Greece, the fabled birthplace of democracy has, according to its critics, behaved in a distinctly undemocratic manner by arresting leading members of the far-right Golden Dawn party, which at the last election, came from nowhere to have 18 legislators elected to parliament. The party's leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, was taken into custody on Saturday along with all 17 other Golden Dawn members of parliament. They have been charged with belonging to a criminal organization. Police claim to have found weapons and ammunition, along with many thousands of euros at the home of Michaloliakos The response from the party has been a predictable cry that this is an attempt to curb free speech. Albeit through gritted teeth, some left-of-center civil rights bodies have echoed the protest. Yet there are limits to democracy, even in Greece. The will of the people, as expressed through the ballot box, is not always wise. Consider Germany in 1933. Hitler's Nazi party won a majority (albeit reduced) in the Reichstag elections. Within a year, all political parties, save the Nazi party had been banned, democracy snuffed out and Germany embarked upon a murderous tyranny that led to the slaughter of the Second World War. In 1946, the Communist party emerged as the largest party in elections in Czechoslovakia, though with only 31 percent of the vote. The Czechoslovaks were to have fifty years of Communist dictatorship in which to rue their decision. The fact that almost seven percent of the Greek electorate voted for the Golden Dawn party, with its Swastika-like logo, can in no way legitimize its message of racial hatred, nor the thuggish activities of its street fighters, who in the last two years have been responsible for some 260 racist attacks, in which two immigrants have been killed. The final straw for the authorities appears to have been the murder of a left-wing Greek singer, by a Golden Dawn party member, who boasted of his party membership. Decent Greeks have regarded the rise of this hate-filled movement with increasing alarm. It was clear that elements within the police force either actively supported Gold Dawn or were prepared to go easy on its bullyboys. It is significant that along with the arrests of party members, a number of police officers has been taken into custody and several more obliged to resign. There will be those who maintain that investigations by justice officials meant that the authorities needed time before they could act decisively against these fascists. Maybe so. The Golden Dawn leadership certainly appears to have been given more than enough rope with which to hang itself. What is needed now is a robust criminal process, in which the loathsome activities and views of these people are exposed to public view. It can be expected that there will be all sorts of legal maneuvers to try and exonerate the party and its leadership. There will also doubtless be plangent appeals to the European Court of Human Rights. Such tactics will stick in the craw of all reasonable Greeks. Golden Dawn is a violent, bigoted political party that gave no thought to the human rights of its immigrant victims. Its presence within the Greek parliament dishonors the whole democratic process, as well as those Greeks who voted for it in the first place.
