Rising Neo-Nazis In Greece Threat Immigrants, Workers
By Countercurrents.org
4 November 4, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Recession ravaged Greece, a fertile ground for Nazism, is witnessing rise of neo-fascists. The fascist thugs are carrying out attacks on workers, mainly immigrants. Golden Dawn, the Greek neo-fascist party is utilizing all opportunities to seize initiative in politics. It’s their allegiance to capital. Nikolaos G. Michaloliakos, the leader of Golden Dawn, denies gas chambers were used during the Holocaust. Golden Dawn is setting up a blood bank for pure Greek blood only. These are Nazi-positions that deny historical fact. One of their ideological positions, “I’m the only, I’m the best”, is racist, anti-humanity, anti-working people.
The Telegraph from the UK reported [1]:
Fascist gangs are turning Athens into a city of shifting front lines, seizing on crimes and local protests to promote their own movement, by claiming to be the defenders of recession ravaged Greece.
Thugs wearing the black T-shirts of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party are carrying out attacks on immigrant markets and in public squares, according to the United Nations, with victims speaking of areas in the capital which are now strictly off limits.
Malik Abdulbasset, an Egyptian-born shopkeeper, found himself the target of one of the mobs on October 31, 2012 night after the barber across the road was stabbed during a robbery.
Golden Dawn members led a crowd of enraged locals in a protest on Mikhail Voda St that turned violent despite the presence of riot police.
While no one witnessed the attack on the barber, residents were adamant the assailant was black.
After battering his Egyptian assistant, the mob turned on Abdulbasset, who had defied police to keep his shop open.
"I had to turn and point to my Greek children and my Greek wife and say, look I am Greek, we are Greek, if you want to kill us we cannot stop you but you are killing your own."
The riot police watched on but did not intervene and threats of more protests were pasted on nearby doors.
"I will not close my shop because it is not my fault. But at the same time if something was to happen to my shop I will leave Greece because I am not protected."
Ilias Panagiotaris, a Golden Dawn MP, and a leading party figure in Athens, was unapologetic about his group's methods.
"Most nations, well, not the US or Australia, have a single nationality that defines its culture and Greece must return to this ideal," he said. "The Golden Dawn is a very well organized party that is intervening to support and help people. Without us in a country where two million of ten million people are illegal, there would be chaos."
Support for his party has doubled from the seven per cent it received in the last Greek election, according to an opinion poll this week.
One of its main claims is it would dragoon immigrants on to flights to Islamabad and dare Pakistan to shoot the aircraft down.
Panagiotaris added the 'papers' of every Greek who had acquired citizenship would be thoroughly vetted. "Everyone should have their documents inspected and those that bought their papers expelled."
The undisguised extremism promoted by Golden Dawn is a chilling watershed in Greece's post-war democracy.
Dimitra Xirou, the mother of Argyris Argyropoulos, the stabbed barber, seethed with anger at the nearby hospital, while holding vigil for her son.
The 43-year-old Argyropoulos, came within a millimeter of death when he was robbed for just 10 euros, with the knife just missing his heart.
"It is us who have no one to protect us," Mrs Xirou said. "We are hungry, we have no jobs, there is crime everywhere.
"It used to be one of the best districts of Athens and now it is slum that we can't escape because the Pakistanis all come here when they arrive in Athens."
While the attacks have not specifically been backed by the powerful Orthodox Church, some priests have reportedly been involved in the protests.
Metropolitan Omyotis Moiysides, the local priest in Mrs Xirou’s Panteleiomon district, said the crime wave sweeping Athens as the economy disintegrated was forcing residents to fight back.
“I understand why the people are crying for help. I was pulled from my car and robbed,” he said. “The police do not come and stop these crimes, so the people have to defend themselves.”
The rise of Nazism in Greece has deeper roots in the capitalist economy. Another report [2] from Athens said:
For every Jew who lives in Greece, there are about 100 Greeks who voted for the country’s neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, last spring.
The party now controls 18 seats in Greece’s 300-member parliament, and its popularity is rising rapidly: A poll taken in October showed that if elections were held again today, Golden Dawn would capture 14 percent of the vote, making it Greece’s third-largest party. A September poll showed that 22 percent of Greeks have positive views of Golden Dawn, up from 12 percent in May.
With its swastika-like flag, gangs of black-shirted thugs attacking immigrants and its ideology of Greek racial superiority, Golden Dawn’s sudden and significant rise has prompted condemnations from around the world.
It also has put many of Greece’s 5,000 Jews on edge. Community leaders already have begun a campaign to educate Greeks about the dangers of allowing a neo-Nazi party to flourish, and Greek Jews are trying to figure out what more they can do to arrest Golden Dawn’s rise.
“We definitely think that a very basic tool to promoting social equality and combating the rise of extremists like Golden Dawn is educating schoolchildren,” said Zanet Battinou, director the Jewish Museum of Greece.
The museum and its programs teach visiting schoolchildren about Greece’s Jewish community, its heritage and, in particular, about the Holocaust, in which more than 80 percent of Greek Jews were murdered.
“It certainly is a very strong weapon against misinformation, bigotry and prejudice,” Battinou said. “But the biggest benefit is, and should be, to teach young people to think for themselves.”
While Golden Dawn mostly has targeted those it holds responsible for Greece’s dire economic plight and its international humiliation — immigrants from Asia and Africa, politicians and the Communist opposition — the party also has a clear anti-Semitic streak.
Golden Dawn’s leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos has a penchant for giving the Nazi salute. Statements from the party refer to Israel as a “Zionist terror state.” Party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, who made international headlines when he punched a female Communist Party member in the face during a live television debate, recently read out a passage from the anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in parliament.
