Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn on the Rise in Greece

Support for fascist group high among -- surprise, surprise -- the police

You can hear it from blocks away: the deafening beat of Pogrom, Golden Dawn's favourite band, blasting out of huge speakers by a makeshift stage. "Rock for the fatherland, this is our music, we don't want parasites and foreigners on our land…"

It's a warm October evening and children on bicycles are riding up and down among the young men with crew cuts, the sleeves of their black T-shirts tight over pumped-up biceps, strolling with the stiff swagger of the muscle-bound. They look relaxed, off-duty. Two of them slap a handshake: "Hey, fascist! How's it going?"

Trestle tables are stacked with Golden Dawn merchandise: black T-shirts bearing the party's name in Greek, Chrysi Avgi, the sigma shaped like the S on SS armbands; mugs with the party symbol, a Greek meander drawn to resemble a swastika; Greek flags and black lanyards, lighters and baseball caps. I lean over to talk to one woman stallholder, dressed in Golden Dawn black with thickly kohl-rimmed eyes, but as soon as she opens her mouth a man in a suit strides up: "What are you writing? Are you a journalist? Tear that page out of your notebook. No, no, you can't talk to anyone."