“In recent weeks racially-motivated attacks have proliferated. Immigrants have spoken of their fear of roaming the streets at night following a spate of attacks by black-clad men on motorbikes. Street vendors from Africa and Asia have also been targeted.
“For a lot of people in poorer neighbourhoods we are liberators,” crowed Yiannis Lagos, one of 18 MPs from the stridently patriot “popular nationalist movement” to enter the 300-seat house in June. “The state does nothing,” he told a TV chat show, adding that Golden Dawn was the only party that was helping Greeks, hit by record levels of poverty and unemployment, on the ground. Through an expansive social outreach programme, which also includes providing services to the elderly in crime-ridden areas, the group regularly distributes food and clothes parcels to the needy.
But the hand-outs come at a price: allegiance to Golden Dawn. “A friend who was being seriously harassed by her husband and was referred to the party by the police very soon found herself giving it clothes and food in return,” said a Greek teacher, who, citing the worsening environment enveloping the country, again spoke only on condition of anonymity. “She’s a liberal and certainly no racist and is disgusted by what she has had to do.””
- Greek police send crime victims to neo-Nazi ‘protectors’ | World news | The Guardian
“For a lot of people in poorer neighbourhoods we are liberators,” crowed Yiannis Lagos, one of 18 MPs from the stridently patriot “popular nationalist movement” to enter the 300-seat house in June. “The state does nothing,” he told a TV chat show, adding that Golden Dawn was the only party that was helping Greeks, hit by record levels of poverty and unemployment, on the ground. Through an expansive social outreach programme, which also includes providing services to the elderly in crime-ridden areas, the group regularly distributes food and clothes parcels to the needy.
But the hand-outs come at a price: allegiance to Golden Dawn. “A friend who was being seriously harassed by her husband and was referred to the party by the police very soon found herself giving it clothes and food in return,” said a Greek teacher, who, citing the worsening environment enveloping the country, again spoke only on condition of anonymity. “She’s a liberal and certainly no racist and is disgusted by what she has had to do.””
- Greek police send crime victims to neo-Nazi ‘protectors’ | World news | The Guardian