NotDavidSoslan's Test Thread

[NotDavidSoslan]

Jacquerie France is often referred to by historians as the Third French Empire due to its expansionist and Anglophobic ambitions, and Jacques Dutroux is compared to Napoleon Bonaparte, especially since both lost.

During WWII, it created the following puppet states:

• Rexist Belgium
• The Rhineland Republic
• The Independent State of Croatia, which is not shown on the map.

Shortly after the tripartite attack on British forces in Egypt, the French colonial forces invaded all of Britain's colonies in West Africa, and after France invaded Belgium, they also launched an attack on the Belgian Congo that captured its western half but not the eastern jungles due to the King's African Rifles holding out. Sudan was not invaded during the war.

By 1945, all of France's overseas territories, other than French Polynesia, which held out until the country surrendered, had been lost to the Allies, and postwar treaties meant France lost all of its overseas territories other than the original French West Africa, Tunisia and Algeria, all of whom later peacefully obtained independence from foreign rule.

France, Italy and Egypt managed to capture most of the latter's territory, but they failed to capture the massive base around the Suez canal twice, and their final defeat in March 1945 was a major turning point in the war.

French Indochina remained controlled by France, but it lost some territories to Thailand and gave Japan access to its territory and resources, and from 1943 onwards, much of its territory was captured by the Viet Minh, which ruled the north of the country as a communist state after 1947, while the south, Laos and Cambodia became independent kingdoms.

Martinique was captured by the United Kingdom between 17 and 19 September 1944, around the same time Brazil invaded and annexed French Guyana with the support of the United States. On the other hand, the Seychelles were reocuppied by the French colonial forces, and together with Madagascar and the Comoros, remained in Jacquerie hands until early 1945.

France also annexed British Somaliland to French Somaliland, but by May 1945, it had been retaken along with North Africa.

February–March 1944 was the final phase of the war before the colonies of Axis countries came under attack from the Allies. The invasions of Spain and Italy and France's loss of North Africa, as well as the Marine nationale's defeat at the Bay of Biscay, allowed metropolitan France to be invaded.

The Jacqueries were never able to capture southern Nigeria and Accra, both of whom they were stopped at by Commonwealth troops. New Caledonia was the first in the house of cards called French State to fall to the enemy, doing so in April 1944.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Jacquerie France in 1936.

The fascist ideology developed by Jacques Dutroux in the 1920s was built around the "five pillars" of:

• French national sovereignty;
• Roman Catholicism, and the end of laicite;
• A dirigiste economic policy;
• Opposition to the influence of Jews, Freemasons, Protestants and foreigners;
• Staunch anti-communism and Germanophobia.

In 1923, shortly after the march on Rome, he founded the National Action (French: Action nationale, AN) as a fascist political party based around these five principles. The AN was a weak party with only one MP until the Great Depression, when it began to grow exponentially, especially among small businessmen and farmers; its rural appeal, having a chief named Jacques, and paramilitary violence against PCF, SFIO and rival far-right militants earned the party's members the nickname Jacqueries, which also refers to the regime they founded and its actions. It was only throughout late 1933 when the AN began patching things with far-right leagues such as the AF and CdF, both of whom were later purged, with Maurras and De La Rocque being imprisoned, although the former was released in 1936 and came out in support of the Jacquerie regime.

The Jacquerie regime followed a Traditional Catholic social policy, restricting the public lives of women, outlawing homosexuality and prostitution, and beginning an eugenics program, with the sterilisation of mentally ill patients. Consequently, Paris lost its avantgarde status in French culture, and artists such as Josephine Baker left France. It was also racist, claiming Mediterranean Europeans were superior to Nordic Europeans and most nonwhites, with the exception of the Japanese and Tonkinese.

Neofascist groups sprung up after World War II, the strongest of which was the French Social Party led by Pierre Poujade, but they have been mostly banned or dissolved by the government.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

In the 1928 general election, the AN only elected one MP, its leader Jacques Dutroux, and won 0.76% of the vote, but the Great Depression and the mass unemployment it caused led the party to grow massively.

In the 1932 general election, the party's manifesto called for, among other items:

• The restoration of Catholicism as a state religion;
• A dirigiste economic policy, where the private sector would be directed by the state;
• Protectionism and the pursuit of autarky;
• A Jewish quota for universities and the civil service.

