Golden Dawn Showered by Raids

[Papewaio]

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2013-0...rimina/4987964

The leader of the far-right Golden Dawn Party in Greece has been arrested and charged with belonging to a criminal organisation.

The arrest of Nikolaos Michaloliakos is the most prominent in a series of arrests of the party's MPs since last week.

Greece's anti-terrorist unit said it found weapons, ammunition and thousands of euros in cash at the party leader's home.

Twenty other Golden Dawn members were arrested over the weekend, including five of its members of parliament.

The Supreme Court has rained on the Golden Dawns torch lit parades after investigating them and have found sufficient evidence of acting as an organized crime syndicate to arrest five MPs along with the leader.

Lets hope Golden Dawns charges aren't watered down.

[Fragony]

Hardcore nazi's, I don't think this will stand though. Everybody knows they are scum but it's going to be pretty hard to prove they are a criminal organisation, they are, but they are also a democratically elected party.

[AntiDamascus]

Asian Dawn? No wait, I read about those guys in Time Magazine.

[HopAlongBunny]

Golden showers and Nazi's!?
This can only end badly

[Rhyfelwyr]

So, a forceful political crackdown on the ugly face of popular disillusionment, but absolutely no measures to tackle the huge variety of social injustices that both fostered it and were voiced through it in the first place.

Good job.

Imagine, you lose your livelihood, your home, heck your whole life... and now have your political representation taken away from you...

What is the typical working-class, downtrodden, political ignorant Golden Dawn supporter going to think of democracy now?

[Fragony]

So, a forceful political crackdown on the ugly face of popular disillusionment, but absolutely no measures to tackle the huge variety of social injustices that both fostered it and were voiced through it in the first place.

Good job.

Imagine, you lose your livelihood, your home, heck your whole life... and now have your political representation taken away from you...

What is the typical working-class, downtrodden, political ignorant Golden Dawn supporter going to think of democracy now?

It's hard to as politically ignorant to not know who these guys are, can't be compared to the BNP or the likes. They attack immigrants, destroy their marketplaces, patrol the streets. They are pretty damn hardcore. But it certainly is a dillema. Finding weapons somewhere doesn't mean it's a criminal organisation, and the behaviour of their supporters doesn' either. Really tough one I would love to have these guys behind bars as I detest their kind but the one doing that would probably have to cheat.

[Husar]

It's hard to imagine nazi supporters as having a high opinion of democracy in the first place.

There are other parties that support downtrodden workers, you don't have to beat up immigrants to support the working class.

[Fragony]

It's hard to imagine nazi supporters as having a high opinion of democracy in the first place.

There are other parties that support downtrodden workers, you don't have to beat up immigrants to support the working class.

They are absolute scumbags, but I don't know where the canary in the coalmine is when it comes to democracy, if you would have to draw a line would you be confident of where to put it

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I will admit that a quick scan of the thread title had me thinking it was the title of some kind of "adult" film effort. Fortunately, I was mistaken.


Ryf':

You are, so far, the closest thing to an apologist for these blokes in the thread (though I think you're arguing that the issues that fostered such a fascist party are still un-addressed, not arguing for fascism).

So, what are those social injustices? I had heard that Greece was facing tough times as they clawed their way from under the debt rock, but you are suggesting something more, no?

[Papewaio]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

If the Golden Dawn party is doing criminal activities then they must be prosecuted or the government ends up legitimizing the activities of GD.

The other side of the equation is addressing the root causes of the situation. Greece has to take an honest look at all levels of society and make sure that they all are paying their fair share. Greece is fairly infamous rightly or wrongly in operating a large amount of black markets and paying very little tax yet expecting government to pick up the tab at much higher levels then comparable tax bases. It is unsustainable, but the austerity solutions have already been show to be based on a faulty interpretation of data so that isn't the way out either.

So make surre basic welfare is achieved ie warmth, shelter food that is good enough to sustain life. Then start reforming both the processes and the people around long term sustainable life styles. If they want more social securities then they need to improve efficiencies and their tax base.

[Andres]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

If the Golden Dawn party is doing criminal activities then they must be prosecuted or the government ends up legitimizing the activities of GD.

The other side of the equation is addressing the root causes of the situation. Greece has to take an honest look at all levels of society and make sure that they all are paying their fair share. Greece is fairly infamous rightly or wrongly in operating a large amount of black markets and paying very little tax yet expecting government to pick up the tab at much higher levels then comparable tax bases. It is unsustainable, but the austerity solutions have already been show to be based on a faulty interpretation of data so that isn't the way out either.

