Greek Fascism

[Sava]

Greece's Golden Dawn party describes Hitler as 'great personality'

Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros cements party's credentials as neo-Nazi force in interview with Australian current affairs show

Helena Smith in Athens
theguardian.com, Wednesday 16 April 2014 11.05 EDT



Cementing its credentials as an unapologetic neo-Nazi force, Greece's increasingly combative Golden Dawn party has hailed Hitler as a "great personality" and denounced homosexuality as a "sickness".

In a rare interview with a foreign media outlet before May's European elections, the Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros told the Australian current affairs show 60 Minutes the group was involved in an "extremely ugly [war]" and that "in every period of time, there must be, there are, some people who are doing the dirty work".

When asked about Hitler, Panagiotaros, who is widely seen as the organisation's chief overseas strategist, described him as a "great personality, like Stalin".

With its leadership imprisoned and more than half of its 16-strong parliamentary group under criminal investigation, Golden Dawn has previously attempted to minimise any association with nazism. Fascist salutes among party cadres and the group's swastika-style emblem have been played down. So, too, have video recordings, speeches and documents confiscated from the computers of its jailed elite that have depicted the force as headed by an all-powerful führer and a rigid hierarchy resonant of the Nazi party.

But Golden Dawn has clearly decided to up the ante as European elections and Greek local elections, also in May, approach. It was unclear, however, whether Panagiotaros' inflammatory comments were indicative of the extremists' renewed confidence or fear in the face of crisis.

Extolling the virtues of a "one-race nation", Panagiotaros, who also faces charges of participating in a criminal gang, lashed out at the minorities the party considers deviant in the 60 Minutes interview, describing Muslim immigrants as jihadists and gays as "******s".

"Until 1997, [the] international association of doctors, and I don't know what, considered homosexuality a sickness, illness, which it is."

In October 2012, at the height of Greece's economic and social crisis, Panagiotaros led a mob that prevented a Greek performance of Terence McNally's Corpus Christi – in which Jesus is portrayed as a gay man – from being staged. Panagiotaros brushed off the incident, describing its director, Laertis Vasiliou, as "an Albanian ******. A stupid idiot."

Members of Greece's gay community and dark-skinned immigrants have been singled out for attack by Golden Dawn hit squads. The paramilitary units roamed the streets with seeming impunity until a government crackdown against the group spurred by the murder last September of the Greek musician and anti-fascist activist Pavlos Fyssas.

Panagiotaros, Golden Dawn's candidate for governor of the Attica region in the May local elections, vowed this week to release more videos detailing the group's murky relations with other parties. Earlier this month, secretly filmed footage released by the neo-fascists showed the prime minister Antonis Samaras' chief of staff telling Golden Dawn's spokesman that a criminal investigation had been ordered against it out of a fear the party was stealing votes from the ruling conservatives. Golden Dawn, until recently Greece's third biggest political force, has since seen a rebound in the polls.

It has also won the support of Voula Patoulidou, one of Greece's greatest sporting legends. The women's 100m hurdles gold medallist in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics described the ongoing criminal inquiry as politically motivated and based on lies.

Golden Dawn has pledged to hold a "Greek only" food handout on the Thursday before Easter, the most important religious festival in the Orthodox calendar.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/16/greece-golden-dawn-hitler

[molly bloom]

and denounced homosexuality as a "sickness".

Greek Right wing politicians and their love of irony.

During the Peloponnesian War, an group of vandals went around Athens knocking the phalluses off Hermes - the steles with the head and phallus of the God Hermes which were often outside houses. This incident, which lead to suspicions of the Athenian general Alciabiades, provided Thucydided with a spring board to recount the story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, two homosexual lovers credited by the Athenians with overthrowing tyranny.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/thuc6.asp

I think one of them is saying : 'Take this, Golden Dawn, and shove it'....

[Sava]

i see their weiners

[molly bloom]

i see their weiners

You made laugh, damn you!!!!!

Reminded me of one of my Canadian friends- he says that, in a deliberately affected way. Usually to make me burst out laughing at inappropriate moments.

