The political history of modern Greece is marked by a legacy of conflicts, instability, polarisation and fragile legitimacy. Political processes and political development have been confronted by pressures from outside the parliamentary system. Until very recently, the military occupied a dominant position in the country’s political and institutional setting, exercised undue influence over the political process, and showed little hesitation in interrupting and/or abolishing parliamentary institutions. It is no accident, therefore, that Greece has been seen as a ‘praetorian society’ affected by endemic political instability.
Western parliamentary institutions were imported into the country in the last century. The demise of Greek oligarchic parliamentarianism and the transition to broader forms of political participation and representation occurred at a time when industrial capitalism was very weak. In any case, its impact on the process of political development can in no way be compared with the effects of industrialisation on political institutions in Western Europe.1
The national schism of 1915, caused by the clash between the pro-Entente liberal Elefterios Venizelos and the Germanophile King Constantine, acquired the dimensions of a serious confrontation between throne and parliament, and marked the beginning of a series of military coups and counter-coups. The involvement of army officers in the party political affairs of the country was such that it can amply justify the claim that the military clientele of each political party became the arbiter of political disputes.2 The first Greek Republic, established in 1924, was short lived. King George II was restored to his throne in 1934. This was a turning point in Greece’s modern political history. Two years later, on 4 August 1936, a quasi-Fascist military dictatorship was imposed by General Metaxas with the King’s full support and patronage.
The inter-war period
Inter-war Greece was still a predominantly agrarian society. In the main, the dominant class of peasant smallholders emerged from the distribution of the ‘national lands’,
the previously Turkish properties taken over by the Greek state.3 Radical land reforms were effected, particularly after the Asia Minor disaster of 1922 (the defeat by the Turks).
Not only did these reforms accommodate the demands of the huge refugee population numbering approximately 1.2 million, which was driven out of Asia Minor, they also created a massive new stratum of smallholders largely dependent on state agencies for support and survival.4 By 1930, Greece had irrevocably become a country whose smallholders constituted the main social class.5
On the political level, the two major bourgeois parties, the Liberals [Filelefteroi] of the charismatic Elefterios Venizelos (1864-1936) and the staunchly royalist People’s Party [Laiko Komma, LK], commanded the loyalties of the peasantry, whereas the newly founded Communist Party of Greece [Kommounistiko Komma Elladas, KKE]6 was never able to make any significant inroads in the countryside. The peasants were kept firmly within the clientelistic networks of the two major parties which were fundamentally divided over the issue of the throne.7 On the other hand, although the KKE’s influence within the working class was very limited, industrial capitalism had made little advance in inter-war Greece.8
Moreover, Greek society was highly homogeneous from the linguistic, religious, cultural and national points of view. There was no foreign ethnic group in a dominant economic and/or cultural position to attract hatred from other social groups and be made a scapegoat for the country’s social and political ills. The refugee problem did not provide a social basis for the growth of Fascist or extreme right-wing movements feeding on massive human misery or wounded nationalist feelings. Patriotism did not prove a vehicle for any Fascist movement. The fragile legitimacy of the political parties and political institutions played into the hands of the military, not of any would-be Fascist leader.
The period of the Republic (1924-1935) was a turbulent one. However, despite the serious economic crisis of 1932, and a degree of labour militancy led by the Communists, a Fascist movement was, again, virtually absent. General Metaxas’s party of Free believers [Elefterofronoi, EL], for instance, had only two deputies elected in the 1932 general election, as against nine Communists, in a 250-seat parliament. A few right-wing organisations, inspired to some extent by National Socialist ideas, made their appearance during this period, but were rather insignificant in terms of both size and political impact.9 These organisations10 failed, also, to spark off any massive movement in support of Fascist ideologies and/or goals. However, pressure from military and monarchist elements was mounting. A new National Socialist organisation, the Panhellenic National Front [Panellinio Ethniko Metopo, PEM] made its appearance and was responsible for some acts of terrorism against the Communists in Athens.
The abortive pro-Venizelos military coup of 1 March 1935 was followed by an anti-Venizelos backlash. A rigged plebiscite on the issue of the restoration of the monarchy held in November 1935 produced, predictably enough, a 95 per cent majority, and King George II returned to the throne. New elections held on 26 January 1936 were, on the whole, conducted fairly under a system of proportional representation. However, the result was inconclusive. The Communist-dominated Popular Front held the balance of power in a hung parliament, and, despite an agreement with the Liberals, the two major parties finally gave their vote of confidence to Metaxas when he was appointed Prime Minister in April 1936.
The Chamber was not to meet again for ten years. A nation-wide general strike, proclaimed for 5 August, served as a pretext for Metaxas to secure the King’s assent to the suspension of a number of key articles of the Constitution on 4 August.11 The nightmare of the ‘4th of August’ dictatorship had begun with little resistance.12 Metaxas, a marginal political figure, was now invested with unlimited powers which he exercised until his death in January 1941.
The ‘4th of August’ regime
Metaxas embarked on the reshaping of the Greek state and society. His basic objective was to establish a totalitarian state and to ‘discipline’ the Greek people by evolving the concept of the Third Hellenic Civilisation, a self-conscious imitation of Hitler’s Third Reich. He aped many of the trappings of Fascism and Nazism. The regime tried to buy off the support of the workers and peasants by introducing labour and social legislation. Some of his chief ministers, such as the Press and Propaganda Minister Theologos Nicoloudes, never concealed their admiration for Fascist regimes, although, officially, the Greek regime shied away from such explicit references.13
The regime’s anti-plutocratic, anti-capitalist and anti-parliamentary rhetoric failed to create any enthusiastic, large-scale political mobilisation in support of the dictatorship. The style of government remained paternalistic and authoritarian,14 but beneath the surface lay the brutal reality of oppression, persecution, systematic torture, censorship and terror. Resistance to the regime was ruthlessly crushed by the ‘efficient’ Public Security Minister, Constantine Maniadakis, with his notorious Special Security Branch. Lacking a political following, and having acquired some degree of autonomy vis-a-vis the king, Metaxas sought to obtain a power base of his own by setting up the National Youth Organisation (Ethniki Organossis Neolaias, EON) and the Labour Battalions (Tagmata Ergassias, TE), membership of which was compulsory. However, with Metaxas’s death this Fascist youth movement, which had around 600,000 members, effectively collapsed.
