Athens--Nikos Michaloliakos, the founding chief of Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, is a lifelong disciple of the far-right and a Holocaust denier who rode a wave of popular anger over austerity to steer his once-fringe party to finishing third in January elections.
Dubbed "the Fuehrer" by investigating magistrates, the heavyset 57-year-old with a fiery disposition goes on trial Monday along with 68 others linked to his party, facing charges of heading a criminal organisation.
State prosecutors will try to prove that the openly xenophobic and anti-Semitic group operated as a criminal organisation under a military-style leadership that allegedly encouraged the beating -- and possibly the killing -- of migrants and political opponents.
Handpicked by ex-Greek dictator George Papadopoulos to lead a far-right youth group after Greece's ruling military junta fell, Michaloliakos went on to found Golden Dawn in the mid-1980s.
In the 1990s he took advantage of a flood of immigration from the Balkans to hone his racist message while violence against migrants and leftwing activists multiplied.
Yet at the time Golden Dawn only managed to capture one percent of the vote and did not hold a single seat in parliament.
Then came the economic crisis in 2008 and accompanying spikes in poverty, unemployment as well as rounds of punishing austerity. Michaloliakos was first elected to Athens City Council in 2010, then he and 17 other party members won seats in Greek parliament 2012.
He courted controversy at one of his first council meetings with a Nazi salute, though his group rejects the neo-Nazi label, saying instead it is Greek nationalist.
Even so, for many years Golden Dawn glorified Adolf Hitler in its party publications.
In a May 2012 interview Michaloliakos effectively denied the Holocaust, telling Greece's Mega channel: "There were no crematoria, it's a lie. Or gas chambers."
AFP
