GOLDEN DAWN, Greece’s extreme right-wing party, already has a growing presence in public high schools around the country. Teenage supporters have been spreading its racist message despite complaints by the Greek teachers’ union and left-of-centre political parties.
Now Golden Dawn is targeting pupils at primary schools. Its official website recently hosted pictures of neatly-dressed 6 to ten-year-olds, accompanied by parents, at a “national awakening” session held at a Golden Dawn branch office outside Athens. The session included a discussion on “the Olympian gods, the ancient Greek pantheon and the Christian faith". More such lessons are planned, says the party.
Shocked educators and commentators drew comparisons with propaganda methods used in Nazi-era Germany and by the military junta that ruled Greece in the 1970s. Golden Dawn was defiant. “You’re bothered by us teaching Greek history? …We’re going to write it, too”, shouted Dimitris Koukoutsis, one of 18 Golden Dawn lawmakers, during a rowdy exchange with left-wingers in parliament.
Opinion polls show support for Golden Dawn jumped from 6.9% to 11.5% soon after it entered parliament for the first time at last June’s general election. It has remained steady for several months. The party’s characteristics are violent racism (demonstrated by scores of attacks against immigrants), anti-semitic rhetoric and a “social action programme” for the needy (as long as they can produce a Greek identity card).
The party’s ambitions go much further, as the move into schools testifies. Dozens of new Golden Dawn offices in provincial towns stage events designed to attract new supporters. Torch-lit gatherings and talks on Greek history with a fascist slant are popular. Selected members undergo military-style training at weekends. Volunteers support a blood bank, only for Greeks.
Nikos Michaloliakos (pictured above), the 55-year-old party leader, surrounds himself with bodyguards in black T-shirts and combat fatigues. He is greeted with Nazi-style salutes at party meetings. Anti-Semitism is an integral part of its credo. His claim that Golden Dawn is “nationalist but not Nazi” is thoroughly unconvincing.
Greeks are already reeling under the weight of a five-year recession, a rising tax burden and the euro zone’s highest unemployment rate. Golden Dawn’s emergence is shrugged off by many as another unpleasant outcome of the economic crisis rather than a potential threat to democracy.
Civil-society organisations, judicial authorities and the police seem reluctant to lay down a formal challenge to Golden Dawn, even though “hate-speak” is part of its rhetoric both in and outside parliament. Five of its lawmakers face criminal charges, yet only one has appeared in court. Amid persistent accusations of collusion between the police and Golden Dawn, Nikos Dendias, the public order minister, has set up a special police unit to tackle racist crime. One arrest has been reported.
Leftwing radicalism is more hotly debated in Athens than Golden Dawn, perhaps because the left-wing Syriza coalition, which struggles to keep its anarchist faction under control, almost came first in the June election. Yet Golden Dawn is not like other rightwing parties, according to Antonis Ellinas, a political scientist at the university of Cyprus who studies Europe’s far-right parties. According to Mr Ellinas "they’re at the extreme end of the far-right spectrum, but what makes them exceptional is their use of violence.”