During Metaxas’s rule, a number of more or less serious military plots to overthrow him failed. The military were deeply divided, while a group of army generals was actively plotting with the Germans behind the scenes. The paradox was that, despite his ideological loyalties, Metaxas sided with the British and the allied camp against the Axis powers.
Occupation, resistance and civil war (1941-1949)
On the morning of 28 October 1940, Metaxas was presented with an ultimatum by the Italians which he instantly rejected. At that time Greece was the only country to have sided, of her own volition, with the Allies, when Britain stood alone.15 The Greeks drove the invading Italians back, deep into Albania, and when the war was reduced to deadlock, Hitler decided to intervene in order to secure his southern flank in his preparations to invade Russia.
General Tsolakoglou, the Commander of the Western Macedonian front and one of the prominent figures of the pro-German military faction, surrendered his troop (without government authorisation) and singed an armistice in April 1941. He was soon to be rewarded when the Germans installed him as the first Quisling Prime Minister of Greece. The King and the government, headed by the banker Tsouderos, had already fled, first to Crete and, after its fall to the Germans, to Egypt.
Resistance to the occupation forces (Germans, Italians and Bulgarians) took on formidable proportions. The most powerful groups were the Communist-led and controlled National Liberation Front [Ethniko Apelefterotiko Metopo, EAM], founded in September 1941, and its military arm, the National Popular Liberation Army [Ethnikos Laikos Apelefterotikos Stratos, ELAS]. Despite the terror and horrifying reprisals of the occupation forces against acts of resistance, the movement quickly embraced the great majority of the Greek population. This occurred even though the Quisling governments had organised a number of Fascist and extreme right-wing collaborationist groups which assisted the Germans to defeat resistance in any possible way. The most notorious of these groups were the Security Battalions [Tagmata Asfaleias, TA],16
In the Middle East, new Greek military units were formed from remnants of the Greek army, under the aegis of the British Command. These units were highly factionalised along political lines. Pro-EAM elements had fomented mutinies in the unit stationed in Egypt, demanding the formation of a government of national unity in exile to be based on the Political Committee of National Liberation [Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apelefterossis, PEEA], the so-called ‘Government of the Mountain’, created by EAM in mid-March 1944. The mutinies were suppressed by the British, the units were purged of leftist elements, and large numbers of those involved were interned.17
During this period, many clandestine organisations were formed by officers. Most of them were right-wing, pro-royalist and anti-Communist. The most prominent and active of these organisations in the post-civil war era, the Sacred Bond of Greek Officers [lews Syndesmos Ellinon Axiomatikon, IDEA], originated in the Middle East during 1943^-4. There were many other groups of lesser importance.18
A national unity government under George Papandreou, with the participation of EAM ministers in minor posts, was formed in the Middle East and landed in Greece in October 1944. Papandreou had the full support of Churchill who had previously secured a free hand in Greece under the Yalta agreement with Stalin. Early in December 1944, a bid for power by the Communists failed when the military tide turned with British intervention. In February 1945, a political settlement was reached. ELAS agreed to disarm.
However, the terms of the agreement were never to be implemented. The right-wing backlash and white terror followed. Collaborators were not brought to justice and were on the loose. Violence by right-wing bands and gangs, such as that of the notorious X (Hi), was widespread. This reign of terror paved the way for elections in March 1946. However, the left decided to abstain and thus excluded itself from parliament – with disastrous consequences. The slide towards civil war gathered momentum with the return of the King after a plebiscite in September 1946, the fairness of which is still very much in doubt.
In the winter of 1946—47, a fully-fledged civil war broke out. The ‘Democratic Army’, the KKE’s military arm, was to be led to defeat in 1949 by a variety of factors. The Americans, with the declaration of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, had replaced the British as the patron-power of Greece, and their influence over Greek affairs in subsequent years was to be enormous.19 The civil war left a bitter legacy of bloody political divisions with lasting effects on the country’s political system and political culture.
The post-civil-war state and military dictatorship (1949-1974)
After its victory, the right imposed a quasi-parliamentary regime. The ‘repressive parliamentarianism’20 was controlled by the triarchy of throne, army and the political right. Within this power bloc, the army played the dominant role, an important aspect of which was its political, ideological and, to a lesser extent, financial dependence on the United States.21
Beyond its own vast security apparatus, the Greek army was in a position to exercise direct or indirect control over the key ‘civilian’ intelligence and security services which, in fact, were heavily militarised. Files were kept on the majority of the population22 (between 80 and 90 per cent); in addition, there was a nationwide system of identity cards. These services became the centre of plots, counter-plots and military conspiracies. Moreover, the military were also in control of the Battalions of National Defence [Tagmata Ethnikis Amynis, TEA], which were officered, commanded and trained by the army. The threads connecting the Security Services with the ‘parastate’ organisations were also numerous. It seems that parastate organisations started to appear and proliferate, under legal or illegal covers, around 1957-58. This was the time of rising popular discontent expressed clearly by the electoral triumph of the left in 1958 which, under the banner of the United Democratic Left [Eniaia Demokratiki Aristera, EDA], became the major opposition party in parliament, against all odds.23
These parastate organisations were no more than rubber-stamp associations, with few members in most cases, recruited mainly among the petty criminal and political underworld. They were used as an instrument for doing the ‘dirty work’ so that official state organs could, publicly, keep their hands clean. They were also used in other provocative actions and, more openly, in student politics.24 Their obscure existence came into broad daylight with the assassination of the left-wing MP Gregoris Lambrakis,23 in Thessaloniki, in May 1963.