[Sava]

I like to make laugh

[molly bloom]

I like to make laugh

I'm imagining you saying that in a creepy Ernst Stavro Blofeld accent, fondling a puddytat and feeding a clumsy operative to your pet piranhas....

Sava, you rawk !!!!!!

[Sava]

thx

[Sava]

in a creepy Ernst Stavro Blofeld accent

[molly bloom]

James Bond villain. Donald Pleasence, Charles Gray, Telly Savalas, Max Von Sydow.

No Mr. Bond... not the kittycat!!!!!!

[Sava]

I have two cats perfect for that role too.

[Bereta_Eder]

Greek Right wing politicians and their love of irony.

They are not right wing, they are fascists/nazis with every meaning of the word.
Despicable characters, bastard children of the juntists, criminal gang of thugs, extremely idiotic, ape like mentality, the filth of the sewer.

having said that, "great personality" translates to "noteworthy/made an impact personality" in greek.
noone really has any illusions that they are fascists and nazis but "great personality" in greek translation -necessairily - doesn't mean "admirable personality".
that doesn't mean they don't admire him, in private.


But they can't openly admit they like him because that would alienate even the pathetic people that voted for them in the national elections.
they are a symptom of the times. a direct effect of austerity.
made to crawl in their wet ugly holes in the ground untill 2009 with only 0,5% of the electorate.
now they are the 3rd largest party offering "solutions" to problems that are easily digestable to the guelible cryptoracists and capitualizing on the general sneer of people towards established political parties.

[AAAAAAAAH!]

Austerity is a direct effect of Greece cooking the books and racking up debts they couldn't pay.

[Bereta_Eder]

It is also a matter of political choice to some degree...
Unfortunately austerity has played havock on health care and education.
losing 25% of GDP in a matter of 3 or 4 years is a hell of a "correction".
I think one of the reasons greece isn't a chavez or aliente run country by now, is that many people simply leave the country and go abroad for work.
I'd contemplate leaving it too but there are people I care for here and I couldnt bare leaving any of them behind.

the only reason greece is staying at the euro is that in reality most greeks still like the EU and, secretly, they believe that being run to a large part from abroad is better than running the show themselves. of course there is a breaking point to all that but apparently it hasn't been reached. some of the reforms make sense and were long overdue, others are catastrophic.
actually the whole "greek experiment" is an experiment to save the euro itself. but there is a limit to it, one that apparently is still a long way off and maybe won't be reached before the economy picks up again.

untill that happens scores of unemployed youth will be supported by their families and the large percentage of home ownership greece has will aleviate some of the pain. but those unemployed will be good feeding material for lunatics left and right, like those upstanding gentlemen above.

also I guess the golden dawn did an interview for an australian media because they want to "expand" their little thug like business abroad wherever there is a large greek diaspora like australia or even the US.
the thing is that some greek-something (americans, australians) do not know what they are, and they mistake them for some romantic paligenesis of greek ideals created to "cleanse" the established corrupt political system (which is corrupt, but that's like putting out fire with gazoline) and are favorable towards them. if to those greek-somethings being greek is so important then they'd better know that what golden dawn symbolizes is very much anti-greek. it's a grotesque parody of "greek ideals".
they'd be outlawed right out but greece doesn't have anti-nazi laws like germany does and a new anti-racism bill has been blocked from being passed by the parliement for the time being.

[Sava]

finally

[C0ckney]

unfortunately fascists have been on rise across europe. this is partly as a response to the economic crisis, but also because of mainstream parties' failure to deal with that crisis and the 'solutions' to it that the EU/ECB/IMF have imposed on national governments. the political elite in europe are wedded to the EU, the euro and all that entails. as a result, as public dissatisfaction grows with the EU and its handling of the crisis and the only alternatives to the current way of doing things are offered by the far left and far right, it's unsurprising that support for them grows. certain sections of the public, because of the economic situation, have also found themselves more open to the traditional messages of the far right: immigrants stealing natives' jobs and driving down wages, multiculturalism destroying community bonds, globalisation (free trade, the EU etc.) making working class westerners poorer and so forth. as a result they've achieved greater penetration in many countries' elections; and not just those in crisis, witness the rise of the front national in france.