“Golden Dawn is a genuine offspring of Nazi ideology, and this is the motive behind their actions. Members owed absolute obedience to the hierarchy. Everything was organised and known to the Central Leadership.” With these words, the public prosecutor of the bench of the Five-Member Court of Appeal for Felonies, Kyriaki Stefanatou, set out her assessment of the criminal organisation Golden Dawn in her address, which is still ongoing.
Referring to Golden Dawn, the prosecutor expressed no doubt about the organisation’s defining characteristic: “It is a Nazi party, modelled on the Thule Society, the cradle of Germany’s National Socialist Party, whose order bearing the name Golden Dawn had as a fundamental principle that ‘there is not enough space on Earth for everyone’.” She also noted that Hitler himself served in this specific Order.
As the prosecutor stated characteristically regarding Golden Dawn and the 42 defendants, “it is a genuine offspring of Nazi ideology, and this is the motive behind their actions”. She added that although the defendants claim they were seeking German reparations, in reality “they are admirers of Hitler’s Germany”.
She further stated that Golden Dawn is not a political party but a criminal organisation, noting that the party functioned as a “front” to cloak its “actions and activism”. Citing the testimony of a witness at the trial, a co-founder of Golden Dawn, she said that the organisation’s members were “outcasts, professionally unsuccessful… Michaloliakos was interested in organising assaults. He was a man of the street. Golden Dawn was the street”.
The prosecutor stressed that this witness did not make these statements in order to attack Golden Dawn, but rather to support his former comrade Nikos Michaloliakos. “It is not a criminal organisation, it is a gang,” he told the court.
Ms Stefanatou elaborated in detail on the trajectory of Golden Dawn’s founder and leader, Nikos Michaloliakos. She also referred extensively to the issue of Golden Dawn’s statutes.
“I always wonder why people who are genuinely intelligent consider everyone else to be stupid,” the prosecutor said, referring to the efforts of the defendants accused of leading the criminal organisation to conceal their Nazi ideology. “Before the cock crowed three times, they denied their Nazi ideology,” she remarked.
“When we look at Auschwitz, we see the end of the process,” Ms Stefanatou said, citing an earlier statement by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which stresses that a prior process of dehumanisation and degradation of social groups had taken place. “They called them ‘cockroaches’,” the prosecutor said, referring to statements made by defendants.
“The fact that everyone may hold whatever ideology they wish in their own home does not negate the anti-racist law or the socially destructive consequences of National Socialism: the targeting of minorities, the social degradation that turns into stigma, and the pursuit of their extermination,” Ms Stefanatou noted, underlining that Golden Dawn’s ideology never changed.
During her address, the prosecutor cited a multitude of statements and texts by Nikos Michaloliakos and other defendants convicted at first instance for leadership roles, which clearly refer to Nazi ideology. “Michaloliakos says ‘we are Nazis’ and notes how much they despise elections and democracy,” the prosecutor said.
The prosecuting authority placed particular emphasis on Golden Dawn’s hierarchical structure, the complete subordination of its members to the organisation’s central planning, and the continuous ενημέρωση of the central leadership regarding all activities. She therefore read out a series of internal circulars and regulations which, as Ms Stefanatou stated, show that “everything was organised and known to the Central Leadership”.
At the outset of her address, Ms Stefanatou fully outlined the legal framework applicable to the defendants following successive amendments to the Criminal Code, stressing that the more lenient provision applies both in terms of sentencing and with regard to the legal definition of the offence of participation in a criminal organisation.
The prosecutor emphasised from the very beginning that Golden Dawn is “a criminal organisation that operated for thirty years and evolved into a party. It is not a rabble nor a gang”.
Ms Stefanatou’s address continues.
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