Tim Cornelis
30th April 2012, 22:43
Golden Dawn (Greek nazi party) is rising in the polls.
Where is the revolutionary left? The KKE? The Anarchists? Too comfortabel in their parliamentary seats? Hurling molotov cocktails?
Meanwhile Golden Dawn is supplying the needy with food and clothes.
Is the KKE leadership using every opportunity to explain the 'migrant issue' (the only way to stop such crimes is by eliminating the need for such crimes: eliminate capitalism)? I'd be very surprised if they did.
It seems that -- the KKE being in parliament for decades but without result -- is seen as the establishment and thus part of the problem. Are the members of the KKE out on the streets every day with an armory of propaganda?
Are the anarchists doing more than just raiding Golden Dawn offices and hurling molotov cocktails at coppers?
ATHENS, Greece - Reeling from a vicious financial crisis that has cost them pensions and jobs, Greeks have been turning away in droves from the mainstream politicians they feel have let them down. Another political force is trying to tap the void, with blunt promises to "clean up" the country.
It's one that could see Europe's most extreme far right deputies take up seats in Greece's Parliament in crucial May 6 elections.
Black-clad Golden Dawn members have been storming across the campaign trail across Greece, stopping to chat at cafes and shops, handing out fliers promising security in crime-ridden neighborhoods — and vowing to kick out immigrants.
Greece's borders, they say, must be sealed with land mines to stop illegal crossing into a country that became the entry point for 90 percent of the European Union's illegal migrants. Authorities estimate there are about 1 million migrants living in this country of 11 million.
Appealing to populist sentiment, Golden Dawn has been gathering donations of food and clothing to deliver to the needy while pledging to make politicians accountable for the crisis. Ordinary Greeks are struggling under tough conditions demanded for rescue loan deals that have pushed the country into a fifth year of recession.
"Golden Dawn stands against this corrupt system of power. All those who are responsible for the waste of public money must go to jail. That is our priority," said Ilias Kasidiaris, a 31-year-old party member who served in the Greek army's special forces.
Around him, the party offices in downtown Athens were a hive of activity, with newcomers dropping in and the membership list growing by the day. In the back, T-shirts and caps are for sale marked with the party logo, taken from the ancient Greek meander, a motif resembling the swastika and often seen on ancient mosaics, carvings and wall paintings.
Firmly on the fringe of the right since it first appeared 20 years ago, Golden Dawn garnered a meager 0.23 percent in the 2009 elections. Now, it looks set to easily win more than the 3 percent threshold needed to enter Parliament, with recent opinion polls showing support at about 5 percent.
The party has a barely veiled sinister side, and has been blamed for vicious attacks on immigrants. Members skirt questions about violence, saying they have no knowledge of such incidents.
"We don't do anything, we protect the Greeks," said Epaminondas Anyfantis, a mild-mannered, 59-year-old candidate who looks the antithesis of many of the young, muscled and shaven-headed members. "Now, if in protecting the Greeks, a foreigner might get a slap or a kick or something, I think that's in the framework of the protection of the Greeks. ... Because unfortunately the Greeks at the moment have come to the point of asking Golden Dawn for protection."
With parts of central Athens turning into ghetto-like neighborhoods where drug users inject openly and muggings and burglaries are regular events, many have lost confidence in the police.
Giorgos Vardzis, who lives in the small seaside town of Artemida, has taken down the numbers of Golden Dawn members in case of emergencies.
"Who else should I call, the police? ... When you ask for help from the police because you're being killed, you have to be killed first, and then the police will come," he said.
Immigrants are increasingly concerned.
"We are worried very much," said Javed Aslam, the head of the Pakistani community in Greece, during a recent anti-racist demonstration. "This is very bad. You can imagine one political party with weapons, with knives, they are going out in the roads, and this is politics? This is not politics!"
Led by Nikolas Mihaloliakos, who won a seat on the Athens city council in 2010 local elections and shocked Greeks by delivering a fascist salute in his first appearance there, Golden Dawn rejects the neo-Nazi label, pointing out that many of their fathers fought the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
"We are Greek nationalists. Nothing more and nothing less than that," said Kasidiaris.
But they don't hide their admiration for many of Hitler's policies, saying he eliminated unemployment in Germany. Golden Dawn members often give fascist salutes at marches and rallies featuring nationalist slogans and burning torches, pictures of which adorn walls in party offices.
