Posted on 05/06/2012 3:10:38 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
AFP - Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn warned rivals and reformers Sunday that "the time for fear has come" after exit polls showed them securing their entry in parliament for the first time in nearly 40 years.
"The time for fear has come for those who betrayed this homeland," Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos told a news conference at an Athens hotel, flanked by menacing shaven-headed young men.
"We are coming," the 55-year-old said as supporters threw firecrackers outside.
According to updated exit polls, the once-marginal party will end up winning over six percent of the vote and sending 19 deputies to the 300-seat parliament on a wave of immigration and crime fears, as well as anti-austerity anger.
Exulting in the apparent breakthrough, Michaloliakos quoted Julius Caesar: "Veni, Vidi, Vici" -- I came, I saw, I conquered.
Michaloliakos said his party would fight against "world usurers" and the "slavery" of an EU-IMF loan agreement which he likened to a "dictatorship".
"Greece is only the beginning," he shouted at reporters as he walked to the news conference, accusing foreign media of spreading lies about his movement.
At the last general election in 2009, the virulently anti-immigrant group had scored just 0.29 percent.
Once part of the country's political fringe, the Hryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn) had already made headlines in 2010 by electing Michaloliakos, 55, to Athens' city council on a wave of anti-immigration tension in the capital's poorer districts.
Shortly after being elected to the council thanks to more than 10,000 votes in the Greek capital, Michaloliakos made waves by giving two fascist salutes captured by a television camera.
A mathematician, Michaloliakos has said Greece could survive "very nicely" without the EU-IMF recovery deal.
"Certainly we should break the agreement," he told the Athens News English-language weekly last month.
"After that, we will survive very nicely. Greece is a rich country," he said, adding that the country would not necessarily have to return to the drachma.
On his agenda, Michaloliakos said his focus would be on "national issues, social issues, the problem of illegal immigration, attribution of responsibility for all scandals."
All illegal migrants "should leave our country," he said.
Golden Dawn has strengthened on the back of the country's deep economic crisis -- it has been bailed out twice -- with unemployment at 20 percent and poverty rising.
It has portrayed immigrants as stealing Greeks' jobs and as being responsible for a wave of crime, as the country is the first point of entry for many illegal migrants into the European Union.
The mainstream parties on the right, including New Democracy of the country's likely next prime minister Antonis Samaras, have been forced to boost their own anti-migration rhetoric to keep up.
The outgoing coalition government planned a network of detention camps around the country to hold migrants earmarked for repatriation, and its socialist predecessors began building a wire fence on the Greek-Turkish border as a deterrent.
With Greece the main entry-point for illegal migrants into Europe, thousands of migrants unable to cross to other EU states due to legal constraints have created urban ghettos in Athens, Patras and other cities.
Hostility from local residents has spiked in recent months with the deterioration of an economic crisis that has brought recession and hundreds of thousands of job losses in Greece.
When you grow your “moocher” class to an unsustainable level there is no violence-free way out.
Sorry but I won’t take the media’s word for it when they call anyone not wearing a swastika a “Nazi.”.
Because the socialist/communist media is biased toward communism.
Can anyone explain to me why this group, Golden Dawn, is labeled as “Neo-nazi”?
You are the first of many to come in the future that will make that statement.
Until it changes to "We have grown our moocher class to an unsustainable level so that is why we have the violence we have".
I'm going to guess that the vast majority of the people who voted for them, did so out of anti-immigrant sentiment than any actual neo-Nazi sentiment.
The "mainstream" conservative party (such as it is) has been put on notice: curtail immigration and balance the budget, or be replaced entirely in the next election.
Their politics are based on socialistic types of government promotion.
He sounds just like Ubama.
This is not a fascist political symbol.
It is an ancient Greek symbol, called Greek Key, found all over ancient temples and pottery, even as far back as 3000 years ago. See:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=altavista&va=greek+key+pattern
The following link will take you to a photo of a plate with the symbol painted just below the belly of the creature on the plate (7th century BC).
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plate_Sphinx_Cdm_Paris_73.jpg
This symbol is oftentimes found connected, in continous friezes, running along under the eaves of temple buidlings.
Greek Nazis? Let me guess: “Never On Saturday.”
“Their politics are based on socialistic types of government promotion.”
So does Mitt Romney, who is a self-professed Progressive, i.e., a national socialist and now heading up the Republican Party, a “neo-nazi”?.
Medicare and Social Security are both “socialistic types of government promotion”. So, does that make us all ‘neo-nazis’?
I suspect this group, Golden Dawn, has yet to be correctly described to Americans.
“Greece is only the beginning,”
That’s just what you DON’T want to be hearing!
Who knew there were neo-Nazis in Greece?
Where there ever Nazis in Greece?
Yeah, what you say is true, but why those colors?
I mean, come on that is pretty Nazi.
“...why those colors?”
Because the ancient pottery of Greece was in three colors: black, red, and white. It was black on white ground or red on white ground. Today, the red looks to be brown because the paint was red ochre, created from iron oxide, and has rusted brown over the past 2000 - 3000 years.
You must understand that the National Socialists (Nazis) of Germany, during the 1930s, adopted much of their symbolism from the ancient world.
I suspect that Golden Dawn is a Greek nationalist party seeking seperation from European financial and political domination. As such it would not be popular with the European press or global government supporters.
Well, during WWII, German Nazis were in Greece, as occupiers.
Because of a party that won 21 seats? A leftist coup seems much more likely.
Europe is on the verge of collapse.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