So make surre basic welfare is achieved ie warmth, shelter food that is good enough to sustain life. Then start reforming both the processes and the people around long term sustainable life styles. If they want more social securities then they need to improve efficiencies and their tax base.

They could start with ending tax benefits for their rich ship owners and perhaps prevent them from transferring their very favourable taxed wealth abroad.

And maybe they should also show their middlefinger to the troika which is now forcing them to sell their state owned assets at dumping prices to sharks.

Last thing I heard, is that universities are now forced to close their doors this year.

And then people act surprised when the monster of extreme right rises again in Europe.

Wait and see. 68 years of peace in Europe is no guarantee for another few decades of peace. Those from reality detached troika idiots are playing with fire.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Golden Dawn are actual violent fascists. Hammer them into the ground. Even 7% is way too many to have in government.

[Andres]

Nazis don't come out of thin air. Organized Nazis with widespread support of any kind speaks to deep, deep issues in Greece. By the time Nazis enter a political arena, a large portion of the population has to be unhappy and ready to get evil to "fix" things.

Many of them will see their party as even more legitimate now that they are being "bullied" by the establishment. Bad situation and bad political handling. Glad I'm not greek.

Indeed.

It's easy to wave your finger at the evil nazis, it's far more complicated to run your country in a way that the general population isn't kicked into misery and becomes receptive for the ideas of scum like Golden Dawn.

Rhyfelwyr is right. It's easy to judge people while sitting well fed and well educated in your comfortable chair sipping coffee.

[Fragony]

Nazis don't come out of thin air. Organized Nazis with widespread support of any kind speaks to deep, deep issues in Greece. By the time Nazis enter a political arena, a large portion of the population has to be unhappy and ready to get evil to "fix" things.

Many of them will see their party as even more legitimate now that they are being "bullied" by the establishment. Bad situation and bad political handling. Glad I'm not greek.

I have little interest in excusing them in anything really. They aren't even pretending to be something they are not.

[Empire*Of*Media]

why u always match the white neo-Nazi racists and super racists of eastern europe to normal Nazis?!
Nazis in Greece and Thailand only want independence and cut dependence from Imperialists !

[Papewaio]

why u always match the white neo-Nazi racists and super racists of eastern europe to normal Nazis?!
Nazis in Greece and Thailand only want independence and cut dependence from Imperialists !

I will go out on a limb here why people see them as wannabe Nazis. It might be their white greek meanser styled like a nazi like swatizka, anti-Semitic output, black uniforms and beating up and murdering of ethnically different people than themselves at a guess.

Of it could be their MPs wearing iron cross jewelry, having tattoos of Sieg Heil or their official magazine having articles stating "We are the faithful soldiers of the National Socialist idea and nothing else" and "[...] WE EXIST, and continue the battle, the battle for the final victory of our race".

IMDHO It kind of hints that they are wannabe Nazis.

[Fragony]

They aren't wannabees they are nazi's.

[Empire*Of*Media]

I will go out on a limb here why people see them as wannabe Nazis. It might be their white greek meanser styled like a nazi like swatizka, anti-Semitic output, black uniforms and beating up and murdering of ethnically different people than themselves at a guess.

Of it could be their MPs wearing iron cross jewelry, having tattoos of Sieg Heil or their official magazine having articles stating "We are the faithful soldiers of the National Socialist idea and nothing else" and "[...] WE EXIST, and continue the battle, the battle for the final victory of our race".

IMDHO It kind of hints that they are wannabe Nazis.

first consider why in GREECE Without any Nationalism & Nazism Basis, is growing and why not in German that has been controlled strictly by USA & EU?! why in a country without any Aryan & German Race?! dont u think they want to be Free and be in better situation and break their dependence and be independence?!
anyway....
i didnt say they dont want to be Nazi or dont have all of the Nazi Specifications, i meant they are not matched with The White Neo-Nazis (those terrorists that believe White race as greater Race!!) ! anyway u see Nazism as Devil i dont want to talk about that (Has much great long discussion!) but your prejudice of Anti Nationalism that u r told to think like that, just shows how much your narrow minded and one minded!! the SWATSKA that u fear & hate when u see it (again are told u to be like this by controlled media) has not came from HITLER!! itler wanted only to resurrect that symbol!

The Symbol called Swastika has Aryan Iranian & Aryan Hindian Roots and and continued & went across until the Danube River Where the GOTHS were stationed before their Kingdoms in Italy & Spain and thats why Many Aryan-German Raced people are in France - Germany - Austria - Finland - Sweden! and that was why why that symbol got roots in Germania (germany & Austria - to Sweden & Finland)
your Hatred and Fear is only what THEY told u to think like what they please !
plz be more Logical & dispassionate & unprejudiced! (not u i mean All the people in Modern Countries with Huge Media Control over them!)

