General

Article on Church influence and Western Individualism

/16 Comments/in /by

I have a paper that was just published in Mankind Quarterly:

Can Western Church Influence Explain Western Individualism? Comment on “The Church, Intensive Kinship, and Global Psychological Variation” by Jonathan F. Schulz et al., Mankind Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2020): 371-391.

This paper is a critique of a paper by Jonathan Schulz that appeared in 2019 in Science and got quite a bit of publicity. A co-author and likely inspiration for the project is Joseph Henrich, professor and chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard and thus is well acquainted with evolutionary perspectives. However, while he acknowledges evolved, genetic influences on human behavior and that cultural changes may result in genetic changes (the classic example is the evolution of genes for lactose tolerance in some populations consequent to utilizing milk from domesticated cattle), he argues that the prime mover of human evolution is culture. In this scenario, there was nothing special or unique about Western populations prior to the Middle Ages, and that indeed, European populations in the year 1000 AD were markedly less advanced than Muslim societies and China. However, around this time the Catholic Church succeeded in imposing its marriage and family policy which essentially “demolished” intensive kinship relations (i.e., kinship deeply embedded within closely related groups, e.g., clans and kindreds with a distinct hierarchy and based on degree of genetic relatedness) commonly found in agricultural societies. Freed of the ties to intensive kinship groups, individuals gradually gravitated to voluntary associations based on common interests, ranging from merchant guilds to religious sects and scientific societies that ultimately gave birth to the modern world. In 2020 Henrich published The WEIRDest People in the World which is based fundamentally on the research presented in the 2019 Science article.

As I note in the abstract, this contrasts with my recently published book Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition: Evolutionary Origins, History, and Prospects for the Future, which proposes that Western individualism, as expressed in the characteristic European marriage system and in a plethora of other cultural expressions, is ultimately the outcome of selection in the ancestral environments of northern Europe and northern Eurasia more widely. This commentary highlights the historical evidence bearing on these alternative explanations for European exceptionalism. The main conclusion is that European individualism, as expressed in kinship structure and social organization, was firmly established before the advent of Christianity.  My paper has 4 sections:

1. Primordial Tendencies toward Western Individualism: the key issue is signs of individualism in the Indo-Europeans and Northern Hunter-Gatherers that make up the core populations of Western Europe.

2. Sources and Targets of Church Power, where the key issue is whether the Western European tradition of monogamy predated Church influence.

3. How Widespread Was Compliance with the Church’s Rules on Incestuous Marriage? A basic claim of Shulz et al. is that the Church eradicated widespread cousin marriage. I present the case that cousin marriage and clan-type social organization were never characteristic of the West.

4. The Geography of Church Influence. I show that Western individualism does not at all map onto the research on Western family history which shows that some areas of Western Europe long under Church influence (e.g., southern France) retained collectivist family patterns, while some areas of Western Europe that were Christianized late are the most individualistic (Scandinavia).

 

Far Left Center for American Progress Hosts Netanyahu, Leader of the Israeli Ethnonationalist Right

/5 Comments/in /by

Editor’s note: This was originally posted on November 15, 2015, but since Neera Tanden is in the news again as Biden’s choice to head the Office of Management and Budget, I thought it would be of interest. The Israel Lobby has nothing to fear from a Biden Administration. As the article by Glenn Greenwald (linked below notes), 

For years, CAP has exerted massive influence in Washington through its ties to the Democratic Party and its founder, John Podesta, one of Washington’s most powerful political operatives. The group is likely to become even more influential due to its deep and countless ties to the Clintons. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent put it earlier this year: CAP “is poised to exert outsized influence over the 2016 president race and — should Hillary Clinton win it — the policies and agenda of the 45th President of the United States. CAP founder John Podesta is set to run Clinton’s presidential campaign, and current CAP president Neera Tanden is a longtime Clinton confidante and adviser.

When Israeli PM Netanyahu visited the US at the invitation of then House Speaker John Boehner in March, the take-home message was that support for Israel had become a partisan issue, with strong Republican support and relatively weak, dwindling Democrat support. Indeed, the Democrats have an analogous split between the donor class and it base that we  see among the Republicans, but for different reasons.

