esc_attr( get_the_title( $cat_image ) )

Golden Dawn pushes Greek-only blood bank

  • By Joshua Keating

    Joshua Keating is associate editor at Foreign Policy and the editor of the Passport blog. He has worked as a researcher, editorial assistant, and deputy Web editor since joining the FP staff in 2007. In addition to being featured in Foreign Policy, his writing has been published by the Washington Post, Newsweek International, Radio Prague, the Center for Defense Information, and Romania's Adevarul newspaper. He has appeared as a commentator on CNN International, C-Span, ABC News, Al Jazeera, NPR, BBC radio, and others. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he studied comparative politics at Oberlin College.

Golden Dawn pushes Greek-only blood bank

Given that far-right parties tend to somewhat moderate their positions when they’re actually in government, the degree to which Greece’s Golden Dawn party has thoroughly lived up to its reputation for buffoonish, neo-Nazi thuggery since its electoral success has been a bit suprising.  Their latest provocation is a Greek-only blood donation drive: 

Golden Dawn, which enjoyed unprecedented success in last month’s election after promising to rid Greece of all immigrants, put up posters in Athens calling for volunteers to donate blood "only for Greeks who need our help."

"All the bottles of blood we collect will be handed over to patients we choose and to no one else," the party said in a statement. "This right to choose belongs not just to Golden Dawn members, but to all volunteer blood donors."

The party, which denies it is neo-Nazi, said it had managed to get such a blood bank up and running at a state hospital in Athens.

Right… nothing Nazi about policing racial purity in blood donations.  A Greek doctor’s union called the plan an "insane, unscientific, illegal and racist action"

The Times reported on Tuesday that Golden Dawn members have also been threatening immigrant shopkeepers in Athens.