And they are tapping into a deep well of discontent with the parties that have dominated Greek politics for decades, conservative New Democracy and socialist PASOK.
"Our children have no jobs. They cut my husband's pension," said Evlambia Spantidaki, sitting on the porch of a friend's house in Artemida. "For a while I voted New Democracy. I changed and voted for PASOK. But now nothing, none of them."
This year, her vote will go to Golden Dawn.
"All those people who are following us at the moment, let's be realistic ... they didn't suddenly become nationalists from one minute to the next," said Giorgos Germenis, a member of the party's political council responsible for ideology. He is running as a Golden Dawn candidate in the wider Athens area. "It is a vote of protest. They find confidence in the face of Golden Dawn, that it will enter Parliament and really shake up the system."
With none of its more than 220 candidates, bar its leader, a recognized politician, the party also plays to voters disillusioned with the political elite.
"We will never become politicians. We are soldiers and we will die soldiers," said Anyfantis. "We are soldiers fighting for a cause."
In a country that suffered famine under Nazi occupation and saw arbitrary detentions and torture under the 1967-74 military dictatorship, the party's growing popularity has alarmed many.
"I have been surprised and very worried by the explosion in the opinion polls of Golden Dawn, the most extreme form of the extreme right," Athens University political science professor Ilias Nicolacopoulos said shortly after elections were declared in mid-April.
So the mainstream has been scrambling to win back the right-wing vote, putting immigration at the top of the agenda. Public Order Minister Michalis Chrysohoidis has pledged to build detention centers for 30,000 illegal immigrants by 2014, with the first one to open within days. Police have raided migrant apartments, and legislation now allows authorities to force migrants to have health checks and medical treatment.
Immigrant groups say there has been a spike in racist violence recently.
"There is a worrying trend of racist attacks directed against non-EU foreigners in Greece," said Ketty Kehagioglou, UNHCR spokeswoman in Athens. "In times of instability it is always easy to look for scapegoats and extremist groups take advantage of this situation."
In an Athens hospital ward, Pakistani migrant Mohammad lies propped up on a bed, his right arm in a cast, stitches in the back of his head, his nose broken — the result of a severe beating one recent Sunday night by a group of about 25 men armed with wooden bats and iron rods, he said.
Across town in a small one-bedroom flat, his friend Ahmad is recovering from head and hand injuries from the same attack.
"They just asked 'what's your country?' and then they start beating us. ... With hands and wood and the iron rod," Ahmad said. Neither had spoken to the police about the incident. Fearing reprisals, they asked for only their first names to be used.
For their part, Golden Dawn seem confident of taking up parliamentary seats after May 6 — even if it is on a protest vote.
"That is why the whole system is fighting us," said Anyfantis. "Because they are afraid that when we get into Parliament, the Greek people will understand that we are neither a gang, nor Nazis, nor children of Hitler. ... We are just Greek patriots, we love our country. We are prepared even to sacrifice ourselves for our beliefs, for the country, for its people."
(associated press)
April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Theodore Couloumbis experienced the Nazi occupation of Greece as a boy and 70 years later he's worried he'll witness the return of stiff-armed salutes and fascist flags.
The Golden Dawn party may enter the parliament in Athens for the first time after May 6 elections, current polls show, as rising anti-immigrant sentiment among austerity-hit Greeks spurs support for groups formerly on the political fringes. Ninety percent of people surveyed for a To Vima newspaper poll published on April 9 said immigrants are responsible for an increase in violence and crime.
"The last thing I would want to see in the Greek parliament is a bunch of people who give the Hitler salute," said Couloumbis, 76, a professor of international relations at the University of Athens. "I'm old enough to remember the absolute ugliness of that particular occupation."
The group is known for its violent clashes in immigrant neighborhoods and for a red and black party logo resembling a disentangled swastika. Members of the group have said it's not Nazi or fascist and they reject any connection of its logo to a swastika, saying it's an ancient Greek symbol. A video of Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos shows him giving the fascist salute.
Golden Dawn's charter says its "main ideal and belief is the nation-tribe" and that "only men and women of Greek descent and consciousness should have full political rights." Michaloliakos declined to comment for this story when called on his mobile phone.