The Democratic Party establishment and donor class are strongly supportive of the Jewish state and are seeking to find new ways to increase U.S. military aid for Israel following the Iran deal. But recent polling shows that support for Israel among rank-and-file Democrats has fallen by 10 points in one year. A Gallup poll released this year found that fewer than half of Democrats, 48 percent, report sympathizing more with Israelis than with Palestinians as it relates to the Middle East conflict, while 83 percent of Republicans sympathize more with Israel. (John Hudson, Foreign Policy: “Netanyahu Visit Sparks Internal Backlash at Powerhouse D.C. Think Tank“

The White Republican base is more supportive of Israel (at least partly because of a large, terribly misguided Evangelical component) and thus more in tune with the donors on that issue. But it is famously out of step with the donors on social issues—immigration, gay marriage, abortion, etc. On the other hand, the Democrat base is far less supportive of Israel than the donors but, as a coalition of the ascendant non-White majority, it is entirely in step with them on social issues.

The common denominator is that in both parties the donors are substantially Jewish, and these wealthy Jews are pursuing a Jewish diaspora strategy of favoring Israel and leftist stances on social issues.

So in his recent trip to the US, in addition to dunning the Obama administration for a hefty increase in military aid in return for the US not bombing Iran (at least until the Republicans are back in charge), Netanyahu was invited to give a speech at the Center for American Progress, a powerful left-wing lobbying group. The result was that Netanyahu, dedicated to ethnonationalist policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing vis-á-vis the Palestinians and expelling African migrants in Israel, spoke at CAP which is dedicated to the dispossession of White America via immigration and multiculturalism in the name of universal human rights and empathy for the oppressed. There were some tensions, but in the end, the strength of the Israel Lobby on the left in the US was reaffirmed — and CAP bigwigs burnished their credentials for high-level positions in a putative Hillary Clinton administration.

The tensions among CAP staffers were real—after all, not everyone on the left is dedicated to double standards and hypocrisy. A dissenting statement that received broad support at a staff meeting included comments on the 2014 Gaza bombing that resulted in the deaths “over 2000 people — many of them children” and the incongruity of supporting Ferguson protesters while turning a blind eye to Israel’s treatment of peaceful protests by Palestinians. (Ali Gharib and Clifton, The Nation, “Dissent breaks out at CAP“).

CAP had already been under pressure for some time from neoconservatives and AIPAC for whom controlling the media narrative via censorship and intimidation is standard procedure.

The internal dissent at CAP comes after a report by Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept that exposed CAP’s conduct following a smear campaign against several of its staffers in 2011 and 2012, including us (Gharib was quoted in Greenwald’s report). After being attacked by Israel lobby groups and neoconservatives for critical writing about Israel, [CAP president Neera] Tanden implemented a protocol to monitor our writing, including setting certain subjects—such as criticism of AIPAC—off limits and, in one instance, censoring our work after publication. According to the Intercept, CAP imposed the measures as a means of currying favor with right-leaning pro-Israel groups and figures.

It’s therefore no surprise that the decision to invite Netanyahu required some intellectual gymnastics. Winnie Stachelberg, CAP’s Executive Vice-President for External Affairs, justified the decision by stating that Netanyahu would be subjected to hard questioning, and

she noted that as a think tank, “we believe we need to be open in engaging with people we don’t agree with.”

“Had we said no [to Netanyahu], there would be no public forum where he would’ve been asked tough questions, and quite frankly, we would’ve been hypocritical,” she said. She noted that the Israelis reached out to CAP in the first place and that in the past, CAP has been “highly critical of the prime minister for only dealing with the right.” (John Hudson, Foreign Policy: “Netanyahu Visit Sparks Internal Backlash at Powerhouse D.C. Think Tank“

So I guess CAP will be inviting me soon to discuss immigration policy and White ethnic interests.

CAP officials may well be motivated by the possibility of high positions in a new Clinton administration—yet another example of how Jewish lobbying groups are able to provide very tangible, career-making rewards for being on board with their agenda. All you have to do is sell your soul. The anti-White revolution is massively incentivized.

