Europe Far-Right Parties: Greece's Golden Dawn Furthest Right Of Europe's Far-Right (PHOTOS)

Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos speaks during a news conference in front of a banner with the twisting Maeander, an ancient Greek decorative motif that the party has adopted as its symbol in Athens, Sunday, May 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

-- Twenty-one members of Golden Dawn were sworn into Greece's Parliament on Thursday, making it arguably the most far-right party to enter a European national legislature since Nazi-era Germany. Europe's financial crisis is changing the tone across the continent, with frustrated voters turning to extremists on both the right and left. None seem as extreme as Golden Dawn, whose leaders claim that the Nazis did not use gas chambers to kill death camp inmates during the Holocaust. The party – which won 7 percent of the vote in a May 6 election – says it wants to rid Greece of immigrants and plant landmines along the border with Turkey.

The new parliament will hold power just one day because the election left no party with enough votes to form a government, forcing repeat elections next month. Recent polls show falling support for Golden Dawn, so it's not certain to make it into parliament again. Still, many people across Europe are troubled.

"The Golden Dawn party is a dark stain on European politics," said Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress. "For the first time in over six decades a seemingly long hidden Nazi ideology returned to power."

Here are other far right parties that have won parliamentary seats and pushed their views into mainstream policies and discourse in Europe, sometimes in ways that have impacted immigrants and Muslims.

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Associated Press writers Elena Becatoros in Athens, Angela Charlton in Paris, George Jahn in Vienna, Victor Simpson in Rome, Mike Corder in Amsterdam, Pablo Gorondi in Budapest and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm contributed to this report.

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• France

  <em>France's far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, and candidate for the 2012 French legislative elections speaks as she campaigns for the party during a press conference in Henin Beaumont, northern France, Monday May 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)</em><br><br> France's anti-immigrant National Front was in parliament until 1986, when new rules made it harder for small parties to make it in. Its leaders, first Jean-Marie Le Pen and now his daughter Marine, have featured prominently in presidential elections and maintained a national following. Marine Le Pen came in a strong third place in presidential elections this month, earning more than 6 million votes, and is angling to get National Front candidates back in parliament in legislative elections next month. While Jean-Marie Le Pen has been convicted and fined a few times for racism and anti-Semitism, Marine Le Pen has sought to soften the party's message, and turned its anger toward what she calls the "Islamization" of France. Those ideas have entered the mainstream discourse, notably in former President Nicolas Sarkozy's push to ban face-covering Islamic veils and keep halal meat out of public cafeterias. He also made reducing immigration a pillar of his presidency.

• Austria

  <em>The leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), Heinz-Christian Strache (C) celebrates with his supporters on October 10, 2010 after municipal elections in Vienna. (DIETER NAGL/AFP/Getty Images)</em><br><br> The right-wing Freedom Party consistently polls a close second in popularity to the leading Social Democrats, reflecting the resonance of its anti-immigrant, Euro-skeptic message. It counts the neo-Nazi fringe among its supporters and its leaders' occasional anti-Semitic comments are widely condemned by other parties. Its main draw with voters is Islamophobia. It holds 34, or 1.5 percent of the seats in parliament compared to the nearly 27 percent won in 1999. That result catapulted it into a government coalition - and led to EU sanctions against Austria. In response to their gains, the federal government has toughened asylum rules and introduced compulsory German courses for immigrants.

• Netherlands

  <em>The leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), Geert Wilders, casts his vote for the country's 12 provincial councils on March 2, 2011 in a school in The Hague as the PVV Senate leader Machiel de Graaf (L) smiles. (ROBIN UTRECHT/AFP/Getty Images)</em><br><br> The Freedom Party of anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders became the third largest bloc in the Dutch Parliament in 2010 elections with 24 seats. The result turned Wilders into a kingmaker who agreed to support the minority coalition of Prime Minister Mark Rutte on crucial votes in return for concessions such as a crackdown in immigration and a ban on the Islamic veil, the burqa. Wilders, a Euro-skeptic, brought down Rutte's government last month when he refused to support an austerity package aimed at cutting the country's budget deficit to within the EU norm of 3 percent of GDP.

• Italy

  <em>Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (R) flanked by former Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) Gianfranco Fini (L) gestures during their first party meeting at the Palalido on March 08, 2008 in Milan. (GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty Images)</em><br><br> The Italian Social Movement, which saw itself as the heir of Benito Mussolini's Fascist party, was Italy's fourth largest party in the decades after the war, gaining up to 6 percent in some cases. But mainstream parties refused any alliance with it so it was kept out of the postwar governing coalitions. It campaigned against immigration and sought tough law enforcement, and some fringe members were linked to right-wing violence. In the early 1990s it morphed into the National Alliance and under party leader Gianfranco Fini moved into the mainstream: It shed its hardline roots, decried anti-Semitism and Mussolini's racial laws, and became a major ally of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi. Fini had to pull back from a statement in a newspaper interview that Mussolini was one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th century.