Like the PNF and NSDAP, the party offered simplistic solutions for problems, such as by blaming Jews for the Great Depression and calling for them to be limited to, for all intents and purposes, private citizens. There was widespread violence between the AN's paramilitary wing, the Blueshirts, and PCF and SFIO militants during the election campaign, and Dutroux himself incited violence at his rallies, encouraging his supporters to "directly face the Socialist scum". On the other hand, rural voters were impressed by his charisma and powerful rethoric, as well as promises that appealed to them and were later implemented, such as cheap credit for farmers.

After France was defeated in 1947, Normandy and Aquitaine were occupied by the British, Ile-de-France and most rural areas by the Americans, and Alsace-Lorraine by the Germans. The Allied occupiers tried Jacquerie officers responsible for war crimes and sentenced them to death or life imprisonment, and sought to restore freedom and democracy to French society while preventing the advance of Communism, as the Cold War had already started in the mid-1940s.

The 1955 general election, held almost four years after the coalition broke down, was won by the MRP in coalition with smaller conservative parties, and its subsequent government was based on Christian democracy and Catholic social teaching, although there were many former Jacqueries in its ranks.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

During the presidential campaign, Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas used populist rethoric, attacking the other two major candidates as faces of the same Washington Consensus policies, and promising a new alternative for the Mexican people.

He sought to win over the PRI's voterbase by emphasizing how his father was one of the party's greatest leaders, and that the son was closer to Revolutionary ideals than Labastida. With this and the PRI's unpopularity from 71 years of dictatorship, its candidate finished a historically disappointing third.

Vicente Fox sought to win the support of Catholics, and attacked Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas' left-wing policies (but not the man himself), saying they would damage the economy and achieve equality by making everyone poor. Fox emphasized economic liberalism, cracking down on drug cartels, and close ties with the United States, but poor voters came to perceive him as an out of touch elitist.

In 2006, Cárdenas managed to get his successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, elected, due to running a fine presidency that improved socioeconomic indicators and had no major scandals.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Credits to r/vexillology three years ago for the DKP flag.

In 1918, an Austrian-born German corporal who had been injured in a chemical attack and lost one testicle during the Great War¹, named Adolf Hitler, became a supporter of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and soon an ideological Bolshevik. But Hitler was also antisemitic and a Pan-German nationalist, and strongly opposed the KPD, especially since its leader, Rosa Luxemburg, was a Jewish woman.

Instead, he infiltrated the German Workers' Party (DAP) the following year, and soon turned it into the German Communist Party (DKP), a name intentionally meant to differentiate the party from the original Communist Party of Germany. Since the DAP was economically populist instead of communist, Hitler virtually had to build it from scratch, although a few people that shared his vision joined.

The DKP was a "national communist" party that mixed Bolshevism with German nationalism and revanchism and antisemitism, albeit justified in economic terms. It supported an alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union against "plutocratic Anglophone liberalism", municipal ownership of public utilities (inspired by Karl Lueger), the nationalisation of industry and banking, and land reform and the cancellation of farmers' debts, proposals that appealed to a few war veterans, unskilled workers and radical farmers, but not many other people.

But Hitler made up for this through his eloquent oratory that relied on the stab-in-the-back myth, broader scapegoating, and his understanding of crowd psychology, and the party's ranks grew, especially in Bavaria and Hamburg. By 1923, it boasted 20,000 dues-paying members, and put a special emphasis on attempting to control unions.

In November of that year, the DKP, inspired by the March on Rome of former socialist Benito Mussolini, attempted a coup d'etat in a Munich beer hall where Bavarian officers met. The SA could only muster 100 troops against 3,000 government soldiers, and was defeated by the turn of the day.

While in prison, Hitler wrote an autobiography and political text named Mein Kampf (My Struggle), and dictated its content to fellow prisoner Otto Strasser. After being released, he focused on winning power through elections.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

In 1941, the Viet Minh rose up against French rule with US and Chinese support, soon capturing a great deal of territory against French colonial forces.

On 18 February 1942, the Governor General of Tonkin sent Hideki Tojo a telegram asking for Japanese troops to land in Indochina in support of the Jacqueries, but Tojo refused the offer, allegedly due to his opposition to Western colonialism in Asia; he would prefer a Japanese invasion and takeover to reinforcing the French presence. For the next two years, the front's fortunes greatly shifted, but as a general rule the guerrilas made no major gains

In 1944, NRA troops led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek intervened in support of the Viet Minh, putting the Allies on the offensive in Indochina. Jacques Dutroux ordered the French to resist, which they did in spite of constant territorial and personnel losses, only surrendering in 1947, when France itself did.

In North Vietnam, the communists in the Viet Minh soon became dominant, with Trotskyists and moderate nationalists being pushed aside, and it was later proclaimed the Communist Party of Vietnam. In the South, there was a struggle between Diem and Bao Dai that resulted in the former establishing himself as a right-wing dictator backed by the United States.

