Golden Dawn

History

1980–2005

In December 1980, Nikolaos Michaloliakos and a group of supporters launched Chrysi Avgi magazine. Michaloliakos had been active in far-right politics for many years, having been arrested several times for politically motivated offences, such as beatings and illegal possession of explosive materials, which led to his discharge from the military. While he was in prison, Michaloliakos met the leaders of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 and laid the foundations of the Golden Dawn party. The characteristics of the magazine -which featured the swastika and other Nazi symbols, Adolf Hitler, Nazis and collaborators, and some of its issues bore the alternate title "National-Socialist Periodical Publication"- and of the organisation were clearly aligned to Neo-Nazism. Chrysi Avgi magazine ceased publication in April 1984, when Michaloliakos joined the National Political Union and took over the leadership of its youth section. In January 1985, he broke away from the National Political Union and founded the Popular National Movement – Golden Dawn, which was officially recognised as a political party in 1993.

Golden Dawn remained largely on the margins of far-right politics until the Macedonia naming dispute in 1991 and 1992. On 10 October 1992, during a massive demonstration against the use of the name Macedonia by the then-Republic of Macedonia, about 30 Golden Dawn members attacked students at the Athens University of Economics and Business occupation, a housing squat and two members of a leftist organisation, OSE. 9 Golden Dawn members were arrested by the police, but released without charges, and a Golden Dawn's press release assumed responsibility for clashing with "organised anti-national elements". Around the same time, the first far-right street gangs appeared under the leadership of Giannis Giannopoulos, a former military officer who was involved with the South African neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) during the 1980s. After the events of 1991 and 1992, Golden Dawn had gained a stable membership of more than 200 members, and Giannopoulos rose within the party hierarchy. Golden Dawn ran in the 1994 European Parliament election, gaining 7,264 votes nationwide; 0.1% of the votes cast.

During the 1980s, the party embraced Hellenic Neopagan beliefs, praised the Twelve Olympians and described Marxism and liberalism as "the ideological carriers of Judeo-Christianity". After the party went through ideological changes, it later endorsed Greek Orthodox Christianity.

During the Bosnian War, Golden Dawn members participated in the Greek Volunteer Guard (GVG), part of the Drina Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska. A few GVG volunteers were present in Srebrenica during the Srebrenica massacre, and they raised a Greek flag at a ruined church after the fall of the town. Spiros Tzanopoulos, a GVG sergeant who took part in the attack against Srebrenica, said many of the Greek volunteers participated in the war because they were members of Golden Dawn. Golden Dawn members in the GVG were decorated by Radovan Karadžić. According to Charis Kousoumvris, a former member of Golden Dawn, those who were decorated later left the party.

2005–2019

According to Golden Dawn's leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the party suspended its own autonomous political activities after 1 December 2005 because of clashes with anarchists. Golden Dawn members were instructed to continue their activism within the Patriotic Alliance party, which was very closely linked to Golden Dawn. The former leader of Patriotic Alliance, Dimitrios Zaphiropoulos, was once a member of Golden Dawn's political council, and Michaloliakos became a leading member of Patriotic Alliance. There were accusations that the "Patriotic Alliance" was simply the new name of Golden Dawn. Activities by Patriotic Alliance's members were often attributed to Golden Dawn (even by the members themselves), furthering this confusion. For this reason, Golden Dawn's members eventually announced the withdrawal of their support of the Patriotic Alliance, which eventually led to the interruption of Golden Dawn's political activities. In March 2007, Golden Dawn held its sixth congress and announced the resumption of their political and ideological activism.

In May 2012, WordPress shut down Golden Dawn's official website and blog due to death threats made against Xenia Kounalaki, a journalist.

In 2018, Ilias Kasidiaris, then a member of the party, declared himself an admirer of the Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and added that the only non-hypocritical European countries were those of Visegrad. He asked why Muslim migrants did not go to Saudi Arabia or other Islamic countries, and claimed "We at Golden Dawn want to give priority to Christian asylum seekers. And, in any event, Greece cannot continue to welcome everyone in. If we ever get into power, we will put economic migrants in jail, instead of hosting them in hotspots, as Syriza does."

