Athener Neonazis gründen neue Partei

TAGES ANZEIGER: Die griechischen Behörden gehen seit Herbst gegen die Neonazi-Partei Goldene Morgenröte vor. Deren Mitglieder wollen einem drohenden verbot der Partei nun zuvorkommen.

Anhänger der griechischen Neonazipartei Goldene Morgenröte (Chrysi Avgi) haben auf einer von den Behörden abgesperrten Hauptstrasse im Zentrum Athens eine Parade abgehalten. Die Rechtsextremen gaben zudem die Gründung einer Alternativpartei bekannt.

Die Gründung der «Nationale Morgenröte» genannten Partei verkündete der Sprecher der «Goldenen Morgenröte», Ilias Kassidiaris, an der Kundgebung. «Die 'Nationale Morgenröte' kann an allen Wahlen teilnehmen, sollte die Partei 'Völkischer Bund - Goldene Morgenröte' verboten werden», hiess es dazu auf der Internetseite der rechtsextremen Partei. » | ajk/sda | Sonntag, 02. Februar 2014

Golden Dawn...or Dusk? Greek Far-right Party Faces Criminal Charges

The leader of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party is set to appear before magistrates to face charges of criminal activity. Four senior members of the group have already made preliminary court appearances, three of them were released pending trial. A clampdown on the political part was sparked by the killing of an anti-fascist musician last month, allegedly carried out by a member of Golden Dawn.

Greece Crackdown: Golden Dawn Leader Michaloliakos Charged

BBC: The leader of the far-right Golden Dawn party, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, has been formally charged with belonging to a criminal organisation.

Four more Golden Dawn MPs, a party leader in an Athens suburb and 15 other people face the same charges.

They were arrested on Saturday amid anger over the murder on 18 September of anti-racist musician, Pavlos Fyssas.

A man held for the stabbing told police he was a Golden Dawn supporter, though the party strongly denies any link.

The MPs arrested on Saturday were party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, Ilias Panayiotaros, Nikos Michos and Ioannis Lagos. It is the first time since 1974 that a party leader and MPs have been arrested.

It was an extraordinary moment to see the five MPs being escorted in handcuffs by armed police in balaclavas, BBC Athens correspondent Mark Lowen reports.

They will now return to police headquarters and are likely to be refused bail before their trial, our correspondent says.

Mr Panayiotaros told reporters before giving himself up: "Shame on them, the people will lift Golden Dawn higher." » | Saturday, September 28, 2013

Golden Dawn Leader Charged with Heading a Criminal Gang »

Golden Dawn Leader Charged with Heading a Criminal Gang

THE GUARDIAN: Nikos Michaloliakos appears in court after he is arrested along with key members of his Greek neo-fascist party


The leader of Greece's Golden Dawn party, widely viewed as Europe's most violent political force, appeared in court on Saturday night on charges of heading a criminal gang after police mounted an unprecedented crackdown on the neo-fascist party, arresting Nikos Michaloliakos and other key members of his organisation.

After a police operation in which anti-terrorism officers stormed the homes of Golden Dawn politicians across Athens, Michaloliakos and five of his MPs were seized. Fifteen other senior party activists, including a female police officer, were taken into custody accused of fomenting violence as members of a criminal organisation. Reading from a nine-page charge sheet, a public prosecutor accused the far-rightists of murder, extortion and money laundering.

The crackdown was hailed as "a historic day for Greece and Europe" by the public order minister, Nikos Dendias, who oversaw the operation, known only to three security officials before it was launched a little after dawn. "Golden Dawn tried to test the endurance of democracy," he said in a televised address, insisting that the inquiry into the party's illegal activities would continue apace. "Today it got an answer from state justice." » | Helena Smith in Athens | The Observer | Saturday, September 28, 2013

Greece's Golden Dawn Leader Nikolaos Mi[c]haloliakos Held

Nikolaos Michaloliakos

BBC: Greek police have arrested the leader of the far-right Golden Dawn party, Nikolaos Mi[c]haloliakos, on charges of forming a criminal organisation.

Another Golden Dawn MP has been held and more warrants issued, police said.

The arrests and warrants come amid anger over the murder of anti-racist musician, Pavlos Fyssas, who was fatally stabbed on 18 September.