Land Mines
The party wants land mines placed on the Greek-Turkish border to stop illegal immigrants entering the country and cancellation of Greek loan accords with the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
It also calls for wiping out debt accumulated since 1974 that's deemed "illegal and burdensome." Greek banks that get state funds should be nationalized, as should all natural resources, the party's program says.
Golden Dawn is bolstering support by organizing security patrols in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods and by running food banks for Greeks suffering from five years of recession and unemployment of almost 22 percent.
"I'm voting for Golden Dawn because I want all the immigrants to leave," Maria Papageorgiou, 52, said in an interview in the Athens neighborhood where she has lived all her life. "There's a high crime rate, it's a miserable situation. They should leave and go back to their countries. Or maybe the Germans can take them."
Euro Status
At stake in the election is whether the next Greek government can implement the austerity measures on which bailout funds and euro membership depend.
The Athens Stock Exchange has lost 61 percent of its value over the last two years. An index of Greek banks dropped 73 percent in the last 12 months. Greek government bonds maturing in February 2023 are yielding 20.55 percent compared with 18.28 percent on March 14, the day after the country's credit rating was lifted out of the default category by Fitch Ratings following the agreement of a debt swap.
Polls show Golden Dawn winning as much as 5 percent of the vote, enough to enter parliament for the first time. The party, which was founded two decades ago, won its first seat on the Athens city council in 2010.
Golden Dawn's rise comes as far-right or nationalist parties are surging in a number of European countries including Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands and France, where anti- immigrant National Front leader Marine Le Pen won 17.9 percent in the first round of presidential elections on April 22.
'Lazy Thinking'
"Populist parties on the left and the right rely on fear," Jan Techau, director of the Brussels-based European Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a phone interview. "They always gain when the economy is bad. But to just hope an improving economy will make them go away is lazy thinking."
In Greece, Pasok and New Democracy, the two parties supporting the interim government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos in implementing austerity measures in exchange for a second 130 billion euro ($172 billion) loan package, are trying to show their credentials in combating illegal immigration to stem the loss of votes to anti-foreigner parties.
New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, whose party leads in opinion polls yet is short of a majority, also has to contend with a loss of votes to parties opposed to austerity measures.
Illegal Entry
Greece, with a population of 11 million, has an estimated 1 million immigrants, many of whom are illegal, the Greek government says. Police last year arrested 99,368 foreigners for being in or entering the country illegally, more than half of whom were from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Most want to travel to other EU countries where economic prospects are better yet many of them end up in central Athens living in squalid apartments and are exploited by criminal gangs, according to a statement on the Ministry of Citizen Protection's website.
Anti-immigrant groups "are taking advantage of the disaffection of the average Greek voter against uncontrolled immigration," said Couloumbis, who is vice-president of the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy and writes a regular column in the Athens-based Kathimerini newspaper.
In addition to Golden Dawn, the Independent Greeks party has polled near 10 percent. It was set up on Feb. 24 by Panos Kammenos after he was expelled from New Democracy for casting a vote against the interim Papademos government.
Laos, a nationalist party that wants immigrants to be shipped to uninhabited Greek islands before being deported, is also vying for anti-foreigner voters. Polls show as many as 10 political parties could enter Greece's parliament.
No Nazis
Golden Dawn caused controversy on the campaign trail when a group of its supporters threw bottles and other objects at a Pasok socialist candidate during a campaign event in the Athens suburb of Maroussi on April 21, Athens News Agency reported.
"Parliament cannot become a reception space for the followers of Nazism and fascism," Pasok leader Evangelos Venizelos said in response to the incident.
During late March and early April, hundreds of police with dogs began rounding up illegal immigrants in downtown Athens ahead of the creation of detention centers being set up throughout Greece, mostly at disused army bases.
Couloumbis, who experienced Adolf Hitler's troops as a boy, said Golden Dawn's winning seats "would be quite damaging."
"I'm old enough to have lived during the occupation of Greece by the Germans," he said in an interview. "The last thing we need on top of everything else is to have a bunch of fascists in the Greek parliament."
(source (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/04/30/bloomberg_articlesM33G291A1I4K01-M35B3.DTL&ao=2))
This shit could set a serious precedence.