The controversy at CAP has gained attention given the organization’s close affiliations with the Clinton family. CAP’s first president and founder, John Podesta, was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and is Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman. CAP‘s current president, Tanden, served as policy director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008. If Clinton manages to win her bid for the White House, a number of CAP staffers are well positioned for plum jobs in the next U.S. administration. In Clinton’s bid for the White House, the Democratic front-runner has delicately sought to convince Jewish voters that she would be better for Israel than Obama. She has expressed this to wealthy pro-Israel donors in a number of closed-door discussions, with varying levels of success. Some Obama administration officials and left-leaning activists resent such overtures. (Hudson, linked above)

But besides personal ambition of CAP officials, Philip Weiss correctly blames the power of the Jewish establishment in the US:

The answer is not a conspiracy of donors. Though, yes, donors matter. The answer is the importance of Zionism inside the US establishment. It is the sincere belief among empowered Jews like Dana Milbank, Alan Dershowitz, and Matt Dorf that the establishment of Israel was the redemptive end point of a tragic European Jewish history, and that American Jews are equal partners in the fulfillment of that redemption. This is a sincere, core belief on the part of countless Jewish politicians, journalists, donors and thinktank officials, many of them liberals.

In the event, it was a cake walk for Netanyahu:

Yesterday was a display of the Israel lobby’s strength in the Democratic Party. Netanyahu’s audience was obtained by the American Israel Political Affairs Committee — AIPAC — and the room was rigged, the questions were rigged, every moment from start to finish was scripted to make Netanyahu seem acceptable in Democratic circles. The crowd in the room looked like it was drugged. [In fact, the crowd was by invitation-only, guaranteed to be supportive of Netanyahu.] There was no animation, little audible response, no effervescence. The room was stocked with pro-Israel Jews. The only questions from the audience were from stalwarts of the Israel lobby: Morton Halperin of J Street, David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Greg Rosenbaum of the National Jewish Democratic Council. The arrangement of these three questions, two of them putatively adversarial (a Jewish publication quotes J Street saying it was the first time that J Street had ever had a direct encounter with the PM), was straight out of the history of the Soviet Union.

Max Blumenthal said Tanden was auditioning for her job in the forthcoming Clinton administration, and nailing it. Adam Horowitz said, It’s not entirely surprising that Tanden was unimpressive, given that it’s not her area of expertise, but she cowered and Netanyahu loved it. And by the way, the awkward chairs displayed the Prime Minister’s sizeable gut. (James North and Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, Nov. 11)

North and Weiss conclude, a bit optimistically:

Yesterday was also a display of the downfall of the Israel lobby. This is what it’s reduced to: show-conversations, with a rigged room, inside the Democratic Party. Just about everyone in that room was old and just about everyone was Jewish too. It’s not American democracy on display; it’s the dead hand of an old order.

The entirely Jewish audience at an event hosted by an organization avowedly committed to a rainbow vision of America reminds us that this is all about narrow Jewish ethnic interests, and not at all about what’s good for the US.

Actually, the claim that the meeting was nothing more than “the dead hand of an old order” is a bit optimistic. Netanyahu also spoke at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, with the likes of Dick Cheney and Richard Perle in attendance. The neocons are still “the dominant foreign policy force in the Republican party,” and when it comes to donors, it’s not possible for any but the wealthiest Republicans to even think about running for president unless they receive the support of Sheldon Adelson and the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Jewish power is not going away soon in either party, despite the gaps between the donor classes and their bases, because, after all, the really big money provided by the donor class is essential to the success of any political party, and politically motivated Jewish money is not going away any time soon. Philip Weiss notes that “it’s been estimated that on the Democratic side at the congressional level on up, Jews account for half to two-thirds of the funding,” and it’s doubtless at least that high for presidential elections. On the Republican side, it may be slightly less overall, but it’s obvious that Sheldon Adelson’s $100 million for the GOP in 2012 and the other billionaires in the Republican Jewish Coalition simply can’t be ignored.

Liberal_donors_2012

From Vox

As Norman Podhoretz noted, Jews fund the left in America. As I have noted several times, Jewish wealth would be unimportant except that Jews are very effective at using their wealth in ways that promote issues in both major parties that oppose the interests of the traditional American White majority, whether on Israel or on the social agenda of the left (immigration, multiculturalism). Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any candidate for president being successful without the support of pro-Israel Jews who are liberal on social issues—right now their favored candidates are Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. Unless they have their own money.

And that is a major attraction of Donald Trump.