Generally, the term ‘security state’ seems appropriate to define the post-civil war state both in legal, political and ideological terms. The dominant role of the army as a state institution was to be demonstrated in many crucial instances. Especially after 1958, more funds were allocated for psychological warfare and, in 1959, two more security agencies were added to an already overprotected state. Prisons were still full of political detainees, and places of internal exile for political opponents were to be found all over the country.26 The public administration was purged, and the institutionalised practices of requiring certificates of ‘civil loyalty’ and of strict security screening were widespread. This regimentation of society required an enormous army of functionaries, estimated at nearly 60,000.27
The rise of George Papandreou’s movement of democratisation in the early 1960s, which became known as ‘the unyielding struggle’, was to erode the regime’s own sources of legitimacy. The landslide victory of the Centre Union Party [Enonis Kentrou, EK] in the February 1964 elections produced an overall majority in Parliament, broke the right-wing parties’ monopoly of power and carried the promise of a democratic, reformist government.
However, the government was short-lived. With the active involvement of King Constantine II, Papandreou’s government was toppled in 1965, and the country slipped into a protracted and deep political crisis having as its epicentre the political control of the armed forces. The crisis was ‘resolved’ by military intervention in April 1967. This time, a group of middle-ranking officers, acting more or less autonomously, abolished parliamentary institutions and established a military dictatorship which lasted for seven years.28 The traditional political system29 crumbled under the pressures of rapid economic development and intense and protracted political mobilisation.
The seven-year military dictatorship30 did not fundamentally alter the status and role of right-wing ideologies in Greek society. The military conspirators who gravitated round Colonel George Papadopoulos, the leader of the 1967 coup, were now elevated to key ministerial posts. Their political ideas were crude, naive and extremely vague. Though the regime’s ideology was sui generis, it left a residual sensation of much of it having been heard before. There is no doubt that, behind the changing rhetoric and verbiage of the main propagandists,31 one can isolate persistent references to the ideological principles of Metaxas’s regime, frequent religious overtones, a right-wing populist approach and crude anti-Communism. Among the most recurrent themes, were: national security, alleged social decadence and the need for the ‘political re-education’ of the Greeks who had lost their way in the jungle of modernity and irresponsible parliamentarianism.32
Members of the military junta maintained close links with the ‘4th of August Party’33 [Komma tis 4 Avgoustou, K4A], named after the date on which Metaxas established his dictatorship in 1936. The fortnightly left-wing magazine ANTI carried numerous reports, between 1974 and 1977, documenting the various new parastate organisations created by the military regime, such as the National Movement of Young Scientists [Ethniko Kinima Neon Epistimonon, EKNE] and, more importantly, the relations between the Greek military regime, the K4A and ‘New Order’ [Nea Taksi, NT] with Italian far-right groups. It was reported, in this context, that Greece was a convenient hideout for Italian neo-Fascists like Elio Massagrande, deputy leader of Ordine Nuovo, or Clemente Graziani, leader of the organisation and of the International of neo-Nazism. It was also argued that the Italian fugitive neo-Fascists had made Greece their headquarters for organising a coup in Rome on 2 June 1974.34 The assassination of Christos Man takas, a Greek studying in Italy, in February 1975, led the Italian authorities to discover many vital clues about the activities of Italian neo-Fascists.35
However, the Greek colonels failed to legitimise their power36 and obtain any mass support. The regime collapsed amid chaos and the national tragedy of Cyprus, invaded by Turkey in July 1974.
1974 to 1993
The transfer of power from military to civilian leadership under Constantine Karamanlis inaugurated an entirely new phase in Modem Greek politics. Karamanlis’s gradualist approach to the serious problems that confronted him was evident in the timing of the measures he adopted. He defused the near-war situation with Turkey, formed a government of national unity and proceeded carefully in restoring civil authority over a demoralised and disintegrated military. His strategy succeeded in full.37 He was also able to consolidate the new parliamentary regime and establish the most liberal political system in the post-war period. The KKE was legalised and could now compete on an equal footing with other political forces, despite its split.38
The new open, competitive and democratic regime successfully passed the test of functionality and stability39 with the smooth transition of power from the conservative New Democracy [Nea Demokratia, ND] to a radical-socialist party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement [Panellinio Socialistiko Kinema, PASOK], in October 1981, when the later’s leader Andreas Papandreou won a landslide victory at the polls. The protagonists of the 1967 military coup were tried and sentenced to death, although the government rushed to commute their sentences to life imprisonment. In December 1974 a plebiscite on the divisive issue of the monarchy was held. Support for a republic soared to 69 per cent of the total vote.40
Since 1974, social, economic and, above all, political conditions have not been conducive to the creation and/or proliferation of extreme right-wing groups. The collapse of the military regime, under the burden of its own incompetence and crimes, completely demoralised, confused and disorganised the far right. Although ND, under the leadership of Karamanlis, won the general elections of 1974 and 1977, the wave of radicalism sweeping the country appeared unstoppable. The charismatic Andreas Papandreou, who founded the PASOK in 1974, succeeded in leading the movement to power shortly after, by sweeping to victory in 1981 and by winning, convincingly, a second term in office in 1985 with an overall majority.
