“TeaO were big and brave and struck like a thunderbolt,” says Aphrodite Frangou, an activist and left-wing journalist, recalling the moment a group of Golden Dawn sympathizers went on the attack. “They kicked us and We got punched and broke everything, the tables, the chairs, even the loudspeakers we installed. The four of us spent the night in the hospital.
October was a month of celebration for Frangou and the other members of Kirfa, Greek The pre-eminent anti-fascist movement.
A year earlier this month, neo-Nazi leaders of the Golden Dawn, including the party’s self-styled ‘Führer’, Nikos Michaloliakos, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. a historic five-year trial hailed as a turning point in Greek political history.
Kirfa was celebrating its anniversary when a public square in Athens was attacked.
A few days ago, similar scenes had surfaced at a vocational school in a Dalit suburb of Thessaloniki. In Balaclava, black-clad youth, armed with clubs, porbanders, flames and knives, became furious, targeting students, anti-fascists and trade unionists. In what would be a wave of far-right attacks that stunned the country, the attackers were filmed giving a Nazi salute.
For Kirfa’s coordinator Petros Constantino, events are reminiscent of the worst days of Golden Dawn, when hit squads attacked the streets of Athens with “immigrant scum” and other perceived enemies in the form of Greece, which was reeling from an economic crisis. became the first nation in Europe. To vote neo-Nazis in parliament. “Nine years later fascists feel empowered again by racist policies,” he said. “We are watching his return precisely because he thinks this is his moment, this is his time.”
The passing of Golden Dawn has filled a blank. In 2012, two years after reaching the 300-seat House of Athens, the party polled 9.3% in European elections, cementing its position as the country’s third-largest political force when nearly 500,000 Greeks Voted ultra nationalists in 2015.
The 13-year sentence that the entire leadership of the party received after he was convicted for operating a criminal gang as a political group. Biggest Nazi court hearing since Nuremberg has made sure that the Golden Dawn is dormant in all but the name.
But there are fears that other extremist organizations are now trying to fill the gap.
The conspiratorial Greek Solution Party is believed to have soaked up most of its base in the last general election in July 2019, securing 3.7% of the vote.
“It traditionally creates strongholds when the right-wing cannot sway nationally,” said Prof Vasiliki Giorgiodo, an expert on far-right extremism at Penteyan University.
“Golden Dawn did the same thing in 2008, when it captured economically disadvantaged areas of central Athens that went unnoticed, and then won a seat on the city’s municipal council. Two years later this parliament I am concerned that this may now happen with the construction of similar strongholds in the northern Greece,” He said.
He said Thessaloniki’s recent street clashes took place in areas with high unemployment, where Pontic Greeks whose families immigrated from Russia were radicalized.
Greek security officials have noted the emergence of at least 16 new far-right groups since the fall of Golden Dawn, according to a police report that has yet to be publicly released.
Seven were recorded in the north of the country, where nationalist enthusiasm – often fueled by conservative clerics in the Orthodox Church – has been fueled by protests against the 2018 Prespa Agreement, which name dispute over With the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
While the blurry imitation of Golden Dawn, whose uninterrupted embrace of Nazi ideology and violent tactics was a source of embarrassment to like-minded parties Europe, the new factions are no less racist, anti-homosexual or anti-Semitic, and include ardent believers in the hegemony of the Greek race. Media reports, citing police investigations, suggest that he has about 5,000 members and supporters in Thessaloniki alone.
“Northern Greece has a strong tradition of nationalism since the far-right has been legitimized in the conflict over Macedonia,” said Kostis Papionau, who directs Signal, a research group that studies far-right extremism. .
“The emergence of these new groups has been linked to the anti-vaccination movement in the region as it is in northern Greece that vaccination rates are so low. But no doubt some have links to the Golden Dawn and jailed parliamentarians.
The rise in conspiracy theories with the pandemic has also helped the far right who are now able to exploit the ignorance and fear of a large segment of the population.
Propatria, which began as a martial arts school and has close ties with Golden Dawn and other terrorist organizations across the continent, is believed to be behind the Kirfa attack. “One of the attackers had a black sun” [tattooed] on his elbow and I was able to recognize him,” said Frangau, referring to the emblem associated with the infamous SS units of Nazi Germany.
The man, who was arrested and given a three-year suspended sentence, was already known to police in Athens after being detained for inciting violence at a violent anti-vaxxer protest.
Papaioannou’s concern is the slow response of the authorities to the new threat.
In a move that fueled outrage last week, a court upheld an appeal from jailed Golden Dawn cadre, Giorgos Patelis, to allow him to walk free on the grounds that his son was ill. As the leader of the party in the capital’s working-class district Nikiya, Patel was serving a 10-year prison sentence for giving orders. The murder of Pavlos Fissa, an anti-fascist hip-hop artist whose death would eventually lead the group to reconcile.
“After last year historical verdict“Some parts of the judiciary seem to be questioning this,” Papioanou said. “For many, Patel’s release has cast doubt on the tribunal’s decision, albeit in a welcome move, asking a Supreme Court prosecutor to review it.”
It was absurd, he said, that on a year-long official investigation police complicity With Golden Dawn still not held.
The prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has been criticized by the main opposition party, Syriza, which has created an environment that has formerly facilitated extremists with the populist radical right-wing Laos Party giving senior cabinet positions to politicians.
While Mitsotakis belongs to the moderate side of the governing New Democracy Party, and has sought to appeal to centrists by appointing figures from the left of the centre, he has been accused of leaning to the right by following radical migration policies and a tough law Have-and-order agenda.
“It has helped to create a political climate in which humiliating decisions such as the release of Patels could lead to humiliating decisions,” said Syriza MEP Stelios Kouluglu.
Georgiadou said the jury was still out on whether the country was experiencing a far-right resurgence. “It is too early to say whether what we are seeing is a revival or an outbreak of far-right extremist violence,” she said. “But we must not ignore what is happening – because the far right has not disappeared in Greece.”