old people from the para-religious organizations. A truly unprecedented incident ensued. As the police took one of the protesters into custody and led him to a riot police van, a Golden Dawn MP ran up to the door, casually took the detainee from the grip of a police oicer, and, in front of photographers, journalists and the riot police squad, pulled the man in the opposite direction, all the while shouting at the police: “Let the man go”! Thy will be done...18 In Greece, as in every other rule-of-law state, if the police has detained someone and some other citizen tries to set him free, he too will be detained. At least that is what we thought, until October 2012. A few weeks later, in late November 2012, another Golden Dawn MP visits Heraklion, Crete. There, he stumbles upon a letist counter-demonstration trying to prevent the Golden Dawn gathering. Numerous police forces promptly take position to repel the letists, but the MP asks the police to open their lines and sets about repelling the demonstrators all by himself, cursing and threatening. The MP tells the chief police oicer: “I will fuck them all. I promise you that by the end of the day you will have dead bodies”! The police oicer listens, eyes to the ground. The MP keeps cursing and threatens to sue the police for “neglect of duty”, adding: “They come here and ruin cars, while you sit around and jerk of. How am I supposed to do my thing?” His interlocutor continues to listen without reacting19. Later on, the MP issues a statement in which he threatens that Golden Dawn will sue anyone responsible for neglect of duty and abetting criminals. Naturally it is uncommon for the Hellenic Police to appear on camera as the administrative inferiors to Golden Dawn MPs. In this sense, these two snapshots are indeed unique. Nevertheless, the image, the discourse and the posture of both the police oicers and the Golden Dawn MPs evoke a bizarre hierarchy that must be deemed politically excrescent. That something is unique does not mean it has no meaning. On the contrary, given certain conditions, something unique may reveal signiicant conclusions. This is what we are going to attempt in the following pages. 3/ MODELS OF INTERPRETATION REGARDING THE INTRUSION OF THE ULTRA-RIGHT INTO THE POLICE FORCE The events of September 2013 and the atermath have, sadly, served to altogether conirm our working hypothesis: The intrusion and iniltration of the ultra-right extreme into the Hellenic Police until that point was systematic and deep-seated. Let us begin, however, by considering three common models of interpretation regarding this iniltration. The irst model tends not to see it as an iniltration. To summarize as accurately and fairly as we can, it goes like this: “It is all a matter 18. 19. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MMR2cLSZio. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4zw5CSVD5c. MAPPING ULTRA-RIGHT EXTREMISM, XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM WITHIN THE GREEK STATE APPARATUS | 23