Google – AFP, John Hadoulis (AFP), 2 October 2013
 |
The leader
of ultra-right wing Golden Dawn party Nikos Michaloliakos (c)
is escorted by
masked police to an Athens court on October 2, 2013
(AFP, Louisa Gouliamaki)
|
Athens —
Nikos Michaloliakos, the leader of Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, is a
disciple of a former Greek military dictator, who led his fringe group all the
way to parliament.
Just over a
year after it took Greek politics by storm to elect 18 MPs for the first time
in its history, Golden Dawn has been labelled a "criminal
organisation" by judicial authorities.
Michaloliakos,
a 56-year-old mathematician, will appear in court Wednesday to be charged with
belonging to a criminal organisation.
He has
already been jailed on two occasions in the late 1970s for assaulting
journalists and participating in bomb attacks in Athens.
While in
prison, he befriended ex-dictator George Papadopoulos and was handpicked to
lead the youths of far-right group EPEN after the fall of the Greek junta in
1974.
He then
founded Golden Dawn, which he has run with an iron fist for the past three
decades, making him one of the longest-serving party leaders in Greece.
The party
follows a strict military-style regimen. Its members conduct parades dressed in
black shirts and camouflage trousers, and are required to stand to attention
before higher-ranking members.
Magistrates
have linked the group to two homicides, three attempted homicides, robberies
and an arson attack on a bank.
The
evidence was drawn from prior police investigations, police wiretaps and the
testimony of former members who have described how the group orchestrated
attacks on migrants and Greek rivals.
According
to the magistrates' report, which was leaked to the media, Golden Dawn also
held clandestine training in the use of assault weaponry for elite members.
Michaloliakos'
first elected post was as an Athens municipal councillor in 2010, where he
attended sessions with bodyguards and was filmed taunting a left-wing opponent
with fascist salutes.
At the time
of its inception and for years thereafter, Golden Dawn glorified Adolf Hitler
and the warrior ethos of Nazi Germany in its party publications.
One of the
party's older texts, read in parliament by a leftist MP in May, called Hitler a
"visionary of new Europe".
"Faith
in the words of the Fuehrer, and faith in victory, grows in our hearts. The
fight goes on, the future is ours," the Golden Dawn text read.
This
rhetoric was later toned down as the party adjusted its message to better suit
Greek voter concerns with austerity and illegal immigration.
Even so, in
a May 2012 interview Michaloliakos effectively denied the Holocaust, telling
Greece's Mega channel: "There were no crematoria, it's a lie. Or gas
chambers."
Formerly on
the fringe of Greek politics, Golden Dawn went from 19,000 votes a few years
ago to over 426,000 in June 2012 after pledging to "scour the
country" clean of illegal immigrants.
Michaloliakos
later said the party's voters were "the equivalent of 30-40 army
divisions."
The party
has further boosted its ratings over the past year by organising food handouts
for impoverished Greeks, and until recently polled more than 10 percent of the
vote, making it the third most popular party in the country.
Now denying
any neo-Nazi affiliation, Golden Dawn has mercilessly attacked mainstream
parties as "traitors" and "thieves", tapping into
widespread anger towards the conservative and socialist governments that
brought Greece to the brink of bankruptcy in 2010.
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