The far right in Greece: a foretold story

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the Greek political scene had been observing far-right movements and parties emerging in countries throughout Europe, without experiencing any similar phenomena within its own borders. However, in 2012, Greece would become the first country of Europe that would host, in the national parliament, a neo-Nazi party, the party of Golden Dawn. The country that since 2008 has been in a constant series of crises (economic, societal and political), was now also called to reflect on the emerging question: ‘How did we get here?’. In a country where, since its political change-over of 1974, democratization, tolerance and hospitality were the mainstream political discourse of parties throughout the left-right spectrum, a shift of that scale would be considered highly implausible. However, despite the internal collisions, disruptions and confrontations in far right movements, they managed to remain, maintain and preserve support within the electorate, reflecting the notion of extremism rooted in the Greek society. This chapter addresses not only successful expressions of far-right in Greece, like LA.O.S., Golden Dawn or Greek Solution, but also tries to identify the origins since the political change-over, of a political scene that was seen as a pariah that arose to shake the national democratic institutions. Building on the already extended bibliography on far-right (Mudde 2019, Ignazi 1996, Minkenbert 2011, Rydgren 2018) the chapter follows Greek far-right from 1974 onwards. As its compass it uses the predominant criteria of nationalism, racism, nativism and anti-establishment attitudes, in order to transcribe and narrate its foretold story.