‘It’s worrying’: Greek election ban on extremist party may be too little, too late

Ilias Kasidiaris, photographed in 2013, has been able to address his 134,000 followers via YouTube even though he is serving a 13-and-a-half-year prison term. Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

For two years Ilias Kasidiaris, a convicted leader of the now disbanded neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, has used social media to address supporters from Domokos prison in central Greece.

Month after month the former MP has railed against the inability of the “corrupt political regime” to govern the country in a stream of hate-filled speeches. For his 134,000 subscribers on YouTube, the exhortations are a lifeline to Kasidiaris and the Hellenes, the small nationalist party he set up shortly before being handed a 13-and-a-half-year prison term for his role in Golden Dawn. And they seem to be paying off.