Athens, Greece – Far-right activists and neo-Nazi organisations in Greece not too long ago referred to as for a pan-European memorial in Athens, to commemorate 10 years since two members of the self-described Nazi organisation, Golden Daybreak, have been killed.
On November 1, 2013, Manolis Kapelonis and Giorgos Fountoulis – each of their 20s – have been fatally shot in a drive-by assault exterior the occasion’s workplace, an obvious revenge assault for the homicide weeks earlier of the anti-fascist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, by a Golden Daybreak member.
In response to this week’s name, dozens of antifascist teams organised counterprotests at close by metro stations and squares.
A number of days earlier than these occasions, which have been deliberate for Wednesday, the Basic Police Directorate of Attica issued a 24-hour ban on all public out of doors conferences.
The state of affairs heated up on Tuesday night time, when 21 members of the Italian neo-fascist group Casa Pound have been arrested upon arrival on the Athens airport, and put in course of for deportation.
On the appointed night, a way of chaos erupted in some components of the Greek capital.
At two totally different metro stations in Athens, a whole lot of antifascist demonstrators have been held in static positions by rows of riot police.
On the small marble memorial for the Golden Daybreak, supporters handed by rows of police, and 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 counterprotestors inside a cabin.
In movies posted on-line, far-right activists may be seen hitting individuals with belts and sheets of steel, and later dousing them in what seems to be petrol, threatening, “We’ll burn you alive.”
There have been no fires, however a number of individuals have been hospitalised with accidents.
Although Golden Daybreak was formally deemed a legal organisation in 2020, this week’s spectacle was proof that the beliefs and followers of Golden Daybreak haven’t disappeared, and that the Greek far-right is reorganising.
“Clearly with the conviction of Golden Daybreak, we didn’t end with the far proper in Greece,” Kostis Papaioannou, member of the monitoring community Level for the Research and Countering of the Far Proper, instructed Al Jazeera.
“The principle components that feed the acute proper live on and there may be additionally a mainstreaming of the acute proper, of far-right concepts, each by the mainstream information and sadly by political events.”
From political drive to legal organisation
Within the 2000s, Golden Daybreak was a central and potent drive in Greek politics.
The occasion took on a populist attraction, positing that solely their model of fervent nationalism would assuage the nation’s devastating financial woes.
They constructed up help in struggling neighbourhoods throughout Greece, and in 2012 received 7 p.c of the seats within the Greek parliament.
Throughout this era, the organisation bastioned their arguments with violence.
They usually deployed members on nighttime patrols to beat and kill refugees and migrants – and typically left-wingers, typically with impunity.
In 2013, Golden Daybreak organised the coordinated homicide of Fyssas, the favored anti-fascist rapper; a number of of the occasion higher-ups have been later arrested.
In 2020, after years of trial proceedings, Golden Daybreak 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 being criminalised, Golden Daybreak was largely prohibited from partaking in political organising, however its former leaders have continued to marketing campaign for political workplace from jail, members have shifted their help to different far-right organisations, and their violent strategies have been glorified and parroted.
Ilias Kasidiaris, a Golden Daybreak chief with a swastika tattoo who was jailed in 2021, based the nationalist Hellenes occasion simply earlier than starting his 13.5-year sentence on the Domokos jail.
The occasion was banned from this 12 months’s parliamentary elections attributable to Kasidiaris’s legal report.
However the 42-year-old, closely energetic on YouTube and X, then endorsed the previously unheard-of Spartans, and the occasion garnered a groundswell of help that received them 4.7 p.c of the parliament.
The occasion’s chief, Vasilis Stigkas, has earlier ties to Golden Daybreak, and several other different neo-Nazi organisations in Greece.
Two different far-right political events additionally gained seats on this 12 months’s elections – the ultranationalist Greek Resolution and the Christian-conservative Victory.
In sum, these far-right events now comprise 16 p.c of parliament, making the present authorities Greece’s most far-right parliament for the reason that fall of the navy dictatorship in 1974.
Avenue violence
Exterior of occasion politics, Golden Daybreak’s use of avenue violence has additionally been replicated and mimicked.
In the course of this 12 months, as fires raged throughout Greece’s northern Evros area, 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 Resolution.
On August 12, a younger Pakistani man, Sizar Saftar, was killed, in what the organisation the Motion United Towards Racism and the Fascist Menace has recognized as a racist homicide, although it stays unclear who the perpetrators have been.
In latest weeks, far-right youth teams round Athens have publicised their night time patrols, throughout which they spray paint nationalist and racist slogans in varied neighbourhoods.
Papaioannou stated there was a rise in avenue assaults not too long ago.
“After the 2020 conviction of Golden Daybreak, there was a lower within the presence of this violence of racist neo-Nazi teams on the streets,” he stated.
“Nonetheless, there have been some appearances, round colleges within the north of Greece and in Athens. And there may be now a reactivation of those kinds of teams and violent assaults.”
Magda Skoutzou, head of a dad and mom’ affiliation in Athens, stated “fascist” teams are “performing undisturbed”.
On the finish of the earlier faculty 12 months right here, she added, far-right activists stabbed two 15-year-olds in her neighbourhood.
Skoutzou stood with different dad and mom and teams within the antifascist camp on November 1, and although they argued with police, weren’t allowed to go forward with their demonstration.
“I imagine it’s my obligation to be right here at the moment,” stated Skoutzou. “To emphasize that we don’t need fascist teams to have any area in our neighbourhoods and colleges.”
Consultants of the Greek far proper be aware that, regardless of their extra seen presence, these assault teams are nonetheless not practically as organised or as sturdy as they have been through the heyday of Golden Daybreak.
“The teams we have now now – Propatria, or for instance, the Youth Entrance of Golden Daybreak, which is basically a bunch in Thessaloniki – these are very small teams that attempt to recapture the threads of the outdated to do the identical factor, nevertheless it doesn’t work now,” stated Dimitris Psarras, a journalist who reported on Golden Daybreak since its formation.
“They imitate [Golden Dawn] however have neither the ability nor the attraction.”
Psarras stated these neo-Nazi teams function in a different way from the all-encompassing top-down strategy of Golden Daybreak.
“The teams that do far-right politics now, reminiscent of Velopoulos [Greek Solution] within the Parliament, and even the Spartans, on the floor, they need to seem that they’re solely political activists, they don’t do different actions,” he stated.
“It’s just like the Golden Daybreak has break up into the political and navy branches that was collectively and now they’ve break up, though there positively stay amongst them connections and contacts.”
