A Golden Dawn in Greece

Invader_Zimmy wrote: »

Any violence used is just proactive self defense from their part to be honest, you would understand this if you read the news properly.

........and tell me, where can one find a copy of Die Sturmer these days?

Proactive self-defence sounds very much like a euphimism for attack

fianna saor wrote: »

have to say i dont believe that irish times article for a second 'the government rejected 99% of asylum claims'. then again if its in the papers and on boards it has to be true:rolleyes:

Its also in the UN

On the 23 and 24 May 2011 the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) reviewed Ireland's human rights record in preventing torture, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment for the first time.

The Committee expressed serious concern about Ireland's increasing decline in recognition rates for refugees, with Ireland currently rejecting 98.5% of refugee status applications. The Committee suggested that the recession was provoking tough policies on immigration, urged reform and noted that the current rate of 1.5% (well below the EU average recognition rate of 27%) was "a little extreme".

http://www.pila.ie/bulletin/2011/june/2-june-2011/un-calls-irish-refugee-acceptance-rate-quot-extreme-quot-iprt-amp-iccl-launch-joint-report-under-torture-convention/


http://www.independent.ie/national-news/only-25-granted-asylum-last-year-lowest-rate-in-eu-2599995.html

fianna saor wrote: »

chances are it probably does, and as your earlier post it definitely did

So because some countries discriminated in the past, its ok for this country to discriminate now against people originally from other countries (not just the ones who discriminated in the past).

That's not even following the 'logic' of revenge.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

What does SF have to do with the rise of a fascist party in Greece?

Golden Dawn is in some respects not dissimilar to Sinn Fein of perhaps ten or twenty years ago. As with all fringe political movements, both left or right wing, they both shared a number of similarities:

• Simplistic identification of social ills, be it illegal immigration, Capitalism or Irish partitionism.
• Nostalgia for an ideology which has essentially not developed much in 70+ years.
• Propensity to attract thuggish supporters.

Sinn Fein, love them or loath them, matured a fair bit and began to tone down the thuggish image and importantly developed policies beyond it's core beliefs. Golden Dawn isn't there yet - they don't really have much in the way of policies beyond some vague anti-immigration, pro-nationalism platform.

Then again, neither has SYRIZA - they're just a coalition of far left groups who happen to agree on a handful of positions; beyond which there's not much there - probably more substance than Golden Dawn, but not by much.

Of course, the danger now is that SYRIZA will take power in a new election, cause Greece to default which will lead Greece to be pushed out of the Euro. With the economic chaos that will inevitably follow this could well lead to Golden Dawn taking power, either democratically or otherwise.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Let's ask our EU partners Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Portugal, France, Poland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium etc how life under Fascism turned out for them shall we?

Actually in those nations that developed their own Fascism, rather than have it imposed from without, it enjoyed considerable support in many cases. The idea that Fascism has no redeeming features or was some form of tyranny that the US-USSR liberated us all from was essentially invented as a result of World War II and, of course, the revelation of the Holocaust.

Prior to that, things were not seen as so black and white. For example, in 1937 Churchill went so far as to write of Adolf Hitler that "if our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations" and Mussolini was described as "that admirable Italian gentleman" by Roosevelt in 1933.

Ellis Dee wrote: »

They also use the Nazi salute

Technically, if anything, it is a Roman Salute, which was adopted originally by Italian Fascism and later by other forms of Fascism, including National Socialism.

It does seem clear that Golden Dawn draws from Fascist ideology, but I'm not entirely certain which flavour as accusations of Nazism can easily be founded in an attempt to discredit as from truth. However, if they do draw from National Socialism, I'd find this bizarre. Adopting the very form of Fascism that was principally founded on Aryan racialism in a country that was part of a non-Aryan empire for so long is really a bit self defeating, such was the level of fraternization and cultural crossover.

As an old friend who spent a few years there as a diplomat once told me, when describing modern Greek culture; a Greek is a Turk, who thinks he's Italian. Apologies to any Greek reading this, and I'd admit something similar could be said for Ireland and England, however my principle reason for doing so is to point out that Greek National Socialism would in many respects be a bit of an oxymoron.