minister. Let us remark further that Stochos saluted Antonis Samaras’ election as president of the New Democracy party in 2009, deeming it a “revolution of the popular Right”.93 One year before taking up the newspaper’s publication, Chatziparaskevas had been a member of the “Front Line”, a formation led by the well-known neo-Nazi Kostas Plevris, a former collaborator of dictator Ioannis Ladas, connected with the secret services94, and an occasional collaborator of Georgios Karatzaferis, President of LAOS. B | FROM THE SPECIAL FORCES TO THE CABINET The above does not of course exhaust the story of ultra-rightists inside, outside and in parallel with the Hellenic Armed Forces or their high-proile connections. On the world’s most popular social media page, Facebook, just one of the groups, entitled “We want the UDCCG to shout again their slogans during parades”95 has about 46,000 member-supporters. This is a rather modest indication of the appeal of the racist and chauvinist slogans shouted in spring 2010, at the centre of Athens, by members of the coast guard, the UDCCG, during the oicial military parade for the 25 March national independence celebration.96 In December 2011, during the uproarious trial of the 39 accused oicers that took place at the Admiralty Court of Piraeus, members of Golden Dawn, the “Uncommitted Patriots,” and other ultra-right organizations rallied to manifest their support. Frangoulis Frangos, the wannabe dictator according to Vima newspaper, who had also directed the Military Intelligence Service during the 2004 Olympic Games, was among those showing their support for UDCCG at the Admiralty Court. Despite his aforementioned removal as chief of the Armed Forces General Staf in November 2011, Frangos subsequently served a few weeks as defence minister in the interim government under Panagiotis Pikramenos, between the elections of May and June 2012. According to Frangos’ irredentist views, Asia Minor is “a vital space of our country, and, though under Turkish domination, never stopped being the spiritual focus of our people”. This may explain why his ministerial appointment was hailed “with cries of joy by the Greek ultra-right, from Stochos to Golden Dawn”97. The same circles had been only slightly less joyful a few months earlier, when Georgios Georgiou, a member of LAOS, had become deputy minister of defence in the “experts’ government” (November 2011 to April 2012) under Loukas Papadimos. Such cases clearly indicate that in Greece, the choice of “experts above party ailiations” has a distinctive trait of militarism. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. O Ios [Team Virus], “Antonis Samaras’ secret weapons”, I Eimerida ton Sintakton newspaper, 25 June 2013. Cf. Dimitris Psarras, “Ultra-right snakes in New Democracy’s bosom”, I Eimerida ton Sintakton, 19 March 2013. On the relations between Plevris and the secret services, cf. Klitsikas & Speranzoni 2003. https://www.facebook.com/GrOyk Cf. Dimitris Angelides “…And hatred”, http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=145379. Cf. O Ios, “The vision of a ‘new 1897’”, ibid. MAPPING ULTRA-RIGHT EXTREMISM, XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM WITHIN THE GREEK STATE APPARATUS | 73