“We must react to everything they do against the Jews,” said David Saltiel, president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece. “We protest, we fight in every instance where there are displays of anti-Semitism and will not let ourselves fall down. We take every measure we can within the spirit of democracy.”
The Greek Jewish community is also trying to maintain a dialogue with the government and mainstream political parties, and urging them to take a stronger stand, according to Saltiel.
Outside Jewish groups are stepping in, too. In response to the rise of Golden Dawn, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which assists Greece’s 500 Holocaust survivors, has begun funding the Greek Jewish museum’s traveling exhibition on anti-Semitism.
“For survivors that went through what these people went through during the war, many of whom were saved by the underground efforts of other Greeks, they never expected that in their lifetime they would see Greek support for a Nazi-like party,” said the Claims Conference’s chairman, Julius Berman. “There must be complete horror.”
Golden Dawn’s political ascendance has been fast and furious, propelled by a Greek public weary of five years of economic depression, massive unemployment and what they see as Greece’s international humiliation and its betrayal by the politicians who got them into this mess. Similar factors led to Hitler’s rise in Weimar Germany, some have noted.
For years, Golden Dawn had lingered as a tiny party on the fringes of society. In the 2009 elections, the party won just 0.29 percent of the vote.
Given the relatively small size of the country’s Jewish community, Jewish leaders are aware that their efforts may appear like a drop in an ocean of hate, and that they alone cannot fight Golden Dawn’s rise.
“It is not possible for only a few thousand remaining Jews. There must be mainstream involvement or a big segment of the mainstream like newspapers, universities and the politicians,” said Hagen Fleischer, the emeritus professor of history at the University of Athens and an expert on the Holocaust and the German occupation of Greece.
The Austrian-born Fleischer, who is not Jewish, organized a public event aimed at countering the growth of Golden Dawn, bringing Holocaust survivors to tell their stories. But, he says, “You cannot solve the problem of Golden Dawn only with enlightenment or telling people there really was a Holocaust.”
Initially, many Greeks and leading politicians downplayed the party’s rise, dismissing it as a knee-jerk reaction from Greeks looking for a shortcut out of the country’s economic crisis, but who did not really identify with Golden Dawn’s fascist ideology.
As Golden Dawn has become more brazen, violently attacking migrants, gays and Communists, disrupting theater productions deemed blasphemous and holding racist events like setting up a blood bank for pure Greek blood only, Greek political leaders have begun to mount a stronger response.
In October, parliament voted to lift the immunity of three Golden Dawn members of parliament accused of attacking immigrants. Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias announced the creation of a special police unit to deal with racist violence — a welcome move after repeated allegations that police were deliberately turning a blind eye to, or sometimes even colluding with, the black-shirt gangs in their attacks on foreigners.
Perhaps most significantly, the head of the Church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymous II, spoke out. “The Church loves all people, including those who are black, white or non-Christians,” he said.
Saltiel says these developments give him a glimmer of hope.
“If all the political groups, the church, the universities and the media come together to try and put things in the right way, I think that this will change,” he said.
There are reports that anti-fascist activists are being tortured [3].
Claims made by 15 antifascist demonstrators that they were subjected to torture at Attica police headquarters (GADA) are being investigated in the context of a sworn administrative inquiry, public order minister, Nikos Dendias, has said, in a written reply to a parliamentary question from a number of Syriza MPs.
The alleged torture took place on September 30. Those arrested had taken part in an antifascist motorcycle cavalcade against racist attacks carried out by Golden Dawn supporters in central Athens.
In his reply, Dendias, citing information from the police chief, said that five police officers were injured and that four police motorcycles were damaged in the incident. He added that in order to deal with an attack, officers made use of stun grenades and arrested 15 protesters.
The charges of police brutality would be investigated in the context of a sworn administrative inquiry, he added. The process will also investigate an anonymous charge received via email and relevant reports in the British daily the Guardian and on a Greek website.
Dendias reiterated his intention to sue the Guardian over the reports, saying that the issue was being discussed by the State Legal Council.
In 2008, the UN Human Rights Committee described a sworn administrative inquiry as an "internal and confidential police procedure whose safeguards aim to protect the rights of the officer under investigation, rather than those of the complainant".
"Thus, the inquiry guarantees the right of the 'accused' officer to nominate witnesses, to request the postponement of proceedings or the exclusion of the investigating officer, as well as the right of access to the evidence and the right of appeal," the report said.
"By contrast, there are no provisions setting out the rights of the complainant, who does not have the right of access to the hearings and cannot appeal against the findings.
"In common with the oral administrative inquiry, the complainant only has the right to be informed of the outcome, which consists of a mere paragraph without any reference as to the type of disciplinary penalties imposed, if any. The complainant is usually not entitled to ask for copies of documents gathered in the course of the inquiry," the UN committee said.
Unit to record racist attacks
In the written reply Dendias also announced plans to set-up of a special police unit to record incidents of racism.
The unit will operate a uniform data bank for the purpose of immediately notifying international organizations of the cases monitoring their investigation.
Dendias described racist violence as a grave insult to human dignity.
He noted that a special bureau to deal with incidents of police violence in cases of racist and xenophobic violence has also been set up and reports directly to him.
Source:
[1] Damien McElroy, “Golden Dawn takes advantage of recession ravaged Greece”, November 2, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/9651505/Golden-Dawn-takes-advantage-of-recession-ravaged-Greece.html
[2] JTA, Gavin Rabinowitz, “Greek Jews seek outside help in battle against surging neo-Nazi party”, Nov. 2, 2012,
http://www.timesofisrael.com/greek-jews-seek-outside-help-in-battle-against-surging-neo-nazi-party/
[3] Oct. 30, 2012, http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/58717
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