This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Tens of thousands protest against austerity in Greece
• Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party gains support in Greece
• Greeks shocked at Golden Dawn attack on Corpus Christi play performance
• Hungary's neo-Nazi Jobbik party demonstrates against Roma Gypsies
• Bitter Germany/France divisions mark European summit

Tens of thousands protest against austerity in Greece

Protester throws petrol bomb at police (Reuters)

Some 70,000 furious Greeks took to the streets in Athens on Thursday, while European officials were at a summit in Brussels discussing the next round of austerity measures to impose on Greece. Protesters in Syntagma Square through rocks, petrol bombs, bottles and chunks of marble at police, who responded with rounds of tear gas and stun grenades. One 60 year old protester, Nikos Xeros, is quoted as saying:

"After nearly 50 years of work and paying into an expensive pension fund, I have been forced to retire on 1,000 euros a month and if they pass these measures it will be even less. It's like having a noose about your neck that is getting ever tighter. The next time I come out to demonstrate it's going to be with a gas mask and a big wooden club."

Xeros has been working as a shipbuilder since age 16. AP and Guardian

Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party gains support in Greece

Proceedings in the Greek parliament were disrupted Thursday when Eleni Zaroulia of the far right Golden Dawn party, an MP and member of a Council of Europe anti-discrimination committee, described immigrants as subhumans:

"It is unacceptable that they be assimilated to this kind of subhumans who have invaded our fatherland with the diseases that they lug around."

The loud support that she received is symptomatic of the growing support that the Golden Dawn party is receiving from the public. Violence against "subhuman" immigrants is growing, and there is some evidence that some Greek police are supporting the violence, or at least doing nothing to stop it. Greek Reporter

Greeks shocked at Golden Dawn attack on Corpus Christi play performance

Another Golden Dawn MP, Ilias Panagiotaros, last week led a protest against a performance of the Terence McNally play, Corpus Christi. Panagiotaros shouted racist, homophobic and threatening remarks against the director of the play. The 1997 play dramatizes the story of Jesus and the Apostles, and includes a scene where Jesus administers a gay marriage between two apostles. A Youtube clip has Panagiotaros shouting, "Wrap it up you little faggots. Yes, just keep staring at me you little hooker. Your time is up." and "You Albanian assholes." Golden Dawn members threw rocks at audience members and, through it all, the police just stood by and let it happen. Panagiotaros is commemorating the Greece's civil war that ended in 1949:

"There is already civil war.

Greek society is ready - even though no-one likes this - to have a fight: a new type of civil war.

On the one side there will be nationalists like us, and Greeks who want our country to be as it used to be, and on the other side illegal immigrants, anarchists and all those who have destroyed Athens several times."

The attack on Corpus Christi has become a signal moment in Greek politics, and greater nationalism and violence directed against immigrants. BBC

Hungary's neo-Nazi Jobbik party demonstrates against Roma Gypsies

Around 500 supporters of Hungary's far right Jobbik party demonstrated against Roma Gypsies in the Hungarian city of Miskolc, protesting against "Gypsy crime" in the Avas housing development mostly occupied, some illegally, by poor Roma families. The housing development was originally built to house an influx of Roma workers in the 1980s, but when factories closed down in the 1990s, Avas has fallen into disrepair. Jobbik supporters are calling for the eviction of families that owe rent or public utility bills, and an "end to the terror." Like Greece's Golden Dawn party, Hungary's nationalistic Jobbik party is growing in popularity. BBC and Politics (Hungary)

Bitter Germany/France divisions mark European summit

Bad body language between Angela Merkel and François Hollande (Al-Jazeera)

European leaders have arrived in Brussels for a two-day European Union summit with a bitter dispute growing between France and Germany. France's president François Hollande would like to extend as much credit as possible to the "Club Med" countries, Greece, Italy and Spain. Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel is much more cautious, and is making a counter-demand: That Brussels be given a budgetary veto over euro zone countries. However, Hollande has stated that France will never give up any budgetary authority to anyone. At stake is the next bailout loan to Greece. Expect the "Kick the Can Theory" to be followed, and that the EU officials will find a way to kick the can down the road, postponing the problems for a few additional weeks or months, after which the problems will be MUCH worse than they are today. Al-Jazeera

Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail