— J

I generally respect your blog, and love your sarcasm. I attended a school that is respected in the areas of international relations and political theory, and I consider myself fairly informed. I have been following your posts on this issue, and I see that you often respond to people who write you, so I am hoping for a response 🙂 !

I am somewhat concerned about the situation with Golden Dawn, more than I have been concerned about anything that I have observed in recent history. On the one hand, I see that Golden Dawn has potentially spread rhetoric that supports violence against members of Greek society based upon ethno-racial characteristics. Notice something important here: I say POTENTIALLY, because I have not seen any “official” statements from the organization advocating or calling for violence against immigrants or the domestic Jewish population, despite that I recognize that Golden Dawn makes public statements denouncing those groups, and speaking against them publicly. I have seen on your website that you claim that they advocate violence, and I am curious to understand what you mean by that … Did the Golden Dawn explicitly call for the citizens of Greece to “take up arms” — if you will — against other individuals, citizens or not, of the nation? Or when you assert that they have incited violence, are you saying that there are inexplicit components, observed in the rhetoric, of their statements or speeches that encourages greeks to take up violence?

But building upon this point, it does seem to me that there have been overt attempts, and their continues to be an overt attempt in the media, to label the Golden Dawn as having incited violence. Again I don’t know if they have or not, but I see that they claim they have not, and I cannot find any explicit evidence of the fact that they have. I see allegations with no evidence.

Beyond this, I see no acknowledgement of the validity of their central claim … which is that mass immigration into their country , mostly from the muslim world, is hurting their domestic citizens, and their government is not responding to the issue. I have heard 20% of the population in Greece ( the actual population) are immigrants, and that the government is not doing anything about this. A critical fact about this situation, and about past situations, is that the rise of the Golden Dawn can most appropriately be attributed a flaw in the political system, and the belief of the “the people” that their government is not acting in their interest. Instead, the situation is most often attributed to the irrationality of the Greek People under the economic pressures of the times, and it is not so clear that the people are behaving irrationally. Are the Greek people behaving irrationally?

“Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the KKK in 1979, reported that the FBI’s COINTELPRO efforts were highly successful. Rival KKK factions accused each other’s leaders of being FBI informants. Bill Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI.[122]
Thompson, the journalist who claimed he had infiltrated the Klan, related that KKK leaders who appeared indifferent to the threat of arrest showed great concern about a series of civil lawsuits filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center for damages of millions of dollars. These were filed after KKK members shot into a group of African Americans. Klansmen curtailed activities to conserve money for defense against the lawsuits. ”

“After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI investigated his death and two local KKK members were convicted of having a role, including Henry Francis Hays, who was sentenced to death. With the support of attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, sued the KKK in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United Klans of America was tried in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald and ordered the Klan to pay US$7 million. To pay the judgment, the KKK turned over all of its assets, including its national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa. After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed for Donald’s death in Alabama on June 6, 1997. It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.”

“Klan splinter divisions grew substantially after the 2008 election of U.S. President Barack Obama, the first African-American to hold the office.[136][137] The Klan has expanded its recruitment efforts to white supremacists at the international level.[138] But in the long run, the Klan’s numbers are steadily dropping, with membership estimated to be between 3,000 and 5,000 as of 2012. This decline has been attributed to the Klan’s lack of competence in the use of the Internet, their history of violence, a proliferation of competing hate groups, and a decline in the number of young racist activists who are willing to join groups at all.[11]
Recent membership campaigns have been based on issues such as people’s anxieties about illegal immigration, urban crime and same-sex marriage.[139] Many KKK groups have formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis. Some KKK groups have become increasingly “nazified”, adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads”

Hence, unlike a previous poster’s “ideal”, not given Free Speech.

This is why infootje’s statement is what it SEEMS like from the outside to be as he says.

Any restriction of free speech is latched on to by *some* USians as Automatically And Always Bad.

It’s really very hard to hear of the same happening inside the USA and statements like that bolster the idea that the USA is some sort of Free Speech Haven.

I, for example, hadn’t heard of any problem the KKK have had being investigated.

(PS while here, on the subject of WW2, the American Forces who aided Europe were deserving of all thanks possible. THEY risked and gave their lives to help others retain their freedom. The problem is three generations later and after all that payment, there are still many americans who want europe to doff their caps for americans who have paid nothing to keep the world free. THOSE people are a different matter)

In the US, we take care of our Nazis and White Supremacists. They have various right, but they are also considered to be dangerous groups. There have been investigations, arrests, and even Al Capone-esque acts. The KKK was virtually shut down several years ago, for a while, when they lost a major civil suit and had to give up their savings.

Note the same certainly goes for the US from a European point of view; the major difference here is your nazi’s are only explicitly so on weekends and holidays, when the white hoods come out and they decide to go do some harassing of homosexuals or of whatever is currently deviant and near.

Shouldn’t you best focus concerns on the nazi running for ‘democratic’ leader among your own people right now, and you know, step in and do something about it?