The Full Catastrophe (33 page)

In New York, after the first arrests were made, Prime Minister Samaras spoke about Golden Dawn before an audience at the American Jewish Committee. “It’s important for me to deracinate this group,” he said. “Now, everyone realizes who they really are.” The Greek government, however, clearly knew what Golden Dawn was before Fyssas’s killing. If it was important for Samaras to deracinate the group, a lot of people in Greece were asking why the government hadn’t acted sooner.

At a café next to the neighborhood police station in Agios Panteleimonas one morning around this time, I got an answer to this question from a finely dressed man the proprietor of the establishment introduced to me as “Boss.” Boss wore a suit and tie, multiple gold rings, a thick silver watch, and wingtip shoes. He had a long nose and spiky gray hair. I’d come to the right place, he told me, after I introduced myself and told him the subject of my interest. “I am extreme right.” He was indeed dressed a bit like the shadowy right-wing henchmen portrayed in Greek movies about the postwar period, the men who showed up in the middle of the night to kidnap some leftist from his bed. “People you see licking themselves at a café next to the police station are always from the right-wing realm,” Boss told me. “You won’t see a single leftist.” Boss, a
retiree who didn’t want to tell me his real name, paced back and forth while I sat at a table by the window. He occasionally bent down to stick his face directly in front of mine for emphasis as he explained to me a few things about Greek politics. Boss then began to clap; during the military dictatorship in Greece, he told me, a lot of people were doing this. “Where do you think they all ended up?” The answer, according to Boss, was that most of them went to New Democracy, the party he, too, had long supported until switching to Golden Dawn a few years earlier. “New Democracy is extreme right,” Boss told me. “At least a big piece of it.” New Democracy and Golden Dawn, he said, were “cousins,” and it’s hard to clamp down on your cousin.

Some apparent evidence of the family ties Boss was talking about surfaced a couple of months after our conversation, as prosecutors were working on the Golden Dawn case. Kasidiaris—the Golden Dawn parliamentarian with a swastika tattoo on his arm—released a video of a secretly recorded conversation he’d had with Samaras’s senior aide, Panagiotaros Baltakos, in which the aide suggested that Golden Dawn’s prosecution was purely political. “First of all, he’s afraid for himself,” Baltakos said of Samaras. “Because you’re hitting him, giving Syriza the lead.”

“And because we take his votes, he puts us in jail?” said Kasidiaris.

“The motherfucker. Incredible thing. Unbelievable,” said Baltakos about his boss.

Samaras condemned Baltakos after the video surfaced, saying he did not know his aide had close contacts in Golden Dawn. Baltakos resigned, and in an interview on Greek radio he said he was telling Kasidiaris what he wanted to hear as part of a strategy to stay in touch with Golden Dawn and get information about them. This had to be done for the good of the country, he said. “New Democracy is a center-right party that for two years has been in danger of losing its right wing,” he said. “And if that happens, it
will fall completely out of the primacy of the political spectrum. That should not happen.”

The episode helped explain why the conservative-led government did not move against Golden Dawn earlier. Samaras had long been advised against a crackdown on the party out of concern it would alienate New Democracy’s nationalist wing, and in the beginning, that logic seemed to have won out. Samaras initially tried to defeat the political threat that Golden Dawn posed to him by getting tough on illegal immigration and anarchist street protesters. This, Samaras hoped, would make those far-right voters who had defected come back. Instead, the strategy just seemed to help legitimize and strengthen Golden Dawn. Samaras’s government then turned to Plan B: prosecution. The killing of a Greek
palikari,
and the revulsion this stirred among Greeks, provided the window of opportunity.

