ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — The Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party reportedly set up an office in New York City in a bid to bolster its support among expatriate Greek communities.
The populist ultranationalist party has been collecting food and medicine at drives in New York for Greeks left destitute by the country’s massive financial crisis and recently distributed the aid in Athens, according to the Kathimerini daily.
The website of the Golden Dawn New York branch, which features the party’s black swastika-like symbol across a dark New York skyline, promises the aid will be donated “only to Greek people.”
Similar drives also have been held in Melbourne, Australia, and Montreal, Canada, Kathimerini said.
Golden Dawn swept into the Greek parliament with 19 lawmakers in recent elections campaigning on an anti-austerity, anti-immigrant platform, preying on the fears of Greeks who have seen the country flooded with immigrants amid a terrible recession.
Greek and international Jewish groups have condemned the party repeatedly as racist and anti-Semitic. Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos uses the Heil Hitler salute and in recent interviews denied the existence of gas chambers at Nazi death camps during World War II.
The New York chapter of Golden Dawn vows to help its brethren in Greece “resist and overcome the genocidal multi-culturalist and anti-Hellenic agenda of the New World Order,” and combat the “unholy alliance of the bankers, the media, corrupt politicians and the educational system.”
However, it “supports the American Constitution and respects all U.S. laws,” the website states.
