Magda Fyssas exited the Athens courtroom after the verdict, raising her fists. “You did it! My son, you did it!” she shouted, her voice hoarse. Around the court, a crowd of tens of thousands chanted the name of her late son: “Pavlos lives! Smash the Nazis!”

The verdict in the criminal case against Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party was announced on Wednesday morning, after a trial that spanned five and a half years. The party was found guilty of an attack on members of a trade union, the attempted murder of a group of Egyptian fishermen, and, most famously, the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas — the son that Magda Fyssas invoked on the court steps. The case culminated with the ruling that Golden Dawn was founded and operated as a criminal organization. As news filtered out of the courtroom, a cheer ripped across the crowd.

“This is a historic decision from the justice system,” said Lefteris Papagiannakis of Golden Dawn Watch, a court observatory that has tracked every twist and turn in the half decade of trial. “It recognizes something that many of us have said for many years. And that the anti-fascist movement has been saying for decades — that Golden Dawn is a criminal organization.”

The case against Golden Dawn captivated Greece, partly because of its vast scale. There were sixty-nine defendants (eighteen of whom were former members of Parliament) charged with more than a hundred violent incidents, in a trial involving 120 witnesses and taking up 454 days in court. But the case also illuminated the fault lines in a country facing crushing economic crisis, the rise of the far right, and an influx of migrants. For decades, Golden Dawn positioned themselves in the center of these forces — arguing that their fascist ideology and violent actions could solve Greece’s problems. The ruling has now come as a welcome blow, but it is unclear if it truly marks the end of the movement.

Rise of Golden Dawn

Golden Dawn was created in 1980, as a propaganda magazine that frequently praised Adolf Hitler and other fascists and antisemites. The organization grew, was recognized as a political party in 1993, and began to gain traction amid Greece’s far right by pushing itself into the center of debates about the Macedonian name dispute and fomenting fear of migrants. In the late 2000s, as Greece weathered a debilitating economic crisis followed by years of austerity, Golden Dawn positioned itself as the only advocate for downtrodden Greeks. In 2010, party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos, called the “Supreme Führer” by party members, was voted into the Athens city council. In Greece’s 2012 parliamentary elections, the party won 7 percent of the votes, and thus eighteen seats in Parliament.

A constant through these decades was Golden Dawn’s brutal use of violence. The key to Golden Dawn’s structure was its battalion squads, which — under the specific direction of party leaders — patrolled neighborhoods with the aim to beat, torture, and kill anyone who stood outside of their worldview, particularly focusing on migrants. Attacks were rarely reported to the police, both due to victims’ concerns about their immigration status, and the well-known fact that Golden Dawn enjoyed police support. After the 2012 elections, several Greek newspapers and television stations estimated that more than 50 percent of special service police officers in Athens voted for the neo-Nazi party. In neighborhoods like Athens’s Agios Panteleimonas or the Port of Piraeus, Golden Dawn squads beat and knifed migrants with impunity.

“It was an atmosphere of fear,” said Naim Elghandour, the president of the Muslim Association of Greece. “We told people not to hold more than twenty euros on them. To carry photocopies of your ID, not the real one, don’t go outside alone, have someone stationed outside during prayers.”

When, in 2012, Elghandour received a call from a group of Egyptian fishermen beaten within an inch of their lives by a Golden Dawn squad in their own homes, he was not surprised. As a witness in the recent trial, he gave testimony about this attack, along with several mosque burnings, beatings, and instances of torture. Elghandour has himself been threatened by the group.

“They had strength and they had power,” he said. “They used populism, and the crisis helped them.”

After the 2012 election, the group’s violent attacks became bolder. “In 2012, when they first entered the parliament, many thought they would change and become a normal political party, far right, of course, but normal,” said Dimitri Psarras, a journalist who has reported on Golden Dawn since the 1980s. “But this did not happen. On the contrary, they gained courage and began to be more violent and more criminal.”

Fyssas

On September 18, 2013, a Golden Dawn squad executed the planned murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, beating and then stabbing him. In a video reconstruction of the night created by the Forensic Architecture research team at London’s Goldsmiths University, it becomes clear that a convoy of motorcycles arrived from the Golden Dawn regional headquarters to a bar where Fyssas and his friends were watching a football match. “We can see Pavlos being attacked in waves,” said Stefanos Levidis, the coordinator of the investigation. “They held him there until the killer arrived. All this points to something that was organized.”

The investigation also revealed that the Greek police had been present at the time of the murder, despite their testimony that they arrived too late to do anything. “It’s not my role to say if that is criminal,” said Levidis, “but it is clear they could have done something.”