Samaras’s conservative-led government was by no means solely to blame for Golden Dawn’s unhindered rise. Golden Dawn had begun its political ascent and violent tactics long before he took power, and the state’s tacit consent ran far deeper. The fact that sympathy for Golden Dawn flourished within the ranks of the Greek police and in the upper echelons of the government lay bare the nationalist extremism that had skulked inside the organs of the government since the end of World War II. Had Greece’s police and judiciary functioned as one imagines they ought to in a modern European state, Golden Dawn members would have faced prosecution far sooner. The complicity also extended to the wider Greek society. The mainstream Greek press largely ignored Golden Dawn’s violence, inflamed fear of immigrants, and sometimes praised the party for defending Greeks. Church clerics did not speak out forcefully enough against the party’s violence, and some echoed its rhetoric.

Even if the government’s belated drive to outlaw Golden Dawn proved successful, changing the large part of Greek society that
stood by and acceded to its xenophobic reign of violence would be a far lengthier and more challenging undertaking. The crackdown on the party had one immediate and valuable benefit, however. The attacks on migrants in the center of Athens all but stopped.

Prosecuting a popular political party in a democracy is a delicate matter. The Greek government knew that the effort could backfire politically if Golden Dawn retained its popularity. So, as prosecutors prepared their case, the government made an effort to undermine the party’s support. Documents, photos, and videos revealing Golden Dawn’s unseemly activities were leaked to the Greek press—pictures of Golden Dawn members with guns in what looked like paramilitary boot camps (camping trips and fitness routines, the party explained), a photo of someone dressed in Ku Klux Klan garb and doing a Hitler salute in front of a Golden Dawn flag (a Halloween costume gag, and furthermore, an ancient Greek salute). The leaks were intended to convince the voters that Golden Dawn was not, in fact, simply nationalist, as the party claimed, but Nazi. Still, a lot of voters didn’t seem to mind. With its political leadership in jail and its Nazism now underscored in the press, the party’s voters did not go away. In the first elections following the arrests—the European Parliament election of May 2014—Golden Dawn won 9 percent of the national vote. In national parliamentary elections several months later, the party won some 6 percent of the vote, nearly as much as it had received in 2012, when it first entered parliament. This outcome made Golden Dawn the third largest party in Greece.

One spring evening just before the European election, Golden Dawn held a rally at the spot where their self-described “struggle” began—the square of Agios Panteleimonas. When I arrived, Golden Dawn’s martial-sounding music was blaring through
speakers, and a podium draped with a party banner was already set up on the steps of the church. As the crowd arrived, groups of burly young men patrolled the area, telling people who looked foreign to go away. At one point, a solemn tune sung by Nikos Xilouris, a famous Cretan musician of the ’60s and ’70s, came over the speakers. The song that played, about the apathy of citizens to the presence of an enemy in their midst, is thought of as a protest ballad against the military dictatorship, though Golden Dawn, fond of that dictatorship as it is, seemed to have had another interpretation. As the song played, the church bells began to ring, marking the beginning of the evening vespers inside. “They entered the city, the enemies,” sang Xilouris. “They broke down the doors, the enemies. And we laughed in the neighborhoods, on the first day.”

I sat down on a bench with a few old ladies who seemed bothered that the party gathering had disturbed their evening benchsitting session, and after a while they decided to move to a calmer place. One lady grimaced as she gingerly stood up with the help of a cane, taking with her the piece of cardboard she used as a seat cushion. “Don’t care to watch?” I said to her. “My love, what’s there to see here?” she said before shuffling away. Then, two young Golden Dawn apostles unraveled across the marble columns of the church entrance a large banner of their dear jailed leader, raising his arms in victory.

The candidates for municipal elections began speaking from the steps of the church. “We continue a struggle, the holy struggle that the residents of the area started,” said one city council candidate. Another addressed his words to the heroic residents, those who struggled to prevent the Athens of Pericles, Solon, and Socrates from becoming Islamabad. A woman read a letter from Themis Skordeli, the pioneer Committee of Residents member, who had been jailed in connection with the crackdown on Golden Dawn, though she was running for city council anyway. “It was six
years ago that here, in our area, we first yelled the slogan ‘Greece belongs to the Greeks.’ ” Then, “Only Golden Dawn stood beside you in your struggles and protestations.”

