Earlier this week, Ilias Panagiotaros, a heavy-set Golden Dawn MP said these words during a rally in Athens:

"If Chrysi Avgi [Golden Dawn] gets into parliament [as polls predict], it will carry out raids on hospitals and kindergartens and it will throw immigrants and their children out on the street so that Greeks can take their place." He went on to threaten fellow MPs with violence if they voice opinions on issues of national interest that his party does not agree to.

There are laws in Greece that prohibit hate speech and the threat of force against people or groups of people, of course. But, as usually happens here, the objectionable legality of this outburst was ignored.

It was the latest in a series of grim incidents initiated by Golden Dawn members, a group of mostly young men that combine hate speech with a swagger familiar among nightclub bouncers. As the country faces the worst crisis of its modern history, political discourse has sunk to their level. How did this happen?

Just three years ago, the far-right Golden Dawn party was a nonentity. An outlandish group modelled after similar neo-Nazi parties of Europe, they caused more bewilderment than fear. Their anger seemed inexplicable and appalling, but also inconsequential. In the 2009 election they got 0.29% of the popular vote, which, in the tiny electorate of Greece, translates to less than 20,000 votes in total.

Then, after the economy crumbled, bailouts were issued, memoranda were signed and the Greek political system imploded, something changed: on the 6 May election, Golden Dawn got almost 7% of the vote (and 21 seats in parliament). More than 440,000 people voted for them.

That's a lot of new neo-Nazis in just three short years.

But of course, they were always there. Before May, those at the far-right edge of the Greek political spectrum were assimilated in the "regular" right. Laos, a party with an anti-immigration, nationalistic agenda similar to Golden Dawn's, but wrapped in a less-scary populist package, got 5.6% of the vote at the 2009 polls. Three years later, after alienating its supporters by voting for the much-maligned second memorandum (the agreement that secured the 2012 bailout), it only got 2.9%. Many of the defectors naturally fled to Golden Dawn.

Add to that the ultra-conservatives among the 1.1 million voters that fled New Democracy, the major party of the Greek centre right, during the past three years, and there you have it: Hundreds of thousands of conservative Greek voters, disillusioned with the status quo, found in Golden Dawn an unexpected alternative.

But what was it that swayed them towards a political force so blunt and raw? How can such an aggressive, negative, violent political message find agreeable ears in a modern democracy?

If anything, the rise of Golden Dawn is an indication of our lawlessness.

This lawlessness is so pervasive that it is rendered imperceptible. We evade taxes, drive illegally, park illegally, build houses in burned-out forest land, tolerate corruption, hate speech, racism and violence, and somewhere along the way we forget that what we are doing is wrong.

Greeks, let me assure you, are not biologically wired to be violent or immoral. The lawlessness is not an innate characteristic – it's a visible trait, but not a genetic one. It would not exist if lax policing, vague laws, a needlessly complicated bureaucracy and a justice system that barely operates didn't facilitate it. It's a self-replicating monster. A catch-22 of corruption.

Unfortunately, it shapes the way civilians view themselves as members of their society, and the level of public discourse that is based upon that view. This is obviously why Greece is ranked low in studies that measure social capital. (Greece ranks last among EU members in volunteering and blood donations, for example). In a 2010 Vanity Fair article, author Michael Lewis called Greece "a society that has endured something like total moral collapse".

When civilians view law abidance as optional, they can immediately assume that their opinion is above any law. And their opinion, unbound, can become anything. In times of crisis and uncertainty, when fear reigns, opinions can easily turn sinister.

People can begin to accept that, sure, we can throw immigrant children out of kindergartens. That is something that can happen. We can throw yoghurt at politicians, or bludgeon passerby reporters. We can slap women on live TV, and justify it on Facebook posts afterwards. We can upload YouTube videos calling for an armed rebellion, as an alleged Syriza candidate did. We can assemble in a city square and chant threats of physical violence against our elected officials, while holding DIY hanging nooses as symbolic banners. Thousands of Greeks did just that last year.

When a nation's moral compass is malfunctioning, when the level of its public discourse is abysmal, its lawlessness made manifest as violence in words and deeds, people can even pretend that a group of thugs that terrorise immigrants in poverty-stricken suburbs are a plausible political entity, and elect it in parliament.

In a country collapsing in so many disparate ways, anything can happen. This is exactly where Golden Dawns bloom and flourish.

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