The murder of a young Greek man, already well known for his music, created an outrage in Greece — and catapulted discussions of Golden Dawn’s violence to the forefront of public conversation. Ten days after Pavlos’s murder, the leader and several other prominent members of Golden Dawn were arrested on charges of directing a criminal organization. In February 2015, a judicial council announced that sixty-nine individuals would be tried.

The Trial

The evidence in the trial was vast and overwhelming. Lawyers proved that the violence was directed from the very top of the organization, with a specific and obsessive Nazi ideology. Magda Fyssas has attended every single day in the winding court case, bereaved but firm, becoming a beloved symbol of anti-fascist resistance among Greeks.

Through years of proceedings, Golden Dawn’s popularity began to wane. In 2019, it did not get enough votes to enter Parliament, and it had to close its central Athens office. The decision this Wednesday looks to be the final nail in the coffin. “It chills the face of Golden Dawn and gives a strong signal to whoever wants to take the place of Golden Dawn,” said Papagiannakis of Golden Dawn Watch.

To be sure, there are many who want to take Golden Dawn’s place. In 2019, as the neo-Nazi party was voted out, the far-right Greek Solution party gained ten seats in Parliament. In the past year, two prominent former Golden Dawn Members started their own far-right parties: called “National Popular Consciousness” and “Greeks for the Fatherland.” The party has also created a multifaceted network of far-right fanatics from Germany, Belarus, Hungary, Ukraine, and beyond. Their tactics inspire racists internationally — in 2017, a white nationalist at the violent Charlottesville rally specifically noted that they used organizing tactics modeled by Golden Dawn.

And though Golden Dawn’s battalion squads no longer patrol the streets of Athens, hate crimes against migrants are ongoing. Vassilis Tsarnas, a researcher for the Greek Helsinki Monitor, an organization that tracks hate speech and violent crimes in Greece, said that since last year, he has seen an increase in hate crimes. “However, this ruling is a really vital minimum, showcasing that the rule of law in the country isn’t completely broken.”

Psarras, who has dedicated almost the past forty years of his life to documenting the crimes of Golden Dawn, remained cautiously optimistic. “Of course, this does not mean this is the end of the far right, or of racism,” he said. “It does not mean these will not exist in Greek society, or that they will not make another party. No. But we will not have a political party that enters in the night and murders, smashes, and beats people it deems subhuman.”

The case against Golden Dawn has provided a rare moment of unity in Greece. For the past month, Greek social media has been overwhelmed with posts stating, “They are not innocent.” The leaders of the country’s largest political parties — usually loath to agree on anything — both finally put out statements condemning the neo-Nazi party. Athens has been covered with banners and signs, whether hoisted by anarchist groups or esteemed art museums — all pointing to the case.

On Wednesday morning, a crowd of around twenty thousand gathered outside Athens’s Supreme Civil and Criminal Court, anxious and hopeful. Word of the ruling was announced on a loudspeaker and met with instant cheers. Amid hugs, people lifted fists into the air, defiant.

Elghadour waited all morning just outside the doors of the courtroom. Previously, he had spoken at length about the burgeoning far right in Greece and the need for ongoing vigilance. But the ruling was an undeniable moment of victory. When he heard the verdict, he began to cry, and he held his wife, and they cried together. “We did it,” he told me on the phone. “After so many years of struggle. Against the fascism, the racism, the hate. We did it.”

Moira Lavelle

• Jacobin. 10.08.2020:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/greece-nazi-golden-dawn-trial-verdict

• Moira Lavelle is an independent reporter based in Athens, Greece. She covers migration, borders, gender, and language.

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Awaiting a Verdict in the Golden Dawn Trial

All just single perpetrators? The verdict expected on October 7, 2020 in the trial, which will last for more than five years, will focus on whether the court considers the Golden Dawn to be a criminal organization and will draw the appropriate conclusions.

The five-and-a-half year trial of the Greek neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn will conclude on Wednesday, 7 October 2020, when the panel of three judges issues its verdict. The judgement will resonate beyond Greece, where the trial has already played a big role in reversing Golden Dawn’s rise since the start of this decade. The party has fallen from third place to losing all of its parliamentary seats in last year’s election, and has suffered a number of splits and defections. It will also impact the morale and confidence of far-right organizations across Europe which had seen in Golden Dawn a successful model of combining electoral advance with violent street-fighting aimed at controlling neighbourhoods and intimidating opposition.

Also at stake is the reputation of the Greek state and judicial authorities. Prior to this trial, which resulted from popular anger at the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013, Golden Dawn had been able to operate with impunity for decades. Will the authorities finally end this state of affairs and send a necessary signal to the far right by issuing guilty verdicts?

