The rising star of the Greek far-right arrives at the European Parliament

He is young and wears designer clothes. Her name is Afroditi Latinopoulou, she is famous for her outbursts on social networks and since this Sunday she is an MEP. The new Greek extreme right dresses in silk. Her image is more reminiscent of an executive than of the Golden Dawn neo-Nazis who beat up migrants dressed in black t-shirts and military-style pants. Although her aesthetic is completely different, the political space that Latinopoulou aspires to occupy is the same. Before the conviction of its leaders for belonging to a criminal organization, Golden Dawn became the third force in the Greek Parliament.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has proposed that, in his second term, the label by which his party, New Democracy (ND), is known, will not be “conservative”, but “liberal”. Greece, Mitsotakis believes, is already a mature country to naturally accept social reforms that not long ago seemed unthinkable in a Balkan country where the Orthodox Church remains a fundamental part of the State. Last February he managed to approve equal marriage. Although he encountered resistance in his own party, granting rights to gays and lesbians did not entail the crisis that critics expected. The good electoral results in the recent European elections, in which ND won seven of the 20 seats up for grabs, reinforce the commitment to the liberal turn.

But not all the Greek right is willing to accompany ND on its journey to the center. Three far-right parties are represented in Parliament, accounting for 13% of the votes. They are the ultranationalists of the Greek Solution, the orthodox Christian fundamentalists of Niki and Spartans, the heir candidacy of the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn. In the European elections last Sunday, the sum of the ultra vote that achieved representation rose to 16.7%. Greek Solution, the most ultranationalist, leads this sector with 9.3%. The pro-Putin Niki formation reached 4.4%. This time Espartanos did not appear and its place, with 3%, was taken by a newly created, more radical party called The Voice of Reason (Foni Logikís), led by Afroditi Latinopoulou.

Latinopoulou is a 33-year-old lawyer who grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city. She has two brothers and defines her family as “traditional, devout and with a strict education”, the ideal that she defends. She has been playing tennis since she was four years old. Her political interest was awakened in adolescence. At 17 she was appointed provincial secretary of ONNED, the youth organization of New Democracy. In 2018, in the heat of ultranationalist mobilizations against the agreement with North Macedonia, Latinopoulou began to be known through the campaign “Macedonian products made in Greece”, which advocated the consumption of national products. In 2019 she was a candidate for New Democracy in the national elections and, although she did not win a seat, she began to be a regular face on television talk shows.

Greek Trumpism

Latinopoulou’s interventions surpassed the most conservative wing of the party in extremism. They were characterized by a provocative style. On social networks she has attacked feminism, migrants, the LGTBI community and what she considered the dictatorship of political correctness. One of her viral videos, from May 2021, is titled: “The unshaven female armpit as the new ‘model’ of beauty that they are trying to impose on us.” A few months later, in June 2022, she published a post on Instagram with hurtful comments about the weight of actress and presenter Danai Barka, with photos of her on the beach.

Fatphobia was the last straw for his co-religionists. Six former New Democracy ministers signed a public manifesto in which they accused Latinopoulou of “sliding down the slope of Trumpism, away from the spirit and practices, as well as the ideological, spiritual and moral heritage” of his party. She was removed from all internal positions. Latinopoulou then accused ND of giving in to culture woke up. “When the left sneezes, ND contracts pneumonia,” he said in a post in which he accused the insulted presenter, to whom he attributed close ties to the party, of being the real person responsible for her expulsion from it.

In 2023 she founded Foni Logikís–Afroditi Latinopoulou and redoubled her commitment to provocation in networks against LGTBI families, feminists, Muslims and, most especially, against migrants and refugees. For the European election campaign, he traveled to the Evros region, the land border with Turkey, and next to the anti-migrant fence with thick metal bars and five meters high that separates both countries, he wrote: “Greece’s borders must be closed with “seven keys and illegal migrants, out of Greece.”

The condemnation of Golden Dawn as a criminal organization forces intellectual contortionism among those who aspire to occupy the electoral space of what became the largest neo-Nazi party in Europe. Latinopoulou does not want to show excessive sympathy so as not to be accused of colluding with criminals, but at the same time she cannot dissociate herself too much if she aspires to gain the trust of those who voted for the neo-Nazis. Whenever Latinopoulou is asked about Golden Dawn, she simply says that she does not know her leaders and has no ties to them. When she is questioned about Spartans, the heir candidacy of Golden Dawn, now mired in a deep internal battle, she responds that they have “correct positions” but “wrong functioning.”

Its political program is very similar to that of Golden Dawn. Messages against Türkiye, against North Macedonia, against immigration, against moderation on the right. But, unlike Golden Dawn, Foni Logikis is not a street shock force that spreads terror wherever it goes, but rather an electoral brand tailored to its only known face, without a solid organization behind it. What he did learn from the neo-Nazis is that scandal can give political gain. In the only interview he gave after the elections, to the newspaper Proto Thema, Latinopoulou insisted on his provocative style for his proposal to ban equal marriage. “Two men, or three men and two cats, or two women and three kangaroos, are not a family. The family is father and mother, husband and wife. “Marriage is a sacred institution.”

Last Sunday, when the election results were known, he wrote: “I promise you that I will never betray your trust. The Voice of Reason is here to stay.” As in almost all of his publications, at the end he added the Greek national flag and a flame. Incendiary speech with exquisite image.

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