Religious Discourse and Radical Right Politics in Contemporary Greece, 2010-2014

Building on the ‘pathological normalcy’ thesis, the paper aims at exploring the ideological relationship between the ‘institutional’ Greek Church and the neo-Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ party. To this end, the paper seeks to examine two interconnected themes: (1) the religious political discourse as a factor for the party's growth; and (2) the significance of the religious value system within the party's ideological structure. The method of analysis employed is the Essex School discourse theory paradigm. Overall, the paper argues that (1) the Church has not substantially contributed to the establishment of a ‘cordon sanitaire' against the Golden Dawn; (2) the political theology of the Greek Church, as well as the discourse of its former archbishop Christodoulos, have operated as the breeding-ground for the social legitimization of the party ideology; and (3) Golden Dawn has instrumentalized religion as a marker of national identity and an exclusion criterion.