This is not a trial of ideas or the limits of free speech. It is a criminal trial under the penal code—not under the kind of constitutional provision found in some countries that permits the proscribing of an organization if it threatens the democratic order. The 68 defendants have four cases to answer for between them: the murder of Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013, the attempted murder of Communist trade unionists and their leader Sotiris Poulikogiannis that same month, the attempted murder of Egyptian immigrant fisherman Abouzid Embarak in his home in June 2012, and finally the overarching charge of running a criminal organization facing the Golden Dawn leadership.

A Neo-Nazi Criminal Enterprise

The last charge is under Article 187 of the Greek criminal code, a law developed for the prosecution of organized crime. As with similar laws and procedures in other jurisdictions, it is about demonstrating how the heads of mafia-like organizations direct, order, and inspire the criminal activity carried out by their foot-soldiers.

The court has examined many thousands of documents and the verdicts of scores of previous cases of criminality by Golden Dawn members. There is also the testimony of many witnesses, ranging from experts on Golden Dawn to some who have left the organization and are now testifying against it. The weight of the evidence is overwhelming in the three specific cases as well as in the main charge that Golden Dawn constitutes a criminal enterprise masquerading as a legitimate political party. The court also saw that, despite its protests to the contrary, Golden Dawn is and always has been a neo-Nazi organisation, not “merely” fanatical Greek nationalists.

Video clips show its leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos telling a private party meeting: “We are the seeds of the defeated army of 1945”— the army of the Third Reich. The court also saw the secret oath for Golden Dawn recruits, which identifies the organization’s chief enemy as “the Eternal Jew”. According to its original statute, brought to the court’s attention by investigative journalist Dimitris Psarras, Golden Dawn is structured on the basis of the Hitlerite Führerprinzip—one-man authority from top to bottom.

Whereas the primary functions in branches of a normal political party would be secretary, treasurer, chair, and so on, these are mere formalities in a Golden Dawn “branch”, which instead is organized around “security”. The Greek term translates as “battalion squads”. They are modelled on Hitler’s Sturmabteilung or Mussolini’s squadrismo. They have uniforms, drill, train with weapons, have a distinct membership, are hierarchically organized to the very top of the party, and are the first unit established whenever Golden Dawn expands into a new neighbourhood. They form the true core of the organization. The three cases of murder and attempted murder—plus the evidence from other attacks—demonstrate the operations of these battalion squads up to the highest level.

The Murder of Pavlos Fyssas

The 33-year-old rapper Pavlos Fyssas was murdered on the night of 17 September 2013 as he sat with friends at the Coralli Café in his neighbourhood of Keratsini, Athens, where he was well-known for his humanist and anti-fascist music. He was stabbed three times (once in the heart) by Giorgios Roupakias, a member of the five-man leadership of the Nikea branch of Golden Dawn, as other neo-Nazis held him down.

Branch members had recognized Fyssas at the café. Following a group text from their local leader Giorgos Patelis, the battalion squad assembled at the offices of Golden Dawn in Nikea within 15 minutes. Equipped with sticks and knives, they were given clear instructions about their mission and their target. They left for Keratsini in one coordinated group—two or three cars and a dozen motorbikes.

They joined with another group of Golden Dawn members already there. A radio conversation between the base and police who were present during the attack recorded them saying: “Fifty people with bats, heading to the store called Coralli. Have you received?” But the police did not intervene. They only belatedly caught up to where the stabbing took place, saying it had taken them minutes to run there although it was on the main street just 100 meters from the café. It was only because Pavlos was able to identify his murderer with his dying breath that Roupakias was arrested. Others were allowed to get away.

Tellingly, as he was arrested Roupakias told the police: “I’m one of yours. I’m Golden Dawn.” The logs of Golden Dawn mobile phones show the attack’s meticulous organization, during which calls went back and forth from national leader Iannis Lagos, an MP in charge of that area at the time who is now a European MP elected on the Golden Dawn slate.

The Attempted Murder of Sotiris Poulikogiannis

Five days before the Fyssas murder in Keratsini, a gang of 50 Golden Dawn members set upon the leader of the metalworkers’ union in the shipyard zone and other members of the PAME union who were putting up posters in the neighbouring area of Perama.

The court heard how they blocked off escape routes and called out for Poulikogiannis, another well-known local figure and Communist Party member. The modus operandi of the near-fatal attack was just as in all the other cases the court heard about: an organized grouping, coordinated arrival in vehicles, armed and purposeful with orders to attack resulting in serious, repeated bodily injuries followed by an order to disperse. Here, too, a chain of communication went up to Lagos and other senior leaders.

Poulikogiannis himself explained to the court the immediate motivation: Golden Dawn acted in alignment with the big employers of the shipyard who wanted to get rid of the militant union. Days after the attack, union members at one yard were sacked and replaced with workers provided by a labour agency set up by Golden Dawn.