Note: last poll results (polls are no longer allowed by Greek law):
http://s17.postimage.org/3nofqslzx/polls.png
Where is the revolutionary left? The KKE? The Anarchists? Too comfortabel in their parliamentary seats? Hurling molotov cocktails?
Meanwhile Golden Dawn is supplying the needy with food and clothes.
Is the KKE leadership using every opportunity to explain the 'migrant issue' (the only way to stop such crimes is by eliminating the need for such crimes: eliminate capitalism)? I'd be very surprised if they did.
It seems that -- the KKE being in parliament for decades but without result -- is seen as the establishment and thus part of the problem. Are the members of the KKE out on the streets every day with an armory of propaganda?
Are the anarchists doing more than just raiding Golden Dawn offices and hurling molotov cocktails at coppers?
ATHENS, Greece - Reeling from a vicious financial crisis that has cost them pensions and jobs, Greeks have been turning away in droves from the mainstream politicians they feel have let them down. Another political force is trying to tap the void, with blunt promises to "clean up" the country.
It's one that could see Europe's most extreme far right deputies take up seats in Greece's Parliament in crucial May 6 elections.
Black-clad Golden Dawn members have been storming across the campaign trail across Greece, stopping to chat at cafes and shops, handing out fliers promising security in crime-ridden neighborhoods — and vowing to kick out immigrants.
Greece's borders, they say, must be sealed with land mines to stop illegal crossing into a country that became the entry point for 90 percent of the European Union's illegal migrants. Authorities estimate there are about 1 million migrants living in this country of 11 million.
Appealing to populist sentiment, Golden Dawn has been gathering donations of food and clothing to deliver to the needy while pledging to make politicians accountable for the crisis. Ordinary Greeks are struggling under tough conditions demanded for rescue loan deals that have pushed the country into a fifth year of recession.
"Golden Dawn stands against this corrupt system of power. All those who are responsible for the waste of public money must go to jail. That is our priority," said Ilias Kasidiaris, a 31-year-old party member who served in the Greek army's special forces.
Around him, the party offices in downtown Athens were a hive of activity, with newcomers dropping in and the membership list growing by the day. In the back, T-shirts and caps are for sale marked with the party logo, taken from the ancient Greek meander, a motif resembling the swastika and often seen on ancient mosaics, carvings and wall paintings.
Firmly on the fringe of the right since it first appeared 20 years ago, Golden Dawn garnered a meager 0.23 percent in the 2009 elections. Now, it looks set to easily win more than the 3 percent threshold needed to enter Parliament, with recent opinion polls showing support at about 5 percent.
The party has a barely veiled sinister side, and has been blamed for vicious attacks on immigrants. Members skirt questions about violence, saying they have no knowledge of such incidents.
"We don't do anything, we protect the Greeks," said Epaminondas Anyfantis, a mild-mannered, 59-year-old candidate who looks the antithesis of many of the young, muscled and shaven-headed members. "Now, if in protecting the Greeks, a foreigner might get a slap or a kick or something, I think that's in the framework of the protection of the Greeks. ... Because unfortunately the Greeks at the moment have come to the point of asking Golden Dawn for protection."
With parts of central Athens turning into ghetto-like neighborhoods where drug users inject openly and muggings and burglaries are regular events, many have lost confidence in the police.
Giorgos Vardzis, who lives in the small seaside town of Artemida, has taken down the numbers of Golden Dawn members in case of emergencies.
"Who else should I call, the police? ... When you ask for help from the police because you're being killed, you have to be killed first, and then the police will come," he said.
Immigrants are increasingly concerned.
"We are worried very much," said Javed Aslam, the head of the Pakistani community in Greece, during a recent anti-racist demonstration. "This is very bad. You can imagine one political party with weapons, with knives, they are going out in the roads, and this is politics? This is not politics!"
Led by Nikolas Mihaloliakos, who won a seat on the Athens city council in 2010 local elections and shocked Greeks by delivering a fascist salute in his first appearance there, Golden Dawn rejects the neo-Nazi label, pointing out that many of their fathers fought the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
"We are Greek nationalists. Nothing more and nothing less than that," said Kasidiaris.
But they don't hide their admiration for many of Hitler's policies, saying he eliminated unemployment in Germany. Golden Dawn members often give fascist salutes at marches and rallies featuring nationalist slogans and burning torches, pictures of which adorn walls in party offices.