Jews in the Church: Documents Link Prominent Jews to the Southern Baptist Convention  

/22 Comments/in /by

Those who have read my book, The Sword of Christ, will be familiar with the spectacular collapse of that last bastion of Christian Biblical orthodoxy, the Southern Baptist Convention, into Satanic Jewish Leftism. The SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, led by the snake Russell Moore, was the vehicle through which much of this subversion was made. Though Christian Zionists captured the Southern Baptists long ago, the Convention continued for decades to held the line on traditional social issues and, with only a few exceptions, refrained from demonizing its almost wholly White congregants.

That changed during the past decade, with a sharp acceleration after the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Russell Moore led the charge. The Southern Baptists are now in the process of renaming themselves the “Great Commission Baptists,” a decision that Convention President J.D. Greear declared is “essential” to supporting Black Lives Matter. Greear also took it upon himself to insist that “Our Lord Jesus was not a White Southerner but a brown-skinned Middle Eastern refugee.”

New documents reveal Moore and the rest of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, to be hired guns directed by the prominent international Jews George Soros and Paul Singer. It is thus unsurprising that the ERLC recently claimed that “there has been no evidence that voter fraud has been occurring,” and that “widespread election fraud is difficult, if not impossible, to pull off at the presidential level.” Russell Moore’s name also appeared in the Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks in 2016. These documents are not smoking guns, but they are highly suggestive, and provide rare physical evidence of the active Jewish subversion of American Christianity. White Christians must build our own Church, cleansed of the Jew—our Enemy from the start.

Call for papers: National Socialism and the Third Reich

/14 Comments/in /by

CLEMENS & BLAIR, LLC
Call for Contributors
1 November 2020
New anthology book
ESSAYS ON NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH
Thomas Dalton, PhD, editor

In cooperation with Clemens & Blair LLC publishers, we are initiating a new book project, to be  comprised of all-new essays related to truthful, objective, and positive assessments of National Socialist Germany and its leading advocates. After decades of false, slanderous, and misleading demonization by mainstream Western press and academia, it is time to present a fair and honest account of the many remarkable accomplishments of Adolf Hitler and his compatriots during the years 1920 (the advent of NS ideology) to 1945.

This book will be a celebration of the victories and triumphs of the Third Reich, in all aspects of society. It has much to teach us in the present day. Despite any shortcomings, NS Germany contained much that should be honored, cherished, and preserved for posterity.

Topics that could be addressed include:
• The historical and philosophical basis for National Socialism.
• NS women’s issues: improvements to their health and well-being, political rights,
respect, etc.
• NS health care improvements, health innovations, new medical treatments.
• NS race theory, eugenics, and euthanasia: the true story.
• Technical achievements of NS Germany.
• Social and economic achievements of NS Germany.
• Is there such a thing as “Hitlerism”? If so, what is it? And how does it differ from both Aryanism and National Socialism?
• Hitler and others of the time spoke frequently of the importance of “blood”, meaning roughly, race or ethnicity. Given that we do not use such terminology today, and in light of modern genetics, how might one interpret these ideas of “blood”?
• A nominal “core” of National Socialism: Does one exist? What is it?
• The Jewish Question: What was the true meaning of this?
• Consequential and innovative ideas in the thinking of leading NS intellectuals, such as Joseph Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg.
Other topics are of course welcome, provided they conform with the general theme of the book.

CLEMENS & BLAIR, LLC
Objectives:
1) To produce a book of high-quality writings—well-researched but lively—on the above issues.
2) To bring truth and insight to a topic drowning in falsehood and slander.
3) To inspire future thinkers and leaders.
4) To bring in and develop new voices and younger activist/scholars.
5) To give an outlet for women contributors, who have often been dismissed or sidelined in
present-day “dissident right” or “alt-right” discussions.

Goal: We hope to collect 15 to 20 high-quality, well-researched essays to serve as chapters in this
book. Writings must be new or significant modifications to previously published on-line essays.

