![]() Yet in June, the party amassed votes from across the political spectrum, wiping out the more moderate nationalist LAOS party and winning support from as far left as the communist KKE party, pollsters said. When pressed on such issues, Golden Dawn says they are all in the past and it is looking to the future.įor years after Mihaloliakos founded the party in 1985 it remained marginal: in the 2009 elections Golden Dawn won just 0.29 percent of the vote, or fewer than 20,000 votes. A former special forces commando in the Greek army, he met the leaders of the Greek military junta while in prison for carrying illegal weapons and explosives as a member of a far-right group in 1979. Short, squat and combative, Mihaloliakos once praised Hitler and denied the Nazi gas chambers existed. "We operate like a well-organized army unit, because the military is the best institution in any country." Greece's far-right party goes on the offensive (PDF) /rut83t > Greece's other debt problem (PDF) /ryq82t Everything else has stopped working or is partially working,” he said. “Golden Dawn is the only institution in this country that works. In an interview with Reuters at an open-air cafe in the Athens district of Papagou, a traditional neighbourhood for military personnel, Ilias Panagiotaros, a Golden Dawn lawmaker and spokesman, explained the party’s appeal. ![]() So why are many Greeks now turning to a party whose emblems and rhetoric, critics say, resemble Hitler’s? In World War Two Greece suffered massacres and famine in its fight against the Nazis, and the spectre of the 1967-1974 military junta still hangs heavy over its modern politics. The possibility that Golden Dawn could capture second place in a snap election is slim but real, say pollsters.Īnalysts believe that, ultimately, the party lacks the broad appeal and structure needed to gain mass traction. Violent behavior by Golden Dawn members, who often stroll through run-down Athens neighborhoods harassing immigrants, seems to boost rather than hurt the party’s standing.Īs the government imposes yet more austerity on an enraged public, the collapse of the ruling conservative-leftist coalition remains on the political horizon. The party now lies third in the polls, behind conservative New Democracy and the main opposition, the radical leftist Syriza. “Golden Dawn can potentially tap up to 30 percent of voters.” “As long as the political system doesn’t change and doesn’t put an end to corruption, this phenomenon will not be stemmed,” said Costas Panagopoulos, chief of ALCO, another independent polling company. They warn that Golden Dawn, which denies being neo-Nazi despite openly adopting similar ideology and symbols, may lure as many as one in three Greek voters. Political analysts see no immediate halt to its meteoric ascent. A survey by VPRC, an independent polling company, put the party’s support at 14 percent in October, compared with the seven percent it won in June’s election. Riding a wave of public anger at corrupt politicians, austerity and illegal immigration, Golden Dawn has seen its popularity double in a few months. Last month’s rally revealed the party, which describes itself as nationalist and pledges to expel all illegal foreigners, has a new-found sense of triumph, even a swagger, that some find menacing. ![]() Now we’re thousands and it’s only the beginning,” cried the leader of Golden Dawn, a far-right party that is seeing its support soar amid Greece’s economic collapse. They haven’t stolen,” shouted Nikolaos Mihaloliakos as he stood, floodlit, in front of about 2,000 diehard party followers filling an open-air amphitheatre at Goudi park, a former military camp near Athens. “We may sometimes raise our hand this way, but these hands are clean, not dirty. ![]() Supporters of Greece's Golden Dawn extreme right party secure an area where fellow party supporters are distributing food to residents suffering from the economic crisis at the Syntagma square in Athens in this Augfile photo. ![]()
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