And they are tapping into a deep well of discontent with the parties that have dominated Greek politics for decades, conservative New Democracy and socialist PASOK.
"Our children have no jobs. They cut my husband's pension," said Evlambia Spantidaki, sitting on the porch of a friend's house in Artemida. "For a while I voted New Democracy. I changed and voted for PASOK. But now nothing, none of them."
This year, her vote will go to Golden Dawn.
"All those people who are following us at the moment, let's be realistic ... they didn't suddenly become nationalists from one minute to the next," said Giorgos Germenis, a member of the party's political council responsible for ideology. He is running as a Golden Dawn candidate in the wider Athens area. "It is a vote of protest. They find confidence in the face of Golden Dawn, that it will enter Parliament and really shake up the system."
With none of its more than 220 candidates, bar its leader, a recognized politician, the party also plays to voters disillusioned with the political elite.
"We will never become politicians. We are soldiers and we will die soldiers," said Anyfantis. "We are soldiers fighting for a cause."
In a country that suffered famine under Nazi occupation and saw arbitrary detentions and torture under the 1967-74 military dictatorship, the party's growing popularity has alarmed many.
"I have been surprised and very worried by the explosion in the opinion polls of Golden Dawn, the most extreme form of the extreme right," Athens University political science professor Ilias Nicolacopoulos said shortly after elections were declared in mid-April.
So the mainstream has been scrambling to win back the right-wing vote, putting immigration at the top of the agenda. Public Order Minister Michalis Chrysohoidis has pledged to build detention centers for 30,000 illegal immigrants by 2014, with the first one to open within days. Police have raided migrant apartments, and legislation now allows authorities to force migrants to have health checks and medical treatment.
Immigrant groups say there has been a spike in racist violence recently.
"There is a worrying trend of racist attacks directed against non-EU foreigners in Greece," said Ketty Kehagioglou, UNHCR spokeswoman in Athens. "In times of instability it is always easy to look for scapegoats and extremist groups take advantage of this situation."
In an Athens hospital ward, Pakistani migrant Mohammad lies propped up on a bed, his right arm in a cast, stitches in the back of his head, his nose broken — the result of a severe beating one recent Sunday night by a group of about 25 men armed with wooden bats and iron rods, he said.
Across town in a small one-bedroom flat, his friend Ahmad is recovering from head and hand injuries from the same attack.
"They just asked 'what's your country?' and then they start beating us. ... With hands and wood and the iron rod," Ahmad said. Neither had spoken to the police about the incident. Fearing reprisals, they asked for only their first names to be used.
For their part, Golden Dawn seem confident of taking up parliamentary seats after May 6 — even if it is on a protest vote.
"That is why the whole system is fighting us," said Anyfantis. "Because they are afraid that when we get into Parliament, the Greek people will understand that we are neither a gang, nor Nazis, nor children of Hitler. ... We are just Greek patriots, we love our country. We are prepared even to sacrifice ourselves for our beliefs, for the country, for its people."
(associated press)
April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Theodore Couloumbis experienced the Nazi occupation of Greece as a boy and 70 years later he's worried he'll witness the return of stiff-armed salutes and fascist flags.
The Golden Dawn party may enter the parliament in Athens for the first time after May 6 elections, current polls show, as rising anti-immigrant sentiment among austerity-hit Greeks spurs support for groups formerly on the political fringes. Ninety percent of people surveyed for a To Vima newspaper poll published on April 9 said immigrants are responsible for an increase in violence and crime.
"The last thing I would want to see in the Greek parliament is a bunch of people who give the Hitler salute," said Couloumbis, 76, a professor of international relations at the University of Athens. "I'm old enough to remember the absolute ugliness of that particular occupation."
The group is known for its violent clashes in immigrant neighborhoods and for a red and black party logo resembling a disentangled swastika. Members of the group have said it's not Nazi or fascist and they reject any connection of its logo to a swastika, saying it's an ancient Greek symbol. A video of Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos shows him giving the fascist salute.
Golden Dawn's charter says its "main ideal and belief is the nation-tribe" and that "only men and women of Greek descent and consciousness should have full political rights." Michaloliakos declined to comment for this story when called on his mobile phone.
