Golden Dawn, Dark Horizon: Exploring the Rise of Greece’s Ultra-Right Party In the Context of Simultaneous Crises

<a href="https://embed.stanford.edu/iframe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurl.stanford.edu%2Ftz511fz2567" class="su-underline">Show Content</a>

Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Over the past decade, Greece has undergone two simultaneous crises. The first is economic, triggered by the global financial crisis of 2008. Since then, gross domestic product has shriveled by a quarter, and the average Greek has become forty percent poorer. The second crisis is related to immigration: Greece has, over the past decade, become the favored point of entry for most illegal migrants seeking to reach Europe, resulting in an ongoing demographic shift in a previously homogenous country. It is in this climate of political and social upheaval that the Golden Dawn, a far-right, neo-Nazi political party, has risen to national prominence, becoming the country’s third most-popular party in the 2015 elections. In this thesis, I seek to determine whether either or both of these crises have influenced Golden Dawn’s sudden electoral success. I argue that, although the economic crisis laid a foundation for the party’s rise, Golden Dawn’s success is not simply a function of its ability to garner support from the country’s most economically disadvantaged. Instead, the party has found success by campaigning on a platform that promises the return of Greek society to its pre-crisis status quo, both economically and demographically. Specifically, the Golden Dawn shapes itself as a response to the cultural threat imposed by both the economic and immigration crises, as both have induced feelings of status loss among the Greek electorate.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 11, 2018

Author	Savellos, Zoe
Advisor	Stedman, Stephen
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/tz511fz2567

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).

Preferred Citation: Savellos, Zoe. (2018). Golden Dawn, Dark Horizon: Exploring the Rise of Greece’s Ultra-Right Party In the Context of Simultaneous Crises. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/tz511fz2567

Stanford University, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. (CDDRL)

Loading usage metrics...