Description
This article identifies the ways in which the far-right organization Golden Dawn (GD) has influenced the policy agenda and the frames of mainstream parties on foreign policy initiatives during the seven years that it sat in the Greek parliament. GD, a group grounded on its grassroots profile and with a well-developed non-party sector, was the first neo-Nazi party that entered a Western European parliament since WWII. Gaining popularity during the outbreak of the financial crisis in the early 2010s and watering-down its xenophobic rhetoric, it gathered twenty-one parliamentary seats in 2012 and remained in parliament for seven years, until 2019 for its involvement in a series of criminal offenses against both foreign and native citizens. The paper carries out content analysis of party manifestos and speeches delivered by the leaders of the parties in the Greek parliament in the period 2009-2016, in order to capture change across time, specifically pre and post GD entry in the Greek parliament. The focus of the analysis is on two Greek foreign policy issues, Turkey and North Macedonia, which often dominate the policy agenda. Whenever polarising foreign policy issues came to dominate the domestic political arena, Golden Dawn had an opportunity to spread its influence on policy agenda-setting, prioritising issues that have been supported by the more extremist groupuscules, paramilitary units, and ideologues affiliated with it. Our paper contributes to the debate on the influence of far-right non-party actors on policy outcomes through the shaping of geopolitical narratives that challenge both the EU’s current and future borders and its cultural identity.