Meanwhile, the far right tried parliamentary tactics to make its voice heard. This does not mean that right-wing organisations had altogether disappeared from the Greek political map. Although, according to some sources,41 nearly 150 groups, which were Fascist, royalist or associated with the military dictatorship, appeared during 1967-84, none survived for more than a few months. The K4A is still around and faithful to its National Socialism. Its influence, however, is insignificant.42 Given the circumstances in which the military regime collapsed, it is not surprising that the extreme right of the political spectrum made a very poor showing in the first freely conducted general election of November 1974. The National Democratic Union [Ethniki Demokratiki Enosis, EDE] received no seats by scoring only 1.1 per cent of the total vote: 54,162 votes out of a total of 4,912,356. A more serious regrouping of the far right emerged in time for the 1977 elections. This was a new political formation, the National Camp [Ethniki Parataxis, EP], led by Stephanos Stephanopoulos, which won 6.8 per cent of the total vote (349,851 votes out of 5,129,884), and secured five seats out of a total of 300. Stephanopoulos had been Prime Minister in 1965-66 and a minister in several pre-1965 governments. The EP consisted of an assortment of right-wing revivalists of various shades, disenchanted with Karamanlis’s policies, and of royalist diehards.
Although the EP did not manage to deprive ND of an overall majority in parliament, it nevertheless became a force to be reckoned with and a serious threat to ND’s right flank. Although the new ultra-right formation emphasised that the monarchy was not an electoral issue, its deputy leader, Spyros Theotokis, was a prominent royalist.43 The Camp, though, was soon to develop centrifugal tendencies.44 Three of its five deputies defected in 1980 to support Karamanlis in his bid to become President45 of the Republic, and the ‘Party’ disintegrated. Theotokis himself was invited to cooperate with ND and re-joined its ticket in the October 1981 elections. Subsequently, he won a seat on ND’s national list.46
George Rallis, who succeeded Karamanlis in the leadership of ND, and in the premiership of the government, made some pre-electoral concessions to the far right in order to secure their withdrawal from the electoral contest, in the face of the growing threat of Papandreou’s ‘Marxist’ PASOK, but to no avail. In the meantime, in 1979, the United Nationalist Movement [Enomeno Ethniko Kinema, ENEK] was formed. This organisation had Fascist, National Socialist and racist views, but made no particular impression upon the political scene. However, the standard for the disintegrated ultra-right was borne, in the 1981 election, by Spyros Markezinis, the puppet Prime Minister of Greece’s military dictatorship in 1973, when the regime tried to ‘liberalise’ itself for a short time. The new right-wing party, called Progressive Party [Komma Proodeftikon, KP], was launched on 7 December 1979. It secured 1.4 per cent of the vote (77,465 votes out of a total of 5,670,941). The party won 1.95 per cent of the vote in the European elections which were conducted simultaneously and, thanks to the simple proportional representation system, it secured one of the twenty-four seats allocated to Greece in the European Parliament.
The difficulties of right-wing groups in consolidating a solid electoral base were exacerbated by the lack of any serious, stable leadership and organisation. It is not surprising, therefore, that another electoral formation, the National Political Union [Ethniki Politiki Enosis, EPEN], was hastily set up to contest the June 1984 European elections.
After a polarised campaign, EPEN managed to win 2.29 per cent of the vote (136,642 out of a total of 5,956,060) and elect one MEP, who joined the group of the European Right. EPEN made no secret of its ideological and political links with the protagonists of the 1967 military coup whose release from prison it had constantly demanded. It is characteristic that the former dictator Papadopoulos had secretly recorded a message which was played at a meeting of EPEN’s founding members. In December 1984, Jean-Marie Le Pen hosted an Athens meeting of the Group of the European Right, which provoked violent protest demonstrations.47
Despite EPEN’s initial relative success in regrouping the far right and gaining some publicity, the problems besetting this part of the political spectrum did not go away. ENEK scored only 0.03 per cent of the total vote in the 1984 European elections, while EPEN was unable to hold most of its votes gained. In the general election the following year it scored a poor 0.6 per cent and won no seats at all in the Vouli, the national parliament. Despite this setback, EPEN continues its activities today and publishes a weekly political newspaper, the Ellinikos Kosmos [Greek World] with a strong anti-Communist line (circulation figures are not available). There are also a few other daily and weekly papers which disseminate extreme right-wing and totalitarian ideas with strong anti-Semitic overtones, but their circulation is insignificant.46 The common denominator of all these publications, representing small far right-wing groups, is their anti-Communism, anti-Semitism and deep hostility towards democratic and parliamentary institutions.
In the general and European elections conducted simultaneously in Greece on 18 June 1989, the far right failed again to make any impression. EPEN, for instance, scored only 1.16 per cent of the total vote and lost its single seat in the European Parliament, whereas ENEK’s share of the vote was a poor 0.23 per cent. EPEN took only 0.32 per cent of the vote in the general election.
In the electoral contests of November 1989 and April 1990, conducted amid political instability and bitter inter-party bickering, the far right electoral groupings failed once more to make any impression. Deputies of far right-wing persuasion had found refuge in the ND party which won the election by a whisker in terms of parliamentary seats (151 out of 300). This group of deputies tried occasionally either to force a pardon for the 1967 coup leaders on the government, or to openly pronounce their royalist views. However, it was ‘discovered’ that public opinion remained solidly behind its anti-junta and anti-royalist stance. A new electoral law49 made it hardly possible for any extreme right political grouping to be represented in parliament. Indeed, in the October 1993 general election the National Party (Ethniko Komma, EK)-EPEN coalition scored a mere 0.14 per cent of the total vote. The governing party of ND suffered a devastating defeat and PASOK assumed again the reins of government by winning nearly 47 per cent of the total vote and a large majority in parliament. It is safe to conclude that the official far right has been virtually extinguished from parliamentary politics. However, this is not to say that the extreme right’s potential to influence political opinion is nearly extinct.50 The emergence of nationalistic feeling could well play into the hands of politicians eager to exploit and make political capital out of it. To see why, we have to ponder briefly on the nationalist tide that swept Greece following the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the re-emergence of the so- called ‘Macedonian’ problem.
