particular form of fraternal solidarity ... There is clearly a lack of democracy within the Security Forces. Arbitrariness is inherent in the Security Forces”. The speaker was none other than the minister of citizen protection, Christos Papoutsis.23 At a clearly very diicult moment for Greek society and the political system,24 the highest responsible State oicial issued this public confession, explicitly distanced from the avoidance of the “individual incidents” theory, asking for the dismantlement of speciic services and units of the Hellenic Police such as the riot police and the DIAS and DELTA squads. If this were not enough, a month later, a former minister of public order and a fanfavourite of the police force itself spoke as follows in a TV interview of 30 June 2011:25 “In October 2009, I took over a thoroughly disintegrated police … I was afraid at that time of what was going on in the country … I remind you of the parastate then active within the police, where Golden Dawn members and various fascists were participating in a series of activities and helping the police. Along with the chief of the police, we drove them of, one by one”. His interlocutor, a high-ranking New Democracy oicial (shocked not by what is being said, but by the man who is saying it) asked him if he understood the consequences of what he had said, while the journalists kept asking if the situation was still the same. Mr. Chrysochoides replied: “Are you actually trying to play dumb now?”, adding that during his term 40 to 50 persons were indicted on grounds of collaboration with Golden Dawn, although, of course, he no longer has the faintest idea what happened with these indictments. To a journalist who insists on asking him whether things remain the same, Mr. Chrysochoides answered that it was possible: “I do not know that, I cannot rule out anything, it may well be that the phenomenon runs deep”. The results of the two consecutive 2012 elections only conirmed what everyone already assumed and whispered – that the electoral appeal of the neo-Nazi party had reached astonishing proportions among members of the security forces, far greater than its appeal to the rest of the electorate. In Attica, and more speciically in Athens, security forces were scheduled to vote in various election departments surrounding the Attica Police Directorate, mostly in the Ampelokipi area. Golden Dawn gained between 15.4 and 23.7 percent of the vote in the areas of Ampelokipi and Kaisariani, at the same time harvesting much lower, singledigit scores in neighbouring election departments with similar socio-economic proiles. Golden Dawn appears to have won a massive share of the vote among thousands of police oicers serving in the Attica Police Directorate and special services such as DIAS, DELTA, ZITA, the Emergency Unit and State Security. If one takes into account that each election precinct has 500 to 600 registered 23. 24. 25. See http://www.tovima.gr/society/article/?aid=400491. This is the moment (summer 2011) of the biggest social explosion in Greece during the Memorandum years, and also a moment of unprecedented violence by the Greek police against demonstrators in Syntagma Square, aiming at preventing the latter from possibly attacking the Greek Parliament. The question of resignation is publicly posed to the Prime Minister for the irst time; eventually, it did take place a few months later. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKaaCdFnKns. MAPPING ULTRA-RIGHT EXTREMISM, XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM WITHIN THE GREEK STATE APPARATUS | 27