by ALEXANDER CLAPP
Golden Dawn party flag, which has a strong resemblance to the Nazi flag. IMAGE/Wikipedia
In Kalamata I introduce myself as an American neo-fascist with a strong interest in Greek history. Sceptically at first, later with fervour, a few members of the Golden Dawn invite me to attend meetings. Their offices tend to be located off main squares, usually in residential buildings in quiet neighbourhoods. Large Greek flags hang on the walls, along with news clippings and redrawn maps: Greece in possession of Skopje and bits of Bulgaria, Greece in possession of northern Turkey, Greece in possession of Cyprus and southern Albania. Swastikas (‘ancient Greek symbols’) are everywhere: on pencil-holders, clock faces, a paperweight. On the walls of a room in Gytheio there are reproductions of Hitler’s watercolours. Last autumn, two Dawners were gunned down by Athenian anarchists. Their profiles are pasted on refrigerators and desk drawers. No one says their names. They are just the Athanatoi, the ‘deathless ones’. Kala palikaria itan, the older Dawners murmur. ‘Those were good lads.’ They cross themselves.
…
The party pushes its anti-immigration programme not simply because it believes in it, but because it’s popular among Greeks generally. Dawners ambush immigrants about once a week. They call these raids krypteia, ‘secret things’. Most attacks are ordered by the top brass and pinpointed by hour and neighbourhood. Party violence is rarely random. Dawn texting groups and Facebook threads are used to home in on three or four immigrants. A Bangladeshi barber I met in Metaxourgeio said that Dawners mimic the Greek police: they roll up in pairs on white motorcycles, helmeted and decked out in black armour. The party doesn’t go after the illegals in immigrant neighbourhoods; it targets those who have strayed into middle and upper-class areas, where the residents are less welcoming. Dawners generally don’t kill. They break a few limbs in lightning-quick strikes. Last September a Dawn truck driver stabbed an Athenian rapper named Pavlos Fyssas to death in Piraeus. The uncharacteristic murder of a Greek – immigrants don’t count – triggered a government investigation into the party. Sixty top Dawners are now facing criminal charges in trials which began in November.
London Review of Books for more