Gewrgios Kordas

This article analyses how the Greek extreme right covered the Covid-19 pandemic in Greece, with a special focus in the period of the Greek lockdown. We argue that as parts of the Greek society favoured conspiracy theories during the last years, extreme right could benefit from that trend, spreading its ideas and capitalising on the rising levels of suspicion and dissatisfaction in the Greek society. This paper brings our attention to the emergence of blogs as a crucial digital tool for the
diffusion of conspiracy theories and other anti-scientific discourses. Based on a discourse analysis of the blogs’ uploaded content during the Greek lockdown the paper focuses on the construction of discursive frames by looking into the way conspiracy theories benefit the extreme right. It further highlights the need for more attention on the various narratives constructed during the Covid-19 crisis in Greece and their connection to conspiracy theories

In the present research, the case study is the extreme right in Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, between 1989 and 2014, which is putting in a comparative framework with Western Europe’s extreme right family. For this research, were used primary and secondary sources. The primary sources were came from the study of party manifestos, journalists articles and extreme right’s internet resources, while the secondary sources were came from the analysis of scientific articles and books. By studying the above forms of sources and focusing in party manifestos, religion, sports, music and symbols, we are driving to the following result: according to Cas Mudde’s tripartite typology (nativism, populism, authoritarianism), extreme right in the three countries that are being studied, seems to gather Mudde’s typology in a strongest degree than Western Europe’s extreme right. This research, could contribute to the scientific explanation of extreme right’s process in the three countries, in a crucial period, in which the Soviet Union’s crash transformed the region’s political scene. Except this, we can also observe how the extreme right behaved, while democracy was established.

"... Even though we are all ‘unreliable narrators’, a few key themes and threads emerge from this collection,
which are worth noting:
(i) whereas Syriza’s success in January was based on a strong message of hope and change, its
victory this time seems to be based upon a more muted, pragmatic, indeed unclear, assessment of
what lies ahead for Greece
(ii) despite the big margin between Syriza and New Democracy, a rapidly declining voter turnout
meant that both parties, but especially Syriza, actually lost hundreds of thousands of voters
(iii) despite the economic and political turmoil of the last eight months, including a controversial
approach to negotiations with EU partners, closed banks, capital controls and a referendum whose
legitimacy, purpose and ultimate impact have been questioned by some, Alexis Tsipras remains the
dominant player in the political system
(iv) however, the tension, first established in January, between Syriza’s pre-election pledges and
the demands of the Greek debt programme remains; Mr Tsipras seems trapped between the expectations
of his supporters, a programme of austerity that is both unpopular and unhelpful in terms of
growth, and the demands of Eurozone partners who are running out of patience with Greece
(v) the re-election of Syriza and the formation of another coalition with far-right Independent
Greeks following the government’s U-turn on the bailout agreement challenges the relevance of all
known socio-political cleavages, including ‘left v. right’ and even ‘pro-Euro v. anti-Memorandum’; also,
given that both governing parties have in recent years taken in their ranks politicians from the two
established parties of the Greek political system (PASOK and New Democracy), the much-famed ‘old
v. new’ [system] divide seems to be both a temporary explanation for the continuing popularity of Alexis
Tsipras and at the same time an indication of a deep and widespread public disconnect with the values
of the post-1974 system
(vi) finally, in a country of 11 million people, a neo-Nazi criminal organisation whose leaders are on
trial for murder managed to retain its third place in parliament with a mere 379,581 votes; this particular
fact underscores the fragmentation of the political system which has been benefitting anti-systemic
voices..."

"...Even if each of us is an ‘unreliable narrator’ of events in Greece, a few key themes and threads
emerge from this collection, which are worth noting:
(i) the success of Syriza’s message of hope versus a less successful campaign by
New Democracy focusing on the threat of instability
(ii) the realignment but continuing volatility of the Greek party system with the
confirmation of Syriza as a pillar of a new (quasi) two-party system, the collapse
of PASOK, the fragmentation of the political centre and the shortening of the
electoral cycle
(iii) the logic behind the Syriza / Independent Greeks coalition and the tensions that
may possibly arise from their ideological differences
(iv) the increasingly imminent tension between Syriza’s radical agenda of ending
austerity and the Troika’s stated positions
(v) the continuing salience of populism, especially at the far right of the political
spectrum
(vi) the potential impact of Syriza’s victory on other political parties, actors and
debates across the European Union and beyond."

The relationship between the extreme right and the European integration
seems to define the political agenda during the last years in an important degree, as it presents a strongly controversial character. This view usually finds fertile ground in the extreme right’s position concerning the superiority of the member – state against the transnational institutions (Mudde 2011: 232 – 235). This kind of studies focuses on the role of the Eurosceptic phenomenon and how this is present at the “Left-Right” ideological axle. Therefore, studies refer either to a total or to a partial rejection of the European institutions (Kopecky & Mudde 2002: 300; Taggart & Szczerbiak 2008: 7 – 8; Vasilopoulou 2009: 4; 2011: 224, 232 - 234). The present study deals with the content analysis of extreme right discourse inside the European Parliament, while it simultaneously focuses on answering the following questions:
a) how the appearance and the stabilization of extreme right parties in our country’s political scene is connected with the growing dissatisfaction against the role of the EU and b) with which gradations Euroscepticism is presented in the official discourse of the extreme right parties.