Keyser Söze: Reputation Building and the Electoral Success of Right-Wing Extremism

A well-documented repercussion of the Greek debt crisis has been the emergence of the Golden Dawn (GD), a neo-fascist party with racist rhetoric and violent practices,which saw its vote share in 2012 skyrocketing from infinitesimal percentages in previous elections into an unprecedented 7 percent of the popular vote. What accounts for this dramatic shift in the party’s fortunes? Political commentary attributes this success to two factors, both products of the political turmoil that accompanied the crisis. First, during this period anti-immigration attitudes were intensified, providing the GD with a new pool of voters due to priming effects. Second, the perceived failure of the established parties to confront the crisis fuelled anti-systemic sentiments. None of these factors explains why such a previously marginalised outsider was chosen over other alternatives. Delving into this exact question, we argue that the political conditions generated after the crisis were only necessary conditions for the rise of the GD. The sufficient condition was its grass-roots activity. Since mid-2010, when the GD campaigned for the Mayoral Elections in Athens, the party projected itself as a network of locally organized initiatives allegedly providing welfare services and crime protection. Gradually, the rumor was spread from Athens’ neighborhoods to all over Greece. Coupled with strategically downplaying its anti-immigrant stances in favour of strong accusations against the mainstream parties, the GD emerged as a pure, albeit viable, anti-systemic alternative without actually extending its physical presence in the periphery. To test this hypothesis we first make use of two surveys showing how within one year the GD gains in visibility and builds a reputation of pork provider. This evidence is enriched with in-depth interviews of party activists and residents in areas where the GD developed local activity. Second, we content-analyse GD’s rhetoric to reveal the low salience of its anti-immigrant stances.