• <em>Hungarian citizens wave flags during a demonsstration called by far-right parliamental party 'Jobbik' against European Union at European Union Parliament and Commitee headquarters in downtown Budapest on January 14, 2012. (FERENC ISZA/AFP/Getty Images)</em><br><br> Hungary's Jobbik party - The Movement for a Better Hungary - won nearly 17 percent of the national vote in the 2010 parliamentary elections and is currently the second-largest opposition party in the legislature, behind the Socialists. Jobbik's popularity is highest in Hungary's northeast region, the country's poorest, and some of its support came from its pledge to fight what it calls "Gypsy crime." From 2009, uniformed groups closely tied to Jobbik, such as The Hungarian Guard, set up patrols in countryside villages to "protect" residents from Gypsies, but such activities have been banned under the current, center-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The Guard and several other such groups use some colors, slogans and symbols of the far-right nationalist parties of the 1930s, and its rhetoric is sometimes anti-Semitic, racist and anti-gay. Racist comments by Jobbik deputies have drawn condemnation from the rest of the parties and Orban's governing Fidesz party's two-thirds majority has allowed it to not make any concessions to Jobbik in the legislature. At the same time, some of the themes Jobbik promotes can also be found to a smaller or larger degree in Orban's policies.

• Denmark

  <em>Danish police clash with demonstrators supporting of a group of rejected Iraqi asylum seekers outside Brorsons Church in Copenhagen early on August 13, 2009. (Andreas Hagemann Bro/AFP/Getty Images)</em><br><br> The anti-immigrant Danish People's Party is Denmark's third largest party and has pushed the country to adopt some of Europe's strictest immigration laws, leading to a drastic cut in the number of refugees seeking shelter there to just over 5,000 in 2011, from 13,000 in 2001. Last year, it also pushed through a plan to reinstate custom checks at Denmark's borders with Germany and Sweden. Both the European Union and Germany sharply criticized the move, with the EU accusing Denmark of violating the spirit of EU rules on free movement for goods and people.

Comments

[subrog8er]

06:47 PM on 05/21/2012

There is no middle ground anymore. Here is proof that people are miffed at the left. Everyone divided, you know what happens? They fall. Simple.

[Russian Viking]

11:36 AM on 05/18/2012

"Europe Far-Right Parties:"

What???

Puh~Leeze!

There hasn't been a "Far-Right" anything in Europe since Charlemagne.

[kruelhunter]

10:44 AM on 05/18/2012

Remember, the European extreme right includes Hitler's Nazi, or National Socialist, party.

[rastock]

10:15 AM on 05/18/2012

When people are in dire straits like the upheaval of your economic system, they tend to turn to extremist groups for refuge. They can go extreme left (Russian revolution) or extreme right (Nazi Germany). When the "conventional" politics no longer appeal to the general electorate as being capable of re-sealing Pandora's box, radicalism raises it's ugly head.
Rants about sealing borders, expulsion of immigrants, keeping the country pure and free of "outsiders", this has a very familiar ring to it coming from the shores of a certain country in North America.

[niceguyarl]

09:41 AM on 05/18/2012

The only surprising thing is that this hasn't happened sooner. The European people have been forced for decades to voluntarily accept mass immigration from North Africa and Asia that is nothing short of colonization. If any one dares question this process, they are denounced as xenophobic Nazis. It's really quite bizarre. They are simply not permitted to defend their own history and their culture and their values. It's funny how Asian countries, which do not accept immigration, are not held to the same standards.

[Taxim]

04:47 AM on 05/19/2012

"been forced for decades to voluntarily accept" :)))

And it's the only language you have, isn't it?

[Katarzyna Kamienski]

03:13 PM on 05/20/2012

Taxim, your comment does not even make sense, nicegurlyarl makes an excellent point.

[mcptginc]

08:28 AM on 05/18/2012

The pendulum swings...this is what happens when people are scared. The socialist policies of Greece served to sink the country...now we swing the other way. Is there a lesson here America?
Keep the economy/fiscal policy sane.

[presscrawler]

04:26 AM on 05/18/2012

Whether one is a liberal or conservative, we can learn some lessons in what is going on there. What is the lesson? Don't just passively accept what candidates a party gives us. We are the citizens, not the big donors of candidates. We can't just blame the parties or candidates. We are the ones who passively accept whatever they give us. We've created two new royal families here, the Democrats and the Republicans. The new nobles are the lobbyists, media, and international (not just national) corporations. No one is representing the citizens. We just provide the money in demanded taxes. Wasn't this country formed to get away from this?

[irishprince317]

04:57 AM on 05/18/2012

haha, best post on topic so far

[karaokekoncerts]

08:05 AM on 05/18/2012

Well said! And love the "Royal Parties"...excellent!!!

