A landmark court decision has dealt a blow to the far-right movement in Greece after MPs with the neo-fascist Spartans party were deprived of seats in parliament.
Citing electoral fraud, a specially assembled electoral tribunal stripped three of the group’s lawmakers, including its leader, of their status in a move that, for the first time since the collapse of military rule, leaves Athens’ 300-seat parliament operating with just 297 MPs.
In an unprecedented step, judges ruled that voters had been “deceived” in general elections two years ago because, although Vasilis Stigkas was described as the party leader, there was another person pulling the strings: Ilias Kasidiaris, an unrepentant neo-Nazi and former leader of the now disbanded Golden Dawn.
Parties in Greece legally cannot run in elections if their “real leaders” have been convicted of crimes such as participating in a criminal organisation.
“The message for the far-right is that it has to respect the norms of democracy, of democratic electoral competition,” said Lamprini Rori, an assistant professor in political analysis at the University of Athens. “Many supporters see Kasidiaris as their natural leader and follow his extreme far-right ideology.”
The Spartans rose seemingly out of nowhere to be elected with 12 MPs in June 2023 after being openly endorsed by Kasidiaris from behind bars after his own party, the Hellenes, was banned from contesting the poll.
An avowed Holocaust denier, Kasidiaris, 44, held sway over the hit squads of Golden Dawn that targeted immigrants and other perceived enemies, earning the party the moniker of Europe’s most violent neo-fascist force.
Following a marathon trial, he was among senior cadres convicted of running a criminal organisation that had masqueraded as a political party and sentenced to 13.5 years in prison. Kasidiaris has since appealed against the penalties.
For several years the ultra-nationalist found ways to address followers through social media from jail. “It may be a far cry from the heyday of Golden Dawn but Kasidiaris still has a support base of mostly young people who hold regular meetings on the internet to discuss his comeback,” said Dimitris Psarras, a prominent left wing author who has written extensively about the far-right in Greece.
“The Spartans were the vitrine of Kasidiaris in parliament,” he said. “While today’s court decision has dealt a crushing blow for a party that, through infighting had already lost support and MPs, it will not affect the appeal of the far-right more generally. Today, sadly, all polls show it is on the rise.”
Golden Dawn’s popularity soared during the nation’s near decade-long debt crisis when large segments of the population were hit by austerity measures enacted in exchange for rescue loans from the EU and International Monetary Fund.
Although the group had been dismantled by 2023, voters returned three far-right parties to parliament in what Rori, currently a fellow at Oxford University, described as “its most significant presence” in the country since the explosion of the debt crisis.
“It’s the first time all strands of the far-right – populist radical, extreme and ultra-conservative religious – are represented simultaneously in parliament,” she said. “We know from the election results that 80 % of voters [for the Spartans] previously supported the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. While [the party] also attracted people who didn’t vote before, many supporters may now be waiting for Kasidiaris to tell them what to do next.”
