Is this the fall of Greece's Golden Dawn?

If the courts in Greece are not suspended over the coronavirus outbreak, one of the most important trials in the country’s modern history is expected to end soon.

After four years and more than 430 court sessions and hundreds of witnesses, the 69 defendants, among them the leader, the MPs and many members of Greece’s neo-nazi party, Golden Dawn, will finally hear whether they’re guilty of organising and running a criminal organisation, responsible for numerous attacks and even deaths.  

Currently, the defendants’ lawyers are making their closing arguments. The judge’s decision is expected to follow as soon as they conclude.

In their testimonies, defendants have told the court that they believe the charges against them are politically motivated, and that they are being persecuted by the right-wing government because Golden Dawn is attracting their voter base. 

“I believe there were political motives and political intervention and that’s why all MPs elected in June 2012 were persecuted,” former Golden Dawn MP, Christos Pappas, said in his testimony. Pappas is a close friend of Golden Dawn’s leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, though he denies being second in the party’s hierarchy.

Golden Dawn members and former MPs have stated they were ignorant of alleged organised beatings of immigrants and leftists, military-style training of members, or any ties to Nazi ideology. Prosecutors are investigating whether a criminal organisation was set up and whether or not Nazi ideology played a part in criminal acts. 

“In court, they’re disowning everything,” says Kostas Papadakis, a lawyer who represents Egyptian fishermen who in 2012 were allegedly attacked by Golden Dawn members. “They’re renouncing violence, claim they had security teams because they were being attacked by anarchists, while some claim the killers of Greek rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, were kicked out of the party.”

Golden Dawn has been around since the late 1980s. Its first election campaign was in 1993 and for two decades it won less than one per cent of the vote. Its highest point was in the 2015 elections, when Golden Dawn won seven per cent of the general election vote, catapulting it to become the third largest party in the country.

The trial, however, coming after a series of controversies involving Golden Dawn members and supporters, has contributed to the party’s decline. In the 2019 national elections, it lost all its 18 seats in the 300-seat Greek parliament and managed to put only one MP in the European Parliament, who soon after left the party. 

According to the prosecution lawyers, Golden Dawn has adopted a military-style hierarchy, with all decision-making authority resting with the leader. Police have found firearms and Nazi memorabilia in the homes of some defendants. 

“Golden Dawn was created by a core of neo-Nazis and followers of Hitler,” said Papadakis. “The party created groups similar to the Nazi’s paramilitary groups, called Storm Detachments, [which] tried to undermine all politics… [it also] organised attacks against leftists and migrants, and cooperated with branches of the State, especially the police.”

It is of little surprise to Greeks that Golden Dawn’s nationalistic rhetoric found fertile ground when it did, coming amid the country’s financial crisis, which led to an economic meltdown. In 2012, youth unemployment reached 50 per cent.

But the economy isn’t the only factor at play. George Pleios, a Sociology professor at the University of Athens, said that, from the 1950s until the 1990s, state education, the Greek Orthodox Church, and the media all reinforced racism as well as anti-immigration and nationalistic beliefs.

“This was also a period [in which] consumerism and political apathy increased,” Pleios said. “When the economic crisis hit Greece, which is still very traditional, society strived to keep its unity and cultural identity. It needed a scapegoat to explain the woes of the crisis and it found it in the face of immigrants and the EU.”

According to a Pew Research Centre report published last year, racism and nationalism are widespread in Greece. The number of people with anti-immigrant sentiment was 82 per cent, the report found, while those who believe their culture was superior to others accounted for 89 per cent of the population.

Golden Dawn may have failed to garner three per cent of the vote in the July 2019 national elections — the threshold needed for any party to be awarded parliamentary seats — but populism and much of the anti-immigrant and nationalistic ideas that form the bedrock of its ideology are very much alive.