https://vimeo.com/140641573
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What’s in the mind of the neo-nazi next-door?
For all languages please visit: goldendawnapersonalaffair.com/
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“My partner in life is a Jew, one of my sons is gay, another is an anarchist, and I am a left-wing feminist as well as a daughter of immigrants. If Golden Dawn comes to power our only problem will be which wagon they will put us on.”
A journalist is delving for years into the organization of the Greek neo-Nazi party “Golden Dawn”.
The financial collapse, the political instability and the family relations are placed into the spotlight as the documentary is trying to discover “what’s in the head of GoldenDawners, who pose as victims” of the system.
Golden Dawn “never hid” its ideology. Its influence in the polls might have been almost nonexistent previously, but the compatibility of this ideology with unshakeable beliefs in Greece – cultivated by many clergymen and most of the Media and political system – is the fertile ground on which the organization flourishes.
The director is looking into the matter through her personal obsessions, her concerns and fears, after dedicating many years and another two television documentaries in approaching the neo-Nazi party, which has taken the third position in Greece’s political system after three decades of obscure but bloody activity.
Director: Angélique Kourounis | Production: omniatv.com | Co-production: Arte, Yemaya Productions
How can a racist party that was getting less than 0.2% of the vote for years, enter parliament with 18 MPs?
How can a party that promotes violence, hate, sexism and murders amplify its reach after each pogrom?
How can Golden Dawn, when in France it could never exist – in the same way -, remain the third political power in Greece for four years?
What’s in the mind of a Goldendawner?
It’s with these questions that I began filming, at about end of 2009 to early 2010. But, the more I was getting on with the research, the more I realized that my motive was fear.
With a father-in-law and a grandmother in the Resistance, a mother-in-law that had to take off the yellow star in order to pass through enemy lines and bring back food to her family, with an uncle and an aunt that returned from Auschwitz, I was brought up with stories of the War. A world that, I was told, would never exist again.
Is it so, then?
As I gathered more and more images, I was getting the feeling that no, it isn’t like that.
I was obsessed with the men in black: “How could someone be a Goldendawner today?” I had this question every single day. To this day still, after five years of research, this question remains. I don’t have an answer. The crisis is not the only explanation. Those who choose and vote for the Golden Dawn have various, different motives.
What I know, though, is that they are extremely dangerous. Especially because few people take them seriously.
This film is not answering the questions I had and I still have. I do hope though that it is bringing into the light enough evidence for all to understand how dangerous Golden Dawn is.
Because, in the end, there’s no difference at all between Golden Dawn’s “Greece to the Greeks” and the Nazi inscription “Jude” on Jews’ shops.
In both cases, society did not react.