The BBC's Mark Lowen in Greece described Saturday's events as "an unprecedented clampdown on the neo-Nazi party". Watch BBC video » | Saturday, September 28, 2013

Party Leader of Greece's Far-right Golden Dawn Arrested

Nikos Michaloliakos, the leader of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn Party has been arrested by Greek police along with a party lawmaker following the fatal stabbing of an anti-racism rapper by a Golden Dawn supporter.

L’article en relation avec cette vidéo »

Greece Arrests Golden Dawn Leader in Crackdown on Far-right

Nikos Michalololiakos

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Greek police have arrested Nikos Michaloliakos, leader of the Golden Dawn party, as part of a wider crackdown on the far-right group.

Nikos Michaloliakos, 56, was arrested on Saturday morning on charges of founding a criminal organisation, with arrest warrants issued for dozens more party members and lawmakers, officials said.

"The Secretary General and one lawmaker of the Golden Dawn Party were arrested a short while ago after arrest warrants were issued," Greek police confirmed in a text message to journalists.

The arrest of Michaloliakos along with party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris comes as part of a wider crackdown on the far-right group after the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas by an alleged Golden Dawn member, which sparked riots across the country.

Pavlos Fyssas – known by his stage name of Killah P – was stabbed to death in an Athens commuter town on September 17, triggering violent anti-fascist protests across the country. » | Andrew Marszal | Saturday, September 28, 2013

HARDtalk: Nikos Dendias - Minister for Public Order, Greece

HARDtalk speaks to Nikos Dendias, Greece's minister for public order. He believes Greece has become the gateway to Europe, with 90 per cent of all illegal immigrants to the EU.
Watch the programme on BBC iPlayer here | Monday, July 08, 2013

Support for Greece's Golden Dawn Rises

Read the article The Spectre of Fascism in Greece here | Tuesday, July 09, 2013
Related »

New Dark Age Alert! Thug Politics - Greece

Related »

Greece’s Muslims Cite “Slaughter” Threat
GREEK REPORTER: The Muslim Association of Greece (MAG) said that it has received a threatening note giving all Muslims, Greeks and foreigners, one month’s time to evacuate the country or be “slaughtered like chickens,” according to a statement released by the association on May 18.

The note, published on the association’s webpage, is written in Greek, English and Arabic and the Golden Dawn emblem is printed on the paper, although there is no claim of responsibility from the neo-Nazi group that has 18 seats in Parliament, wants all immigrants out of Greece and has been accused of assaults on them, which the party has denied.

The note is printed over a symbol of Golden Dawn which has an openly anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-foreigner, ultra-religious jingoistic platform and says it wants a Greece populated only by Greeks with 100 percent Greek blood from both parents. » | Andy Dabilis | Saturday, May 18, 2013

Below is the content of the note, expurgated.

Muslim Murderers

Until June 30 you shut your bordela in Greece and you will go to hell.

From July 1 onwards those who are still here will [be] slaughtered like chickens on the road.

Islam F*** you, f*** you and the Koran f***ing your mothers.

There will be blood.

'Like 1930s Germany': Greek Far Right Gains Ground

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL – EXTRACT: Right-wing thugs have been spreading fear and terror in Greece for months. The worse the financial crisis gets and the harsher the budget cuts imposed by European creditors are, the worse the terror gets on the streets. Foreigners have been attacked, homosexuals chased and leftists assaulted. Some were beaten to death. There are parts of Athens in which refugees and minorities no longer dare to go out alone at night, and streets that are echoingly empty. Foreign merchants have had to close their doors, while journalists and politicians who criticize these developments receive threats or beatings.

Ta Nea, a leading Greek daily, has described conditions here as similar to those of Weimar Germany. Vassiliki Georgiadou, a political science professor in Athens, likewise calls it "an atmosphere like in the 1930s in Germany against the Jews and their businesses."

As recently as Greece's October 2009 parliamentary election, Golden Dawn garnered just 0.29 percent of votes. But in the early election held last May, as well as in the subsequent new election in June, the right-wing extremist party suddenly received almost 7 percent of votes, securing 18 seats in the country's parliament. Read it all » | Manfred Ertel in Athens | Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein | Thursday, April 18, 2013

Greece's Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Goes Global with Political Ambitions
THE GUARDIAN: Buoyed by its meteoric domestic success, the far right party is planning to expand 'wherever there are Greeks'


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." » | Helena Smith in Athens | Monday, April 01, 2013

Return of the Far Right: Greece's Financial Crisis Has Led to a Rise in Violent Attacks on Refugees
THE INDEPENDENT: John Carlin reports from Athens on the return of the far right.