While the speeches were addressed to the residents of the area, there weren’t very many of them there. Those residents that had come out to stand with Golden Dawn in previous years now seemed afraid to be associated with the party, given the ongoing prosecution. Of the few hundred people in attendance, most of them—judging by the preponderance of Pit Bull Germany and Lonsdale brand clothes, favorites of European neo-Nazi groups—were core supporters brought in for the event. Though the party later declared that thousands of residents had come to the square that evening, one of the speakers that night, a heavyset parliamentarian named Dimitrios Koukoutsis, acknowledged the lack of turnout. “What’s your fear? Is one who is wet afraid of the rain?” he said. “Shame on you! What we’re asking for is your action, at the very least, your vote for a movement that matured here on this square.”

At one point, I saw Spiros Giannatos of the Committee of Residents. During the battle for the square, he had stood among the Golden Dawn combatants with a Greek flag in his hands. On this day, he passed by on the sidewalk with his shaggy black dog, pausing for a while as a few people petted it, but he did not stay. I later asked his wife if she attended the rally. No, she said. If she had, this would only make people think she was a supporter of Golden Dawn. Besides, she said, the party had taken credit for the successful struggle of the residents, and all the fuss about Golden Dawn and its assault battalions was just a bunch of lies.

Speaking last that night was swastika-tattooed Kasidiaris, the main face of the party following its leader’s jailing. He recalled to the crowd the day, a few years earlier, when he and his fellow combatants had clashed with riot police on the square. It was a day, he said, when young kids and elderly citizens, residents, had
gathered to show Greeks the meaning of national resistance. Agios Panteleimonas, he said, was the flame that burned in the heart of every Greek. As he spoke, a young boy stood on the steps of the church and waved a Greek flag. Kasidiaris looked at the boy and said he’d never seen a more beautiful sight. The coming fight, he said, would be for the survival of Hellenism itself.

O
n the January night in 2015 when the leftist Syriza was elected to lead a new Greek government, Alexis Tsipras, the incoming prime minister, gave his victory speech in downtown Athens in front of a young, exuberant crowd. Bruce Springsteen’s “We Take Care of Our Own”—a song Barack Obama had used extensively during his second presidential campaign—blasted over the speakers. Tsipras trotted onto the stage, raised his arms in triumph, and declared that his country had turned a page. The election meant Greece was “leaving behind fear and domination, leaving behind five years of humiliation and suffering.” Some in the audience responded in unison: “The time for the left has come!” Tspiras did not name Greece’s longtime oppressors, as he had done so often during the campaign, but the implication was clear. A woman in the crowd held up a large sign that read, in German, “This is a really
Good Night Frau Merkel
.” Another supporter held up a blunter message, addressed to the Troika: “Keep Calm and Go to Hell!”

Tsipras had chosen to give his victory speech in front of the
University of Athens’s imposing neo-classical facade. It was a picturesque spot for the occasion. As Tsipras spoke in front of the illuminated Greek columns, it looked, on television, as if he were being broadcast from some nerve center of Hellenism. One glaring irony, however, seemed to go unnoticed. The building had been constructed during the reign of Otto—Greece’s first king, installed by European powers. A colorful frieze on it depicted a mustached Otto on his throne, dressed in classical Greek garb. Pictures taken of Tspiras waving his hands in triumph that night show King Otto hovering directly above him, as if having risen from his Bavarian grave to remind Greeks that they remained, as so often in their history, utterly dependent on their more powerful neighbors.

In the following months, the ghost of Otto certainly seemed to haunt the new Greek government as it tried to negotiate with its creditors. The day after the election, immediately following his inauguration, Tsipras took a ride to the suburban Athens shooting range where, during World War II, occupying German forces executed hundreds of Greek partisans—among them, Manolis Glezos’s brother, Nikos. There, Tsipras lay red roses on a memorial as a crowd of teary-eyed supporters gathered behind him and shouted slogans of praise for the communist-led war resistance. He stood for a few moments with his hand over his heart before turning to leave. “Bravo!” people in the crowd shouted as they rushed to kiss and embrace him.

