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Interview with Dimitris Psarras, the author of the Greek “Black Book of Chrysi Avghi (Golden Dawn)” . Interview by Eleni Varikas and Michael Löwy
1. In a few words could you describe the origins of Greece’s neo-Nazi organisation Chrysi Avghi (CA), Golden Dawn?
Golden Dawn was founded in December 1980 as a closed national-socialist discussion group. In 1984 Papadopoulos, the jailed dictator, named Mixaloliakos the first director of the youth organisation of the party he had founded, EPEN (National Political Union). However, Mixaloliakos did not remain long in this position because this organisation of junta partisans was not hard enough for him, not anti-Semitic enough for his taste. In what followed, he reactivated Chrysi Avghi and has continued with Nazi propaganda. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the organisation has profited from the nationalist wave which followed the clash between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the name ‘Macedonia’. Its first public appearances (for example in popular nationalist mass demonstrations) date from that time, and its aggressive behaviour became increasingly evident.
2. What are the differences between CA and the other extreme right groups in Greece?
Most extreme right groupings active since the fall of the dictatorship (1974) are marked by a strong nationalist and traditionalist tendency, favourable to army intervention, aspiring to the restoration of the monarchy and identifying the church with the state. CA is able to call on all previous tendencies – especially the relations with vestiges of the dictatorship, the monarchists and the church – as complementary elements for purely tactical reasons.
3. What are the specifically neo-Nazi characteristics of the CA? What is its relation to the Third Reich and its leader, and through what forms does it represent or reactivate a Nazi tradition in Greece?
From its first appearance, Chrysi Avghi has identified with National-Socialist Germany. It is not an instance of an extreme right party integrated into the so-called ‘third wave’ of the European extreme right, nor a political formation that is simply ‘neo-fascist’. Racism and violence are its essential components. In its publications from 1980 on, it translates the classics of Nazism, such as Hitler and Rosenberg, but also Freisler and Darré; furthermore, it periodically cooperates with other European neo-Nazi movements. The Spanish party CEDADE and the Belgian officer of the Waffen-SS Léon Degrelle have initially played an important role in this European dimension of CA. But what is most important is not the ideological convergences. CA closely follows the political action of the historic German Nazi party (NSDAP), with the creation of its own Storm Troopers which ‘conquer’ neighbourhoods of the big cities, smash the stores of immigrant merchants and attack them massively. The use of violence is a constitutive element of its action, and not an occasional manifestation of the action of its most extremist members.
4. Who are the ‘enemies’ according to CA ideology? Jews, homosexuals, immigrants, Muslims, left-wing activists, feminists?
Naturally, according to CA ideology, all of these are categorised as ‘Untermenschen’, and are thus enemies and designated targets. But CA is careful to define targets according to the political fashion of each epoch. At the beginning of the 1990s, what was ‘in fashion’ in Greece was the nationalist hysteria around the name of Macedonia. At that point, CA’s main target was the activists of the internationalist and libertarian left, whom CA denounced as ‘traitors’ and whom they attacked in the name of the nation. In recent years its principal target has been immigrants, after the reestablishment of a xenophobic political climate in the country, a climate on which CA relies for its fierce propaganda.
5. Can you describe CA’s electoral evolution in recent years?
The organisation’s first electoral appearance was at the time of the 1994 European elections, when it got 7,242 votes (0.11 %). Since that time, CA has participated selectively in certain elections, with quite low results. It had more significant results in the 1999 European elections, when it collaborated with Kostas Plevris and got 48,632 votes (0.75 %). In the 2002 local elections it collaborated with George Karatzaferis who had founded an extreme right party inspired by Le Pen. In the 2009 European elections, CA once again ran under its own name and got 23,609 votes (0.46 %), while in the national elections of the same year it only got 19,624 votes (0.29%).
The organisation’s electoral leap occurred in the 2010 municipal elections, when the crisis had already begun. CA was able to get 5.29 % of votes in the municipality of Athens, electing Mixaloliakos for the first time as City Councillor. In certain districts of central Athens, CA had significantly higher results. Finally, in the May 2012 elections, the party had 441,018 votes (6.97 %) and a month later 425,990 (6.92 %), electing 18 deputies.
6. What explains CA’s spectacular electoral success in 2012?
Without the economic crisis things would doubtless have been different. But the crisis alone does not explain the attraction of such an extreme group for so many citizens. If the crisis had not been coupled with the crumbling of the political system, we would not have seen a phenomenon like this. The majority of CA voters think that by this extreme choice they are taking revenge on politicians, parties and governments. Total despair leads to the conviction that the only way left for citizens is to get revenge through this extremist organisation. What is involved then is a characteristic case of collective resentment. But we should not underestimate the fact that several of CA’s messages – especially regarding immigrants – are rooted in terrain mined by xenophobia. The media and in particular private television channels have long employed several national and racial stereotypes; private television misses no occasion to invite Nazi ‘TV stars’ on their shows as long as they can guarantee a high score on the ratings metre. In addition, as soon as the two hitherto leading parties, New Democracy and PASOK, realised how successful CA was they made the mistake of taking over a great part of its anti-immigrant rhetoric, naively thinking that that they would win over voters in this way. In 2011, the two parties formed a government together with the LAOS (‘people’) party - founded by Kostas Plevris, the former associate of CA – thus legitimating the participation in power of an extreme right party for the first time since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974.
Let me point out that certain media – the television channels but also the weekly Proto Thema , with the largest Sunday circulation in the country – have helped spread CA’s propagandistic myths by reproducing the lie that the Nazis are doing ‘social work’ in helping elderly and handicapped people. As I show in my book this journalistic reportage was largely ‘pre-fabricated’.