Specific Details:
• Prospective contributors may submit an original essay of 5,000 to 10,000 words in length, electronically, as a Word file. (Word count applies to main body text, not notes or bibliography).
• All sources should be identified, using proper academic footnoting. Use in-text citations—e.g. (Dalton 2018: 86-88)—to minimize notes. Use footnotes rather than endnotes. Cite all sources and quotations, but otherwise keep both length and number of notes to a minimum.
• Include a bibliography at the end of the submission.
• All references to Mein Kampf must use the new Dalton translation. References to Hitler and Goebbels on Jewish matters should likewise cite Dalton’s Hitler on the Jews or Goebbels on the Jews.
• The use of pejorative terms like ‘Nazi’ and ‘neo-Nazi’ should be avoided wherever possible, unless required by the context.

Prospective contributors must initially submit (1) a working title, (2) an abstract of the essay (less than 250 words), and (3) a short biography, including publishing history.
• Note: We will allow writers to use pseudonyms, but they must be “real” names, not Twitter handles or cartoon avatars.
• ABSTRACTS AND WORKING TITLES ARE NOW BEING ACCEPTED.

Send by email to: thomasdaltonphd@yahoo.com
• Final papers due date: 15 June 2021. Earlier submissions are appreciated.
• All submissions must be emailed to: thomasdaltonphd@yahoo.com
Honoraria: As an incentive, we will provide a $400 honorarium for each accepted essay. But we are unable to award any royalties on sales to contributors, unfortunately.
Thank you for your consideration and prospective involvement in this important new publication!
* * * * * *
Questions or other queries can be directed to the editor, Thomas Dalton:
thomasdaltonphd@yahoo.co

President Trump Could Have Prepared for This

/32 Comments/in /by

After winning the 2016 election, Donald Trump claimed, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

He specified the three states where the fraud was rampant:

Even before he won, he was worried about this problem:

Once he took office, President Trump established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate the matter. Kris Kobach, perhaps the most prominent Republican interested in voter fraud, was its vice chairman. After less than a year of pushback from states and legal battles, the President dissolved the commission. On paper, the Department of Homeland Security was tasked with picking up where the commission left off, but in reality, the issue was dropped.

Then, months before the 2020 election, the President’s interest in fraud picked back up, with a focus on mail-in ballots:

Twitter found some of these claims of potential fraud to be inaccurate, so saddled them with the warning, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” Those words were hyperlinked to an article about how mail-in ballots were not especially subject to fraud. Instead of switching to a less censorious platform, such as Parler or GAB, which would have made his foes and his followers alike make the same change and challenge Twitter’s de facto monopoly, the President simply took to Twitter to express his outrage over Twitter’s censorship:

Despite all of this, the President did not prepare for election day. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Among the president’s advisers, finger-pointing over the campaign’s legal strategy has intensified in recent days, White House and campaign aides said. Aides have expressed acute frustration over what many see as a slapdash legal effort, complaining that—even though Mr. Trump spent months telegraphing his intent to fight the election outcome in the courts—there wasn’t enough planning ahead of Election Day and has been little follow-through on decisions made this week. For days after the election, advisers said they didn’t know who was in charge of the strategy.

Exhibit A in legal incompetence (actually treason to the campaign) is Ben Ginsberg, “the single most prominent Republican election lawyer in the country” (he also signed an amicus brief in favor of gay marriage):

Trump has enlisted a compliant Republican Party in this shameful effort. The Trump campaign and Republican entities engaged in more than 40 voting and ballot court cases around the country this year. In exactly none — zero — are they trying to make it easier for citizens to vote. In many, they are seeking to erect barriers.

All of the suits include the mythical fraud claim. Many are efforts to disqualify absentee ballots, which have surged in the pandemic. The grounds range from supposedly inadequate signature matches to burdensome witness requirements. Others concern excluding absentee ballots postmarked on Election Day but received later, as permitted under state deadlines. Voter-convenience devices such as drop boxes and curbside voting have been attacked….

The President tweeted, but he did not plan. Making matters worse: Many of the people most qualified to prepare the administration for possible malfeasance during this election were kept from doing so. Kris Kobach was never put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, where he could have continued to investigate voter fraud after the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was dissolved. Darren Beattie, one of the most vocal denouncers of last week’s voting irregularities, was pushed out of the Trump administration after the media denounced him for having spoken at the HL Mencken Club. Michael Anton, who warned about a possible leftist coup months ago, left the White House when neocon John Bolton replaced H.R. McMaster as national security adviser.