The nationalist tide
The disintegration of Yugoslavia has added a new element to the instability of the Balkans, unleashing powerful centrifugal forces in the post-Communist era. An area which in the nineteenth century earned the reputation as the powder keg of Europe, due to the explosion of nationalism and the intervention of the great powers, is now beset by bitter ethnic conflict upsetting old delicate balances and having important implications for European security. The legacy of 500 years of authoritarian Ottoman rule, the lack of any strong democratic traditions and institutions, autocratic Communist rule, deep historically rooted ethnic rivalries and outside intervention in the crisis are considered the most crucial factors which have contributed to the present turmoil and the resurgence of nationalism and chauvinism.
Greece, although not a part of the Balkan conundrum and bloody conflict, has been deeply concerned. Developments in the area have affected its domestic politics in various ways. The revival of Greek nationalistic sentiment, albeit of a defensive character, of latent xenophobia and racism are a direct consequence of the Balkan turmoil.
In the first place, the near-collapse of the economy and the breakdown in social order in neighbouring Albania, where a substantial Greek minority is established in the southern part of the country (Voreios Epirus), has created a major refugee problem, as hundreds of thousands of desperate Albanians have fled across the border to Greece. Neither financial assistance nor investment have provided, for the moment, an incentive for prospective refugees to stay at home. The flood of Greek and Albanian refugees has aggravated social and economic problems in Greece and polarised public opinion. Official statistical data grossly underestimate the total number of economic refugees in addition to the Pontiac Greeks from the ex-Soviet Union who are heading for Athens and other parts of the country. However, it is estimated that more than half a million illegal economic refugees are now in Greece seeking jobs and a better life. Albanians are the most numerous, compact and visible group. They not only put a serious pressure on an already depressed labour market, with a nearly 9 per cent indigenous rate of unemployment, particularly in the construction sector, but also display a highly criminal profile. Serious criminal offences both against persons and property have increased by 25 per cent in Athens in the last three years. The media seized on the opportunity to portray ‘foreigners’ as persons with a higher criminal propensity, giving prominent coverage to offences involving Albanians. However, the proportion of serious criminal offences committed by ‘foreigners’ is usually very low, belying stereotypes and prejudices widely held among the common people. It is not accidental that opinion surveys indicate widespread sentiments of latent xenophobia and racism. Nevertheless, there have been no ugly racial incidents against foreigners and no serious mass reaction. Greek society is still tolerant enough to accommodate hostile feelings and/or to learn to live with people carrying different cultures and ways of life. This is not to say that, given an aggravated social and political situation, the ‘foreigner’ could not be made into a scapegoat for society’s ills. However, apart from some minor public incidents instigated by small far-right groups like the ‘Golden Dawn’ [Chryssi Avghij, with explicit Fascist slogans, no major non-left political party has tried to publicly make political capital out of the situation or endorsed a policy openly hostile to refugees. Moreover, no political group emerged to focus exclusively on social issues related to the presence of ‘foreigners’, or to formulate a political platform on which a separate political identity could be based.
The issue remains submerged, but could burst into the open given a combination of economic deterioration and perceived threats against the alleged ‘purity’ or ‘uniqueness’ of Greek culture and way of life. Besides, tension with Albania over the treatment of the Greek minority could well invite counter-measures and reprisals with the blessing of public opinion.
The Albanian problem has been overshadowed by the ‘Macedonian’ problem which has fanned dormant Greek national sentiment. It serves no useful purpose to outline here the historical roots of the problem.51 What is important is that the move by the new republic, which has emerged as from the ashes of the Yugoslav Federative Republic of Macedonia, to be diplomatically recognised as a separate state under the name of ‘Republic of Macedonia’, has caused considerable concern in Greece. Without doubting the right of the new state to exist as a buffer zone, both against aspirations of a ‘Greater Albania’ and a ‘Greater Bulgaria’, and against the spread of the war in Bosnia to the south, Greece has strongly objected to the move. It has demanded that the neighbour country stop usurping its historical heritage, cease using hostile propaganda and historical symbols regarded as Greek in its flag, eliminate references in its Constitution to annexing neighbouring provinces and stop monopolising the Macedonian name in the denomination of the State. The name of the state has been seen not only symbolically but as a vehicle of Slavic Irredentism, reviving bitter memories of the late 1940s when during the occupation and the ensuing civil war Yugoslavia and Bulgaria tried unsuccessfully to annex parts of Greek Macedonian lands.
The issue is a deeply emotional one in Greece and has mobilised mass support both domestically and among the Greek communities abroad. It could have been resolved in 1993 when it was brought under the mediation of the United Nations, and a negotiated settlement was imminent, if the government of Skopje had been less intransigent and the Greek government more determined to reach a compromise. However, the then Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis, with a one-seat majority in parliament, mounting economic problems, PASOK’s vigorous opposition, and growing dissent from within his party ranks, could not afford to make major concessions. Eventually, early in September 1993, his government was toppled from within when members of his parliamentary party close to his ex-Foreign Minister Antonis Samaras deserted the ranks, forced his resignation and caused his subsequent defeat at the October polls.
Samaras had already launched his own political movement cum party, the Political Spring [Politiki Anoixi, PA], on an uncompromisingly nationalistic political platform. Given the indications that Greek citizens were becoming disillusioned with mainstream political parties, Samaras sought to portray himself as a new, renovating force in Greek politics breaking its duopolic mould and abolishing old political mores and practices. He managed to win 4.9 per cent of the vote and 10 seats in parliament.
