Fascism
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POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES IN ACTION . . . GREECE’S GOLDEN DAWN
EVENTS: Golden Dawn had its origins in the movement for the restoration in Greece of military dictatorship. Assuming its name from the title of a magazine launched in 1980 by Nikolaos Michaloliakos and a group of supporters, Golden Dawn was registered as a political party in 1993, Michalioliakos becoming its leader. Golden Dawn made its electoral breakthrough in May 2012 when it won 21 seats and 7 per cent of the vote. The party emerged from the January 2015 election as the third strongest political force in Greece, despite winning only 17 seats However, Golden Dawn collapsed electorally in 2019, its share of the vote having fallen to less than 3 per cent, under the level needed to gain seats in the Greek parliament. SIGNIFICANCE: Golden Dawn made its electoral breakthrough in the context of the 2007–09 global financial crisis, which seriously destabilized the economies of many countries in the south of the eurozone, Greece included. For example, Greek unemployment hit 28 per cent in 2013, with youth unemployment soaring to almost 60 per cent. Swingeing austerity measures were also imposed as a condition of EU/IMF bailouts for Greece in 2010 and in 2012. Nevertheless, similarly grievous economic conditions developed in countries such as Spain and Portugal without a comparable spike in support for the far-right. This shows thatparties likeGoldenDawnflourishnot just in conditions of poverty and economic dislocation, but when an economic crisis is accompanied by a crisis of democratic representation. In Greece, nevertheless, such circumstances were unable to overcome a widespread revulsion at the use
of violence, an association with violence having dogged Golden Dawn throughout its existence and contributed to its 2019 defeat. But how should Golden Dawn be classified ideologically? Despise the party’s past use of Nazi symbols and paraphernalia, Golden Dawn has always rejected fascist and Nazi labels, preferring instead to call themselves ‘Greek nationalists’. Nevertheless, unlike most other far-right and national populist parties in Europe, Golden Dawn espouses all core fascist, and more specifically Nazi, principles, so justifying its categorization as neo-Nazi. The central theme of Golden Dawn’s ideology is thus a belief in the continuation of the ‘Greek race’ from antiquity to the modern day. Myths from ancient Greece, especially ones that stress heroism, are used to keep alive the prospect of a national revival in which all political divisions will be eliminated and Greece’s moral and cultural decay reversed. This process of ‘catharsis’ will supposedly see the cleansing of the Greek nation from the pollution imposed by political dissidents (particularly communists) and ‘outsiders’.
Anti-rationalism Although fascist political movements were born out of the upheavals that accompanied World War I, they drew on ideas and theories that had been circulating since the late nineteenth century. Among the most significant of these were anti-rationalism and the growth of counter-Enlightenment thinking generally. The Enlightenment, based on the ideas of universal reason, natural goodness and inevitable progress, was committed to liberating humankind from the darkness of irrationalism and superstition. In the late nineteenth century, however, thinkers had started to highlight the limits of human reason and draw attention to other, perhaps more powerful, drives and impulses.
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