When it comes to election integrity, like so many other important matters, such as making a serious attempt to tame big tech censorship and biased search results, “President Trump speaks loudly but carries a small stick.” His presidency was not an abject failure, but there was no issue or policy matter where his bark didn’t dwarf his bite. Time after time, he failed to use executive authority to deliver on his promises. He filled important positions with Republican hacks, many of whom eventually turned on him, instead of competent men who backed his national populist agenda. Whenever the going got tough, he had an excuse at the ready. For four years, he tweeted one thing, and did another. If his reelection really was “stolen,” he has only himself to blame.

Golden Dawn Leaders Sentenced to Prison

/6 Comments/in /by

*   *   *

An Athens court sentenced the leadership of Greece’s Golden Dawn party to 13 years in prison on Wednesday, a week after declaring the neo-fascist party a criminal organization in a landmark verdict that wrapped up one of the most important political trials in the country’s modern history.

Last week, the court convicted the party leaders of crimes related to a campaign of attacks against migrants and leftist critics in 2012 and 2013. At the end of a trial that lasted more than five years, the party was tied to a string of attacks, including the fatal stabbing in 2013 of a left-wing rapper, Pavlos Fyssas.

Giorgos Roupakias, a party member convicted of murdering Mr. Fyssas, received the harshest sentence, life plus 10 years. The court could still suspend some of the sentences.

The convictions were widely seen in Greece as a final blow to Golden Dawn, which failed to re-enter Parliament in general elections last year as the trial gradually eroded its popularity. And the outcome has already spurred political upheaval. …

Golden Dawn’s leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, testifying in an Athens court in November.
Credit…Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In addition to Mr. Roupakias’s conviction, five other party supporters or members were found guilty of the attempted murders of three Egyptian fishermen in 2012. Four others were convicted of causing bodily harm in assaults on members of Greece’s Communist Party trade union in 2013.

Mr. Michaloliakos and five other former members of Parliament for Golden Dawn were all sentenced to 13 years in prison. One other former lawmaker who was among the party leaders was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The group’s remaining 11 former lawmakers to be sentenced received prison terms of five to seven years.

Before the sentences, defense attorneys had urged the court to consider mitigating circumstances, citing good character, lawful behavior and, in some cases, their clients’ marriages to foreign women.

…

After the sentences were announced, the court was to deliberate on whether to suspend any of them, a decision that may not come until Thursday. If the court deems any of those convicted not to be a flight risk, it might allow their sentences to be suspended pending the outcome of their appeals.

Golden Dawn’s fall was as spectacular as its rise. It was catapulted from obscurity into the front line of Greek politics at the peak of the country’s financial crisis in 2012-2013 by tapping into public discontent over austerity measures and a growing influx of migrants.

In spite of Golden Dawn’s dramatic decline, neo-Nazism in Greece has not disappeared. Former members of Parliament, including Ilias Kasidiaris, Golden Dawn’s onetime spokesman, have formed parties that embrace similar views.

A memorial at the site where the rapper Pavlos Fyssas was stabbed in 2013. A Golden Dawn member was found guilty of the murder on Wednesday.
Credit…Yorgos Karahalis/Associated Press

Less extreme right-wing parties have also sprung up, including the nationalist Greek Solution.

In a post on Twitter last week, Mr. Michaloliakos, the party’s leader, said Greeks would remember Golden Dawn “when illegal immigrants are the majority in Greece, when they concede earth and water to Turkey, when millions of Greeks are unemployed on the streets.”

He was referring to arrivals of migrants from Turkey and a recent political crisis between the two neighbors over longstanding territorial disagreements and corresponding energy rights.

Mr. Michaloliakos insisted that the party was the victim of a witch hunt. …

Greece Turns against Democracy

/6 Comments/in /by

Whatever you think of Golden Dawn’s personnel, policies, and optics, the latest news from Greece is not good for democracy:

ATHENS — In a landmark verdict in Greece’s highest-profile political trial in decades, an Athens court on Wednesday found the neo-fascist party Golden Dawn guilty of running a criminal organization as it rose to prominence during the country’s financial crisis, systematically targeting migrants and left-wing critics. The ruling came more than five years after the trial began in a makeshift courtroom in Greece’s largest high-security prison near Athens, and as at the beginning of the trial, none of the party officials were in the courtroom where the verdict was announced. 

