The SYRIZA Phenomenon; Or, How The Greek Center-Right Shot Itself In The Foot
![voula-papachristou[1]](https://www.vdare.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/voula-papachristou1.jpg)
Repressed Golden Dawn supporter Voula Papachristou, thrown off Greece’s Olympic team for her opinions.
See also by Dimitrios Papageorgiou: Greek Anti-Immigration Party Golden Dawn Survives Crackdown—Because It’s Rooted In Middle Class and Like It Or Not, Golden Dawn Fighting Genocide In Greeceby Nicholas Stix
The electoral triumph of SYRIZA in Greece made worldwide headlines: the hard-Left party managed to get an impressive 36.3%, leaving behind the center-right New Democracy governing party, which got 27.8%. Golden Dawn, a new anti-immigration party widely denounced as neo-Nazi, came third with 6.28%. Greece, the center of a renewed European crisis, has taken a radical turn.
SYRIZA is the first hard-Left party to take power in Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union. (The name is an acronym, in Greek, for Coalition of the Radical Left.)
In order to understand the importance of this, we must look at what SYRIZA is. Greek electoral law gives a bonus of 50 seats in parliament to the party that achieves the highest popular vote. But it will not give this much-needed bonus to a coalition of parties. Until recently—just a couple of years ago—SYRIZA was such a coalition, of many leftist parties of various tendencies including Maoist,Trotskyist, Leninist and even some with anarchist leanings. All those, with the addition of voters abandoning the failing socialist party PASOK, have merged nominally into one party, but still fiercely hold into their different views.
That means that there are several agendas that will come into play the next years: internationalist, communist, anti-military. And, of course, pro-immigrant—many of these groupuscules have been trying to make inroads into the immigrant communities in Greece
Others identify themselves with Leftist Latin American governments, notably Venezuela and Cuba. Significantly, the ambassador of Venezuela has recently been accorded celebrity status in SYRIZA’s meetings.
SYRIZA will now pursue schemes like the disarmament of police units, extending voting and citizenship rights to immigrants, the building of mosques in Athens and of course harsher laws against “xenophobia” and “racism” (which includes thought crimes). But this agenda has not been widely discussed in Greece, since all debate in the election was focused on the economy.
A few years ago, SYRIZA was a small party that in every election would be in agony over whether it would reach the 3% popular vote threshold required to enter in the parliament. What were the changes in Greek politics that brought it this ten-percentage point win over the long-established New Democracy party? ...
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