After Golden Dawn’s demise, a dangerous new far right flourishes in Greece | The Far Right News

Athens, Greece – Far-right activists and neo-Nazi organisations in Greece not too long ago referred to as for a pan-European memorial in Athens, to commemorate 10 years since two members of the self-described Nazi organisation, Golden Daybreak, had been killed.

On November 1, 2013, Manolis Kapelonis and Giorgos Fountoulis – each of their 20s – had been fatally shot in a drive-by assault exterior the get together’s workplace, an obvious revenge assault for the homicide weeks earlier of the anti-fascist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, by a Golden Daybreak member.

In response to this week’s name, dozens of antifascist teams organised counterprotests at close by metro stations and squares.

A number of days earlier than these occasions, which had been deliberate for Wednesday, the Normal Police Directorate of Attica issued a 24-hour ban on all public out of doors conferences.

The state of affairs heated up on Tuesday evening, when 21 members of the Italian neo-fascist group Casa Pound had been arrested upon arrival on the Athens airport, and put in course of for deportation.

On the appointed night, a way of chaos erupted in some elements of the Greek capital.

At two completely different metro stations in Athens, tons of of antifascist demonstrators had been held in static positions by rows of riot police.

On the small marble memorial for the Golden Daybreak, supporters handed by rows of police, and left flowers or took selfies.

Later, anti-authoritarian protesters clashed with police at one other metro station.

On the central Monastiraki metro station, a bunch of neo-Nazis attacked counterprotestors inside a cabin.

In movies posted on-line, far-right activists may be seen hitting individuals with belts and sheets of metallic, and later dousing them in what seems to be petrol, threatening, “We are going to burn you alive.”

There have been no fires, however a number of individuals had been hospitalised with accidents.

Although Golden Daybreak was officially deemed a legal organisation in 2020, this week’s spectacle was proof that the beliefs and followers of Golden Daybreak haven’t disappeared, and that the Greek far-right is reorganising.

“Clearly with the conviction of Golden Daybreak, we didn’t end with the far proper in Greece,” Kostis Papaioannou, member of the monitoring community Level for the Examine and Countering of the Far Proper, instructed Al Jazeera.

“The primary elements that feed the acute proper live on and there may be additionally a mainstreaming of the acute proper, of far-right concepts, each by means of the mainstream information and sadly by political events.”

From political pressure to legal organisation

Within the 2000s, Golden Daybreak was a central and potent pressure in Greek politics.

The get together took on a populist enchantment, positing that solely their model of fervent nationalism would assuage the nation’s devastating financial woes.

They constructed up help in struggling neighbourhoods throughout Greece, and in 2012 received 7 % of the seats within the Greek parliament.

Throughout this era, the organisation bastioned their arguments with violence.

They commonly deployed members on nighttime patrols to beat and kill refugees and migrants – and generally left-wingers, usually with impunity.

In 2013, Golden Daybreak organised the coordinated homicide of Fyssas, the favored anti-fascist rapper; a number of of the get together higher-ups had been later arrested.

In 2020, after years of trial proceedings, Golden Daybreak was discovered responsible of a number of assaults on migrants and refugees, and commerce unionists, in addition to the homicide of rapper Pavlos Fyssas.

After being criminalised, Golden Daybreak was largely prohibited from partaking in political organising, however its former leaders have continued to marketing campaign for political workplace from jail, members have shifted their help to different far-right organisations, and their violent strategies have been glorified and parroted.

Ilias Kasidiaris, a Golden Daybreak chief with a swastika tattoo who was jailed in 2021, based the nationalist Hellenes get together simply earlier than starting his 13.5-year sentence on the Domokos jail.

The get together was banned from this yr’s parliamentary elections on account of Kasidiaris’s legal document.

However the 42-year-old, closely lively on YouTube and X, then endorsed the previously unheard-of Spartans, and the get together garnered a groundswell of help that received them 4.7 % of the parliament.

The get together’s chief, Vasilis Stigkas, has earlier ties to Golden Daybreak, and several other different neo-Nazi organisations in Greece.

Two different far-right political events additionally gained seats on this yr’s elections – the ultranationalist Greek Resolution and the Christian-conservative Victory.

In sum, these far-right events now comprise 16 % of parliament, making the present authorities Greece’s most far-right parliament because the fall of the navy dictatorship in 1974.

Road violence

Outdoors of get together politics, Golden Daybreak’s use of road violence has additionally been replicated and mimicked.

In the course of this yr, as fires raged throughout Greece’s northern Evros area, a person broadcast on social media an extrajudicial kidnapping of refugees and migrants in Evros, whom he blamed for the fires. This video was shared by the chief of Greek Resolution.

On August 12, a younger Pakistani man, Sizar Saftar, was killed, in what the organisation the Motion United Towards Racism and the Fascist Risk has recognized as a racist homicide, although it stays unclear who the perpetrators had been.

In latest weeks, far-right youth teams round Athens have publicised their evening patrols, throughout which they spray paint nationalist and racist slogans in numerous neighbourhoods.

Papaioannou stated there was a rise in road assaults not too long ago.

“After the 2020 conviction of Golden Daybreak, there was a lower within the presence of this violence of racist neo-Nazi teams on the streets,” he stated.

“Nonetheless, there have been some appearances, round colleges within the north of Greece and in Athens. And there may be now a reactivation of those types of teams and violent assaults.”

Magda Skoutzou, head of a dad and mom’ affiliation in Athens, stated “fascist” teams are “appearing undisturbed”.

On the finish of the earlier faculty yr right here, she added, far-right activists stabbed two 15-year-olds in her neighbourhood.

Skoutzou stood with different dad and mom and teams within the antifascist camp on November 1, and although they argued with police, weren’t allowed to go forward with their demonstration.

“I imagine it’s my obligation to be right here at this time,” stated Skoutzou. “To stress that we don’t need fascist teams to have any house in our neighbourhoods and colleges.”

Specialists of the Greek far proper be aware that, regardless of their extra seen presence, these assault teams are nonetheless not practically as organised or as sturdy as they had been through the heyday of Golden Daybreak.

“The teams we have now now – Propatria, or for instance, the Youth Entrance of Golden Daybreak, which is actually a bunch in Thessaloniki – these are very small teams that attempt to recapture the threads of the outdated to do the identical factor, but it surely doesn’t work now,” stated Dimitris Psarras, a journalist who reported on Golden Daybreak since its formation.

“They imitate [Golden Dawn] however have neither the facility nor the enchantment.”

Psarras stated these neo-Nazi teams function in a different way from the all-encompassing top-down method of Golden Daybreak.

“The teams that do far-right politics now, resembling Velopoulos [Greek Solution] within the Parliament, and even the Spartans, on the floor, they need to seem that they’re solely political activists, they don’t do different actions,” he stated.

“It’s just like the Golden Daybreak has break up into the political and navy branches that was once collectively and now they’ve break up, though there undoubtedly stay amongst them connections and contacts.”