and infiltration of the ultra-right extreme into the Hellenic police…was systematic and deep-seated.’88 The deep roots connecting the police to the far-right have, likewise, been acknowledged by the political leadership of the Greek police, i.e., the Ministry of Citizen’s Protection, numerous times. In 2011, the Minister of Citizen Protection, Christos Papoutsis, admitted that there was a lack of democracy in the security forces (To Vima, 2011). His predecessor in the Ministry, Mr Chrisochoidis, claimed that during his term 40 to 50 police officers were indicted on grounds of collaboration with Golden Dawn (Parapolitiki Blog, 2011). Other political actors, even those with a very right-wing past, have made similar admissions. In an interview to BBC, Mr. Adonis Georgiadis, Minister of the rightwing government elected in 2012, when asked about the affiliations between Golden Dawn and the police, he responded ‘Very unhappy to say that to some point it’s true.’ (Loggos, 2013) The connections are further corroborated by the fact that nearly 50 per cent of the police force voted for Golden Dawn in the 2012 elections (ThePressProject, 2012). Former Greek Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection, Mr. Nikos Dendias, remarked in 2012 that ‘ever since the Dorian Invasion 4,000 years ago, never before has the country been subjected to an invasion of these dimensions … this is a bomb on the foundations of society and the state.’. More recently, Mr. Makis Voridis, current Minister for Agricultural Development and Food, and a long admirer of authoritarian values, recently defended police brutality by saying that violence on the part of the police entails an element of necessity (TRTWORLD, 2019); thereby giving fuel to arbitrary practices and effectively legitimising racist violence. As police officers have expressed in research conducted by Christopoulos (2014, p. 29) ‘the tone is not set by Golden Dawn, but first and foremost by the government itself’. Therefore, what is more important, Christopoulos (2014, p. 36) defiantly notes, is not whether the police favour racist views, for these have always been latent in the force, but rather their ‘re-legitimisation…as the only ideology that is able to express in the most An analysis of the historical development and modern organization of policing in Greece, shows that this goes back to the Axis occupation and the creation of the Security Batallions, whose members were recruited by the country’s security forces (Vidali, 2007). Some would even argue that racism has its roots in the ancient Greek world, an entire social system based on enslaving ‘enthic’ barbarian others. If the institution of slavery was responsible for generating a discourse on an ideological ‘barbaros’, this might help to explain why the ideology of Greek cultural superiority was such a prevalent one. Ancient Greek ideas of purity are grounded in early forms of racism, which is partly why the Nazi regime venerated Ancient Greece; thereby, creating indissoluble bonds between Greece and fascism (Hamilakis, 2003; Trubeta, 2010). 88 133