Violence and Extreme-right Activism: The Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in a Greek Rural Community

After years of marginal appeal in the electorate, Golden Dawn (GD), a hitherto minor grupuscule of the neo-fascist right, has experienced impressive and continuous electoral success in Greece since 2010. Ιn this paper, we focus on the micro-scale of local communities and explore how violence is used by a local activist in ways that attract sympathisers to GD. Employing ethnographic research in a rural community we observe an everyday rhetoric that gives GD a privileged position in the circulation of violence. We argue that, rather than being a collateral symptom of neo-fascist mobilisation, violence may under certain conditions be one of the strengths of extreme-right movements.