ATHENS — At first glance, the shop on a nondescript street in this chaotic capital looks standard-issue military. Fatigues. Camouflage. Hunting gear. Deeper inside, the political message emerges. Black T-shirts emblazoned with modified swastikas — the symbol of the far-right Golden Dawn party — are on sale. A proudly displayed sticker carries a favorite party slogan: “Get the Stench out of Greece.”Read the rest here.
By “stench,” the Golden Dawn — which won its first-ever seats in the Greek Parliament this spring and whose popularity has soared ever since — means immigrants, broadly defined as anyone not of Greek ancestry. In the country at the epicenter of Europe’s debt crisis, and where poverty and unemployment are spiking, the surplus shop doubles as one of the party’s dozens of new “help bureaus.” Hundreds of calls a day come in from desperate families seeking food, clothing and jobs, all of which the Golden Dawn is endeavoring to provide, with one major caveat: for Greeks only.
Interesting that WAPO seems fixated on a small though admittedly fascist political party while ignoring that the second largest party in Greece is neo-Communist. Communism and Nazism occupy the same moral plane. And yet the WAPO seems unable to tear its eyes from a minor right wing fringe party long enough to note the presence of the huge party that espouses an ideology responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people around the world.
Why is anybody supposed to be terrified of Golden Dawn? If American Indians said their lands were for them and them alone and set up roadblocks, as they still occasionally do, would we call them Nazis? Why can't the Greeks in their own ethnic homeland say the same thing?
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's a bit ridiculous for secular democrats to wring their hands about fascism. Secular democracy itself can only exist in a regime of the State uber alles.