Greek Government Criminalizes "Golden Dawn" Opposition Party, Arrests Leadership

[jordan179]

From Andrew Marszal, "Greece Arrests Golden Dawn Leadership in Crackdown on Far-Right," The Telegraph:

Nikos Michaloliakos, 56, was arrested on Saturday morning on charges of founding a criminal organisation, with arrest warrants issued for dozens more party members and lawmakers, officials said.

The arrest of Michaloliakos, along with 13 other

Comments

[banner]

It is annoying as always that they're calling another leftwing group 'right wing'.

[jordan179]

Well, all European political parties are authoritarian by American standards. Golden Dawn is national-socialist, the dominant Greek parties are more democratic-socialist. Except that, if the Greek government is merely using violent incidents as an excuse to crack down on dissidents, and worse to do so in a biased fashion, the Greeks are losing their civil liberties -- which in the end can delegitimize themselves, and lead to someone calculating that he might be able to carry out a successful coup. That is one of the dangers.

[madwriter]

They keep aligning themselves with self-proclaimed right wing groups, so they're just feeding that fire.

[jordan179]

The thing is that by European definitions, Golden Dawn is far-right. The Europeans see "left vs. right" as "international vs. national," rather than as "authoritarian vs. libertarian."

[marycatelli]

If you leave your constituents actual grievances to violent crackpots, violent crackpots will gain power.

[jordan179]

Indeed. That's always the problem with outlawing peaceful dissent, especially if this is popular peaceful dissent. The more one closes off respectable and constitutional paths to power, the more the concerned -- or merely ambitious -- will contemplate coups and rebellions.

[fpb]

I can't imagine what you think you are talking about. Golden Dawn have been a bunch of vicious bastards from the beginning, and the neighbourhoods where they started became nests of violence. They were elected - and got only 7%, which in the circumstances isn't much - because a section of the Greek public, which is often immature and prone to looking for scapegoats, went mad after the economic disaster. The mandate is what made the trouble; the Greek authorities knew well enough what kind of homicidal filth they were dealing with, but did not have the nerve to touch elected representatives until they began to commit open murder. These men aren't a political party. They are a political criminal gang, like Hamas or the Nazis of old.

[jordan179]

That was actually the question I asked in my original post: did the Greek government have enough evidence to arrest the persons whom they arrested? But my point is that if it's made "not respectable" to oppose Muslim immigration, but there is a serious threat from violent Muslim immigrants, then the "not respectable" will step into the niche thus created. And become popular for their willingness to oppose the Muslim menace. And if they are then arrested, it had damn well better be for actual crimes (not "hate speech"), because a democracy which criminalizes dissent on an important issue won't remain a democracy much longer.

[wombat_socho]

Comparing Michalolikas to Mussolini is a slur on Il Duce, who, whatever his other faults, didn't have a problem with the Jews. Not that I'm a big fan of the Italian Fascists; as you say, they're different only in degree from the Communists and Socialists they fought.

[jordan179]

The comparison with Mussolini was precisely because I don't think that Golden Dawn is nearly as anti-Semitic as were the real Nazis or the current Islamists, and also because I think the Greek Right might make the mistake of picking the wrong side in the upcoming war. Had Mussolini remained aligned with the Allies, France would never have fallen and World War II would have lasted around three years -- and Mussolini might have remained in power well into the 1950's.

[fpb]

You are entirely wrong. When Mussolini rammed through the Race Laws, blasting any remaining shred of his relationship with the Church and making his country effectively a Nazi colony, he declared his relief to his lover, Claretta Petacci. "I have always been an anti-Semite", he told her, "and I am glad that now I am free to act on it". The Petacci diaries, which had been kept in a bank vault for decades while they were subject to litigation, have been recently published by the woman's surviving nephew, and they effectively blast every positive legend on Mussolini to smithereens. The man was a lecher, a brute, a coward and a vulgarian. Reading them made me feel rather queasy.

[wombat_socho]

I had not been aware of the Petacci diaries. I stand corrected.

[luagha]

My problem is with the Greeks more than the Golden Dawn (who crack me up just because of the name being that of an older European occult organization).

There was Golden Dawn member being questioned in a roundtable on television who got up and repeatedly struck the female reporter and the other men at the table did nothing for far too long. When that happens, it is too late.

[fpb]

So, Jordan, these are respectable political new forces being suppressed by a totalitarian Greek government, eh?

[luagha]

Jordan already mentioned that the Golden Dawn are despicable and evil and deserve every badness coming to them.

Governments, however, have a history of writing up new powers to use on bad people and then using them on not-bad people.

[fpb]

I don't think that laws against criminal association and conspiracy to murder count as "new powers"..

[xolo]

Democracy certainly isn't giving them very good results. Maybe it's time to try something else.

[fpb]

I cannot congratulate you on your knowledge of history. They "tried" military government from 1967 to 1974, and I don't think they are too keen to try any such filth again. At least in democracy you are not likely to vanish from your own home one evening and be found a few weeks later by the side of some country road, dead and with your finger and toenails missing and burn marks all over your body. But if that sort of thing floats your boat, you are welcome to it, and there are plenty of places in the world where you can experience it.

[ford_prefect42]

I cannot congratulate you on your knowledge of history. Adolf Hitler was elected democratically to the title of "fuhrer".

Democracy is only one check against atrocity, and not the most important one.

[fpb]

I cannot congratulate you on your knowledge of Greek history, which is what I was talking about. Nor of German - Hitler was never elected to the rank of "Fuehrer" (joint President and Prime Minister) but took it by force when old Hindenburg died. And he never had any kind of parliamentary majority till he had begun to destroy other parties one by one.