Nationalist Breakthrough in Greece

 

“We are a Christian nation and we are Europeans. We don’t need Asians, Muslim fanatics in our country, simple as that,” says Ilias Panagiotaros, Golden Dawn spokesman, as he explains party policy: “Seal our borders with mines, full protection from army in the borders, high penalties and fines for Greeks who rent houses to illegal immigrants, high penalties and fines for Greeks who have illegal immigrants in their jobs.”¹ . . .

“That is why the whole system is fighting us,” said Anyfantis  [a Golden Dawn candidate]. “Because they are afraid that when we get into Parliament, the Greek people will understand that we are neither a gang, nor Nazis, nor children of Hitler. . . . We are just Greek patriots, we love our country. We are prepared even to sacrifice ourselves for our beliefs, for the country, for its people.”²

The Greek government was forced to call early elections due to massive unrest and discontent over their handling of the financial crisis and EU bailouts.  Those elections took place yesterday.  In the last parliamentary elections in 2009, the two mainstream Greek parties, which have been trading the Greek government back and forth for four decades, the center-right New Democracy (ND) and center-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), scored a combined 77% of the vote and formed a governing coalition together.³  Fueled by both huge deficit spending and massive social programs, the prospect of a Greek government default and bankruptcy under crushing debt looked imminent in April 2010.⁴  Due to the serious financial shockwaves this would have sent through the entire Eurozone, the IMF, funded primarily by France and Germany, agreed to bail out Greece if the Greek government agreed to impose severe austerity measures.  But this proved insufficient, and in July 2011 a second bailout package was necessary to keep the Greek government afloat, accompanied by even stricter instructions from the EU concerning further austerity measures.⁵  These austerity measures were (understandably) greatly unpopular, both from those who did not like seeing these welfare programs cut, and also from those who legitimately viewed the EU’s dictating internal Greek policies as a clear and dangerous invasion of Greek sovereignty.  Given the riots, strikes, and general unrest over these austerity measures and the need for a possible third bailout looming, the ruling coalition was forced to call elections this year instead of in 2013, when they were next scheduled to take place.

Opinion polls running up to the election showed that both ND and PASOK, along with their kosher nationalist partner, the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), had taken major hits in popularity.  In their place, public support was fragmented across a number of smaller anti-austerity parties.  These parties included the left-wing Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), the Democratic Left (DIMAR), Ecologist Greens (Greens), and the Communist Party (KKE), in addition to the right-wing and anti-austerity Independent Greeks (ANEL), which splintered from the ND over their pro-bailout stance, and the hardline nationalists, Golden Dawn (XA).⁶

While members of the ND and PASOK were often too afraid to campaign in the streets due to the very real possibility of being physically attacked by angry voters, the anti-austerity parties were able to freely campaign.⁷  The nationalist party Golden Dawn made particularly good use of this ability, going into some of the areas hardest hit by illegal immigration to campaign on their platform of border security, deportation, and Greek independence and sovereignty.⁸  This campaigning even included gathering up donations of clothing, food, and other supplies to give out to the Greek poor.⁹  Political opinion polls are illegal in Greece two weeks before any election, but the last polls, taken on April 20, showed the Golden Dawn polling at 4.5% to 6.5%, well above the 3% threshold needed to gain parliament seats and even further above their 0.29% vote share in the 2009 elections.¹⁰¹¹  This is doubly impressive due to the local and international media’s full-court press against Golden Dawn, using the same old “evil, white supremacist, neo-Nazi” slander that they throw at any European nationalist party or organization.  They even went out of their way to interview members of the immigrant community in Greece to ask how “scared” they were about the Golden Dawn, completely ignoring the crime, disease, welfare drain, and unemployment caused by the hundreds of thousands of Albanians, Pakistanis, Kurds, Afghans, Iraqis, and Somalis in a country with a total population under eleven million people.¹²¹³  The media never grows tried of describing the Golden Dawn’s symbol as “Swastika-like” when, in fact, it is the ancient, millennia-old Greek meander (or Greek key) symbol.¹⁴

With 100% of the vote counted, the results of yesterday’s elections are as follows:¹⁵
Party  Vote %   Vote Total    Seats Earned
ND     18.85%     1,192,054    58 + 50 = 108
SYRIZA    16.78%     1,061,265    52
PASOK     13.18%     833,529        41
ANEL     10.60%     670,596        33
KKE     8.48%     536,072        26
XA     6.97%     440,894        21
DIMAR    6.11%     386,116        19
GREENS    2.93%     185,366     0
LAOS    2.90%     183,466     0

Interactive Greek election map

The two mainstream parties, ND and PASOK, plummeted from 77% of the vote in ’09 down to just 32% yesterday, earning 149 seats, just short of the 151 needed to form a governing coalition.  As a side note: ND earned 58 seats from their votes and another 50 seats reserved for whichever party comes in first to aid them in creating a governing coalition.  The anti-austerity left, SYRIZA, KKE, and DIMAR, captured 31% of the vote and 97 seats.  The anti-austerity right, ANEL and XA, captured 17.5% of the vote and 54 seats.  The Greens and LAOS failed to get the 3% of the vote requisite to qualify for parliament seats.

ND, as the party with the most votes, has three days to attempt to form a governing coalition.¹⁶  It has already admitted failure to do this after approaching and being rejected by SYRIZA.¹⁷  Next, SYRIZA and then PASOK will get their chances to form a governing coalition, and should they both fail as well, new elections will be scheduled for next month.¹⁸  This is likely what will take place, based on the current division of seats amongst parties and the ideological and austerity divide.

The first article of good news in this is the fact that the anti-austerity parties’ solid majority of the vote is a major blow to the foundation of the unelected tyrants of the EUSSR.  A failure in Greece, especially after so much money has been invested in it, would threaten the entire European financial system and be bad news for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, all of whom are in nearly as bad a shape as Greece.

The second piece of good news is, obviously, the great success of the nationalist Golden Dawn, capturing almost 7% of the vote.  This should underline for us the value of getting out on the streets and campaigning, as well as the effects of doing things which actually and physically help our people, like providing security, food, and clothing.  However, we should once again be reminded that the true divide is not between right-wing and left-wing, but between nationalists and Marxists — whether they be more progressive Marxists (leftists) or less progressive Marxists (kosher conservatives).  Throughout the campaign and coverage of the election results, the media talked about how voters were supporting “radical parties on both the left and right,” but would then spend the rest of the article beating up on the Golden Dawn with not a peep about the Greek Communist Party, who always polled higher.  The media then went ballistic when the Golden Dawn gained 21 seats, acting like it was the end of the world, all the while not batting an eyelash at the communists’ 26 seats. This is a clear indication that the media did not really care about the radicalization in Greek politics or the crimes committed by ideologies in the past century, since they gave the radical Left a complete pass and ignored the ideology which killed a hundred million more people than Nazism did.  The media’s attack was based solely on their cultural Marxist, anti-European campaign of genocide and their commitment to attempt to crush anyone who threatens to get in their way.  To further illustrate that even kosher “right-wing conservatives” are in fact cultural Marxists and on board with this program, the leader of ND announced that he would be willing to coalition with anyone except Golden Dawn.¹⁹  Now, the leadership of Golden Dawn rightly considers the ND to be traitors and would not coalition with them in the first place, but it is extremely telling that a so-called right-wing party would rather coalition with communists over nationalists.  We need to keep this in mind as we fight for the future of our people.

This is a great clip of the Golden Dawn’s leader giving his victory speech after the election. He takes the opportunity to throw his success right in the face of the media which had spent months slandering him and his party.

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