In an article in March 2019, the leader of the party, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, declared that "Of course, Greece at the greatest moments of in its history was never multi-racial" and concluded that "The only way to stop the destruction of our nation is to fight hard in order to make our Fatherland a national state again, a Greece that will belong to the Greeks."

Decline and conviction of leadership

During the 2019 European Parliament election Golden Dawn won only 4.88% of the vote and won only 2 seats, down from 9.4% and 3 seats in 2014. During the 2019 Greek Legislative election Golden Dawn lost all of its 18 seats in the Hellenic Parliament, winning only 2.93% of the vote, down from 7.0% in 2015. Shortly after the elections, one of the Golden Dawn's two MEPs, Giannis Lagos, abandoned the party and refused to hand over his seat, thus leaving GD with just 1 seat in the European Parliament. In November 2019, Lagos founded the National Popular Consciousness.

On 8 July 2019, after the election result, the party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos announced: "We send a message to enemies and friends. The Golden Dawn is not over. The struggle for nationalism continues. We will be back where we were strong, in the streets and squares, and we will fight hard against Bolshevism and the cruel capitalism that is coming."

In September 2019, Golden Dawn's headquarters in Athens was closed, only two months after the party's defeat in the July general elections. This followed years of campaigning and opposition by civil society groups including trade unions, anti-fascist networks, migrant groups and victims of Golden Dawn attacks. The NGO KEERFA described this development as being "a victory of the anti-fascist movement". The party's website also became unavailable.

Kasidiaris left the party in June 2020 to form Greeks for the Fatherland, which was said to be inspired by the Italian party Lega with a similar logo. In June 2020, ELAM, their de facto Cypriot branch, explained it had officially cut ties with Golden Dawn. In July 2020, Michaloliakos removed Athanasios Konstantinou, Golden Dawn's last remaining MEP, from the party. Konstantinou continued to serve in the European Parliament as an independent until 16 June 2024.

On 7 October 2020, the court found Michaloliakos, six other party leaders Giannis Lagos, Ilias Kasidiaris, Christos Pappas, Artemios Matthaiopoulos, Ilias Panagiotaros, and Giorgios Germenis (also member of the Black Metal band Naer Mataron) guilty on the charge of directing a criminal organization. The court found sufficient evidence to find the rest of the sixty-eight defendants guilty of participation in a criminal organization. Eighteen of these defendants were former members of parliament. The court described Golden Dawn as a criminal organization "dressed in the mantle of a political party".

Organization

Structure

In 2002, Golden Dawn claimed to have local organisations in 32 Greek cities as well as in Cyprus.

Presence outside Greece

Golden Dawn had aims to expand globally, and in 2013, its spokesman stated that the party planned to establish cells "wherever there are Greeks". Since 2012, the party has opened branches in Germany, Canada (Montreal), and the United States (primarily in New York City, New York and Tarpon Springs, Florida), and has also aimed to establish a presence in Melbourne, Australia. Leaders among the Greek diaspora and Greek Orthodox Church have denounced the group's ideology; they say only a tiny portion of the diaspora supports the group. In 2012, a branch in Italy called Alba Dorata ("Golden Dawn" in Italian) was formed in Trieste.

Activism

The party created the "Committee of National Memory" (Επιτροπή Εθνικής Μνήμης, Epitropí Ethnikís Mnímis), to organise demonstrations commemorating the anniversaries of certain Greek national events. Since 1996, the Committee of National Memory organized an annual march, usually on 31 January in Athens, in memory of three Greek officers who died during the Imia military crisis. According to Golden Dawn and the European National Front website, the march in 2006 was attended by 2,500 people, although no independent sources confirmed that number. The Committee of National Memory continued its activities, and a march took place on 31 January 2010.

The Committee of National Memory organized annual rallies on 17 June in Thessalonica, in memory of Alexander the Great. Police confronted the participants of the rally of 2006, forcing Golden Dawn and Patriotic Alliance members to leave the area after conflicts with leftist groups. Later that day, Golden Dawn members gathered in the building of state-owned television channel ERT3 and held a protest as they tried to stop the channel from broadcasting. Police surrounded the building and arrested 48 Golden Dawn members.

In September 2005, Golden Dawn attempted to organise a festival called "Eurofest 2005 – Nationalist Summer Camp" at the grounds of a Greek summer camp. The planned festival depended on the participation of the German National Democratic Party of Germany, the Italian Forza Nuova and the Romanian Noua Dreaptă, as well as Spanish and other European far-right groups, as European National Front's festival. The festival was banned by the government.