Such is the strength of national feelings that not even a PASOK commanding a comfortable majority in parliament dares to ignore them. The broad range of substantive and theoretical issues related to nationalism, which has been one of the most powerful – and perhaps also of the most destructive – forces shaping the course of Balkan history as well as the history of other peoples, will not be addressed here. The mental construction of nations as ‘imagined communities’52 is a long, painful and sometimes very bloody one.
For the time being, the nationalist tide and issues of nationalistic ideologies are integrated into the dominant political discourse and confined to major political parties. No strong leader or personality has emerged as yet to exploit a potentially receptive social and political base in terms of neo-Fascist policies and ideologies. Needless to say, nationalistic hysteria and ethnocentric political manoeuvring can be potentially explosive, upsetting not only the political scene but the very alignment of political forces. It can also be politically and diplomatically self-destructive. Opportunities for far right ideologies and political formations are looming around the corner.
Conclusions
It is characteristic of the post-1974 era in Greek politics that, once eradicated from State bodies or made redundant, extreme right-wing ideologies ceased to play a political organisational role by rallying all groups under their banner and giving them cohesion. Once discarded from the mainstream of Greek politics by no longer being at the core of conservative ideologies, right-wing extremism found its ‘proper’ dimensions. Stripped of this ideological mantle, it became confined to small groups. Despite their temporary electoral revival in 1977, they never constituted a real challenge either to the conservatives as a political party or to the government of the day.
From a social point of view, Greece is not so polarised as to create and reproduce marginalised sections of the population living under extremely harsh conditions and thus vulnerable to right-wing ideologies. So far, social conditions in the country have not created any dynamics of mass discontent which could be easily exploited by extreme right-wing groups. The economic system, the pattern of capitalist development and property relations have not produced a large stratum of dispossessed people, nor a large agricultural and/or industrial proletariat which could be potentially mobilised by Fascist groups or constitute the social basis of such a movement. There is no tradition of Poujadism in Greece. Old and new petty bourgeois economic and social strata usually register their protest by voting for the major political parties, and not by supporting extreme political movements and/or forming their social backbone. It must be stressed that Greek political parties are multi-class formations in many respects: in the social composition of their membership, in their electoral support and in their policy making. When in opposition, they promise everything to everybody; when in government, they are characterised by strong bureaucratic, clientelistic practices, and display exceptional skills in satisfying sectional, particularistic and corporatist demands, as well as in co-opting social groups into the power bloc. These functions and practices of the political parties do not leave much room for the development of right-wing extremism. However, whereas under present conditions the Greek ultra-right groups do not have the capabilities of mass recruitment and political mobilisation, and, more generally, conditions are not such as to make this feasible, there is always the possibility of some growth given the new circumstances shaped by the flood of refugees and nationalistic propaganda. Nationalistic feelings may well be linked to, and/or incorporated into, neo-Fascist political and ideological discourses of various shades.
It hardly needs stressing here that the authoritarianism and racism within all extremist movements of the right tend to overlap, and their re-emergence in the Greek case cannot logically be ruled out. Although the challenge of neo-Fascism is far more serious in other European countries than it is in Greece, it would be unwise to underestimate a dangerous movement which is using extra-parliamentary action, mass mobilisation and the very democratic institutions and political-electoral processes in order to destroy them.
List of Abbreviations
EAM Ethniko Apelefterotiko Metopo [National Liberation Front]
EDA Eniaia Demokratiki Aristera [United Democratic Left]
EDE Ethniki Demokratiki Enosis [National Democratic Union]
EEE Ethnikistiki Enosis Ellados [Nationalist Union of Greece]
EEK Elliniko Ethnikosocialistiko Komma [Greek Nationalist Socialist Party]
EK Enosis Kentrou [Centre Union]
EK Ethniko Komma [National Party]
EKM Ethnikosocialistiko Komma Makedonias Kai Thrakis [National Socialist Party of Macedonia and Thrace]
EKNE Ethniko Kinima Neon Epistimonon [National Movement of Young Scientists]
EL Elefterofronoi [Free Believers]
ELAS Ethnikos Laikos Apelefterotikos Stratos [National Popular Liberation Army]
EN Ethniki Nemesi [National Nemesis]
ENA Enosis Neon Axiomatikon [Union of Junior Officers]
ENEK Enomeno Ethniko Kinema [United Nationalist Movement]
EON Ethniki Organossis Neolaias [National Youth Organisation]
EP Ethniki Parataxis [National Camp]
EPEN Ethniki Politiki Enosis [National Political Union]
ERE Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis [National Radical Union]
EYP Ethniki Epiressia Pliroforion [National Intelligence Service]
FS Foititiko Somatio [All Student Union]
IDEA Ieros Syndesmos Ellinon Axiomatikon [Sacred Bond of Greek Officers]
KKE Kommounistiko Komma Elladas [Communist Party of Greece]
KP Komma Proodeftikon [Progressive Party]
K4A Komma tis 4 Avgoustou [4th of August Party]
KYP Kratiki Epiressia Plirof orion [State Intelligence Service]
LK Laiko Komma [People’s Party]
ND Nea Demokratia [New Democracy]
NT Nea Taksi [New Order]
PA Politiki Anoixi [Political Spring]
PAO Pnevmatiki Ananeotiki Ormi [Intellectual Renovating Momentum]
PASOK Panellinio Socialistiko Kinema [Panhellenic Socialist Movement] PEEA Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apelefterossis [Political Committee of National Liberation]
PEM Panellinio Ethniko Metopo [Panhellenic National Front]
PK Patriotiko Kinema [Patriotic Movement]
SAN Syndesmos Axiomatikon Neon [Association of Young Officers]
SEKE Socialistiko Ergatiko Komma Ellados [Socialist Workers’ Party of Greece]
TA Tagmata Asfaleias [Security Battalions]
TE Tagmata Ergassias [Labour Battalions]
TEA Tagmata Ethnikis Amynis [Battalions of National Defence]
XA Chryssi Avghi [Golden Dawn]
Notes
1. N. Mouzelis, Politics in the Semi-Periphery. Early Parliamentarism and Late Industrialisation in the Balkans and Latin America, Macmillan, London, 1986.
