Locals in the Greek island of Lesbos went from being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for welcoming refugees five years ago to hurling racist slurs today. On March 1st, a video made its appearance on the media. The location: the village of Thermi, in the Greek island of Lesbos. In the video, one can clearly observe… Continue reading “How Greece Went From Welcoming To Demonizing Refugees”
In the summer of 2017, the radical-right Identitarian Movement (also known as Generation Identity) launched their so-called mission Defend Europe. Chartering a ship, they wished to intervene in and halt NGO work to rescue refugees trying to enter Europe via the Mediterranean – mainly from Northern Africa. In March 2020, and against the backdrop of… Continue reading “Fighting ‘the Great Replacement’ in 2020: an Identitarian road trip to Greece and back”
What can we learn from the rise and fall of the Golden Dawn party in Greece? Golden Dawn began as an ideological movement that managed throughout the years to evolve into a political movement and a political party, which successfully entered the national parliament and emerged as the third largest party in Greece. However, recently,… Continue reading “The dusk after the dawn: fall of a Greek Neo-Nazi party”
It seems like a political nightmare found its end in Sunday’s snap elections in Greece: the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn did not make it to the national parliament again. After seven years of a highly controversial presence – featuring antisemitic diatribes, ultra-racist hate speech, calls for coup d’états and physical attacks against MPs –… Continue reading “From Dawn to Dusk: The End of Parliamentary Neo-Nazism in Greece”
At the age of twelve, my classics class at the high school devoted an entire week to the ancient war between the Persian Empire and Athens. We were told that the battle of Marathon and Salamis (490 and 480 BCE) represented civilisational encounters between Europe and the ‘barbarians’, west and east. The unlikely victory of… Continue reading “The far right’s weaponisation of history”
One doesn’t have to be an expert to attest that Greece has a fundamental problem with violence from the radical right. Alone in the first months of this year, we see a culmination of different forms of violence. In early March, the police arrested a group of militant neo-Nazis called AME, responsible for 34 arson… Continue reading “Greece’s Problem With Radical Right Violence and the Politics of History”
©Michalis Karagiannis/Reuters On 20th April 2015, a trial began against the neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn – one of the largest and most controversial trials in post-dictatorial Greece. A total of 69 Golden Dawn members are accused of leading and participating in a criminal organization and are at the same time charged for several different legal… Continue reading “3 years on: What the trial against Golden Dawn tells us about Greek society”