Golden Dawn is perfectly suited to exploit this rising discontent. It was founded as a political party in the mid-’80s by Nikolaos Michaloliakos, a former mathematician and would-be military man who served time in prison for assault and possession of illegal weapons. After his release, Michaloliakos started a magazine that espoused a National Socialist ideology, authoring articles with titles like “Hitler for 1,000 years.” His group remained on the right-wing fringe throughout the 1990s, dismissed for its insistence on a radical “solution” to the country’s immigration problem. But after the financial crisis hit, Michaloliakos and his supporters seized their chance.

First, Golden Dawn assumed some of the social services that had been abandoned by the bankrupt state. It provided supporters with legal and medical aid, procured hard-to-get prescription medicine, and escorted pensioners to the bank to prevent muggings. But from the very beginning, its efforts to help ordinary Greeks were accompanied by acts of aggression. One of its first popular moves was to “clean up” the streets of Athens, organizing vigilante groups to force foreigners out of public squares. (Since the state provides almost no food or shelter, new arrivals often sleep in trees and on park benches.) This program helped Golden Dawn win its first seat on the Athens City Council in 2010 with as much as 20 percent of the vote in neighborhoods with a heavy influx of immigrants.

The foray into electoral politics did not prompt Golden Dawn to tone down its act. On the contrary, the violence has only escalated. Last year, the group threatened on its website to kill a left-wing journalist. Its vigilantes patrol stores to ensure that they hire Greeks, not immigrants. In the town of Rafina, they overturned market stalls belonging to anyone who didn’t have white skin. This summer, Golden Dawn distributed flyers outside gay clubs in Athens that read, “AFTER THE IMMIGRANTS, YOU’RE NEXT.”

Michaloliakos, meanwhile, makes it clear that his group has only a tenuous allegiance to democratic politics. At a rally where his supporters chanted, “Blood, honor, and Golden Dawn”—an adapted Nazi slogan—Michaloliakos declared: “If they want us to, we can abandon it at any given moment and take to the streets. ... There, they shall see what the Golden Dawn is really about, they will see what battle means, they will see what struggle means, they will see what bayonets sharpened every night mean.” In June, spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris even attacked two female left-wing politicians on live television—flinging a glass of water at one and slapping the other repeatedly across the face.