Golden Dawn and Front National.pdf

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Golden Dawn and Front National: A Comparison of Ideological
Discourse
By: George (Georgios) Triantafillou
Thesis submitted to the
Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the Master’s degree in Political Science
Department of Political Science
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Ottawa
© George Triantafillou, Ottawa, Canada, 2016
George (Georgios) Triantafillou
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER 2: SCHOLARSHIP ON THE RADICAL RIGHT ............................................................... 7
CHAPTER 3: FAR AND RADICAL RIGHT IDEOLOGIES ............................................................... 15
CHAPTER 4: FRONT NATIONAL – THE PROTOTYPICAL RADICAL RIGHT PARTY .......... 29
.
CHAPTER 5: FRONT NATIONAL – DISCOURSE DÉDIABOLISÉ UNDER MARINE LE PEN 42
.
CHAPTER 6: GOLDEN DAWN – THE DAWN OF GREEK NEO-NAZISM ................................... 55
CHAPTER 7: GOLDEN DAWN – EXTREME NEO-NAZI IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE ............ 69
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION – THE COMPARISON OF IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSES ............ 90
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................. 101
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George (Georgios) Triantafillou
Abstract
The literature has lacked a comparative analysis into Greece's Far Right party, Golden Dawn's, (GD)
ideological discourse. The Far Right party is the most extreme in the Greek Parliament, promoting an
ultra-nationalist agenda and being accused of operating as a terrorist organisation by the state.
Looking at characteristics such as nationalism, euroscepticism and authoritarianism, this thesis
compares GD to the prototypical radical right party, Front National (FN), and predicts that they will be
more radical in every aspect of their discourse. In addition, it seeks to fit them within a party
classification.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
The rise of the far right in Greece is not a new phenomenon. The Popular
Orthodox Rally (LAOS) spearheaded the Greek radical right movement prior to the
2012 elections. Although they seemed to be in a position to profit from the Greek
economic meltdown, the coalition government vote in favour of the first bailout
package was the nail in the coffin for the party, disbanding and disappearing from
the Greek Parliament completely in the following 2012 general elections. In their
wake, the Golden Dawn (GD), an even more radical party, took their place winning
7% of the vote and 21 seats in parliament. The June 2012 elections saw their seats
drop to 18 while holding the same percentage of the vote, then dropped again in
January 2015 to 17 while maintaining virtually the same percentage of the vote. In
the most recent 2015 elections, Golden Dawn managed to gain another member of
parliament, bringing the total elected members of parliament back up to 18 while
obtaining 7% of the vote again. Golden Dawn was an openly neo-Nazi party
previously (some argue it still is), and its violent rise has not only shocked the Greek
people, but many in Europe.
Golden Dawn’s ideological discourse differs from that of LAOS, as it does
from other radical right parties in Europe. The party has two main ideological
documents: Golden Dawn: An Ideological Movement and Political Stances: On the
Golden Dawn of Hellenism. Both documents that are readily available on their
website (in Greek), describe Golden Dawn’s ideology along with its political,
economic and social stances. Using these two core documents, along with scholarly
articles and documents written by the party and available on their website, I
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George (Georgios) Triantafillou
compare Golden Dawn’s ideology with a staple radical right party, for which I use
the French Front National (FN). As radical right parties such as these can have
varying ideological discourses, this paper seeks to answer the question: to what
degree is Golden Dawn similar or different from a typical radical right wing party
such as the Front National?
I have chosen the FN because it can be considered the prototypical radical
right wing party. The party has been in existence since the 1970s and has
experienced a sizeable degree of success in the French political arena for quite some
time. In addition, as opposed to most radical right parties that exist for a short
period of time, only to dissolve or merge with other fringe parties, the FN has been
around the longest with surprising longevity and with no evidence that the party
will soon fall off the map like so many others have. For this reason, the FN remains
an idol for new radical right parties, and serves as a strong example for which the
GD could be compared to.
Using the comparative analysis approach to compare the two parties, I
address far right elements such as nationalism (and all its different forms therein),
anti-establishment stances, euroscepticism (scepticism of European integration),
immigration positions, crime and punishment, constitutionalism versus anti-
constitutionalism, militarism, decadence and palingenesis (national rebirth) found
in the two parties. I conduct an in-depth analysis of the Golden Dawn’s published
manifestos with other official documents as well as available articles on their
website that could supplement the information in their manifestos or portray the
party’s ideology in a practical ‘news article’ fashion, revealing their ideological
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