DP

Until the end of 1980s, the far right in Greece was a marginal phenomenon mainly absorbed by the mainstream parties, especially New Democracy, or alternately, comprised divided and fragmented groups wielding little influence. If they did have influence, it was in circles nostalgic for the old authoritarian regimes (the dictatorship of 1974, the monarchy regime, and so on).

This was the reality until the end of 1980s. In the beginning of nineties there was a political chance for the far right in Greece, which came from the so-called national issues concerning the naming of the FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). The Greek church and then–Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonis Samaras led a mobilization of more than a million people in Greece declaring that “our name is our soul.”

This created an opportunity for the Right to act politically as a movement representing something original. In the early nineties, because of the so-called national issues, especially around Macedonia, and with the church playing a more protagonistic role than New Democracy as a party, the Right had a chance to go to the street.

In the early nineties, for instance, before the Macedonian movement, there was a very strong student movement opposing the neoliberal government of New Democracy. A part of this very important movement was absorbed by the nationalist movement led by the church and Samaras. This was the first appearance of Golden Dawn, of movements further right than the traditional right, further right than New Democracy.

This was when the church became the main political expression of the opposition towards the center-left government, since the Left was still a minority and the party of New Democracy was still out of the play. It had a rhetoric of anti-globalization, anti-immigration, and a hardcore stance towards the national issues — the agenda that the post–fascist far right made its own through Laos (The Popular Orthodox Rally, a far-right solidarity party). So I am trying to describe the social and political context in which the far right in Greece changed its agenda.

It moved from a marginal and very minoritarian nostalgia of the authoritarian regimes of other decades to the culturalist and post-economist, post-materialist agenda of the 1990s and 2000s. When Georgios Karatzaferis founded Laos, he capitalized on this and made it the agenda of this party that was, by 2004, to the right of New Democracy.

For Laos and Karatzaferis, there were two key political moments. The first, the so-called right populist moment — I have many objections concerning the use of the term “populist” to describe the far right, but we’ll have to discuss it more later — it had to do with an anti-establishment rhetoric depicting the establishment as Jewish, as certain parts of capital as tied to the European Union in general. This despite the fact that Karatzaferis was a child of this political system for many decades.

Laos lost its populist, anti-establishment veneer in late 2008 with the riots that followed the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos. That was the period that Laos ramped up its rhetoric against the establishment and built a narrative concerning security, public order, anti-anarchism, and all these things.

On the one hand, Laos had a strategy to reject populism and don the clothes of responsibility. On the other hand, the extreme center wanted to counterattack the movement, searching for ways to legitimize itself and delegitimize the Greek European capitalist crisis. This is how the extreme center pulled the far right into the political center, creating an axis containing Pasok (Panhellenic Socialist Movement), New Democracy, and Laos. This was before the three-party coalition government and after the memorandum.

Pasok was brought into power by two forces, first from New Democracy’s ability to guarantee security, and second from the discontent of the people due to austerity. These were the circumstances that brought Pasok into power, and afterwards Laos became a pillar of the center-left government supporting the strategy of austerity.

This continued even more intensively after the memorandum. Laos voted for them and offered itself as a pillar of the new regime. In this three-party system comprising the extreme center, Laos was the extreme right of the center in a way.

This continued after the loss of legitimization of the ruling parties in Greece and the initiation, let’s say, of the strategy of responsibility on behalf of Laos and their participation in the three-party government of Lucas Papademos. After 2011 the consequences of the memorandum were clear, and the main agenda for the political system and the media became security.

All this produced a great field of political opportunities for the neofascist Golden Dawn. Golden Dawn was cultivated in this field, the field of the post-2008 period. For me it was not only because of the economic crisis — and for me this is key — but also because of the counterrevolutionary strategy on behalf of the state concerning a) the anarchists and the movement and b) immigration and migrants, some of whom had participated in the 2008 riots. Golden Dawn became the executive of this counterrevolutionary strategy. The matrix was made possible by the Greek state. That was totally obvious after 2008.

When we talk about Golden Dawn, we are talking about an organization that at the end of the nineties moved together, not individually, to kill a leftist student, Dimitris Kousouris. There was a decision by the Supreme Court in Greece ruling that the actions of Golden Dawn were that of attempted murder. The case fit perfectly into the antiterrorist law we have here, a very well-known law concerning criminal organizations.

Despite the fact that we had this Supreme Court decision, despite the fact that Golden Dawn had openly attacked immigrants, anarchists, and leftists, etc., for many years its action was totally tolerated by the Greek state and its apparatuses. Everybody knew, nobody did anything. And this is why after the murder of Pavlos Physas and the arrest of the ruling nucleus of Golden Dawn, one of its members of parliament, Giorgos Germenis, went to the head offices of the police and said that they had to clean up all the police in order to catch the perpetrators.

He was depicting the reality, that even the internal secret police group of the 1990s, charged with searching for Periandros Androutsopoulos, was influenced by Golden Dawn. Periandros was known as the number two man in Golden Dawn, and this is why he avoided arrest for many years.

So there is a social basis, a social context, there is a political strategy, and there is of course an autonomous role played by Golden Dawn. In some circles on the Left, Golden Dawn and neo-Nazism are understood as instruments of capitalism, yet it is important for them to remain autonomous actors in order to persuade the average person, in order to build mass acceptance of their ideology. Without this autonomous element and without a convincing strategy, neo-Nazism is useless as an instrument of capitalism.

So there is autonomous violent action on behalf of the party, against certain parts of Greek society, attacks which are considered not only tolerable but even desirable. A part of Greek society desires such violence against leftists, against migrants, etc. It comes from a kind of mafia solidarity, rooted in economic activity and clientelistic practices. That’s how Golden Dawn spread its influence.

After the murder of Physsas, the state apparatuses moved against Golden Dawn, in the process reducing the number of attacks. It was enough to make a large part of society understand what Golden Dawn really stood for. Some of their offices closed because the pressure was intolerable. I think this is key to understanding what happened.