Thanks to internet the last few years I’m able to watch Greek television news and actually I have a choice of eight channels including the state one and the most popular private. So a few months ago I was in total shock when I saw the representative of the Greek extreme right party preaching about freedom of speech.

I lived the Greek dictatorship and I was in age to understand that freedom of speech was out of question. Freedom of thought was dangerous. Depends how you looked the policeman he had the right to arrest you. Actually the only ones who had any right during the dictatorship were the policemen, the army officers and the dictators.

So how it comes over thirty years after the end of the dictatorship the very same people to ask their right to freedom of speech? And respecting this right and really pushing myself I stayed and watch. It was unbelievable, the young man talked about race purity – something at least pathetic in the modern world – about the anarchist that should go to prison – he actually meant the left alliance – and a society that losing its values with all these …not men walking around the streets. And of course in the end he blamed the immigrants for all the crimes in history since the snake gave Eve the apple!

So, let me see, we have racism, prejudice, homophobia and xenophobia and all of them in the two minutes he had the right to speak. The four of them are constitutionally punishable crimes in every single democracy – we are not talking about Iran here! So how is violation of freedom of speech when you forbid this man to speak? He actually promotes a crime against society! When we started Ovi magazine we had a similar conversation, we are going to publish all opinions and ideas without any trace of censorship but we are going to reject articles that carry hate, racist, prejudice, xenophobic or homophobic messages.  The same applies to the comments; we delete as a principal all comments that violate the above rules. And don’t worry we had our share. We even had submissions that carried well covered messages like an article about archaeology and anthropology that was covering racist massages. Does that mean that we don’t respect freedom of speech?

But what happens when the channel is not a private channel in Greece but it is BBC, one of the biggest, perhaps the biggest news institution in the world and the young man is the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin. And of course there were demonstrators outside BBC and of course there was trouble. But what they were expecting? The only thing missing from Griffin in his entrance was the black uniform with the gold skull and the double s! amazingly wasn’t it Britain and the British people who were shocked seen one of the princess going to a fancy dress party wearing a Nazi uniform?

Griffin accused the protesters of "attacking the rights of millions of people to listen to what I've got to say and listen to me being called to account by other politicians", adding: "It really is a disgraceful thing." But what Griffin forgot to say or better didn’t want to say is that if he was in power there were be no protesters outside BBC, they would be in some kind of dark cell if not dead. Griffin forgot to say that gays would be imprisoned for life if not in a labour camp, that anything that didn’t cover his racial stereotypes would be dead and that any opposition labour, Trotskyism or whatever else would be in prison. And the problem is that he did say all that but because he doesn’t have a small pathetic moustache and doesn’t wear the black uniform, he is a …patriot who has the right to say whatever he likes because this is …democracy!

So, does fascism always wear a uniform? Who’s going to protect our democracy from our democracy? And what have we done? Don’t we understand where the line is? Do we forget that Hitler took over Germany through democratic elections?