Far-right victories in Greece highlight trend across Europe
Far-right victories in Greece highlight trend across Europe
The Spartans, a group linked to the banned neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, won 14 seats in Parliament.
Snippets
In Greece, while the ruling center-right New Democracy Party won a landslide victory, with 40.5% of the vote, its triumph was overshadowed by the success of the Spartans, a recently formed far-right nativist group that gained 12 seats in Greece’s 300-seat Parliament.
The Brothers of Italy last year became the first far-right party to win an Italian election since World War I.
Earlier this month, the anti-immigration Finns Party entered a four-party coalition to rule in Finland.
In September 2022 Sweden saw the hard-right populist Sweden Democrats win more than 20% of the vote to become the country’s second-biggest party.
The far-right Vox Party in Spain is expected to do well in national elections next month, hovering around 14% in opinion polls. In 2019, the party won 15% of the vote and 52 lawmakers.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) can count on the support of about 20% of the German public, according to opinion polls; on Sunday, it won an important regional election in the eastern state of Thuringia.
Last year Marine Le Pen, the then-leader of the National Assembly, came closer than ever to becoming France’s first far-right president.
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The NYT has an article about greece's right turn and the man in the street sections basically boiled down to people coming of age and into maturity now live through the austerity package time and will vote for anyone that provides stability and opportunity.
Thats why people voted for ND(the government). When SYRIZA(leftist party) was government, the troika(EU, ECB and IMF) refused to provide liquidity to the greek banks, which lead to insane economical disaster. Bank runs, heavy salary and pension reductions across the board, unemployment, etc. SYRIZA was forced to vote for more austerity measures than any other government before or after it. The austerity was so bad and so counterproductive, that even IMF admitted it was wrong and it was killing the economy. But the EU/ECB was on a war of morality. SYRIZA was the first government to ever have primary surplus, though that was kind of a necessity. This was the reward the greeks received for daring to vote something different.
But now that ND is government(aka "return to normality" according to many european leaders), Greece managed to issue negative interest bonds, despite the fact that the debt has remained the same(in fact higher than it used to be). ND is throwing money everywhere because they can, they are participating in EU's quantitative easing program. You dont hear any dutch and german ministers complaining about it anymore. I guess moralizing economics arent good anymore. Troika has basically chosen the government of Greece and greeks are too disappointed, depressed, poor and burnt out. All media are controlled by the government too, Greece has one of the lowest free press scores in the World.
We are 1 step away from becoming Hungary and troika is happy with it. The system is in place but the current ND leader is your run of the mill CIA asset, who avoids engaging in culture wars. Because the lower profile he keeps, the more "centrists" will vote for him, since they are so disappointed by the left. But maybe he will change if he wants to grab those far right votes in the future. Or maybe his successor will do it.
People voting for the small far right parties want the exact opposite. They are mad and they want someone to fuck shit up because they cant take it anymore.
Greece has a neonazi issue. After WW2, the british/greek royalists literally freed and armed nazi collaborators in order to fight against, the defacto resistance and numerically superior, communists. Though because they were the defacto resistance, many of their members werent even communists. That lead to the greek civil war, the most brutal european conflict after WW2(though the Ukraine war has surpassed it), with over 150k dead.
So the nazi collaborators were never punished in Greece. To this day, the civil war isnt taught in schools because it is such a taboo and because noone would agree with how it should be presented(and it might lead to a new civil war).
And on top of that, the demographics are fucked. Greece is a dead and failed country. The brain drain of the last 15 years is beyond belief and noone is having any kids. Most greeks who have left Greece are young, educated and left leaning. Which means the people who are left behind are old, more uneducated on average and conservative.
Greece historically has been a "leftist" country, ie the parties on the left had always gotten over 50% of the votes. But obviously the left was never united, while the right was almost always united. Now for the first time, the parties on the right have over 50% and the right is fragmented(mostly because the government was far ahead in the polls, so conservatives decided to vote for smaller right wing parties).
Sounds a lot like Germany in the early 1900s.