An Afghan who fled his country, fearing a lynching, after converting from Islam to Christianity. A Syrian who bolted across the border after a bomb destroyed his home. A Sudanese man who ran for his life after soldiers murdered his father and raped his sisters.

All three have joined the rivers of refugees that flow, now as ever, from the most wretched corners of the earth, converging today on Athens, the most wretched capital in Western Europe. Pursuing the European dream, they have run aground in the swamp of Greek's economic crisis: undocumented, unwanted, despised, hungry and under constant threat of the sort of violence they imagined they had left behind at home.

The bad guys of this story are not hard to identify. The far-right Golden Dawn party (Chrysi Avgi in Greek) captures votes by using foreign migrants in the same way the Nazis used the Jews: as scapegoats for the frustrations, insecurities and hardships of today's Greek population. They blame Arabs, Asians and Africans (or 'subhumans' as they call them) for their country's dire lot. Accusing them of infecting Greeks with diseases and of turning the centre of Athens into a criminal jungle, young Golden Dawn militants hunt down foreigners in the streets, markets, parks and buses.

The good guys of this story are the NGO workers and Greek volunteers who endeavour to help the refugees. Their altruism is especially impressive: they are also suffering the consequences of the economic crisis, they all know fellow Greeks who are competing with the refugees for food in the bins of Athens. Workers at Médecins Sans Frontières, for example, report Greek people coming to them and asking: "Why don't you help us instead of them? Who invited them, anyway?".

Golden Dawn are the bad guys, but it is not hard to grasp why they are now the third biggest party in the country, well on their way to becoming the second. At a time of awful confusion and uncertainty, they offer simple solutions to complex problems. Linked to neo-Nazi groups in Germany, they have learnt the populist lessons of the Hitler era. They magnify the danger posed by refugees and present themselves as the only true defenders of the people. » | John Carlin | Saturday, March 30, 2013

Greek Extremists: 'Golden Dawn' Fosters Ties with German Neo-Nazis
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: The Greek right-wing extremist party Golden Dawn has established contacts with German neo-Nazis in Bavaria. The group, which is represented in Greek parliament, is also attempting to set up a cell in the southern German state.

The Greek right-wing extremist party Golden Dawn is establishing close contacts with Bavarian neo-Nazis and began setting up a cell in Nuremberg last year. The party, known in Greek as Chrysi Avgi, even held a conference in the southern German city recently.

Bavaria's state intelligence agency is particularly interested in meetings that have been taking place between right-wing extremists from Greece and those in Bavaria.

An umbrella organization of Greek communities in Germany has called on all Greeks in Germany to reject attempts by neo-Nazis to promote "violence, inteolerance and social cannibalism." » | cro/SPIEGEL | Monday, February 04, 2013

Fear and Loathing in Athens: The Rise of Golden Dawn and the Far Right

THE GUARDIAN: In austerity-ravaged Greece, neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn is on the rise. Their MPs give fascist salutes, while on the streets black-shirted vigilantes beat up immigrants. And some of their most enthusiastic supporters are in the police

You can hear it from blocks away: the deafening beat of Pogrom,Golden Dawn's favourite band, blasting out of huge speakers by a makeshift stage. "Rock for the fatherland, this is our music, we don't want parasites and foreigners on our land…" It's a warm October evening and children on bicycles are riding up and down among the young men with crew cuts, the sleeves of their black T-shirts tight over pumped-up biceps, strolling with the stiff swagger of the muscle-bound. They look relaxed, off-duty. Two of them slap a handshake: "Hey, fascist! How's it going?"

Trestle tables are stacked with Golden Dawn merchandise: black T-shirts bearing the party's name in Greek, Chrysi Avgi, the sigma shaped like the S on SS armbands; mugs with the party symbol, a Greek meander drawn to resemble a swastika; Greek flags and black lanyards, lighters and baseball caps. I lean over to talk to one woman stallholder, dressed in Golden Dawn black with thickly kohl-rimmed eyes, but as soon as she opens her mouth a man in a suit strides up: "What are you writing? Are you a journalist? Tear that page out of your notebook. No, no, you can't talk to anyone."

Tonight is the opening of the Golden Dawn office in Megara, a once prosperous farming town between Athens and Corinth. The Greek national socialist party polled more than 15% here – double the national average – in the June election, when it won 18 seats in parliament. (One was taken up by the former bassist with Pogrom, whose hits include Auschwitz and Speak Greek Or Die.)