2. Th. Veremis, The Greek Army in Politics, 1922-1935’, Ph.D. thesis, Trinity College, Oxford, 1974.
3. K. Vergopoulos, To agrotiko zetema sten Hellada [The agrarian question in Greece], Exantas, Athens, 1975.
4. G. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Democracy: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922-1936, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA 1975.
5. According to the 1928 Census, 88 per cent of the heads of agricultural businesses owned their land.
6. The Socialist Workers’ Party of Greece [Socialistiko Ergatiko Komma Ellados, SEKE] was founded in 1918. In 1920, the party joined the Third International and, in 1924, changed its title to the Communist Party of Greece.
7. N. Mouzelis, Modern Greece. Facets of Underdevelopment, Macmillan, London, 1978.
8. G. Coutsoumaris, The Morphology of Greek Industry and A Study in Industrial Development, Center for Economic Research, Athens, 1963.
9. Y. Andricopoulos, ‘The Power Base of Greek Authoritarianism’, in Who Were the Fascists?, Universitets Forlaget, Bergen-Oslo, 1980, pp. 568-84.
10. Andricopoulous, ibid., mentions the following: the Nationalist Union of Greece [Ethnikistiki Enosis Ellados, EEE], which had its headquarters in Salonica, where an 80,000-strong Jewish community was based; the Greek Nationalist Socialist Party [Elliniko Ethnikosocialistiko Komma, EEK]; the anti-Semitic National Socialist Party of Macedonia and Thrace [.Ethnikosocialistiko Komma Makedonias Kai Thrakis, EKM], and the tiny All Student Union [Foititiko Somatio, FS]. This list was drawn up by the British Embassy at the request of the Foreign Office, and despatched on 4 May 1934.
11. Two days earlier the King had rejected an offer by the two major parties in parliament to form a coalition government.
12. S. Linardatos, Pos Ftassame sten 4e Avgoustou [How We Reached the 4th of August], Themelio, Athens, 1965.
13. S. Linardatos, H 4h Avgoustou [The 4th of August], Themelio, Athens, 1966. See also, Ή 4h Avgoustou’, To Vima, special issue, 3 Aug. 1986, pp. 15-34.
14. R. Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1979. See also ‘The Fourth-of-August Regime’, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Nos. 1 and 2, 1986, pp. 53-112. The ‘hybrid nature’ of the regime, which took inspiration from, and aped, Western European models of Fascism and National Socialism, is rightly stressed by Constantine Sarantis, ‘The Ideology and Character of the Metaxas Regime’, in R. Higham and Th. Veremis (eds), Aspects of Greece 1936-40: the Metaxas Dictatorship, Eliamep – Vryonis Center, Athens, 1993, pp. 147-177.
15. C. M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece: a Short History, Faber and Faber, London, 1966 (4th edn.).
16. A. Gerolymatos, ‘The Security Battalions and the Civil War’. Paper presented at the Conference on the Greek Civil War, University of Copenhagen, 1984.
17. H. Fleischer, ‘The Anomalies in the Middle East Forces, 1941-44’, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, special issue on Greece, 1940-1950, Autumn 1970, pp. 5-36.
18. For example, the pro-Fascist National Nemesis [Ethniki Nemesi, EN], the extreme royalist Union of Junior Officers [Enosis Neon Axiomatikon, ENA], the right-wing Association of Young Officers [Syndesmos Axiomatikon Neon, SAN], or others known only by their acronym like the PAN and the EE.
19. L. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, 1943-1949, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982.
20. N. Mouzelis, ‘Capitalism and Dictatorship in Postwar Greece’, in New Left Review, No. 96,1976, pp. 57-80.
21. V. Kapetanyannis Socio-Political Conflicts and Military Intervention: The case of Greece, 1950-1967, Ph.D. thesis, Birkbeck College, University of London, 1986.
22. During the parliamentary debate on a new bill about the State Intelligence Service [Kratiki Epiressia Pliroforion, KYP], renamed National Intelligence Service [Ethniki Epiressia Pliroforion, EYP] in January 1984, figures of between 12 and 30 million files were officially mentioned. According to some reports, they could well number 35 million. See ANTI, No. 252, 20 Jan. 1964, pp. 11-13.
23. J. Meynaud, Les forcespolitiques en Grece, Etudes de Science Politique, Lausanne, 1965.
24. A. Lentakis, Neo-facistikes organoseis neolaias [Neo-Fascist youth organisations], EDA, Athens, 1963.
25. The Lambrakis affair was dramatized in the film ‘Z’ by K. Gavras, named after the book by the Greek novelist Vassilis Vassilikos.
26. N. Alevizatos, ‘Les institutions politiques de la Grece a travers les crises: 1922-1974,’ Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Universite de Droit, d’Economie et de Sciences Sociales de Paris, Paris II, 1977.
