Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party chooses backup name in case of ban
Neo-Nazi party to adopt alias in the event of a government ban as clashes erupt with ant-fascist demonstrators in Athens
If the name Golden Dawn is banned, National Dawn will do instead for Greece’s extreme right party.
Ilias Kassidiaris, lawmaker and spokesman for Golden Dawn, has announced the founding of National Dawn, a party that would serve as a way to circumvent a possible ban on Golden Dawn.
“Patriots will have a party to vote for in the next election if [authorities] go ahead with the coup to ban Golden Dawn,” he told a gathering of about 3,000 Golden Dawn supporters on Saturday.
Kassidiaris was the keynote speaker at the Golden Dawn rally held to commemorate a 1996 incident which cost the lives of three navy officers and brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war. Golden Dawn has been holding the rally for years at the monument dedicated to the three officers in central Athens.
While the extreme rightists dispersed peacefully, there were scuffles between leftists staging a counter-rally at Syntagma Square, a few hundred metres away outside the Greek parliament.
“Patriots will have a party to vote for in the next election if [authorities] go ahead with the coup to ban Golden Dawn.”
Police had banned both right and left extremists from marching through central Athens to prevent bloody clashes between the two. The scuffles broke out when the leftists spotted a man carrying a Greek flag, attacking and injuring him slightly.