[HansB]

03:40 AM on 05/18/2012

Times of crisis, as many in this thread point out. But with a caveat. Only a decade or so ago, the mainstream conservative parties would have nothing to do with these neofascists - let's call them what they are. When in 1999 the Austrian moderate-right OVP created a coalition government with the extreme right FPO, all of Europe was shocked, and the entire country was - as it were - sent to Coventry.

Jacques Chirac of France by contrast laid down red lines to keep the moderate right distinct from the extreme right. But in the recent presidential election Sarkozy crossed those red lines with a fury, and they are gone now, probably forever. A telling sign of how dramatically the UMP has changed under Sarkozy: two weeks ago, its founder Jacques Chirac voted AGAINST its candidate.

Similar story for the Netherlands, where a politician such as Wilders would have been cold-shouldered by one and all in the years when I lived in that country. Kingmaker? Only because the moderate right is willing to work with him.

The real question for the future is not how much these neofascist parties will grow (there is a limit: the FN in France got only 1% more of the vote than in 2002, despite the economic crisis), but to what extent the moderate right will try to appease them. Signs are not good.

[TomMartin]

03:25 AM on 05/18/2012

What about the left wing extremists, who also got into the Greek parliament? Don't ignore those.

[badman5150]

05:36 AM on 05/18/2012

You will see little coverage on them. When there is, it will be in a fluff piece.

[Stop Anti-Japhetism]

03:21 AM on 05/18/2012

Native rights for Native peoples.
Respect each other.

The Golden Dawn is modeled after the Africans political party's, and that is to take the land away from the foreigner racist invaders and give it back to the Natives.

We learn this from the enlightened Africans of Africa.
We only wish to do as Africans do.
Now that is true equality!

[Judean65]

05:34 AM on 05/18/2012

Stop: The anti-Semetic Greeks don't an African model to form a Neo-Nazi party, it comes naturally for some. Hard economic times usually exude this type of filth. It oozes up from the bottom, attaches to the shoes and spreads as feet march in 'goose step'. It stinks and should be disinfected and buried in the garbage-heap of failed ideas...again.

[uCrazy99]

10:36 AM on 05/18/2012

And when was Greece colonizied? I missed that lesson in world history class?

[Wrench Turner]

02:12 AM on 05/18/2012

A bad economy leads to all kinds of fun fringes, like the National Socialists or Soviets all kinds of bad ideas become appealing to a lot of people when times get tough.

[hmstrac]

09:28 AM on 05/18/2012

Well said.

[GeorgeP922]

02:09 AM on 05/18/2012

TOTALLY Biased article.

Sure, Golden Dawn should be crush, arrested and locked up.

But the extreme right wing, wannabe nazi's in Europe are nothing new.

If anything, the Greek ones are the top clowns, in that they have the least clout, and the latest to the movement of racist Europeans.

As a proud Greek American, I hope to God we set an example, and dismantle and lock up the organizers.

Shame on MSM for making Greece's wannabe Tea Party, the kicking boy of a cancer in Europe the last 10-20 years.

[BenGoyim]

12:31 AM on 05/18/2012

Moshe Kantor needs to check out the West Bank bigots first.

[booboo111]

10:34 PM on 05/17/2012

Like Germany in the thirties, Greece is ripe for this type of "leadership."

[BahtHarim]

11:28 PM on 05/17/2012

Exactly. Germany was also experiencing a financial crisis. Very scary.

[starladear002]

07:37 AM on 05/18/2012

Greece will never become a Nazi Germany. By and large the population is too lazy. Forty years of socialism has seen to that. Its all about what has the gov't. done for me lately.

[mcptginc]

08:35 AM on 05/18/2012

Yes this financial crisis, if history is used as a gauge, may lead to war eventually. When the Soverign bubble bursts as it did in the Weimar Republic of Germany this is what you get. Don't be surprised if we get sucked up into WWWlll...only this time America will be too economically weakened to hold World Power status. Just like England after WWll. America will face a similar fate in all this if we do not get spending under control. One day the world will wake up to OUR crushing debt load and will have no faith in our fiat currency then you will see hardship like never before.

[chriskotx]

11:45 PM on 05/17/2012

Leftist socialism gives way to fascist socialism.

[candysays]

01:12 AM on 05/18/2012

Get a grip

[Emereaux]

01:17 AM on 05/18/2012

Actually they are far right extremists and identify with the Nazi party....

[OzzieTonto]

10:21 PM on 05/17/2012

There are so many criminals in Golden Dawn, if there's a Greek FBI they'll have 'em under surveillance. Murderers, thugs (who bashed a professor for his views) and other lowlife. Likely a matter of time before they disqualify themselves from office. (Ain't it illegal for a criminal to be in parliament? Though not in my country, sadly).

[Lechiffre]

07:46 AM on 05/18/2012

Their leader says he'll built landmines across the turko-greek borders ? lol! where is he going to get the money .The foreign speculators he despises ? Meanwhile Turkey has renewed its interest in joining the EU.