Legitimised by democracy and by the media, Golden Dawn is opening branches in towns all over Greece and regularly coming third in national opinion polls. Its black-shirted vigilantes have been beating up immigrants for more than three years, unmolested by the police; lately they've taken to attacking Greeks they suspect of being gay or on the left. MPs participate proudly in the violence. In September, three of them led gangs of black-shirted heavies through street fairs in the towns of Rafina and Messolonghi, smashing up immigrant traders' stalls with Greek flags on thick poles. » | Maria Margaronis | Friday, October 26, 2012

Seeds of Hatred Sprout in Soil of Greek Crisis

Les néonazis s'enracinent en Grèce
LE POINT: Le parti grec d'extrême droite a obtenu, dimanche, 7 % des voix lors du second tour des élections législatives.

Le parti néonazi l'Aube dorée (Chryssi Avghi) a confirmé dimanche sa percée électorale, signe de l'enracinement d'une idéologie ultraviolente dans une Grèce déboussolée par la crise, selon les analystes. Ce sont quelque 430 000 Grecs, soit 7 % des votants, autant qu'au scrutin de mai, qui ont choisi d'envoyer au Parlement 18 députés de ce parti nationaliste et raciste qui n'avait recueilli en 2009 que 18 000 votes et obtenu aucun élu.

"Chryssi Avghi est là pour rester", a affirmé son chef et fondateur, Nikos Mihaloliakos, un mathématicien de 55 ans, qui clamait sa proximité avec le dictateur fasciste grec d'avant-guerre Ioannis Metaxas. Nikos Mihaloliakos avait été élu au conseil municipal d'Athènes en 2010, y faisant une entrée fracassante, sous escorte musclée, en tendant le bras comme un salut hitlérien. "Le pourcentage de Chryssi Avghi ne tient pas du hasard, et ses électeurs savent à quoi s'en tenir en votant à nouveau pour eux, ce qui témoigne d'une tendance actuelle à l'enracinement" de cette formation dans l'électorat grec, affirme Sophia Vidali, professeur de criminologie à l'université de Thrace. » | Source AFP | lundi 18 juin 2012

Related »

Greek Far-right Defies Predictions with Vote Success
REUTERS.COM: The leader of Greece's ultra-right Golden Dawn party savored unexpected success in Sunday's election by taunting journalists and defiantly appearing on camera alongside a party official who went on the run for assaulting a leftist rival.

Hundreds of cheering supporters thronged the party's headquarters in Athens and officials threw ballot papers as confetti from windows after the group defied predictions to once again emerge as among the winners of the night.

"Today's vote proves that the nationalist movement is here to stay," leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos said in a televised message. "Golden Dawn represents the Greece of the future." » | Deepa Babington and Yiorgos Karajalis | ATHENS | Sunday, June 17, 2012

Rise of Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party Leads to Spate of Immigrant Attacks in Greece
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The rise of Greece's far-Right Golden Dawn party has led to a spate of vicious attacks against immigrants that it is feared will only increase after a new election is held on Sunday.

The neo-Nazi group has been blamed for numerous violent incidents since the May 6 vote, when it stunned the whole of Europe by winning 6.97 per cent of the vote and 20 seats in parliament amid deep anxiety about recession, unemployment and high levels of illegal immigration.

Polling data seen by the Daily Telegraph shows that Golden Dawn is on course to perform just as well or even better in the new election, which was called after the first failed to produce a government.

Immigrants groups have said that attacks in Athens have risen in recent weeks, backing up an increase in anecdotal reporting, and fear that once established in parliament the party's black t-shirted vigilantes will feel further emboldened in their campaign of intimidation.

Reza Gholami, the head of association for Afghan immigrants, said: "There are daily beatings. Most incidents are not known because immigrants do not notify authorities. They are afraid for their lives or don't have legal papers or lack the funds to pay the cost of a law suit."

There have been accusations of police bias after it emerged that 50 percent of Athens police officers voted for Golden Dawn. Suspected perpetrators are often arrested but not charged.

In the latest reported attack, a 28-year-old illegal Egyptian immigrant was beaten by men armed with clubs and iron bars as he slept on his roof to escape a summer heat wave. » | Alex Spillius, Athens | Wednesday, June 13, 2012