Syriza leaders offered various explanations for this first prime ministerial action. Some called it a protest against Golden Dawn, whose strong election performance unnerved many Greeks, some of whom feared the neo-Nazi party would be next in line should the Syriza-led government fail. One of Tsipras’s top aides, however, offered a more obvious explanation, calling the visit a symbol of Greeks’ desire for “liberty from German occupation.”

In Germany, many interpreted the act as a provocation. “Did Tsipras with the blood-red roses want to say: ‘Hey, we don’t owe
these nasty Nazis anything anyway’?” asked one commentator on German public radio before condemning the visit as an attempt to give Germany—the creditor—“guilty feelings,” and to make the Greeks—the debtors—out to be morally superior. “These are fatal signals. No one likes to give money when they feel blackmailed.”

The public debate between the two governments soon devolved into a feud. Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was unable to conceal his disdain for Syriza. The austerity and reform regimen had put Greece on the right path, Schäuble told a German radio interviewer, until Syriza came along to derail the progress and “insult those who have helped Greece in recent years.” Schäuble added: “I feel sorry for the Greeks. They’ve selected a government that is at the moment behaving quite irresponsibly.” Tsipras felt obliged to respond to this statement in the Greek parliament, suggesting it would be more appropriate for Schäuble to feel sorry for people “who walk with their heads bowed” rather than those “who lift their heads with pride.”

Despite their declarations of renewed sovereignty, Syriza’s leaders soon found themselves in the same position as their predecessors: struggling under agonizing pressure to scrape together cash for debt payments and to satisfy their creditors’ reform requirements in hope of getting some financial relief. To bolster the national mood, the new government resorted to semantics; instead of referring to the hated “Troika,” it dubbed its creditors “the institutions.” While many Greeks embraced Syriza’s narrative of successful resistance, not everyone was convinced, and some of the most strident criticism came from within the party itself. Manolis Glezos wrote a dispirited letter from Brussels after the government agreed to extend the bailout program. “From my side, I
APOLOGIZE
to the Greek people for having cooperated in this illusion,” he wrote. “Between the oppressor and oppressed, there can be no compromise, just as between the slave and the conqueror, the only solution is freedom.”

In the following months, Syriza’s leaders would face the
impossible task of appeasing “the institutions” while keeping more strident elements of the party from defecting because of it. Tsipras tried to please both sides by promising bold, though not very detailed, reforms—“to build a country from the beginning.” The government would crack down on tax evasion by the rich (with a special focus on the Lagarde List), rein in government waste, improve the civil service, launch an unprecedented fight against corruption, improve treatment of migrants. At the same time, Syriza’s leaders backed off some previous stances. Years earlier, for instance, the party had criticized the conservative-led government for arresting the restaurateur on Hydra. Now, in a letter to the creditors, the Greek finance ministry proposed a crackdown on businesses that did not give receipts by employing undercover tourists supplied with hidden cameras, a slapdash idea met with great skepticism.

Despite the intensifying climate of antagonism and mistrust, Greece and the eurozone were unlikely to split up, at least intentionally (the threat of an accidental break-up, spurred by failing banks or missed debt payments, still loomed). European leaders, despite their disapproval of the new Greek government, did not want to undermine the euro and the European project by cutting Greece loose. For their part, many Greeks, despite their resentments, were cognizant that from the time of the revolution and King Otto, they had frequently benefited from Europe’s intervention. Despite the misery of the previous years, Greeks maintained an almost religious faith in the euro, and the majority rejected one clear path to more independence: a voluntary exit from the currency, fearing it would only generate greater woes. Greeks’ disregard for their creditors, moreover, was rivaled by their lack of confidence in Greece’s shambolic government institutions. The only thing worse than remaining under Europe’s stern sway, many Greeks seemed to believe, was for their country to be left alone to fend for itself.