Athens, Greece – Far-right activists and neo-Nazi organizations in Greece recently called for a pan-European monument in Athens to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the murder of two members of the self-styled Nazi organization, Golden Dawn.
On November 1, 2013, Manolis Kapelonis and Giorgos Fountoulis – both in their 20s – were fatally shot in a drive-by attack outside the party’s offices, in apparent revenge for the murder weeks earlier of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas. by a Golden Dawn member.
In response to this week’s call, dozens of anti-fascist groups organized counter-protests at nearby metro stations and squares.
A few days before these events, which were scheduled for Wednesday, the General Police Directorate of Attica issued a 24-hour ban on all open-air public gatherings.
The situation intensified on Tuesday evening, when 21 members of the Italian neo-fascist group Casa Pound were arrested upon arrival at Athens airport and charged for deportation.
![epa06212608 A young man touches the monument in honor of Greek musician Pavlos Fyssas who was stabbed to death by a member of the far-right Golden Dawn party on September 18, 2013, and takes part in a march in Keratsini, western Attica, Greece. September 18, 2017. A protest march and concert to mark the fourth anniversary since the murder of Greek rapper Pavlos Fyssas by members of the far-right Golden Dawn party will be held in the Piraeus suburb of Keratsini, where the rapper lived. Four years after the musician's murder, the man accused and confessed to the murder, Giorgos Roupakias, has been released from prison with restrictions on his movements, having exceeded the maximum prison term for pre-trial detention. EPA-EFE/ORESTIS PANAGIOTOU](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/7846314-1699017440.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C533)
On the appointed evening, a sense of chaos broke out in some parts of the Greek capital.
At two different metro stations in Athens, hundreds of anti-fascist protesters were held in static positions by lines of riot police.
At the small marble Golden Dawn memorial, supporters passed lines of police, left flowers or took selfies.
Later, anti-authoritarian protesters clashed with police at another metro station.
At the central Monastiraki metro station, a group of neo-Nazis attacked counter-protesters in a hut.
Videos posted online show far-right activists beating people with belts and metal plates, and later dousing them with what appears to be gasoline, threatening: “We will burn you alive.”
No fire broke out, but several people were taken to hospital with injuries.
Although Golden Dawn was officially considered a criminal organization in 2020, this week’s spectacle was proof that Golden Dawn’s ideals and supporters have not disappeared and that the far right in Greece is reorganizing.
“It is clear that with the condemnation of Golden Dawn we are not done with the far right in Greece,” Kostis Papaioannou, a member of the monitoring network Point for the Study and Countering of the Far Right, told Al Jazeera.
“The main factors that fuel the far right continue to exist and there is also mainstreaming of the far right, of far right ideas, both through mainstream news and unfortunately through political parties.”
From political power to criminal organization
In the 2000s, Golden Dawn was a central and powerful force in Greek politics.
The party took on a populist appeal, arguing that only their brand of fervent nationalism could ease the country’s devastating economic problems.
They built support in troubled neighborhoods across Greece and won 7 percent of the seats in the Greek parliament in 2012.
During this period, the organization bastioned their arguments by force.
They regularly sent members on night patrols to beat and kill refugees and migrants – and sometimes left-wingers – often with impunity.
In 2013, Gouden Dageraad organized the coordinated murder of Fyssas, the popular anti-fascist rapper; several party leaders were later arrested.
In 2020, after years of trial proceedings, Gouden Dageraad was found guilty of several attacks on migrants and refugees, and trade unionists, as well as the murder of rapper Pavlos Fyssas.
After Golden Dawn was criminalized, it was largely banned from engaging with political organizations, but its former leaders have continued to campaign for political office from prison, members have shifted their support to other far-right organizations and their violent methods have been glorified and discussed. .
Ilias Kasidiaris, a Golden Dawn leader with a swastika tattoo who was jailed in 2021, founded the nationalist Hellenes party just before starting his 13.5-year sentence in Domokos prison.
The party was excluded from this year’s parliamentary elections due to Kasidiaris’ criminal record.
But the 42-year-old, very active on YouTube and
The party’s leader, Vasilis Stigkas, has previous ties to Golden Dawn and several other neo-Nazi organizations in Greece.
Two other far-right political parties also won seats in this year’s elections: the ultranationalist Greek Solution and the Christian conservative Victory.
All together, these far-right parties now make up 16 percent of parliament, making the current government the most far-right parliament in Greece since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974.
Violence on the street
Outside of party politics, Gouden Dageraad’s use of street violence has also been replicated and imitated.
In the middle of this year, as fires raged in the northern Greek region of Evros, a man 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 leader of Greek Solution.
On August 12, a young Pakistani man, Sizar Saftar, was murdered, in what the movement United Against Racism and the Fascist Threat has identified as a racist killing, although it remains unclear who the perpetrators were.
In recent weeks, far-right youth groups around Athens have announced their nightly patrols, spraying nationalist and racist slogans in several neighborhoods.
Papaioannou said there has been an increase in street attacks recently.
“After the conviction of Golden Dawn in 2020, there was a decrease in the presence of this violence from racist neo-Nazi groups on the streets,” he said.
“However, there have been some performances around schools in the north of Greece and in Athens. And there is now a reactivation of these types of groups and violent attacks.”
Magda Skoutzou, head of a parents’ association in Athens, said “fascist” groups are “acting unhindered.”
At the end of the previous school year, she added, far-right activists stabbed two 15-year-olds in her neighborhood.
Skoutzou stood together with other parents and groups in the anti-fascist camp on November 1 and although they had an argument with the police, they were not allowed to continue their demonstration.
“I believe it is my duty to be here today,” Skoutzou said. “To emphasize that we do not want fascist groups to have any space in our neighborhoods and schools.”
Experts on Greece’s far right note that, despite their more visible presence, these attack groups are nowhere near as organized or as strong as they were during the heyday of the Golden Dawn.
“The groups we have now – Propatria, or for example the Golden Dawn Youth Front, which is essentially a group in Thessaloniki – are very small groups trying to recapture the thread of the old to do the same thing, but it is working now not,” says Dimitris Psarras, a journalist who has reported on Gouden Dageraad since its founding.
“They imitate [Golden Dawn] but have neither the power nor the attraction.”
Psarras said these neo-Nazi groups operate differently than Golden Dawn’s comprehensive top-down approach.
“The groups that are now practicing far-right politics, such as Velopoulos [Greek Solution] in parliament, or even among the Spartans, they want to give the impression on the surface that they are only political activists and do not take any other actions,” he said.
“It is as if the Golden Dawn has split into the political and military branches that used to be together and have now split, although connections and contacts certainly remain among them.”