Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn goes global with political ambitions

 

Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn goes global with political ambitions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/01/greece-golden-dawn-global-ambitions

 

Buoyed by its meteoric domestic success, the far right party is planning to

expand 'wherever there are Greeks'

A Golden Dawn rally in Athens in February. The group's success is being

linked to a rise in racially motivated attacks on immigrants in Greece.

Photograph: Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters

 

Emboldened by its meteoric rise in Greece, the far-right Golden Dawn party

is spreading its tentacles abroad, amid fears it is acting on its pledge to

"create cells in every corner of the world". The extremist group, which

forged links with British neo-Nazis when it was founded in the 1980s, has

begun opening offices in Germany, Australia, Canada and the US.

 

The international push follows successive polls that show Golden Dawn

entrenching its position as Greece's third, and fastest growing, political

force. First catapulted into parliament with 18 MPs last year, the

ultra-nationalists captured 11.5% support in a recent survey conducted by

polling company Public Issue.

 

The group - whose logo resembles the swastika and whose members are prone to

give Nazi salutes - has gone from strength to strength, promoting itself as

the only force willing to take on the "rotten establishment". Amid rumours

of backing from wealthy shipowners, it has succeeded in opening party

offices across Greece.

 

It is also concentrating on spreading internationally, with news last month

that it had opened an office in Germany and planned to set up branches in

Australia. The party's spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, said it had decided to

establish cells "wherever there are Greeks".

 

"People have understood that Chrysi Avgi [Golden Dawn] tells the truth," he

told a Greek-language paper in Melbourne. "In our immediate sights and aims

is the creation of an office and local organisation in Melbourne. In fact,

very soon a visit of MPs to Australia is planned."

Ilias Kasidiaris, Golden Dawn MP, leaves court in Athens 4/3/13 Golden Dawn

MP Ilias Kasidiaris (centre) leaves an Athens court this month where he

denied assisting in a 2007 assault and robbery. He has said the party will

spread 'wherever there are Greeks'. Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

 

But the campaign has met with disgust and derision by many prominent members

of the Greek diaspora who represent communities in both the northern and

southern hemispheres.

 

"We don't see any gold in Golden Dawn," said Father Alex Karloutsos, one of

America's leading Greek community figures, in Southampton, New York.

"Nationalism, fascism, xenophobia are not part of our spiritual or cultural

heritage."

 

But Golden Dawn is hoping to tap into the deep well of disappointment and

fury felt by Greeks living abroad, in the three years since the

debt-stricken nation was plunged into crisis.

 

"Golden Dawn is not like other parties in Greece. From its beginnings, in

the early 80s, it always had one eye abroad," said Dimitris Psarras, whose

book, Golden Dawn's Black Bible, chronicles the organisation since its

creation by Nikos Michaloliakos, an overt supporter of the colonels who

oversaw seven years of brutal anti-leftist dictatorship until the collapse

of military rule in 1974.

 

"Like-minded groups in Europe and Russia have given the party ideological,

and sometimes financial, support to print books and magazines. After years

of importing nazism, it now wants to export nazism," added Psarras. By

infiltrating communities abroad, the far-rightists were attempting not only

to shore up their credibility but also to find extra funding and perhaps

even potential votes if Greeks abroad ever won the right to cast ballots in

elections.

 

"[Golden Dawn] not only wants to become the central pole of a pan-European

alliance of neo-Nazis, even if in public it will hotly deny that," claimed

Psarras, who said party members regularly met with neo-Nazis from Germany,

Italy and Romania. "It wants to spread its influence worldwide."

 

With its 300,000-strong community, Melbourne has pride of place in the

constellation of Greek-populated metropolises that dot a diaspora officially

estimated at around 7 million.

Golden Dawn member, Athens 21/4/12 A Golden Dawn election rally in Athens in

April.

 

As part of its international push, Golden Dawn has also focused on the US, a

magnet for migrants for generations, and Canada, which attracted tens of

thousands of Greeks after Greece's devastating 1946-49 civil war.

 

"It's a well-studied campaign," said Anastasios Tamis, Australia's

pre-eminent ethnic Greek historian. "There is a large stock of very

conservative people here - former royalists, former loyalists to the junta,

that sort of thing - who are very disappointed at what has been happening in

Greece and are trying to find a means to express it. They are nationalists

who feel betrayed by Greece over issues like Macedonia, Cyprus and [the

Greek minority] in Voreio Epirus [southern Albania], who cannot see the

fascistic part of this party. Golden Dawn is trying to exploit them."

 

The younger generation - children of agrarian and unskilled immigrants -

were also being targeted, he said. "They're the generation who were born

here and grew up here and know next to nothing about Greece, its history and

social and economic background. They're easy prey and Golden Dawn will

capitalise on their ignorance."

