Galery

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Golden Dawn acts as a space attracting people who want to allay their anger, as some observers put it. I would say that those are people who would like to have their revenge on the political system. They are furious with all those politicians who caused or failed to prevent the economic collapse as well as with those who failed to cope with the current situation.

Some of the Greeks are unable to rationally consider ongoing events, to understand the fact that the crisis has made the situation extremely difficult and that in order to overcome that difficulty we need to conduct a series of reforms and go through the painful process of restructuring. Those people tend to act emotionally and therefore their votes express their desire to punish those who are guilty about the situation.

Do you think the percentage of votes in favour of Golden Dawn will continue to increase?

No, I do not think so. In my opinion Golden Dawn has already exhausted all available depots of voters, and there were many of them. The party took votes not only from its immediate political space, but also from real depots of the far-right nationalist space which existed before and after 2010.

We should not forget that in Attica, where Golden Dawn won 11.5 per cent of the votes, four years ago 6.5 per cent of voters supported LAOS (and its leader Georgios Karatzaferis, author’s note). I do not share the opinion that there is potential for its growth. As we have already seen Golden Dawn was not able to appoint its candidates for mayors. There were only 9 of them for more than 300 municipalities in the country. There were candidates in 12 of the 13 regions, yet their results were not as satisfactory as the overall result of the party in the elections.

I believe that the expansion of Golden Dawn is now close to an end. Yet, this will also depend on political management, the sustainability of institutions, and the media. The experience of other countries indicates that in addition to the votes, there are other factors which determine how far a right-wing party will go. Nevertheless, my opinion is that Golden Dawn has lore or less reached the maximum of its potential.

Golden Dawn is currently the third political force in Greece. Do you think that it may become the major political factor in the country after the next elections?

I do not see this happening. The EU Parliamentary elections already indicated that the political system has gone through serious changes. The Elia Alliance and To Potami, which in my opinion stands close to it in the left wing of the political centre, have achieved very good results. This indicates that we are in the same situation as in 2010, with a highly polarized party system with a weak and nearly desolate centre and strong right-wing parties (New Democracy) and left-wing parties (SYRIZA). I believe we are now at the stage when the political centre has begun to refill.

I do not think that Golden Dawn will be a decisive factor. Should this happen, it would mean that all political parties had failed. Their first opportunity to show that they will prevent such a thing from happening is the Presidential elections. In my opinion it is crucial to hold the next parliamentary elections when they should be held, rather than due to the fact that there will not be 180 MPs, not counting the members of Golden Dawn, who would agree on who the next president will be.

What I am trying to say is that Golden Dawn might turn into a decisive factor only if all the other parties failed. The indications we have suggest no such possibility.

Why is it that the Constitution of Greece does not ban the establishment of Nazi parties, as is the case in other countries?

As a matter of fact, there is such a ban only in Germany. The constitutions of some EU countries have some more strict regulations, yet not explicit bans. And in the case of Germany, this ban was introduced as an obligation on behalf of other countries so that Germany could become a normal democratic country.

As a matter of fact, that did not prevent the country from harbouring the appearance of similar parties, There were, and still are, extreme political formations in the country, one of them, the German National Democratic Party even had its EU representative in the latest elections.

Over the last fifteen years there have been two attempts to centrally ban the extremist party. They failed though since the constitution provides specific and very strict requirements for applying the ban. Currently there are attempts in two German provinces to enforce the ban yet they are not very likely to succeed.

I do not consider similar bans to be a solution to the problem. In such cases, the solution is provided by the institutions when they function properly and democratically and thus win the confidence of the citizens. The latter could support or resist the activity of similar extremist formations through their vote.

As a matter of fact, this is both an advantage and a disadvantage of democracies – they give their enemies the right to exist. The sociologist Tzvetan Todorov has described this quite successfully in his book ‘Democracy’s Intimate Enemies’. Yet the power of democracy is demonstrated when it succeeds in marginalising those enemies.