In 1951, when the United States were mired in Korea, Ho Chi Minh began planning an invasion of South Vietnam and the country's reunification. The Hanoi Politburo managed to form the NLF as a proxy group in the neighboring state, and border incidents throughout 1952 and 1953 served as the trigger for war.

On 27 September 1953, the PAVN, backed by air support and Chinese volunteers, crossed the 60 parallel north. The ARVN was much weaker, in spite of Diem's engagement in a military buildup geared against the communists, and faced several defeats until the January 1954 victory at Hue, which has been attributed to the United States arms airlift that substantially expanded ARVN inventories.

But the Tet Offensive, launched when most ARVN personnel were on leave, reversed this situation and resumed the communist advances. By that time, Ho Chi Minh had decided to annex South Vietnam immediately after Saigon fell, ignoring advice to form a provisional revolutionary government, and the NLF became the southern branch of the PCV, its Trotskyist factions being purged.

The Soviet Union under Lavrentiy Beria and Mao Zedong's China supported the PAVN throughout the war, providing them with advisors, weapons and supplies; Beria and Mao met several times during the war to coordinate their strategy. Given the corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese government, the support worked, and the country was reunified in 1956, entering a period of stability and growth.

There were concurrent Communist revolts in neighboring Laos and Cambodia, with Vietnam backing the Communists and the United States the monarchist governments. In 1956, the Democratic Lao Republic was proclaimed, followed by the People's Republic of Cambodia in 1960, the latter led by Tou Samouth.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

During AMLO's presidency, the drug cartels experienced a tremendous growth in their power, especially Los Zetas, and he faced a sluggish economy after 2008.

Around that time, with the PRI definitely pushed out of power, the PAN became the main neoliberal party in Mexico, advocating for pro-business economic policies, Atlanticism and free trade, opposing the welfarist and multipolar approach of the two PRD presidents.

The PRD convention selected Marcelo Ebrard to be the nominee, and he began the general election campaign trailing heavily in the polls due to high crime, the poor economy and major protests against the government in 2011–12. Ebrard's polling numbers grew as the general election approached, but it was not enough, and Josefina Vázquez Mota was elected the first female and PAN president of Mexico.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Jacques Dutroux in exile in Argentina (1947–1954)


Dutroux's false Argentine ID, identifying him as engineer "Vincent Bertrand"

By March 1947, Jacquerie France was the only Axis power standing, and it only controlled Paris and having surrounding areas such as Saint-Denis, much of Laos and Cambodia, and French Polynesia. It was clear that the Battle of Paris, fought by American, British, French Resistance and Commonwealth troops against the stubborn French Army, would be the final battle of the war in Europe.

Throughout the first half of the month, Paris was invaded by the Allies, and they quickly surrounded the city from all directions. Dutroux considered commuting suicide with cyanide or escaping to Argentina, as his ally Generalissimo Francisco Franco had done in early 1946.

On the night 15 March 1946, Dutroux held a last-ditch meeting with his remaining generals, and discovered there were no forces available to launch a counterattack. The following morning, he met with his self-appointed successor, Pierre Laval, and verbally (to avoid Allied detection) told him he was resigning as Head of State (merger of the presidency and premiership) of France, automatically making Laval head of state. Dutroux then shaved his mustache and most of his hair, put on a different pair of glasses than his iconic ones, and boarded an Air France flight to Buenos Aires on a captured C-47 Skytrain.

In Buenos Aires, Dutroux bought a house in Hipólito Yirigoyen Street, from a owner unaware of his true identity, and came into contact with fellow fascist exiles, who cooperated with parts of the Catholic Church to forme ratlines allowing other war criminals to escape. When at a Buenos Aires cafe, he met Andressa Pertini, a 26 year-old waitress, and fell in love with her, his first wife having died in an Allied bombing of Paris; the two married on 20 September, and adopted a son.

Laval decreed unconditional surrender on 21 March, formally ending World War II, and France was split into four zones of occupation, losing all of its overseas territories other than Algeria and most of West Africa. Pierre Laval was imprisoned and sentenced to five years in prison by the Allied occupiers, subsequently dying of natural causes in 1956.

In Argentina, Dutroux took on the false identity of "Vincent Bertrand", an engineer. He is said to have offered advice to Juan Perón on public works, but there is no evidence of this; in 1948, Dutroux and Pertini escaped to Patagonia with their adopted son, allegedly having a healthy marriage, as Pertini, like the Western Allies, thought Dutroux was dead.