Land Mines
The party wants land mines placed on the Greek-Turkish border to stop illegal immigrants entering the country and cancellation of Greek loan accords with the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
It also calls for wiping out debt accumulated since 1974 that's deemed "illegal and burdensome." Greek banks that get state funds should be nationalized, as should all natural resources, the party's program says.
Golden Dawn is bolstering support by organizing security patrols in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods and by running food banks for Greeks suffering from five years of recession and unemployment of almost 22 percent.
"I'm voting for Golden Dawn because I want all the immigrants to leave," Maria Papageorgiou, 52, said in an interview in the Athens neighborhood where she has lived all her life. "There's a high crime rate, it's a miserable situation. They should leave and go back to their countries. Or maybe the Germans can take them."
Euro Status
At stake in the election is whether the next Greek government can implement the austerity measures on which bailout funds and euro membership depend.
The Athens Stock Exchange has lost 61 percent of its value over the last two years. An index of Greek banks dropped 73 percent in the last 12 months. Greek government bonds maturing in February 2023 are yielding 20.55 percent compared with 18.28 percent on March 14, the day after the country's credit rating was lifted out of the default category by Fitch Ratings following the agreement of a debt swap.
Polls show Golden Dawn winning as much as 5 percent of the vote, enough to enter parliament for the first time. The party, which was founded two decades ago, won its first seat on the Athens city council in 2010.
Golden Dawn's rise comes as far-right or nationalist parties are surging in a number of European countries including Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands and France, where anti- immigrant National Front leader Marine Le Pen won 17.9 percent in the first round of presidential elections on April 22.
'Lazy Thinking'
"Populist parties on the left and the right rely on fear," Jan Techau, director of the Brussels-based European Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a phone interview. "They always gain when the economy is bad. But to just hope an improving economy will make them go away is lazy thinking."
In Greece, Pasok and New Democracy, the two parties supporting the interim government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos in implementing austerity measures in exchange for a second 130 billion euro ($172 billion) loan package, are trying to show their credentials in combating illegal immigration to stem the loss of votes to anti-foreigner parties.
New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, whose party leads in opinion polls yet is short of a majority, also has to contend with a loss of votes to parties opposed to austerity measures.
Illegal Entry
Greece, with a population of 11 million, has an estimated 1 million immigrants, many of whom are illegal, the Greek government says. Police last year arrested 99,368 foreigners for being in or entering the country illegally, more than half of whom were from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Most want to travel to other EU countries where economic prospects are better yet many of them end up in central Athens living in squalid apartments and are exploited by criminal gangs, according to a statement on the Ministry of Citizen Protection's website.
Anti-immigrant groups "are taking advantage of the disaffection of the average Greek voter against uncontrolled immigration," said Couloumbis, who is vice-president of the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy and writes a regular column in the Athens-based Kathimerini newspaper.
In addition to Golden Dawn, the Independent Greeks party has polled near 10 percent. It was set up on Feb. 24 by Panos Kammenos after he was expelled from New Democracy for casting a vote against the interim Papademos government.
Laos, a nationalist party that wants immigrants to be shipped to uninhabited Greek islands before being deported, is also vying for anti-foreigner voters. Polls show as many as 10 political parties could enter Greece's parliament.
No Nazis
Golden Dawn caused controversy on the campaign trail when a group of its supporters threw bottles and other objects at a Pasok socialist candidate during a campaign event in the Athens suburb of Maroussi on April 21, Athens News Agency reported.
"Parliament cannot become a reception space for the followers of Nazism and fascism," Pasok leader Evangelos Venizelos said in response to the incident.
During late March and early April, hundreds of police with dogs began rounding up illegal immigrants in downtown Athens ahead of the creation of detention centers being set up throughout Greece, mostly at disused army bases.
Couloumbis, who experienced Adolf Hitler's troops as a boy, said Golden Dawn's winning seats "would be quite damaging."
"I'm old enough to have lived during the occupation of Greece by the Germans," he said in an interview. "The last thing we need on top of everything else is to have a bunch of fascists in the Greek parliament."
(source (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/04/30/bloomberg_articlesM33G291A1I4K01-M35B3.DTL&ao=2))
This shit could set a serious precedence.
Note: last poll results (polls are no longer allowed by Greek law):
http://s17.postimage.org/3nofqslzx/polls.png