Short, squat and strident, Nikos Michaloliakos draws thunderous applause as he exhorts the crowd to stand up and say “No!” Days before Greeks go to the polls, the Golden Dawn leader does not want his message to go unheard.

“No to the memorandums. No to illegal immigration,” he roars as he punches the air before a backdrop emblazoned by his party’s swastika-style motif. “We won’t allow them to make us a minority in our own country!”

Until March, the seemingly avuncular Michaloliakos was in prison on charges of running a criminal gang masquerading as a political organization. But six months is a long time in politics.

As he spits into the microphone, his face contorted with fury, his voice tremulous and his supporters cheering him on, it is clear the neo-fascist leader is on a roll. Golden Dawn is having a good election.

Four short weeks of campaigning before a snap poll called by the leftist leader and former prime minister Alexis Tsipras have gone surprisingly well. In successive opinion surveys, the virulently anti-immigrant, antisemitic, anti-EU party has emerged as Greece’s third-biggest political force – the sole certainty in an election that has defied expectation in almost every other way.

Under the banner of being “the only nationalist choice,” the far-rightists have persistently polled between 5.5% and 7%. Tsipras’s Syriza has been shown to be neck and neck with its main challenger, the conservative New Democracy, quashing hopes of an easy victory.

In rallies, including the one held at Michaloliakos’s speech in the seaside town of Megara on Monday, euphoric supporters speak of a “double-digit” victory, with the party gaining 10% or more on a wave of outrage over their country’s economic collapse and perceived invasion by thousands of “illegal migrants.”

“I am afraid. For the first time we have no idea what this election will bring,” said the former conservative MP Fotini Pipili. “What we do know, however, is that Golden Dawn is going to do well, and for the serious minded that is a very worrying thing.”

Pipili, among the female politicians the extremists have publicly targeted – with Golden Dawn MPs hurling abuse at her in parliament and party cadres hounding her outside her country home – is sure of something else: Greece’s frontline role in Europe’s refugee crisis is also emboldening the neo-Nazi group. “They have been inflamed by what many saw as provocative immigration policies under the leftists and all these desperate people arriving every day,” she says.

Touring Kos and other Aegean islands most affected by the influx, Golden Dawn MPs brazenly played on locals’ fears. “Elections are approaching,” Ilias Kasidiaris, the party’s swastika-tattooed spokesman, told residents. “Kos has a choice. If [inhabitants] choose to vote Syriza it will turn into Pakistan. If they choose Golden Dawn and Golden Dawn governs the land, then Kos will become Greece again. And that is our goal.”

Michaloliakos, who like other party leaders was released from prison after serving the pre-trial maximum of 18 months, is accused of overseeing offences that range from money laundering to murder and armed attack. The hearing began this year. The accused deny the charges. Earlier this year the party posted a statement on its website, saying: “Golden Dawn states unequivocally that it wants and expects the smooth conduct of a fair trial ... which will prove the an attempt to frame-up the movement of Greek nationalists at the behest of foreign power centres.”

Until the stabbing of Pavlos Fyssas, a Greek anti-fascist rapper killed two years ago this week, Golden Dawn’s victims were dark-skinned migrants and refugees, leftists and gay people. Golden Dawn has denied any involvement in the killing of Fyssas.

Fyssas’s murder finally goaded authorities into action with parliamentarians being rounded up and arrested. A 692–page report compiled by prosecutors assigned to investigate its criminal activities described Golden Dawn – before the crisis a fringe party gaining less than 0.5% – as Europe’s most dangerous political force.

After the crackdown, it was thought support would begin to wane. But the extremists have shown remarkable resilience. In European elections in 2014, they won more than 9%, deliberately softening their image, tempering their rhetoric and shedding boots for suits a far cry from the black-shirted assault squads they had formerly been associated with.

In the last national vote in January, they gained 6.9%, despite most of Golden Dawn’s leaders being forced to campaign from behind bars. Now allowed to roam freely, in an atmosphere of growing austerity-driven poverty and despair, the far-rightists have also rallied support on the back of fury over yet more tax rises and budget cuts, the price of further rescue funds for the debt-stricken country.

Calling the latest EU-backed bailout the equivalent of “ethnocide” and a “memorandum of death,” Michaloliakos has tried to portray the party as the only anti-establishment force able to defend Greeks. MPs say with Tsipras now embracing the very policies he once opposed, the mantle of the anti-austerity struggle has passed to them. Human rights groups are sounding the alarm.

“The recent bailout, whatever its economic merits and pragmatic imperatives, gives Golden Dawn an opportunity to broaden support as its leaders bill themselves as the only principled opponents of austerity,” said Tad Stahnke, of Human Rights First. “This prospect should alarm advocates of human rights and democratic values everywhere. Golden Dawn is no run-of-the-mill nationalist group,” he said, adding it was vital the trial of Golden Dawn was seen to be fair and impartial.

In the runup Sunday’s elections, politicians have voiced concerns that Golden Dawn could become the main opposition if, as looks likely, neither Syriza nor New Democracy win a majority and are forced to share power.

In a nation still haunted by memories of brutal occupation under the Third Reich, the entire political spectrum has pledged it will not allow Golden Dawn to have such a role. “A lot of people are praying it is the socialist Pasok and not the fascists who come third,” Pipili said.

But Greece, post-crisis, is unpredictable. What worries many is that the extremists, ignored by the mainstream media and kept out of political debate, have already got so far.

Originally published by The Guardian