Nikolaos Michaloliakos began the foundations of what would become Golden Dawn in 1980 when he published the first issue of the neo-Nazi journal by the name Chrysi Avgi. In this context, Golden Dawn originated in the movement that worked towards a return to right-wing military dictatorship in Greece. Following an investigation into the 2013 murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas by a self-identified member,[30][31] Michaloliakos and several other Golden Dawn MPs and members were arrested and held in pre-trial detention on suspicion of forming a criminal organization.[32] The trial began on 20 April 2015.[33] Golden Dawn lost all its remaining seats in the Greek Parliament in the 2019 Greek legislative election.[34] A 2020 survey showed the party's popularity plummeting to 1.5%,[35] down from 2.9% in the previous year's elections, and a peak of 7.0%.[27]
On 7 October 2020, the Athens Court of Appeals announced verdicts for 68 defendants, including the party's political leadership. The General Secretary Nikolaos Michaloliakos and six other prominent members and former MPs were charged with running a criminal organization.[27] Guilty verdicts on charges of murder, attempted murder, and violent attacks on immigrants and left-wing political opponents were delivered,[79] and the leadership was sent to prison.[80]
Heywood, Andrew (2021). "7: Fascism". Political Ideologies: An Introduction (7th ed.). London WC1B3DP, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 151. ISBN978-1-352-01194-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
Kopytowska, Monika; Sotiris, Panagiotis (2017). "Political crisis and the rise of the far right in Greece: Racism, nationalism, authoritarianism and conservatism in the discourse of Golden Dawn". Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 218. ISBN978-90-272-4281-5.
Hatsidaki, Goutsos, Ourania, Dionysis; Hatsidaki, Goutsos, Ourania, Dionysis (2017). "1: The discourses of the Greek crisis". Greece in Crisis: Combining Critical Discourse and Corpus Linguistics Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 35. ISBN978-90-272-0661-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Ioannidou, Eleftheria (2022). "Mythologies of Genesis and Neo-Nazi Palingenesis: Commemorating the Battle of Thermopylae in the Political Rites of the Golden Dawn". Humanities. 11 (4). MDPI: 5. doi:10.3390/h11040088. In the culture of GD, the pagan cult represents a counter-paradigm to Judaeo-Christian religion, which is conceptualised as a long historical period of weakness and decline. Apart from the resemblance to völkisch mysticism, GD's paganism can be traced back to Greek folk traditions, or more saliently, to the thinking of Pericles Giannopoulos, an ardent admirer of ancient Greece and proponent of a spiritual and aesthetic version of Hellenism that surpasses national boundaries.
^Ρούμπου, Νάντια (7 October 2020). "Εγκληματική οργάνωση η Χρυσή Αυγή". The Press Project - Ειδήσεις, Αναλύσεις, Ραδιόφωνο, Τηλεόραση (in Greek). Retrieved 16 November 2022.
^*Wodak, Ruth (2015), The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, Sage, However, Golden Dawn's neo-Nazi profile is clearly visible in the party's symbolism, with its flag resembling a swastika, Nazi salutes and chants of 'Blood and Honour' which encapsulate its xenophobic and racist ideology.
Vasilopoulou; Halikiopoulou (2015), The Golden Dawn's 'Nationalist Solution', p. 32, The extremist character of the Golden Dawn, its neo-Nazi principles, racism and ultranationalism, as well as its violence, render the party a least likely case of success...
Miliopoulos, Lazaros (2011), "Extremismus in Griechenland", Extremismus in den EU-Staaten (in German), VS Verlag, p. 154, doi:10.1007/978-3-531-92746-6_9, ISBN978-3-531-17065-7, ...mit der seit 1993 als Partei anerkannten offen neonationalsozialistischen Gruppierung Goldene Mörgenröte (Chryssi Avgí, Χρυσή Αυγή) kooperierte... [...cooperated with the openly neo-National Socialist group Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avgí, Χρυσή Αυγή), which has been recognized as a party since 1993...]
Davies, Peter; Jackson, Paul (2008), The Far Right in Europe: An Encyclopedia, Greenwood World Press, p. 173
Altsech, Moses (August 2004), "Anti-Semitism in Greece: Embedded in Society", Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism (23): 12, On 12 March 2004, Chrysi Avghi (Golden Dawn), the new weekly newspaper of the Neo-Nazi organization with that name, cited another survey which indicated that the percentage of Greeks who view immigrants unfavorably is 89 percent.
^*Xenakis, Sappho (2012), "A New Dawn? Change and Continuity in Political Violence in Greece", Terrorism and Political Violence, 24 (3): 437–64, doi:10.1080/09546553.2011.633133, S2CID145624655, ...Nikolaos Michaloliakos, who established the fascistic far-right party Chrysi Avgi ("Golden Dawn") in the early 1980s.
Kravva, Vasiliki (2003), "The Construction of Otherness in Modern Greece", The Ethics of Anthropology: Debates and dilemmas, Routledge, p. 169, For example, during the summer of 2000 members of Chryssi Avgi, the most widespread fascist organization in Greece, destroyed part of the third cemetery in Athens...
Gemenis, Kostas; Nezi, Roula (January 2012), The 2011 Political Parties Expert Survey in Greece(PDF), University of Twente, p. 4, Interestingly, the placement of the extreme right Chrysi Avyi does not seem to be influenced by this bias, although this has more to do with the lack of variance in the data (32 out of 33 experts placed the party on 10)
Grumke, Thomas (2003), "The transatlantic dimension of right-wing extremism", Human Rights Review, 4 (4): 56–72, doi:10.1007/s12142-003-1021-x, S2CID145203309, On October 24, 1998 the Greek right-wing extremist organization Chrisi Avgi ("Golden Dawn") was the host for the "5th European Youth Congress" in Thessaloniki.
^Sitaropoulos, Nicholas (2004), "Equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin: the transposition in Greece of EU Directive 2000/43", The International Journal of Human Rights, 8 (2): 123–58, doi:10.1080/1364298042000240834, S2CID145383495, Clearly extreme racist groups are, inter alia, political groups such as Chrisi Avgi and Elliniko Metopo.
^Tsatsanis, Emmanouil (2011), "Hellenism under siege: the national-populist logic of antiglobalization rhetoric in Greece", Journal of Political Ideologies, 16 (1): 11–31, doi:10.1080/13569317.2011.540939, S2CID143633586, ... and far right-wing newspapers such as Alpha Ena, Eleytheros Kosmos, Eleytheri Ora and Stohos (the mouthpiece of ultra-nationalist group Chrysi Avgi).