In June 2007, Golden Dawn sent representatives to protest against the G8 convention in Germany, together with the National Democratic Party of Germany and other European far-right organisations.

In June 2011, Foreign Policy reported that in the midst of the 2010–2011 Greek protests, gangs of Golden Dawn members were increasingly being seen in some of the higher-crime areas of Athens. In May 2012, the BBC reported on how Golden Dawn had become sort of a local 'Robin Hood' in some high-immigration areas of Athens, since the party was developing a social program which included the delivery of food at minimal or no cost to the most unfavored strata of ethnic Greeks. It was reported in 2012, at a time of acute social problems, that the party offered help to victims of crime, which gained it support; police even sometimes referred people who had issues with immigrants to Golden Dawn. Allegiance to the party was expected from those helped.

Program

After being founded in 1985, Golden Dawn first received significant attention in 1991, and in 1993 registered as a political party. By this time, Golden Dawn had adopted several southern Balkan-focused regional objectives as its main programme: to promote the idea of a Greater Greece through the expansion of Greek territory into Northern Epirus, Macedonia, and Northern and Eastern Thrace, and ultimately the reconquest of Istanbul and western Anatolia. They seek the complete Hellenisation of Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace through the expulsion of Northern Greece's last remaining Slavic-speaking minority and the Turkish-speaking Muslim minority of East Macedonia and Thrace. They also aspire "to combat Islam in the region", such as through contributing fighters to the Greek Volunteer Guard that helped capture Srebrenica during the Bosnian War.

By the mid-2000s, Golden Dawn had redirected its attention to opposing non-European, and particularly Muslim, immigration into southern Greece and Athens. Golden Dawn temporarily ceased political operations in 2005 and was absorbed by the Patriotic Alliance. The Alliance, in turn, ceased operations after Michaloliakos withdrew support in the spring of 2007. Golden Dawn held its sixth congress in March 2007, where party officials announced the resumption of political activities. At local elections in November 2010, Golden Dawn got 5.3% of the vote in the municipality of Athens, winning a seat on the Athens City Council. In some neighbourhoods with large immigrant communities, its vote reached 20%.

The party ran a campaign during the May 2012 Greek national elections based on concerns about unemployment, austerity, the economy, and immigration, which gained a large increase in support from the Greek electorate. It received 7% of the popular vote, enough for the party to enter the Hellenic Parliament for the first time with 21 seats. Following a second election in June 2012, this was reduced to 18 seats. The party was reduced further to 17 seats following the January 2015 Greek national elections, but still became the third largest party in Parliament.

The party is hard Eurosceptic and also anti-globalisation.

National Plan

In 2015, Golden Dawn outlined their 'National Plan' for the recovery from the Greek government-debt crisis as follows:

Increase agricultural production and manufacturing.

Reward hard work and implement a meritocracy.

Exploit Greece's oil, gas, and precious metal reserves.

Audit and erase part of the national debt, which they deem illegal.

Demand that the German government repay a loan that was forced upon Greece during the Axis occupation.

Form free trade agreements with Russia, Iran, and China; and remove the "red tape" blocking trade.

Proclaim Greece's exclusive economic zone.

Expand Greece's territorial waters to 12 nautical miles as defined by UNCLOS.

Repeal members of parliament's immunity to criminal prosecution, arrest, and detention while in office.

Remove party funding obtained from taxes and rely instead on donations.

Reduce the size of the Hellenic Parliament to 180 members.

Dissolve any existing plutocracy.

Provide tax relief for investors, businessmen, and shipowners who employ only Greek workers and move their capital into national banks.

Dismiss those recruited illegally into the public sector as a result of cronyism.

Rejection of same-sex civil partnerships

In December 2015, Golden Dawn was one of the main groups to reject a bill to allow civil partnerships for same-sex couples in Greece. Upon the bill's passage, party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos stated that "church bells should toll mournfully across the country".

Foreign affairs

Nikolaos Michaloliakos supports an irredentist concept for formerly Greek regions that now belong to Turkey. These regions had significant Greek populations until the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s. Michaloliakos has criticized Thessaloniki mayor Yiannis Boutaris for wanting to name a street after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who was born in the city when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.

