Tens of thousands of black-clad members of Greece’s Golden Dawn patriotic party have rallied in Athens in in the movement’s biggest show of support since it entered the Greek parliament in the June 2012 elections.
Billed as a remembrance rally, the event in central Athens on 2 February attracted a crowd of 30,000 to honour three “fallen heroes” of the party. The huge crowd lit torches, fired flares and chanted anti-immigration slogans.
“We are winning the hearts and minds of the people, because we say it as it is,” Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kassidiaris told supporters.
“These politicians who have ruled us for decades are crooks. They have betrayed our national interests. They have led us to humiliating defeats,” he said, referring to a 1996 dispute with Turkey, when three Greek air force pilots were killed in a dispute over an Aegean island before the US intervened, forcing both sides to back down.
“This is a day of remembrance. It’s a day to remember that Golden Dawn is here to stay. And so long as it does, there will be hope for the country.”
Golden Dawn has gained traction with the country’s young and unemployed in the context of economic disaster at home, and the increasing control wielded by foreign creditors over Greece’s failing finances.
“They calls us fascists, thugs and criminals,” says Vassilis, a 23-year-old recruit who joined the party because of his disenchantment with the country’s political elite. “We’re nationalists. We’re patriots. And if these guys who ruled the country for decades had a fibre of the nationalism we’re running on, they would have never brought the country to its current predicament.”
The Golden Dawn party has begun aggressively targeting teenagers and schoolchildren in a bid to consolidate its recent extraordinary rise in support.
The party has been able to capitalise on the harsh austerity that has been imposed as a condition of Greece maintaining its Eurozone membership. As Greece’s economic fortunes have plummeted, so Golden Dawn’s fortunes have soared.
Standards of living have diminished for the middle classes, while the nation has seen its sovereignty ceded to foreign creditors.
Campaigning on a platform of expelling immigrants, Golden Dawn took 7 percent of the vote in general elections last June, having polled just 0.2 percent in the previous election in 2009. This gave Golden Dawn 18 seats in parliament.
Since then, it has seen its popularity double again, currently polling in third place behind the conservative New Democracy and the main opposition party, the radical leftist Syriza.
The collapse of the ruling conservative-leftist coalition could leave the route open for Golden Dawn to capture second place in a snap election, say pollsters.
The party has attracted votes from across the political spectrum, wiping out the more moderate nationalist LAOS party and winning support from the communist KKE party.
It has also stolen a march on New Democracy, which appeared indecisive on the international bailout keeping Greece afloat, and later lost popularity when it imposed harsh spending cuts instead of relief measures.
Golden Dawn’s core supporters are disaffected urban men, but the party is gaining ground among women and the elderly, particularly the unemployed.
Mobilising grassroots support is the party’s preferred method of gaining recruits, with Golden Dawn taking a close involvement in neighbourhood initiatives, particularly those in areas with rising crime or high numbers of immigrants.
Gyms, athletic and martial arts clubs are seen as ripe recruiting grounds, while the party now boasts a patriotic supporters’ club, known as Galazia Stratia, or the Blue Army.
Nationalist4UK
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How are we going to get the same thing in Britain?
Nationalism in Britain is divided today. 🙁 Help us!
draximus
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Superb, and the only way to go. Us Brits need to learn from Golden Dawn, because nothing less is going to help us.
Steve
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They used to say beware Greeks bearing gifts but they have found out what the true Trojan horse is & have woken up but we still are mainly asleep here.
Rob Williams
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I think the blind adulation of Golden dawn is not good either. It’s sure great what they do right now. But what if Greece is ruled by the same type of folk as in Libya and Egypt.
i don’t know why so many nationalist parties use fascist paraphernalia. Is it really impossible to have a party which actually values modern day Western individual liberties and yet keep the country nationalised?
Max Musson
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If Golden Dawn succeed in taking power in Greece, I don’t think they are likely to appoint Arabs to government positions.
Also, is it really impossible to value modern day Western individual liberties while sporting fascist paraphernalia?
Steve
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That’s the interesting thing about our enemies, generally speaking they have no faces or iconography, they are everywhere but seem to be nowhere, that’s why they are so difficult to fight.
Educating people to see them is a bit like “They live” or “The Matrix” but when they do, you can see them everywhere.
Rob Williams
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Our culture and society is riddled with illuminati and zionist symbols. I can see them everywhere. To me it is as obvious as if it were fascist symbolism. Therefore disappointed that some nationist parties resort once again to this infantile type of symbolism. A bit like a backward tribe and their war paint and medicine men recanting silly spells to intimidate people or imbue themselves with fake supernal power.
Just keep it straight and simple and to the piont. i find that much more trustworthy.
Max Musson
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Most political organisations employ a logo, Rob, there’s nothing sinister, unusual or ‘backward’ in that. Even commercial organisations, religious bodies and charities employ logos, and monarchies, police forces, fire services and military organisations employ heraldic devices that are in effect logos.
Why do you have an issue with the ‘rectangular’ spiral devised by Golden Dawn?
Rob Williams
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If you’re going to ask me a question you may as well enable the reply function.
To use your own school of logic. If the majority of society find a certain (fascist) symbolism offensive and inappropriate, then the violent retaliation against those displaying such symbols is legitimised.
Personally I don’t give a hoot, as they’re just shapes and colours and are given value and meaning by people’s programmed perception and those playing up on this.
I refuse to debase my intelligence and play along to that that brainwash game. The logos of banks, political organisations, media oultets, have no impression on me, i merely perceive what emotion / thought the person / group using them is trying to evoke.
Perhaps the human population, including the white one, still needs a few millenia of evolution, before they snap out of this massive game of charades.
Steve
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Following on from Rob Williams, the use of symbols is very potent on a lot of people, you can communicate a lot of information very quickly just by a flash of that image straight to the sub conscious.
But those truly in power try to avoid any obvious symbols so as to make it difficult to identify them & therefore combat them.
The swastika despite its long history is constantly shown in a negative light as shorthand for Hitler & killing 6 million Jews, the hammer & sickle doesn’t quite get the same bad press despite the deaths involved there & then there are the religious symbols.
Nowadays the sight of an islamic crescent or star of David instantly makes me feel negative.
James Albion
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The idea of Democracy rearing its ugly head in Greece has caused the establishment to have Golden Dawn to be banned as a Political Party.