In other evidence, the court heard how figures of the conservative New Democracy party had paid printing and conference costs for Golden Dawn. The chief of staff of the hard-right government of Antonio Samaras, Panagiotis Baltakos, maintained a backchannel to communicate with Golden Dawn. Following the murder of Fyssas his government delayed for a crucial ten days before bowing to mass pressure to arrest Golden Dawn’s leader. During that time, crucial evidence was destroyed.

The Attempted Murder of Abouzid Embarak

Also in Perama, around 3:10 on 12 June 2012, Abouzid Embarak and his compatriots were attacked by 20 armed Golden Dawn members in their home. Having first spotted Abouzid sleeping on the roof of the property, they assaulted him with clubs and iron bars, resulting in a double fracture of his lower jaw and nasal bones. They then attempted to storm the house.

Just a few hours earlier, on the afternoon of the previous day, Golden Dawn MP Lagos had told a meeting in Perama: “We have received complaints about … all these issues with the Egyptians who come here, do whatever they want, sell their fish in the way they want… and generally do not stand accountable to anyone. We tell them that from now on they will be accountable to Golden Dawn.” In other cases, immigrant shopkeepers—victims of arson and violent intimidation—have reported that Golden Dawn members ordered them either to leave the area or pay protection money.

The battalion squads’ campaigns to “cleanse” neighbourhoods were both efforts at racist elimination as well as a mafia-style means of self-enrichment extending to the top of Golden Dawn. Its fracturing by the anti-fascist movement, which is represented in court by the lawyers of the victims, has led former rank-and file-members to reveal the corruption of the leadership. Yet it is not the only way in which Golden Dawn’s Nazi ideology is fused with its character as a criminal enterprise. The hierarchical organization of the battalion squads is a material expression of that ideology and its commitment to a conquest of power and elimination of all democratic space.

The Nazi ideology also explains the choice of victims—the overall criminal intent linking together each of many felonious acts: a rapper popular in progressive youth circles, a left-wing trade union leader, and immigrant workers. Other attacks have targeted left-wing social spaces, lesbian and gay people, socialists, outspoken and democratic public figures, and anarchist groups­—all of which are identified as enemies of the neo-Nazi organization. As part of the insurgency the leadership planned for September 2013, there were also physical attacks by Golden Dawn on leading figures of the nationalist right. They sought to send the message that the Nazis were going to occupy all of the far-right political space and not leave it to authoritarian “has-beens”.

What’s at Stake

This is the case we, the lawyers of the victims, have built over the last five years. The evidence is overwhelming. The defence has tried to delegitimize the trial through a combination of ridicule, contempt, and constant delay.

That is one reason why the trail has taken so long. When their delays ran out, the defence case cracked under strain. A court that had given defence lawyers every leeway grew impatient as witnesses contradicted their written statements, pleaded that they simply could not recall events, or claimed that “I wasn’t there” despite video and documentary evidence to the contrary. Some incriminated themselves or others, and defence lawyers ultimately cut short their witness list from 240 to 70.

If remaining Golden Dawn loyalists were hoping for their leaders to rally them, they were disappointed when Michaloliakos cut a rather dismal figure on the stand as he gave his “apologia”, or response to the charges at the end of the process. He stumbled and evaded, claiming at one point that Golden Dawn does not have members and thus he has nothing to be responsible for. He feigned ignorance of crimes committed as well as of direct perpetrators. This is the same the tactic Adolf Hitler adopted in the trials of Nazi Party criminals in the 1920s and early 1930s. Perhaps most ludicrously, this Greek would-be Führer claimed not to know what was happening in his own militaristically structured organization.

The only reason for any doubt concerning Wednesday’s verdict is due to the scandalous proposal from the prosecutor representing the state’s interests in the case. She not only argued for the court to dismiss the charge of being a criminal organization, but even proposed that each of the crimes committed was done so by discrete individuals—they were members of Golden Dawn, but their crimes had nothing to do with the organization. She went so far as to say that only Roupakias should be convicted in the Fyssas case, not those in the immediate group directly assaulting him. This would fly in the face of all criminal law. If accepted, it will mean the re-legitimization of Golden Dawn and the handing out of more than 8 million euro that have been withheld from its state funding until the end of the trial.

So we await the court’s verdict. Greek society has already reached its own, in democratic spaces and events across the country. Nothing less than conviction on all counts and the jailing of the defendants will suffice. Thousands are prepared to march to the courthouse in central Athens on the day the verdict is announced. The decision is of profound interest for anti-fascists and democrats all over the world. Watch out for 7 October.

Thanasis Kampagiannis

• Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. News | 09/29/2020:
https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/43053/awaiting-a-verdict-in-the-golden-dawn-trial?cHash=15611126d0bb95c97ae7afea5689b206

• Thanasis Kampagiannis is a lawyer in Athens, representing the Egyptian fishermen in the Golden Dawn trial.

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