As the third largest political force in Greece following European Parliament elections a few weeks ago, branches of Golden Dawn are popping up throughout the world. The ironic thing about these outposts is that they are popping up in immigrant communities like New York, Montreal and recently, in Brisbane, Australia.
Try and make sense of this… People who left Greece years ago (i.e. immigrants) and started new lives in countries around the world that were built on the backs of immigrants, are supporting a political party in Greece that is staunchly anti-immigrant. One newspaper in Australia tried making sense of the whole thing at a rally in Brisbane when “white supremacists” and Greek Australian Golden Dawn supporters rallied together recently.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the rally. The writer jokingly conversed with a white supremacist that was part of the Australia First party– the Aussie answer to Greece’s Golden Dawn. But wait. The Australia First Party is also anti-immigrant and anti-multiculturalism. So why were they marching side by side with the Greek Australian Golden Dawn members?
“So you’re cool with Greek-Australians?” the newspaper reporter asked the white supremacist.
“Absolutely,” the guy responded. “Greek-Australians. European-Australians, in general.”
“So Italians are okay?”
“Yeah, they’re okay.”
“But back in the 1940s, wouldn’t your equivalent have been against Greek-Australians because they were the ‘wogs’ who were coming here as immigrants and ruining white Australia?”
He shrugs his shoulders, apathetic. “What was going on in the 1940s … we weren’t around in the 1940s, so we can’t really comment about what we would have done back then.”
The conversation gets better as the reporter approaches a Greek Australian Golden Dawn cadre, described as an old man in a Golden Dawn baseball hat, brandishing a huge Greek flag, smiling like a kindly grandfather.
The reporter thinks he says his name is Paul. Incidentally, the old Greek man has a Chinese girlfriend.
“But honestly I can’t tell for sure. His accent is too thick.”
The same is certainly happening in New York, Canada and elsewhere where ultra-nationalists are banding together under the New Nazi flag of Golden Dawn– immigrants themselves with heavy accents, who incidentally were welcomed into their new countries with open arms and were allowed to have a voice, albeit a voice of hate.
Immigrants and offspring of immigrants, celebrating and supporting a political party that hates immigrants. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
But then again, a lot doesn’t make sense. Like the fact that these bozos are standing outside the Greek Parliament singing Nazi SS songs and using the infamous Hitler greeting with arms proudly raised above their heads to the air. The mere thought is mind-boggling– that there still exists in Greece today, the living, breathing generation of people who survived the worst Nazi atrocities against a civilian population in all of World War II history.
I wonder of these Neo Nazi punks know the tragic irony of their actions– in the streets of Athens, where 70 years ago bodies, were being picked up by trucks– tens of thousands of victims of starvation, imposed by the Nazi conquerors to muster the will of the Greek resistance. These are real press photos from my own personal collection. Every time I look at them I ask myself if these idiots know their history.
And what about the brutal massacres– too many to name, with thousands of villages burned across Greece and tens of thousands of innocent civilians– women and children, butchered by… yes, Nazis and those supporting the Nazi ideology.
Kondomari, Kandanos, Distomo, Kalavryta, the Massacre of Viannos where an entire village of 500 people was slaughtered.
I’m not sure these thugs even know how to read– let alone read English. But I’m sure they can look at pictures. In case this post reaches them, I’ve added a few, just to remind them about the ideology they are representing and the poison they are trying to bring back to Greece.
The massacre at Kondomari on the island of Crete– dozens of men killed by a Nazi firing squad in June of 1941.
Just a few of the names of the more than 1,200 victims of the Holocaust of Kalavryta, when the entire village was burned to the ground in December of 1943.
The sign left by the Germans amidst the ashes that remained, when they burned the village of Kandanos to the ground, on the island of Crete. “Here stood Kandanos,” the sign reads. The bastards burned every single building in the village and killed almost 200 innocent people.
Just a snapshot of some of the thousands of Greek children orphaned by the Nazis.
The horrific massacre at Distomo on the Greek mainland and the memorial that was built– with the skulls of those killed.
Some will argue that they pose no real threat to Greek society and the “phenomenon” of Golden Dawn is merely a “knee jerk” reaction to the economic crisis. I’ll agree with Angelo Tsakopoulos, the California businessman who said in an interview that “this is how Hitler started.”
18 comments
I do not recall ever reading in the US papers, of the atrocities the Germans committed in Greece. I was in the U.S. Navy and in the Pacific. I suppose that our news was always about the Japanese.
You should be ashamed implying that there is a connection to a legitimate party and the crimes on nazi in Greece!
You should be ashamed that you DO NOT mention at all the 8000+ suicides οf Greeks since the depression started!
You should be ashamed that you DO NOT mention that over 600.000 Greeks that voted for this legitimate party in the last European Elections are NOT nazi!!
You should be ashamed that you DO NOT mention that in Greece right NOW what has happened to this legitimate party with all the imprisonments of politicians without even pure evidences but for their political ideas is ILLEGAL AGAINST DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS!
You should be ashamed in general!
Vasileios P.
Former Sub-Lieutenant Hellenic Navy
Lets not forget the Pigada in Diavolitsi pof Peloponnesus Greece half of my mothers family's was murdered there by the Nazis. We are doomed to repeat what we do not make sure history teaches the new generations.
