© Milos Bicanski /Getty ImagesSupporters of the Greek ultranationalist party Golden Dawn holding a rally in Athens on the eve of European Parliament elections, May 23, 2014
Just hours after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's new cabinet was sworn into office on Sept. 23, Twitter users began protesting the appointment of one of his junior ministers, Dimitri Kamenos, from the right-wing anti-austerity party Independent Greeks.
Kamenos had published homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist comments on Twitter.
Within hours, Kamenos was fired, making his tenure one of the shortest in Greek political history. What's most worrying about the incident is not his racist tweets, but the fact that reactionary views have gained popularity in crisis-ridden Greece, especially in areas where migrants are arriving in large numbers. And there is real risk that the popularity of these views will increase.
In Kos and Lesbos, the epicentres of the refugee crisis, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party doubled its share of the vote, exceeding 10 per cent in some places.
The absence of functioning government institutions in Greece — and the total lack of a collective European Union policy to address the crisis — have created the conditions that hateful ideologies need in order to grow.
While the local authorities were waiting for the central government to react, and
as the Greek government waited for the European Union to make up its mind about the growing waves of immigration that flooded the islands, the neo-Nazis took advantage of the situation to spread their hate.
In Kos, which is overwhelmed by an influx of refugees, I witnessed the rise of neo-Nazi influence. Shop owners openly expressed their indignation and xenophobic views. A 50-year old woman at the port complained that immigrants are filthy and that extremist Islamists are hiding among them. "Soon enough, the Greeks will become a minority in our own land," she told me.
A few days later Golden Dawn released a video in which three children called upon voters to support Golden Dawn, keep Greece for the Greeks, and urged them not to become a minority in their own country.
Never mind that almost all asylum seekers leave Kos as soon as the police allow them to move on.
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