They’re good kids – they make peinirli

That was not a criminal organization, but a group of angels that had gone astray. So what if their presence only invoked hatred and darkness? So what if the black-clad guys with the army boots, the torches and the bats spread the horror wherever they showed up?

It was only a fleeting manifestation of a heated temperament that sometimes can allow for impunity. Because in between the killings, the attacks on defenseless and intimidated people, these people were catering to a parallel self. For instance, they wrote songs against violence and bullying, they kneaded peinirli and tried to fight the country's demographic problem by generously procreating.

The trial of Golden Dawn, which went on this week with the convicted members arguing for their prison sentences to be suspended, exposed a remarkable anthropological spectrum ranging from nightmarish bullying to fearful...