WHO should be ashamed, Vasileios P.? YOU are the ones who use Nazi symbols to represent your cause. YOU are the anti-immigrant. If you had lived in the 1940s, then, you would have happily killed immigrants and Greeks, as these photos in this post depict? Take your hate to a desert island somewhere and leave the rest of the world alone with your disgusting brainwashing of the uneducated masses..
Dena, maybe you should be the one that goes to the desert island. If you want to live in a multicultural society where Africans and Asians fully replace Greeks, then go to an island and make your dream come true.
Unfortunately for you, most Greeks like being Greek. They prefer going out for a coffee and not having to fear getting raped or murdered by 75 IQ Africans and Pakistanis. Greeks like to have an economic life without Jewish bankers on Wall Street paying off politicians and stealing the money of the people. Greeks like controlled borders where you know who is coming in and out of your country.
You don’t think about these things in your gated community or bourgeois Left-wing cafe debates. But every day Greeks do. So you can live in your little bubble all you want, but Golden Dawn is coming and will hopefully liberate Greece soon.
I am ashamed to share a name with you, Tasso. What a small-minded, bigoted individual you are. What about GREEKS who are in prison for rape and murder and who have IQ’s of 75? My brother-in-law in Greece was murdered by just such a Greek a number of years ago. Many of the Pakistanis and Africans I’ve met in Greece are good, hardworking people who simply want to provide for their families by doing the work the lazy and spoiled Greeks won’t deign to do. Stop blaming foreigners and Jews for your problems – like Greeks have done for centuries. The problems that Greeks are currently enduring were caused by Greeks – and it won’t do any good to try and scapegoat other groups in the same way that Germans did in the last century. Grow up and be willing to take responsibility for your nation’s problems and to do the hard work that is necessary to bring Greece into the twenty-first century.
Tasso – your comments: “Greeks like to have an economic life without Jewish bankers on Wall Street paying off politicians and stealing the money of the people.” Stop blaming the jews and look at yourselves and your corrupt politicians and corporate owners who take their money offshore and screw you all. Stop generalizing. Dropi sou.
If the meandros is a nazi symbol I’m an Eskimo
The starvation that killed hundreds of thousands in Greece was due to a combination of blockades from the British and mismanagement by the Italians. 158,000 Greeks, many of them in atrocities committed by communist traitors, died in the Greek Civil War. Yet, Greg Pappas isn't interested in banning KKE who actually have the nerve to use the symbol that killed 100 million people in the 20th century.
This is little more than junk blogging and plays to emotions instead of actual history. Ioannis Metaxas was very much inspired by Mussolini and Hitler, does that mean that when Mussolini invaded Greece he was an anti-fascist? According to liars and historical revisionists, yes, but it doesn't mean they're telling the truth. Greeks prospered greatly and enjoyed great stability under the 4th of August regime. If that makes Metaxas a Nazi, then so be it.
I’ll be sure to share that with the folks at German military archives, where I’ve been researching for years. I’m sure they’ll be happy to know that it wasn’t the Nazis who razed Distomo, Anogeia, Kandanos… I’ll also enlighten them that it wasn’t the Nazis who killed all of the men at Kontomari (perhaps those wonderful photos were photoshopped?)… Hmmm. Now that you’re enlightening me, are you going to tell me that the Holocaust didn’t exist either? This has nothing to do with Metaxas and everything to do with what Nazism means and what Nazism did to Greece.
Thank you so much, Greg. There are those who chose to ignore history and what happened to so many innocent Greeks/Greek Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Dropi tous. Those of us who live with the consequences of the despicable Nazi actions know too well what happened and how our lives have been affected.
The Germans committed many atrocities in many places. Greece was one of them. These liberals on pappas post try and make the right look bad and evil by following right wing ideologies and automatically connect it to nazism, because it is the most popular known among people.
Germans did very horrible things to Greeks no denying that, but why is everything connected back to nazism. This is nationalism, just like the nationalism of the 19th century
I can only say, wake-up. Look around the world and it is so sad what is going on these days. I say stand up and do away of these nuts such as the Golden Dawn, Neo Nazism and of course the Muslim who are degrading everything in there path. Greece is Gods country, lets keep it that way.
This article is flawed you have no idea what your saying
And you don’t know the difference between you’re & your. Bravo!
NAZI IS NATIONALISM IN GERMAN…. SO IF A NON GERMAN PERSON IS A NATIONALIST DOESNOT MEAN THAT HE IS ALSO CAPABLE OF GERMAN NAZI STYLE WW2 CRIMES..IT SIMPLY MEANS RIGHTLY OR WRONGLY THAT HE HAS THE BELIEF THAT HIS NATION IS SUPERIOR .
RACISM IS ALIVE AND WELL AMONGST THE IGNORANT AND NON ACHIEVERS IN THE LOWER CLASSES OF ABSOLUTELY EVERY COUNTRY.LI
what the Germans did to thousands of families and Greek children is unacceptable and can not be repaired only with an apology from the German government.I wanted to see if the same atrocities had been committed against the English if their reaction would not be the same (monetary redress).