In January 2013, a group of Golden Dawn supporters attacked the car of Turkish consul-general Osman İlhan Şener in Komotini during an anti-Turkey protest. The party members also insulted Atatürk during the attack.

Golden Dawn promoted a hardline stance on the Macedonia naming dispute, rejecting any compromise solution that would include the term Macedonia in the name of North Macedonia, on the basis that only Greek Macedonia is entitled to use the name. Mihaloliakos has also called for the "liberation" of Northern Epirus, which is today part of southern Albania, has a Greek minority and is claimed by Greek irredentists. Golden Dawn supports enosis, the union of Cyprus with Greece.

Election advertisements for Golden Dawn depicted the burning of US and Israeli flags, a reflection of the party's strong anti-American and anti-Zionist position. However, in June 2018, the party's MEPs voted in favour of increased security coordination with Israel. Golden Dawn is also staunchly eurosceptic, opposing Greece's participation in the European Union and the eurozone.

Golden Dawn spoke out in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian Civil War.

Election results

European Parliament

One representative elected in 2014, Eleftherios Synadinos, left the party in 2018.

One representative elected in 2019, Ioannis Lagos, left the party later that year. The other, Athanasios Konstantinou, was expelled from the party in July 2020.

Political representation

In May 2009, Golden Dawn took part in the European elections and received 23,564 votes, 0.5% of the total votes. In 2010 it won 5.3% of the vote in Athens. In that election, the party won its first municipal council seat and entered parliament for the first time in 2012. In the Greek parliamentary elections of May 2012, the party received 6.97% of the popular vote. In the rerun of the elections in June 2012, their share of the vote was 6.92%. This made them the third largest group from Greece to the European Parliament (the largest was Syriza's alliance).

Public profile

Connections to Nazism

The party is regularly described as neo-Nazi by news media and academic sources, both domestic and international, and members are frequently responsible for anti-semitic graffiti.

The party has denied that it has any official connection to neo-Nazism. Although it uses the Nazi salute, a salute used by the Italian Fascist and German Nazi movements, it claims to draw its inspiration in this primarily from the 4th of August Regime established by Ioannis Metaxas, the Greek nationalist leader and dictator, whose National Youth Organization (and later, his entire government) adopted upon taking power. Ioannis Metaxas was the dictator of Greece from 1936 to 1941, when he died.

The Golden Dawn's meander symbol (which the party sees as representing bravery and eternal struggle), while based on the traditional "Greek key", is seen as "closely resembling a swastika". Both the Golden Dawn symbol and Hitler's NSDAP flag can be described as a meander of black straight lines with right angles (Greek key or swastika) with a white border on a red background.

Ilias Kasidiaris, a spokesman for Golden Dawn, wrote an article that was published in Golden Dawn magazine on 20 April 2011, in which he said, "What would the future of Europe and the whole modern world be like if World War II hadn't stopped the renewing route of National Socialism? Certainly, fundamental values which mainly derive from ancient Greek culture, would be dominant in every state and would define the fate of peoples. Romanticism as a spiritual movement and classicism would prevail against the decadent subculture that corroded the white man. Extreme materialism would have been discarded, giving its place to spiritual exaltation". In the same article, Adolf Hitler is characterized as a "great social reformer" and "military genius".

In an article published in 1987 in the Golden Dawn magazine titled "Hitler for 1,000 years", its editor Michaloliakos showed his support for Nazism and white supremacy. Specifically he wrote, "We are the faithful soldiers of the National Socialist idea and nothing else" and "[...] WE EXIST, and continue the battle, the battle for the final victory of our race". He ends the article by writing "1987, 42 years later, with our thought and soul given to the last great battle, with our thought and soul given to the black and red banners, with our thought and soul given to the memory of our great Leader, we raise our right hand up, we salute the Sun and with the courage, that is compelled by our military honor and our National Socialist duty we shout full of passion, faith to the future and our visions: HEIL HITLER!". Michaloliakos uses capital letters for pronouns referring to Hitler ("by Himself", "His people").

