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Ultra-right winger, George Karatzaferis has certainly excelled in his Italian studies. Like the Prime Minister of Italy’s ultra-right coalition he knows there is nothing like owning your own television station to promote your political career.

Though Karatzaferis is only small-time, he only owns one station, Teleasty, as opposed to Berlusconi’s control of about 85% of Italian television, but the effect is the same, albeit on a smaller scale.

Day after day he pumps out racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic material for the good people of Athens, and surprise, surprise he managed 13.5% of the local poll to become governor of Athens.

Not enough for victory, not even enough to make the run-off ballot, that will be contested by Pasok and New Democracy but enough to ensure his 210,000 votes represented the highest level of support for a far-right candidate in 20 years

If he repeats this performance at the general elections in 2004, the extreme right would be represented in parliament for the first time since the collapse of the military junta in 1974.

The “success” he has gained is largely due to the daily diet of xenophobia and racism spewed out from his televison station. According to the current edition of Athens News (22nd October)“ In his daily TV sermon, excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged, anti-Semitic book, are regularly read.”

He has told “Greeks, particularly women, should steer clear of Evripidou St, a road in central Athens, ..... as it "throngs" with Third World foreigners.”

According to . Dr. Shimon Samuels, Director for International Liaison at the Wiesenthal Centre Katzaferis' television station is “ a mouthpiece for hate - which is operating in violation of Greece's obligations under European conventions against incitement to racism and violence."

He has written to Constantine Skandalidis, Greek Minister of the Interior, expressing concern at "the empowerment of the racist extreme right party Popular Orthodox Rally, by a nightly propaganda show on the Athens-Piraeus television station owned by..... Giorgos Karatzaferis."

Originally a deputy in the New Democracy conservative opposition parfty, Karatzaferis,was ejected from the party after a homosexual smear against the parties modernising spokesperson accusing him of being the "ND's Salome",

However, his main currency in trade has been anti-Semitism. He attacked PASOK's former deputy foreign minister (and current vice-president of the European Court of Human Rights) for being Jewish, and even went for the Prime Minister himself for his 'Jewish origins” which made him “unable to defend Greek interests”.

He has become one of the sources of the slur that 'the Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks because he says 4,000 Jews were warned not to go to work that morning at the World TradeCentre."

His anti-Semitism is, however, not party political, he has also made anti-Semitic statements about a former New Democracy leader whose father saved thousands of Greek Jews from deportation in the Second World War.

Ejected from New Democracy he formed his own party, Popular Orthodox Rally, and his TV boosted poll results have caused national papers to sit-up and take notice. The Athens daily Ethnos saying that "This Karadzaferis phenomenon must be handled carefully by political parties so that it does not reach a worrying level."