 

Tamis, who admits that some of his students support the organisation, does

not think the group will gain traction even if Australia's far-right party

has been quick to embrace it. But the prospect of Golden Dawn descending on

the country has clearly sent tremors through the Greek community.

 

"This is a multicultural society. They are not wanted or welcome here," said

one prominent member, requesting anonymity when talk turned to the group.

 

Greek Australian leftists have begun collecting protest signatures to bring

pressure on the Australia immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, to

prohibit Golden Dawn MPs from entering the country. In a statement urging

the government not to give the deputies visas, they said the extremists had

to be stopped "from spreading their influence within the Greek community and

threatening the multicultural society that Greek Australians and other

migrants have fought to defend".

 

The neo-Nazis have been given a similar reception in Canada, where the party

opened a chapter last October. Despite getting the father of champion

sprinter Nicolas Macrozonaris to front it, the group was quickly denounced

by Greek Canadians as "a black mark".

 

The culture of intolerance that has allowed racially motivated violence to

flourish in Greece - with black-clad Golden Dawn members being blamed for a

big rise in attacks on immigrants - had, they said, no place in a country

that prides itself on liberal values.

 

"Their philosophy and ideology does not appeal to Greeks living here,"

insisted Father Lambros Kamperidis, a Greek Orthodox priest in Montreal. "We

all got scared when we saw they were giving a press conference. But it was a

deplorable event and as soon as we heard their deplorable views they were

condemned by community leaders and the church."

 

"We are all immigrants in Canada," added Kamperidis, referring to Golden

Dawn's tactic of tapping into anti-immigrant resentment. "The conditions

that apply in Greece do not apply here, so there is no justification for the

party to flourish. The really bad thing is that in opening here it gives the

impression, to people who don't know the situation, that it is supported by

a lot of Greeks, which is not the case. It has hurt Greece, the Greek cause,

and Greeks' reputation more than anything else."

Anti-racism activists, Athens 4/3/13 Anti-racist activists outside the

appeals court in Athens this month for the case involving Golden Dawn MP

Ilias Kasidiaris. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty

 

Despite the resistance, the far-rightists have made concerted efforts to

move elsewhere, with Golden Dawn supporters saying Toronto is next. But the

biggest push by far to date has been in the US. As home to close to 3

million citizens of Greek heritage, America has the diaspora's largest

community. At first, cadres worked undercover, organising clothes sales and

other charitable events without stating their true affiliation. Stickers and

posters then began to appear around the New York suburb of Astoria before

the organisation opened a branch there.

 

But while Greek Americans have some of the strongest ties of any community

to their homeland, senior figures have vehemently denounced the organisation

for not only being incongruous with Greece's struggle against fascism,

during one of Europe's most brutal Nazi occupations, but utterly alien to

their own experience as immigrants.

 

"These people and their principles will never be accepted in our community.

Their beliefs are alien to our beliefs and way of life," said Nikos

Mouyiaris, co-founder of the Chicago-based Hellenic American Leadership

Council (HALC), whose mission is to promote human rights and democratic

values.

 

The victims of often violent persecution at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan as

well as wider discrimination (in Florida in the 1920s restaurant

noticeboards declared "no dogs or Greeks allowed") Greek Americans proudly

recount how, almost alone among ethnic minorities, they actively

participated in the civil rights movement, their spiritual leader Archbishop

Iakovos daring to march alongside Martin Luther King. "Our history as a

diaspora in the US has been marked by our fight against racism," said

Mouyiaris.

 

 

Many in the diaspora believe, like Endy Zemenides who heads HALC, that

Golden Dawn has deluded itself into believing it is a permanent force

because of its soaring popularity on the back of the economic crisis. "The

reality is that it is a fleeting by-product of failed austerity measures and

the social disruption this austerity has caused," he said.

 

In Greece, where Golden Dawn has begun to recruit in schools, there are

fears of complacency. Drawing parallels with the 1930s Weimar period and the

rise of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' party, the historian

Mark Mazower recently warned against underestimating the threat posed by a

party whose use of violence was so disturbing. "Unfortunately, the Greek

state does not seem to realise the urgency of the situation," he told an

audience in Athens.

 

After spending almost 30 years following Golden Dawn, Psarras agrees. Only

weeks ago, he claimed, Michaloliakos held talks in the Greek parliament with

two German neo-Nazis posing as journalists. Golden Dawn rejected the claim

as "old mud".

 

"It is an extremely dangerous phenomenon and do I think it will get worse?

Yes I do," Psarras said, lamenting that, with living standards plummeting,

the organisation was opening offices in traditional middle-class

neighbourhoods. There remained a simple fact too big to ignore: in 2009 the

party was a political pariah, gaining a mere 0.29 % of the vote; today it

had global ambitions.

 

"Ten years ago, if you had said Golden Dawn would become the third biggest

force in Greece, you'd be called crazy," said Psarras. "Now look where it

is."

 

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