Athens, Greece – Far-right activists and neo-Nazi organizations in Greece lately known as for a pan-European monument in Athens to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the homicide of two members of the self-styled Nazi group, Golden Daybreak.
On November 1, 2013, Manolis Kapelonis and Giorgos Fountoulis – each of their 20s – had been fatally shot in a drive-by assault exterior the get together’s workplaces, in obvious revenge for the homicide weeks earlier of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas. by a Golden Daybreak member.
In response to this week’s name, dozens of anti-fascist teams organized counter-protests at close by metro stations and squares.
A number of days earlier than these occasions, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, the Common Police Directorate of Attica issued a 24-hour ban on all open-air public gatherings.
The state of affairs intensified on Tuesday night, when 21 members of the Italian neo-fascist group Casa Pound had been arrested upon arrival at Athens airport and charged for deportation.
On the appointed night, a way of chaos broke out in some components of the Greek capital.
At two completely different metro stations in Athens, a whole bunch of anti-fascist protesters had been held in static positions by strains of riot police.
On the small marble Golden Daybreak memorial, supporters handed strains of police, left flowers or took selfies.
Later, anti-authoritarian protesters clashed with police at one other metro station.
On the central Monastiraki metro station, a bunch of neo-Nazis attacked counter-protesters in a hut.
Movies posted on-line present far-right activists beating folks with belts and metallic plates, and later dousing them with what seems to be gasoline, threatening: “We are going to burn you alive.”
No fireplace broke out, however a number of folks had been taken to hospital with accidents.
Though Golden Daybreak was formally thought-about a prison group in 2020, this week’s spectacle was proof that Golden Daybreak’s beliefs and supporters haven’t disappeared and that the far proper in Greece is reorganizing.
“It’s clear that with the condemnation of Golden Daybreak we’re not carried out with the far proper in Greece,” Kostis Papaioannou, a member of the monitoring community Level for the Examine and Countering of the Far Proper, instructed Al Jazeera.
“The principle components that gas the far proper live on and there’s additionally mainstreaming of the far proper, of far proper concepts, each via mainstream information and sadly via political events.”
From political energy to prison group
Within the 2000s, Golden Daybreak was a central and highly effective power in Greek politics.
The get together took on a populist attraction, arguing that solely their model of fervent nationalism may ease the nation’s devastating financial issues.
They constructed help in troubled neighborhoods throughout Greece and received 7 p.c of the seats within the Greek parliament in 2012.
Throughout this era, the group bastioned their arguments by power.
They recurrently despatched members on evening patrols to beat and kill refugees and migrants – and generally left-wingers – usually with impunity.
In 2013, Gouden Dageraad organized the coordinated homicide of Fyssas, the favored anti-fascist rapper; a number of get together leaders had been later arrested.
In 2020, after years of trial proceedings, Gouden Dageraad was discovered responsible of a number of assaults on migrants and refugees, and commerce unionists, in addition to the homicide of rapper Pavlos Fyssas.
After Golden Daybreak was criminalized, it was largely banned from participating with political organizations, however its former leaders have continued to marketing campaign for political workplace from jail, members have shifted their help to different far-right organizations and their violent strategies have been glorified and mentioned. .
Ilias Kasidiaris, a Golden Daybreak chief with a swastika tattoo who was jailed in 2021, based the nationalist Hellenes get together simply earlier than beginning his 13.5-year sentence in Domokos jail.
The get together was excluded from this 12 months’s parliamentary elections as a consequence of Kasidiaris’ prison document.
However the 42-year-old, very lively on YouTube and
The get together’s chief, Vasilis Stigkas, has earlier ties to Golden Daybreak and several other different neo-Nazi organizations in Greece.
Two different far-right political events additionally received seats on this 12 months’s elections: the ultranationalist Greek Answer and the Christian conservative Victory.
All collectively, these far-right events now make up 16 p.c of parliament, making the present authorities probably the most far-right parliament in Greece for the reason that fall of the army dictatorship in 1974.
Violence on the road
Exterior of get together politics, Gouden Dageraad’s use of road violence has additionally been replicated and imitated.
In the midst of this 12 months, as fires raged within the northern Greek area of Evros, a person broadcast on social media an extrajudicial kidnapping of refugees and migrants in Evros, whom he blamed for the fires. This video was shared by the chief of Greek Answer.
On August 12, a younger Pakistani man, Sizar Saftar, was murdered, in what the motion United In opposition to Racism and the Fascist Risk has recognized as a racist killing, though it stays unclear who the perpetrators had been.
In latest weeks, far-right youth teams round Athens have introduced their nightly patrols, spraying nationalist and racist slogans in a number of neighborhoods.
Papaioannou mentioned there was a rise in road assaults lately.
“After the conviction of Golden Daybreak in 2020, there was a lower within the presence of this violence from racist neo-Nazi teams on the streets,” he mentioned.
“Nevertheless, there have been some performances round colleges within the north of Greece and in Athens. And there’s now a reactivation of these kind of teams and violent assaults.”
Magda Skoutzou, head of a mother and father’ affiliation in Athens, mentioned “fascist” teams are “appearing unhindered.”
On the finish of the earlier faculty 12 months, she added, far-right activists stabbed two 15-year-olds in her neighborhood.
Skoutzou stood along with different mother and father and teams within the anti-fascist camp on November 1 and though they’d an argument with the police, they weren’t allowed to proceed their demonstration.
“I imagine it’s my obligation to be right here right this moment,” Skoutzou mentioned. “To emphasise that we are not looking for fascist teams to have any area in our neighborhoods and colleges.”
Specialists on Greece’s far proper word that, regardless of their extra seen presence, these assault teams are nowhere close to as organized or as sturdy as they had been through the heyday of the Golden Daybreak.
“The teams now we have now – Propatria, or for instance the Golden Daybreak Youth Entrance, which is basically a bunch in Thessaloniki – are very small teams attempting to recapture the thread of the outdated to do the identical factor, however it’s working no longer,” says Dimitris Psarras, a journalist who has reported on Gouden Dageraad since its founding.
“They imitate [Golden Dawn] however have neither the facility nor the attraction.”
Psarras mentioned these neo-Nazi teams function in another way than Golden Daybreak’s complete top-down strategy.
“The teams that at the moment are practising far-right politics, corresponding to Velopoulos [Greek Solution] in parliament, and even among the many Spartans, they need to give the impression on the floor that they’re solely political activists and don’t take every other actions,” he mentioned.
“It’s as if the Golden Daybreak has cut up into the political and army branches that was collectively and have now cut up, though connections and contacts actually stay amongst them.”
