Golden Dawn: five things to know about Greece's 'neo-Nazi' party

The leader of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party, Nikolaos Mihaloliakos, was jailed today pending trial – the latest move in the Greek government's crackdown against the racist political party, which has seen 21 of its members arrested, including five parliamentarians. Mr. Mihaloliakos himself faces charges of running a criminal organization. But just who is Golden Dawn and why is the government arresting its members?

Who is Golden Dawn?

Yannis Behrakis/Reuters/File
A member of the extreme right Golden Dawn party holds a flag bearing their party's logo during an election campaign rally in Athens in April 2012.

Golden Dawn is an extreme nationalist party in Greece that has risen to prominence in the last two years.

The party, with its anti-immigration rhetoric, provision of parallel social services, propensity for street violence, and, some say, Nazi-like logo has attracted attention the world over. It has frequently been linked to attacks on immigrants and leftists, and its politics are not only nationalistic and anti-immigrant, but markedly racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Turk, and anti-Semitic.

While it is very much a minority group, Golden Dawn's rise indicates a hardening of attitudes in Greece. 

Founded in 1987, but with a prehistory dating back to 1980, Golden Dawn was an insignificant party until well after the economic crisis hit, polling just 1 percent of the vote in 2009.

But in 2012, it tapped into Greek resentment over the austerity demanded by Europe in exchange for two bailouts and boosted its support to 7 percent, earning it 21 seats in Greece's 300-seat parliament. (A subsequent election reduced its seats to 18.)

A recent opinion poll, taken prior to the arrests, put the party's support at 15 percent, though most Greek sources say that has dropped to around 7 percent since the crackdown.

1 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.