Could Finland and the Nordic region see Golden Dawn-like fanatics in the future?

The news from Greece is getting more distressing as Golden Dawn neo-Nazi thugs continue to terrorize sensible Greeks, immigrants and other minorities with the collusion of the police. An investigative report by The Guardian exposes how bad things are in Greece at present and why matters will get far worse. Could we see something similar happening in Finland and the Nordic rgion? 

 A policeman wearing a Golden Dawn t-shirt under his uniform. See original post here.

Writes the Independent of London: “Actual fascists in actual black shirts are actually marching around Athens waving swastikas and burning torches, and maiming and murdering ethnic minorities, and world governments appear frighteningly relaxed about it as long as the Greek people continue to pay off the debts of the European elite.”

For a person who saw military dictatorships come and go in Latin America in the 1970s like I did, the ever-worsening situation in Greece  is a cause for concern.

The fact that up to 50% of the police is some districts of Greece voted for Golden Dawn, shows how volatile and dangerous the situation is in that country. Taking into account that many Greeks have lost confidence in their rulers and democracy, a blow to the credibility of the police is another straw on the camel’s fragile back.

Migrant Tales wrote in September about the round up of 16,836 foreign nationals were brought for questioning  during the first month that Xenios Zeus was instigated. Xenios Zeus means “god of hospitality” in Greek.

Here’s one recent case of those many beatings taking place in Greece daily by Golden Dawn thugs and the police on I can’t relax in Greece blog.

Just like the Jews were persecuted by the Nazis after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the same is going in many parts of Europe and especially in Greece. Apart from Jews, refugees, immigrants, gays and Muslims are the new scapegoats.

While we erroneously believe in scapegoating the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society because they have no political and economic power, we will end up the losers. How? By watering down and putting into cold storage our civil rights to deal first with imagined menace x and then menace y.

The political culture in the Nordic region is different from Greece. Even so, it doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have our own Nikolaos Michaloliakos running amuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4AXJx3IzdY

While some far-right politicians may not speak like Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos, they hold the same thoughts on immigration, minorities and anything too foreign or non-European for their tastes.

Without a doubt, one of Michaloliakos’ political soul mates in a Nordic context is Pia Kjærsgaard of the Danish People’s Party (DDP). Other ones include the Suomen Sisu faction of the Perussuomalaiset (PS): Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola and other hardliners, who are openly neo-fascists or flirt with neo-fascism.

Taking into account the election successes of anti-immigration parties in the Nordic region before, there was one person that stopped them on their heels for the time being: Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 victims on his crusade to save Europe from Muslims.

With the economic crisis worsening and the election victories of anti-immigration parties in the Nordic region before 22/7, parties like the DDP, Progress Party of Norway, Sweden Democrats and the PS would have been riding the crest of a wave of popularity.

Without Breivik, they would today reveal their same racist arrogance in the same way as the Golden Dawn does in Greece.

The attack by neo-Nazis of a book event on the far right in Jyväskylä in January, the rise in hate crimes in 2011, police indifference to racism, the political rise of the Perussuomalaiset in the 2011 election are just a few signs that matters are heating up in this part of Europe as well.