Crackdown on Hellenes and its Golden Dawn leader Ilias Kasidiaris could cause more problems than it solves
By Helena Smith
Apr. 14, 2023
For two years Ilias Kasidiaris, a convicted leader of the now disbanded neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, has used social media to address supporters from Domokos prison in central Greece.
Month after month the former MP has railed against the inability of the “corrupt political regime” to govern the country in a stream of hate-filled speeches. For his 134,000 subscribers on YouTube, the exhortations are a lifeline to Kasidiaris and the Hellenes, the small nationalist party he set up shortly before being handed a 13-and-a-half-year prison term for his role in Golden Dawn. And they seem to be paying off.
Thirty months after the violent neo-fascist group was found to be a criminal gang that had masqueraded as a political organisation – targeting immigrants, killing a Greek rapper and lashing out at leftists – the appeal of the famously short-tempered Kasidiaris does not appear to have faded.
“On the contrary it seems to have grown,” says Kostis Papaioannou, who directs Signal, a research group that studies far-right extremism. “He’s even been given the opportunity to conduct radio shows from his cell and has been very effective in using social media to rally support among the young. It’s worrying. If general elections were held tomorrow his party would likely exceed the 3% threshold to get into parliament.”
On Wednesday, less than six weeks before Greece heads to the polls – and only hours after lawmakers voted to ban the Hellenes from fielding candidates – Domokos prison’s disciplinary council convened in emergency session as it began examining whether the 42-year-old had flouted prison rules permitting him to have contact solely with close family and lawyers – exchanges that can only take place using a phone card. The council is expected to announce possible punitive measures on 20 April.
Increasingly, Greeks have been asking how a notorious inmate in a high-security jail housing some of the nation’s most hardened criminals could so flagrantly violate the jail code, uploading videos on Twitter and even presiding over meetings of his party officials, albeit by phone.
Continue reading at www.theguardian.com
We remind our readers that publication of articles on our site does not mean that we agree with what is written. Our policy is to publish anything which we consider of interest, so as to assist our readers in forming their opinions. Sometimes we even publish articles with which we totally disagree, since we believe it is important for our readers to be informed on as wide a spectrum of views as possible.
