The Popular Association – Golden Dawn is a far-right political party in Greece. Its general secretary and several members of parliament have been found guilty of leading a criminal organisation. A number of other leading members have been convicted of participation. The party is commonly described as neo-Nazi and fascist.
About Golden Dawn (political party) in brief
The Popular Association – Golden Dawn is a far-right political party in Greece. Its general secretary and several members of parliament have been found guilty of leading a criminal organisation. A number of other leading members have been convicted of participation. The party is commonly described as neo-Nazi and fascist. The group rejects these labels and its members have expressed admiration for the former Greek dictators Ioannis Metaxas of the 4th of August Regime and Georgios Papadopoulos of the Regime of the Colonels. They also use symbolism very like that of the Nazis, and have praised figures of Nazi Germany. According to academic sources, the group is racist and xenophobic, and the party’s leader has openly identified it as nationalist and racist. Golden Dawn later lost all of its remaining seats in the Greek Parliament in the 2019 Greek legislative election. A 2020 survey showed theParty’s popularity plummeting to 1. 5%, down from 2. 9% in the previous year’s elections, and a peak of 7. 0%. On 7 October 2020, Athens Appeals Court announced verdicts for 68 defendants, including the party’s political leadership. Nikolaos Michaloliakos and six other prominent members and former MPs, charged with running a criminal organization. Guilty verdicts on charges of murder, attempted murder, and violent attacks on immigrants and left-wing political opponents were delivered. By the mid-2000s, Golden Dawn had redirected its attention to opposing non-European, and particularly Muslim, immigration into the mainly Greek areas of southern Greece and Athens.
It received 7% of the popular vote, enough for the party to enter the Hellenic Parliament for the first time with 21 seats. Following a second election in June 2012, this was reduced to 18 seats. As a result of the January 2015 Greek national elections, the party became the third largest in Parliament, despite winning only 17 seats. In 2015 Golden Dawn outlined their ‘National Plan’ for Greece’s recovery from the financial crisis. In it, they called for the expulsion of Northern Greece’s last remaining Macedonian-speaking minority and the Turkish-speaking Muslim minority of East Macedonia and Thrace that were settled during the Ottoman period. They aspire to combat Islam in the region, such as through contributing fighters to the Greek Volunteer Guard that helped capture Srebrenica. In the 1980s and 1990s Golden Dawn launched a group of supporters of Chrysi Avrygi magazine. In 1980, NikolaosMichaloliackos launched Chrygi Avrysi magazine and laid the foundations of the Golden Dawn party. He had been arrested several times for politically motivated offences, including beatings and illegal possession of explosive materials, which led to his discharge from the military. While he was in prison, he met the military leaders of the Greek junta of 1967–1974 and laid his foundations for Golden Dawn. In 1990, he published the first issue of the right-wing, pro-military junta journal with the name.
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