Far right Golden Dawn party threatens to throw out illegal immigrants after winning parliamentary seats in electionsFlanked by a Greek version of the swastika and a retinue of young thugs with cropped hair, Nikolaos Michaloliakos celebrated his party's political breakthrough with a threat. "Those who have betrayed the homeland must now be afraid," roared the leader of Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.
The extreme-right street activists leapt into the Greek parliament at the weekend with 7% of the vote.
The breakthrough has come as a shock. At a time of rising rightwing, xenophobic populism across Europe, few parties are so brazen in their espousal of menace and bullying, and intimations of violence as Golden Dawn. Their website carried a death threat against a Greek journalist who had suggested that Michaloliakos might be a candidate for a police investigation rather than a parliamentary seat.
"Greece is only the beginning," Michaloliakos shouted. "You know exactly what I mean."
The party's principal idea is to rid Greece of all "illegal immigrants".
"Out of my country, out of my home! How will we do it? Use your imagination. This victory is dedicated to all the brave youngsters who wear black T-shirts with Golden Dawn written in white."
If the economies of several EU countries are broken, the action being taken to try to repair them may be throwing up a new politics that give the policy-makers in Brussels and Berlin more than they bargained for.
The GuardianFYI, 7% gives them 21 seats in parliament.