European Parliament set to usher in first neo-Nazis
Though no stranger to controversy or diatribe, the European Parliament is set to usher in its first fully-fledged neo-Nazis members, from Germany and Greece.
With around 300,000 votes at the European elections the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) was expected to claim one of the country’s 96 seats in the new Parliament, in a historical ground-breaker.
It describes itself as “national socialist,” just like Germany’s Nazis in the 1930s, and is openly xenophobic and anti-Semitic so a group of German regional governments have tried to have it banned for propagating racism.
Meanwhile, with almost all ballots counted in Greece, the neo-Nazi “Golden Dawn” party is claiming over nine percent of the vote, which would net it three seats in the 751-member Parliament.
Golden Dawn was founded in the 1980s by Nikos Michaloliakos, an open admirer of Adolf Hitler. In 2012, Michaloliakos publicly denied the responsibility of Nazis in the mass-murder of six million Jews.