How Hate Groups Are Using Charity to Breed Racism Amid the Eurozone Crisis

With so many Athenians going through tough times, the recent decision of the mayor of Athens to ban some free food handouts sounds pretty hard-hearted. Last week, he moved to halt the distribution of lunch packets in a square near central Athens, even banning public gatherings in the area for 24 hours.

He was right, of course. Rather than a genuine act of charity, the handout was a stunt by Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn. You see, when the party’s members aren’t vowing to liberate Istanbul for the Greeks, attacking female politicians on television, massing to batter lone immigrants or punching little girls, they like to play act as defenders of the ethnically acceptable sections of the Greek poor. Using food and clothing handouts as a way to promote a racist, divide-and-rule agenda, Golden Dawn stage meetings where they give food only to people who bring Greek identity cards. They also use these events to display their political affiliations with pride. Following that mayor’s ban, the party staged a meeting at their headquarters, treating recipients to a blast of the 1930s Nazi anthem the "Horst-Wessel-Lied."