[Papewaio]

Mate I had relatives who fought and died in WWII. I also have relatives who are Buddhists so I've seen plenty of swatiskas. That's why I called them the nazi swatiska and the nazi iron cross not to be confused with other belief systems such as Buddhism or Christian crosses.

I don't fear Nazis, I loathe and pity them. I am disgusted with people who think it is alright to bully others based on their ethnic group or place of birth. I also know WWII well enough to distinguish between Nazi Germany, Vichy France and Fascist Italy. I am in no doubt of what evils were perpetuated by them.


I don't follow you when you call Greeks non-white. Sure they have tanned skin, but they are the crucible from which a lot of western civilisation sprang. They are very much Europeans. Which until relatively recently one would consider equivalent with white.

[Montmorency]

I think more specifically Panzer's point is that Muslims, like blacks, just suck and should stay away from our pristine Heimat.

[Papewaio]

Colonial aka Imperialism normally had the stated aim of making profit. Whatever was the cheapest method of getting goods was normally done. Mass murder was normally avoided as it depleted the labour pool, pushed up prices and increased instabilty which meant paying for more soldiers.

It got so expensive that before New Zealand joined the British Empire the British were trying to figure out how to scale back the number of colonies. Independence was a long way off but it was a solution the Brits were happy with.

Nazi Germany mass murdered its own citizens and those of countries it captured. Not because they offered resistance or because it was profitable. They killed them because of idealogical reasons. The mass murdered had the wrong religion, wrong sexuality, the wrong politics or the wrong handicap.

It wasn't for profit, it wasn't even neccesarily for security and it was done on an industrial scale (something IMDHO which is a Teutonic trait not something from facism otherwise the Italians would have shown better organizational skills).

[Montmorency]

If all that's the case, then it's strange of him to say:

It's easy to judge anti-immigrant sentiments when you haven't lived with them. These people are watching their neighborhoods, and many times their ancestral homes going back generations, be essentially turned into crime ridden housing blocks for a population that could care less about Greece or its culture and customs, and is instead only interested in chasing benefits through Europe.

There is a certain idealized notion of the immigrant that is strongly reinforced in contemporary Western thought, but spend a bit of time in these areas and it becomes clear that these people, especially those flocking to Europe, bring the same disfunction, petty rivalries, and violence that has kept their respective homelands in the third world. I don't blame the average working class Grecian for observing the crumbling world around him and concluding that his reality is not being understood or addressed by the current major parties.

As for Golden Dawn's alleged violence, one must also consider the violence perpetrated against them by immigrants and their Marxist allies - it certainly goes both ways. These people are fighting a vicious street war for their families and their homes and now face a crackdown by a government that no longer represents them. It would not surprise me if they become more violent, and I would not blame them.

That doesn't sound very much like 'I want to stabilize the size of my national group and focus our attention and resources on internal affairs and development'.

Or at least, it sounds like there's something a bit more - subtle - going on...

[Kralizec]

I think more specifically Panzer's point is that Muslims, like blacks, just suck and should stay away from our pristine Heimat.

I don't agree with Panzer's opinion on this, but this is unfair.

Greece is disproportionally burdened by illegal immigrants compared to most other European countries. It's not surprising Golden Dawn attracts votes. They're violent, but so are a lot of leftist groups in Greece.

Of course the arrests and prosecutions have been a long time coming. There's the risk that they'll successfully paint themselves as martyrs - but that risk is not nearly as serious as the danger of letting these thugs break the law at will.

[Montmorency]

Greece is disproportionally burdened by illegal immigrants compared to most other European countries.

But that's a completely different matter. It is not an unfair characterization.

[PanzerJaeger]

That my expression of sympathy and understanding for the Greeks enduring the uncontrolled influx of welfare immigrants resulted not only in the usual, thoughtless cries of racism, but also an entire sidebar of conjecture about what could possibly motivate me to feel that way, including suggested Nazi sympathies, shows just how detached this forum is from what is going on in Greece and many parts of Europe.

Fragony is correct; fault ultimately lies with a political/intellectual class that has succumbed to the idea that anything short of an open door policy is tantamount to racism and inhumanity. These are indeed the same people who are the most insulated from the results of such a policy. But placing blame solely at the feet of the political class removes any fault from the immigrant himself; conforming to the idealized notion of the immigrant that passes as reality among the middle and upper classes who have little day to day dealings with them.