27. K. Tsoukalas, The Greek Tragedy, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969.
28. J. Meynaud, Rapport surl’abolition de la democratieen Grece, University of Montreal, 1967.
29. K. Legg, Politics in Modern Greece, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1969.
30. C. M. Woodhouse, The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels, Granada, St Albans, 1985.
31. In April 1970, the publication of Politiki Agogi [Political Education], written by Th. Papakonstantinou, sometime Minister of Education in the regime, was announced. The book was widely distributed and used as a school textbook. George Georgalas, the regime’s chief spokesman, published in April 1971 his Ideologia tis Epanastaseos [Ideology of the Revolution], which was given wide distribution. Savas Konstantopoulos, editor of the proregime newspaper Elefteros Kosmos [Free World], was another ‘theoretician’ of the dictatorship. George Papadopoulos himself has published seven volumes of To Pistevo mas [Our Creed] to state his ‘case’.
32. R. Clogg, The Ideology of the Revolution of21 April 1967, in R. Clogg and L. Yannopoulos (eds), Greece under Military Rule, Seeker and Warburg, London, 1972.
33. The ‘K4A’ was founded in 1960 by Costas Plevris, who has openly propagated National Socialist ideas. The organisation was particularly active between 1960 and 1967 in Thessaloniki, during the students’ mobilisations. The emblem of the organisation (the two axes) was identical to that of the Italian neo-Fascist organisation Ordine Nuovo. According to ANTI, No. 62, 8 Jan. 1977, p. 26, splinter groups like that of P. Dakoglou, nicknamed ‘Achaioi’ [Achaeans], were fanatical supporters of Brigadier Dimitri Ioannides, Commander of the notorious Greek military police which had tortured many of the victims of the junta during the dictatorship. Ioannides was responsible for the coup which overthrew Papadopoulos in 1973, and was, behind the scenes, the strong man of the new military regime until its collapse in July 1974. After the fall of the military regime, Dakoglou’s group was renamed Intellectual Renovating Momentum [Pnevmatiki Ananeotiki Ormi, PAO]. Another splinter group of‘K4A’, led by A. Dedrinos, was also renamed Patriotic Movement [Patriotiko Kinema, PK]. See ANTI, No, 62, 8 Jan. 1977, p. 25.
34. ANTI, No. 19, 17 May 1975.
35. ANTI, Ibid.
36. Th. Veremis, ‘Greece: Veto and Impasse, 1967-74’, in C. Clapham and G. Phillip (eds), The Political Dilemmas of Military Regimes, Croom Helm, London, 1985, pp. 21-45.
37. N. Diamandouros, ‘Transition to, and Consolidation of Democratic Politics in Greece,
1974-1983. A Tentative Assessment’, West European Politics, VII (2), 1984, pp. 50-71.
38. V. Kapetanyannis, ‘The Making of Greek Euro-Communism’, Political Quarterly, L (4),
1979, pp. 445-60. See also idem, ‘The Communists’, in K. Featherston and D. Katsoudas (eds), Political Change in Greece: Before and After the Colonels, Croom Helm, London, 1988, pp.120-55.
39. Th. Couloumbis and R. Yannas, ‘The Stability Quotient of Greece’s Post-1974 Democratic
Institutions’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Dec. 1963, pp. 359-72.
40. R. Clogg, Parties and Elections in Greece, C. Hurst, London, 1968.
41. Decapenthimeros Politis, Nos. 67-68, Dec. 1984, pp. 34-41.
42. European Parliament, Committee of Inquiry into the Rise of Fascism and Racism in Europe, Report on the Findings of the Inquiry, Luxembourg, 1985.
43. Theotokis was elected deputy for Corfu with Karamanlis’s ND in 1974. However, he was soon to express his strong disagreement with the party’s neutral stand in the constitutional plebiscite that followed on 8 Dec. 1974, and ended the monarchy by a two-to-one vote. He resigned his seat four days later.
44. See ANTI, No. 106, 26 Aug. 1978, pp. 2-11.
45. Karamanlis was elected President on 5 May 1990 in the third and final parliamentary ballot by receiving 183 votes, three more than the minimum required.
46. Theotokis died in Athens in 1988 at the age of 79. See his obituary in The Times, 9 Sept. 1988, p. 18.
47. See The Times, 5 Dec. 1984, p. 6. Le Pen visited Greece again in Sept. 1988. The government spokesman said then that he was a persona non grata for the Greek government.
48. Stochos [Target], for instance, is an eight-page broadsheet weekly full of anti-Slav, anti- Moscow, anti-Jewish propaganda, and is extremely racist and chauvinistic. Elfteri Ora [Free Hour] is a six-page daily paper with an eight-page Sunday edition. It hosts the views of Costas Plevris, the leader of the ‘K4A’, and of other right-wingers. It is strongly anti-Communist and anti-Jewish. Its circulation is very low, around 1,500 copies daily (Nov. 1988), in the Athens-Piraeus area.
49. Law 1907/1990 stipulated a national 3 per cent threshold for a party to qualify for any seats at all.
50. See P. E. Dimitras, ‘Greece: The Virtual Absence of an Extreme Right’, in P. Hainsworth (ed.), The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA, Pinter, London, 1992.
51. Among the voluminous bibliography, see D. Dakin, The Greek Struggle in Macedonia, 1897-1913, Institute for Balkan Studies, Thessaloniki, 1966; E. Kofos, Nationalism and Communism in Macedonia, Institute for Balkan Studies, Thessaloniki, 1964; E. Kofos, ‘National Heritage and National Identity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Macedonia’, in M. Blinkhorn and Th. Veremis (eds), Modern Greece: Nationalism and Nationality, Sage-ELIAMEP, Athens, 1990.
52. See B. Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, 1983. See also E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1983 and E. Kedourie, Nationalism, Hutchinson, London, 1983.
The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe 2nd Edition (1st Edition 1991)
Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, Michalina Vaughan
Longman Pub Group
ISBN-13: 978-0582238817
ISBN-10: 0582238811