Golden Dawn – The Struggle Continues

By Max Musson:

It is now more than two years since the Greek nationalist party Golden Dawn caused a sensation when they secured almost 7% of the popular vote in national parliamentary elections and twenty-one of their candidates were elected as members of the Greek parliament. Since then the party has had a torrid time, engulfed as it has been by one controversy after another.

The Greek establishment and the mass media have routinely demonised Golden Dawn reporting the longstanding campaign of petty violence that has followed the party as a product of their deliberate policy, when in fact most violence associated with Golden Dawn is the result of aggression against the party by communists and other violent left-wing extremist groups alarmed by the growth of the party.

As has been widely reported, a left-wing rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, otherwise known as ‘Killah P’, was killed in a street fight that took place in Athens on 18^th September 2013 following an argument about football, and an individual, George Roupakia, was arrested for that murder. Roupakia had previously been a member of extreme left-wing organisations, but had allegedly recently joined Golden Dawn. Roupakia is also alleged to have been employed in a cafe situated in a Golden Dawn building, but the party claims he was not formally a member and that the incident in which he allegedly killed Fyssas was nothing to do with them.

Despite these protestations on the part of Golden Dawn, the Greek authorities led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras have led a clamp-down on the party, arresting six of its MPs, including Nikos Michaloliakos, who founded the Golden Dawn more than 30 years ago, and imprisoning them pending trial on charges of operating a criminal organisation.

Michaloliakos and two other MPs have already been charged while the other three individuals arrested have now been released on bail. However, based on a 200-page report compiled by prosecutors, three more Golden Dawn MPs had their immunity from prosecution lifted earlier this year, among them Michaloliakos’s wife, Eleni Zaroulia.

Since the initial wave of arrests, the Greek police have raided the homes and offices of prominent Golden Dawn officials and a large quantity of documents, photographs and computer equipment was taken away for analysis.

In an obvious effort to diminish political support for Golden Dawn among the Greek public, to facilitate the prosecution of the party’s leaders and to prejudice public opinion against the party ahead of impeding trials, the Greek authorities have taken the following measures:

1. They have released details of much of the material harvested from the police raids, which tends to show members of Golden Dawn involved in activities that have been branded ‘Neo-Nazi’, but none of which is actually illegal;
2. They have denied the arrested Golden Dawn MPs the immunity from prosecution normally enjoyed by all members of parliament; and
3. They have introduced legislation to deny Golden Dawn the public funding to which they would normally be entitled.

Widely recognised as of dubious constitutionality, these measures have however produced the opposite effect of that which was expected, and far from Golden Dawn and support for the party collapsing, the party secured an increased vote in this year’s European Union elections receiving 536,442 votes and 9.4% of the vote, compared to 426,025 votes and 6.9% of the vote in the Greek parliamentary elections in 2012. In these recent elections the party had three MEPs elected and it was noted that their support base has widened to include a much larger proportion of middle-class voters.

While Golden Dawn has over the years been embroiled in a certain amount of political violence, the Greek public would appear to be increasingly aware that this is largely the result of violence directed at Golden Dawn rather than members of Golden Dawn going out of their way to court violence:

In November 2005, Golden Dawn’s offices were attacked by a group of Anarchists with molotov cocktails and stones. There were gunshots, and two people were injured;

In March 2010, a bomb was detonated in the fifth floor office of Golden Dawn, in central Athens;

In December 2012, a makeshift bomb containing dynamite exploded at Golden Dawn’s office building in Aspropyrgos, a suburb of Athens;

In February 2013 an improvised bomb exploded in the regional office of Golden Dawn in Piraeus and on the following day a similar improvised bomb exploded outside the offices of Golden Dawn in the city of Larissa, in central Greece; and

In November 2013, two Golden Dawn members Giorgos Fountoulis and Manos Kapelonis were shot dead outside the party’s offices in Neo Irakleio, a northern suburb of Athens. A third member, Alexandros Gerontas, was also severely injured.

Clearly, Golden Dawn have not been operating in a peaceful environment and it is not surprising therefore that from time to time, they may have needed to resort to robust tactics in dealing with their violent political enemies.

It was just over a year ago the Greek government passed the resolution through their parliament stripping Golden Dawn of further state funding. The resolution suspended state funding for parties “when there is sufficient evidence that under the mantle of a political party, serious crimes are being committed by its leadership,” or by a tenth of its members of parliament.

The parliamentary ruling deprived Golden Dawn of roughly $550,000 last year and roughly four times as much this year, however the party is undaunted.

“Golden Dawn’s political activity will continue normally,” declared Ilias Kasidiaris late in 2013. He said the party could carry on because it hadn’t yet spent the $1.6m it had already received that year, and because its 18 MPs tithe 20 percent of their salary to the party. An MP’s base salary after tax is $6,392 (4,676 euros) a month, and there are usually additions for attending committees. The party expects to continue receiving $276,000 annually from its MPS and there are also undisclosed donations from members and supporters.

Obviously Samaras’ liberal conservative New Democracy government and many on the left would like to see Golden Dawn banned. However, under the Greek constitution it is not possible to ban a political party that has elected members of parliament. If all of the Golden Dawn MPs can be convicted of membership of a criminal organisation however, they will lose their seats in parliament and this will open the way for Golden Dawn to be banned.

There is also a time under the Greek constitution within which prosecutors must initiate prosecutions against criminals charged with an indictable offence. Nikos Mikaloliakos and his colleagues were arrested on 27^th September 2013 and therefore the government have until April 2015 to commence prosecutions against them if they wish to ban the party based upon current charges. Prosecutions against the indicted Golden Dawn leaders where to take place this month, however they have now been postponed until early in the New Year. Nikos Mikaloliakos has already stated however that if Golden Dawn are banned he will simply dissolve and then reconstitute the party under a different name.

It seems therefore that despite the level of state harassment, unprecedented since the return of Greece to democracy in 1974, Golden Dawn are far from beaten and look set to survive the current wave of prosecutions and their fortunes were given a further shot in the arm just prior to the European Parliamentary elections earlier this year, when Takis Baltakos, Prime Minister Samaras’s most trusted adviser was filmed admitting that Samaras had instigated the judicial inquiry against the Golden Dawn for ‘political gain’.

This gaffe led to the resignation of Baltakos, which came just hours after the release of a video showing a highly embarrassing exchange between him and Golden Dawn’s spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris. During the meeting, secretly filmed by Kasidiaris, the cabinet secretary can be heard saying that a criminal investigation into the group was aimed purely at stemming losses for the ruling conservative party. “He [Samara] is afraid for himself because you are cutting his lead over Syriza,” he tells Kasidiaris in the video posted on YouTube.

Syriza is the main Marxist opposition party.

The evidence appears to be mounting in Golden Dawn’s favour and far from Samaras engineering the demise of Golden Dawn, it looks as though his bungling and ineffective measures are seriously undermining his own credibility.

By Max Musson © 2014