Twilight of the idols - Rise of Golden Dawn an outgrowth of Greece's crumbling establishment

[FarCenter]

The most poignant message to come out of Greece's latest ballot was that Golden Dawn, the xenophobic party with the meander emblem that closely resembles the swastika, is here to stay.

Many people had hoped that a number of high-profile, controversial incidents that occurred after an inconclusive vote last month would put voters off by exposing the true character of the party.

They were wrong. Golden Dawn eventually managed to hold its ground and once again secure some 7 percent of the national vote, vindicating those experts who claim that the structural conditions are in place to guarantee that the Greek neo-Nazi party won't be just a flash in the pan. This would mean that even if the economic crisis were to disappear, the extremist threat would remain.

“I think that Greece's historical conditions and institutional shortcomings have played a more important role in the party's rise than the economic crisis,” says Vassiliki Georgiadou, a political science professor at Panteion University in Athens. “Golden Dawn has been strengthened by the collapse, or in any case perceived collapse, of the country's party and political system,” she adds. The party has tried to exploit this by relying on anti-systemic, highly divisive discourse to attract support. “I'd like to thank the hundreds of thousands of Greeks who did not ‘correct’ their vote, as they were urged to do by paid journalists and propagandists, and stayed on the side of Golden Dawn,” party boss Nikos Michaloliakos said in a televised message after Sunday's vote.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite3_1_21/06/2012_448354

[freshwest]

1. Appears to be a dangerous trend with youth unacquainted with history, but this puzzled me:

With the exception of multiculti idealists on the left, most people here are ready to acknowledge the disruptive fallout from the massive influx of clandestine immigrants. According to Frontex, the European Union's border agency, 57,000 illegal immigrants -- from Africa, Asia and the Middle East -- were recorded trying to cross the Greek borders in 2011. More than 1 million are believed to live in Athens today.

This is the part I don't understand:

Under the EU's Dublin II regulations, Greece has to accommodate all migrants entering the bloc via its borders; transit to other EU countries is not permitted.

Is this saying that immigration to Greece is a one-way street? What am I missing here? It seems that would be impossible to sustain.

The article explains some of the problems below, but forcing Greece to handle more people than it could, was predictable.

With the economic downturn resulting in a lack of jobs, many of them are stuck in limbo, unable to move into another European country or back home. Some resort to crime to survive.

[jwirr]

2. My guess is that this law is addressing the need to patrol their borders to keep people out or be

responsible for them. Kind of like the people coming across our southern border and heading for Canada.

[freshwest]

4. Okay, I was wondering what it meant. If all the countries are being treated the same under the EU,

Then this is just a matter of them not funding their government to adjust to the immigration or to provide border security. The link mentions the government putting up a fence between at the Turkish border but claims it's merely a zenophobic gesture to placate angry natives, not really a plan to deal with the situation. Thanks for the ideas.

[FarCenter]

3. Dublin II deals with assylum seekers

Most illegal immigrants would be economic immigrants, so I don't see why Greece doesn't simply make that determination and send them home.

But yes, in order not to have assylum seekers shopping around from country to country, Dublin II places the responsibility on the country where they entered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation

[freshwest]

5. I can understand that agreement. The Golden Dawn group appears to embrace that, just negatively.

They seem to be like the Tea Party who are against these immigrants for racial reasons. Those called economic refugees have a moral right like asylum seekers to have a better life. Where does one draw the line in a global economy?

From other threads it appears that the Greeks did not pay their taxes to maintaing their social order, or at least they did not make the wealthy pay their taxes. This might be a lesson for all of us.

Much more immigration, legal and illegal, will happen with climate change, as predicted by the seventies Pentagon study. This is just the human and social cost of overpopulation and less places to live. There is a new thread saying that half the world's land mass in no longer producing what people need to live and that it is approaching critical mass.

Thanks for the input.

[FarCenter]

6. Climate change will increase migration pressures; therefore borders will be closed and defended.

[freshwest]

7. Sadly, I agree. That will make for more tension between countries, don't you think?

Will belief in equality be reduced by this trend?

I wonder how a belief in human rights can survive if birthright is the main consideration to access to the means to maintain life.

[FarCenter]

8. Greece itself is a product of forcing Slavs and Turks out, and incoming Greeks deported from Turkey

Usually people starve or die of disease pretty much in place, rather than migrating. In many cases those starving are subsistance farmers whose crops have failed. The Sahel a few years ago is a good example.

What is unclear is what will happen when populations in the subtropical and tropical megacities start to die off.

Egypt may be an interesting case to follow, since it is the largest importer of wheat in the world, and if it loses its susidies it has little means of generating foreign exchange to pay for food.

[FarCenter]

9. Sahel conditions now

Food crisis worsens in Mali's Timbuktu

[link:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/06/20126205545931365.html|
Burkina Faso food crisis worsened by influx - Drought-stricken country struggles to cope as more than 60,000 Malians cross border to escape fighting]

Interactive: Mapping the Sahel drought

[jwirr]

10. Yes, and that in many ways is sad. I understand the need but imagine where we would be if that

had been the case when our ancestors left an over crowded Europe.

[FarCenter]

11. That was a case of agriculturalists overwhelming hunter-gatherers

This has generally been the case, whether Middle Eastern agriculturalists spreading out over Europe, the expansion of rice farming cultures in Asia, and the Bantu expansion in Africa.

North and South American, Australian, and South African hunter gatherer cultures did not have the resources to oppose their military conquest.

Other areas, which already had agricultural populations (e.g. India and China) were more successful in opposing and eventually expelling Europeans.

But since agricultural societies are now everywhere, it is less likely that there will be any more large scale migrations that are able to overwhelm defenses.

[jwirr]

12. I think you are correct about the future. For instance the Horn of Africa has waited far too long to

make immigration an option except to nearby countries. Too many are too weak to make it feasible.