Allegations of connections to the Greek police

In an interview with Eleftherotypia in 1998, Minister for Public Order Georgios Romaios (PASOK) alleged the existence of "fascist elements in the Hellenic Police", and vowed to suppress them. In a TV interview that same year, Romaios again claimed that there was a pro-fascist group within the police force, although he said it was not organized and was only involved in isolated incidents. The same year, Eleftherotypia published an article which outlined connections between the police and neo-fascism. Dimitris Reppas, the PASOK government spokesman, strongly denied such connections. However, the article quoted a speech by the PASOK Member of Parliament Paraskevas Paraskevopoulos about a riot caused by right-wing extremists, in which he said:

In Thessaloniki, it is widely discussed that far-right organisations are active in the security forces. Members of such organisations were the planners and chief executioners of the riot and nobody was arrested. A Special Forces officer, speaking at a briefing of Special Forces policemen who were to be on duty that day, told the policemen not to arrest anyone because the rioters were not enemies and threatened that should this be overlooked there would be penalties.

Before the surrender of Androutsopoulos, an article in the newspaper Ta Nea claimed that Golden Dawn had a close relationship with elements of the Greek police force. In relation to the Periandros case, the article quoted an unidentified police officer who said that "half the force wanted Periandros arrested and the other half didn't." The article claimed that there was a confidential internal police investigation which concluded that:

Golden Dawn had very good relations and contacts with officers of the force, on and off duty, as well as with rank and file police.

The police provided the group with batons and radio communications equipment during mass demonstrations, mainly during the annual celebrations of the Athens Polytechnic uprising and during rallies by left-wing and anarchist groups, in order to provoke riots.

Periandros and the group's connections with the force largely delayed his arrest.

Violence controversies

Members of Golden Dawn have been accused of carrying out acts of vigilante violence and hate crimes against immigrants, political opponents, homosexuals and ethnic minorities. Golden Dawn's offices have been attacked repeatedly by anarchists and other leftists, and clashes between members of Golden Dawn and leftists have not been unusual.

In 2000, unknown suspects vandalized the Monastirioton synagogue, a memorial for Holocaust victims, and Jewish cemeteries in Thessaloniki and Athens. There were claims that Golden Dawn symbolism was present at all four sites. The KIS, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, the Coalition of the Left, of Movements and Ecology (Synaspismos), the Greek Helsinki Monitor, and others issued statements condemning these acts. The Cyprus chapter of Golden Dawn has been accused of attacks against Turkish Cypriots, and one member was arrested for attacking two Turkish Cypriots who had entered the government-controlled part of the island in 2005.

On 6 October 1999, during a football match between Greece and Albania in Athens, Albanian supporters burnt a Greek flag in their stand. This act was broadcast extensively by the Greek media, leading to a series of angry reactions by Greek nationalists against foreign immigrants. Several weeks later, on the night of 22 October, Pantelis Kazakos, a nationalist and a member of the Golden Dawn, said he felt "insulted by the burning of the Greek flag" and shot and killed two people and wounded seven others in an attack in central Athens. All of the victims were immigrants, and four of the wounded remain paralysed. Other Golden Dawn members formed the hooligan firm Galazia Stratia ("Blue Army") in response to this incident, which has described itself as a "fan club of the Greek national teams" and its goal as "to defend Greek national pride inside the stadiums." It has been reported that following Golden Dawn's official disbandment in 2005, many former party members have put most of their energy into promoting Galazia Stratia. Galazia Stratia is closely linked to Golden Dawn party infrastructure, and the two groups shared the same street address. Golden Dawn made no attempt to deny the connections, openly praising the actions of Galazia Stratia in its newspaper and accepting praise in return from the firm.

Galazia Stratia and Golden Dawn have been accused of various acts of sports-related violence. In September 2004, after a football match between Greece and Albania in Tirana (which Greece lost 2–1), Albanian immigrants living in Greece went out on the streets of Athens and other cities to celebrate the victory. Greek hooligans felt provoked by this and violence erupted against Albanian immigrants in various parts of Greece, resulting in the murder of an Albanian in Zakynthos and many others being injured. Golden Dawn and Galazia Stratia were proven to be directly responsible for many of the attacks. According to Eleftherotypia, Galazia Stratia members severely assaulted a Palestinian and a Bangladeshi during celebrations following the success of the Greece men's national basketball team at the 2006 FIBA World Championship.