But thousands of Greek citizens had gathered outside the court on Wednesday, waving banners reading, “They are not innocent,” “Nazis out” and “Life terms to the murderers,” as some 2,000 police officers patrolled the area and helicopters and drones circled above. 

The three-judge criminal court tied the party to a string of attacks including the fatal stabbing in 2013 of a left-wing rapper, Pavlos Fyssas. The party member who stabbed Mr. Fyssas, Giorgos Roupakias, was found guilty of murder on Wednesday.

 Another five Golden Dawn supporters or members were found guilty of attempted murder over assaults on three Egyptian fishermen in 2012, while four were found guilty of causing bodily harm over assaults on members of Greece’s Communist Party trade union in 2013.

Golden Dawn’s case is that the party had no direct link to the attacks and that the charges and trial are “politically motivated.”

Yes, some Golden Dawn members were involved in violent incidents. That is undeniable. But this did not occur in a vacuum. Golden Dawn was constantly subjected to violent attacks by antifa and extreme leftists, who were noticeably absent from the trial for their crimes, including this “unsolved” attack mentioned at Wikipedia:

On 1 November 2013, two men approached the party headquarters in Neo Irakleio, a northern suburb of Athens, and fired indiscriminately. Golden Dawn members Giorgos Fountoulis and Manos Kapelonis were struck and killed, and a third man, Alexandros Gerontas, was seriously injured. A witness reported that a man got off a motorcycle, wearing a helmet, and fired. Police described the shooting as a “terrorist attack”.

Despite constant vilification by the media, the party scored nearly 10% of the vote a few years back. This popularity was based on the party’s championing of working-class Whites hit hardest by Greece’s Neo-liberal and open borders approach. Golden Dawn activists also attempted to protect Greek citizens from ruthless immigrant gangs. This too could only lead to violence.

Greece’s establishment parties, through economic mismanagement and by allowing in hordes of migrants against the will of the Greek people, should be held responsible for creating these violent conditions.

As for Greece’s Leftist parties, these have been deeply involved in violent rioting for decades, with, of course, people dying.

In 2010 a Leftist “anti-austerity” demonstration saw a mob attack a branch of the Marfin Bank in Athens with Molotov cocktails. Witnesses said that protesters marching past the bank ignored the employees’ cries for help, while others just chanted anti-capitalist slogans. Two employees who jumped from the second-story balcony were badly injured and two women and a man were later found dead after the fire was extinguished. The demonstrators, of course, prevented the fire crews from reaching the building.

At the time Michalis Chrysohoidis, the Socialist Minister for Citizen Protection, declared:

Today is a black day for democracy. … Undemocratic forces have [latched on to] a peaceful demonstration of workers and now petrol bombs have killed three of our citizens and put an immediate danger to the lives of others.

Yes, quite! Even though several well-known Left-wing parties participated in the demonstration and riot that led to the fire, no parties were banned and nobody was arrested or punished. Oh wait, a correction — in 2013 three people were convicted. Three staff members of the bank — yes the bank!!! These unfortunates were sentenced for “failing to take adequate measures to protect their staff.” Isn’t this sometimes called victim blaming?

By considering the background of Greece’s largely Leftist-driven violence and the obvious double standard employed by the legal authorities against Golden Dawn, it is clear that what we are witnessing with this criminalisation of a political party is an anti-democratic move by the oligarchical Greek establishment to remove a political choice whose message resonates with large parts of the public, and which would be a threat to the main parties if a level democratic playing field was provided.

“Today is an important day for democracy,” the country’s president, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, said. “Today’s decision is a confirmation of the fact that democracy and its institutions are always capable of fending off any attempt to undermine them.”

Yes, how “democratic” to ban a party for patently anti-democratic reasons. This is a perfect example of Orwellian double speak. But who would have thought it would be taking place in Greece, the cradle of Western democracy?

The parallels with the situation in the U.S. are obvious. Prosecutors in cities like Portland and Seattle are refusing to prosecute leftist rioters, resulting in months of assaults on police, destruction of property, and one murder of a counter-protester. Leftists engaged in violent assaults on the Charlottesville demonstrators have never been prosecuted, while some of those involved in the Charlottesville march are in prison while others are facing civil suits