Yes, Strike, I am a first generation immigrant to the United States, which gives me a unique perspective on the subject. My family and I came to the US to become Americans, not Germans living in America. We created a successful business and through it contributed to our community in the way of created jobs and taxes paid and even contributed just a little bit to the GDP; we did not come to this country to take advantage of a generous welfare system. In my relatively young 26 year life, I've already paid a significant sum to the government; I've never collected a check. We have made every effort to become American and conform to the cultural norms of our new country. My parents disallowed Deutsch spoken in our home; and while it certainly was not easy to fit into the culture of the American South, I made every effort to understand America - its history, its political structure, its economy, and its culture - better than the Americans around me. We did not seek out other Germans and attempt to build a nation within a nation off the largesse of a bloated welfare system and a paralyzed host population.

Welfare immigrants are the scum of the earth. The come to take, and leave when there's nothing left. In contrast to the popular notion, they do not strengthen a nation, they drain it of its resources and destroy labor markets. We endure a similar situation in America, although certainly not on the same level as what has occurred in Europe. Mexicans come to this nation to send American dollars back to Mexico and now demand that we change our laws to accommodate their desire to be fully accepted into the welfare system. They have become so numerous that it is now infeasible to deport them; thus some form of amnesty is the only realistic option. And yet, in the depths of the recession, when our nation was on its knees, many of those mexicans simply packed up and went back home because the US was no longer a teet worth sucking. The whole situation is disgusting to those of us who went through the arduous citizenship process. Germany is a wonderful country, but the United States is my home - not my current transitory benefit check provider. I'll be here through the good times and the bad.

Any sensible immigration policy would limit entry to those who could reasonably be perceived as a providing a net benefit to the nation in question; however, the short term benefit for those proponents of socialism to import dependent votes is more than enough to ignore the long term impact such a policy will have. There is a reason that Golden Dawn receives its largest share of votes from neighborhoods that have been filled with third world immigrants living off of the government dole. It could very well be that all those Greeks are secret Nazis longing for the heady days of German occupation (), but maybe, just maybe, they are reacting rationally to the reality around them.

[Strike For The South]

I still love you

[Husar]

That my expression of sympathy and understanding for the Greeks enduring the uncontrolled influx of welfare immigrants resulted not only in the usual, thoughtless cries of racism, but also an entire sidebar of conjecture about what could possibly motivate me to feel that way, including suggested Nazi sympathies, shows just how detached this forum is from what is going on in Greece and many parts of Europe.

Fragony is correct; fault ultimately lies with a political/intellectual class that has succumbed to the idea that anything short of an open door policy is tantamount to racism and inhumanity. These are indeed the same people who are the most insulated from the results of such a policy. But placing blame solely at the feet of the political class removes any fault from the immigrant himself; conforming to the idealized notion of the immigrant that passes as reality among the middle and upper classes who have little day to day dealings with them.

That you think open doors is actually the immigration policy in Europe shows how detached you are from actual realities on the European continent. Calling them "welfare immigrants" just supports the idea that you're racist and condescending. Your claim that our elites have no day to day dealings with thew immigrants is great, so how many dealings do you have with them? I for one live in an area with a whole lot of Turkish, Lebanese(Arabian) and Asian immigrants and I see no reason to vote far right.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

That my expression of sympathy and ...just maybe, they are reacting rationally to the reality around them.

This was the most cogently expressed version of your general argument on this class of issues that I have seen you post.


Husar

I didn't interpret "welfare immigrant" as an inherently racist epithet. I thought he was trying to avoid that overtone to clarify his argument. I understand your point as well, since all of the immigrant groups considered "problematic" for Greece and the USA are melanin advantaged, but I read it as him attempting to NOT bring that into the discussion and to frame it more neutrally in terms of ethical choice when facing economic hardship.

[Montmorency]

Not really so much racist as "xenophobic" or "ethnocentric".

I get a 'those poor stalwart peasants are witnessing the violation of their patrimony by savage hordes of (swarthy) foreigners' sort of vibe.

[Fragony]

While I am not going to agree with Panzer I do understand him. The golden dawn is a stretch too far for me though. Blame the ones who are responsible, not those that are here because of their policies, it just isn't fair. More fair, put the burden on those who support it, where people vote for immigration, usually people from 99% white neighbourhoods who put their kids on a 99% white schools (obligatory negroe), and see how they like it when it becomes their own reality, instead of what they feel others should do. All this nonsense will be over very soon.