After the war, Allied governments believed Dutroux had committed suicide in his bunker, and refused to impose a death sentence in absentia against him. Alleged sightings of Le Chef were documented in Switzerland, Turkey and Iran, but none were authenticated, and Allied governments held he had died in 1947 until 1955, when the Revolución Libertadora government revealed Dutroux's whereabouts.

By 1954, Dutroux's health was deteriorating; he suffered from kidney failure, drinking wine heavily in his later years, as well as prostate cancer and heart disease, and was constantly bedridden. He died on 19 February 1954, at the ripe old age of 73, and was buried next to his penthouse, which was turned into an "Anti-Peronist" museum by the 1955 junta. The Junta also flew Dutroux's remains to France, where he was cremated, his ashes thrown into the Loire.

Pertini died in 2004, having written a memoir about life with Dutroux that described him as a friendly and personable man who deeply cared about her, while four of Dutroux's five biological children also survived him, the last dying in 1984.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

In 1934, almost mmediately after coming into power, the AN, which had a section in French Algeria composed exclusively of pieds-noirs, banned miscegenation in all of France's overseas territories.

Jacques Dutroux was a Social Darwinist and scientific racist who blamed miscegenation for the "degeneracy" of the United States, as slave owners had intercourse with their slaves. The ban on race mixing and interracial marriage was followed by further restrictions on natives that effectively implemented Jim Crow-style segregation across the French colonial empire; they segregated society down to its furthest minutiae, and only French Indochina, whose inhabitants (especially the Tonkinese) were not perceived by the Jacqueries to be inferior, was spared. Colonial tirauller units were also maintained.

After the Allies liberated virtually all of the French colonial empire in May 1945, they lifted segregation and removed all restrictions on French colonial subjects, but did not promise independence (except for Tunisia) which the post-1950 French government did and followed with its remaining overseas territories (except French Polynesia, which remained in France's hands and remains so to this day due to its lack of strategic value).

On 14 July 1957 (French Revolution Day), a referendum was held on Algerian independence, and 64% of voters chose independence. General elections were held on 12 October 1957, and won by the party that led the independence struggle and had its flag become that of Algeria.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The Rexist-VNV government taced widespread resistance almost immediately after coming to power, since the Flemish populace did not identify with the Catholic and Walloon-based Rex.

This led to three French infantry divisions being earmarked to Flanders, hurting France in the colonial theaters it was fighting in. However, they did use Belgium as a springboard from which to invade the Netherlands, and the Low Countries in general to bomb the UK.

Léon Degrelle abandoned Catholic rethoric and used Christian messaging instead, proclaiming himself a Christ-like messiah sent to save Belgium, and blaming the Jews and liberal politicians for the country's weakness. He sought to create an economy based on class collaboration, but the Jacqueries planned to economically control their puppet states, and this prevented Degrelle from carrying out any changes to the Belgian economy other than gearing it to help the French war effort.

France had also simultaneously invaded the Belgian Congo, but it never captured all of the vast colony due to rainforest terrain and French soldiers dying from diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness. At the territorial peak of French conquests, they only controlled close to half of the Belgian Congo.

In March 1946, when the tables had turned against France, Jacques Dutroux sent French forces to directly occupy Belgium and impose a Flemish *de jure* puppet government instead of a Walloonian one. By this time, much of prewar Belgium was under control of the Resistance and all French territory in Africa lost. During WWII, the French Army and collaborationist and security forces committed widespread massacres of Jews, Roma, Protestants and political opponents, with Jacquerie war crimes being estimated to have a total death toll of 200,000.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The far-right grew exponentially in the 1930 parliamentary election. The DNVP, for instance, gained 57 seats and pluralities of the vote in all of East Elbia.

The DKP, on the other hand, finished eight and only won 18 seats and 3% of the vote. They took advantage of the economic crisis and parliamentary gridlock to argue against democracy and for a totalitarian government, and Hitler's party was the main surprise of the 1931 election.

The sixth place finisher in terms of seats was the Reich Party of the German Middle Class, led by small businessman Werner Schmidt. It obtained sizeable support among farmers and small businessmen, especially in Swabia, but the entry of Papen's party made it collapse in 1931.

Franz von Papen's meteoric political rise began in 1930. A charming, talented politician with a powerful war record, Papen supported a New State dictatorship as a prelude to restoring the Hohenzollern monarchy, and was elected for the Centre Party with the support of the DNVP. After Zentrum refused to fully oppose Weimar, Papen formed his own party, and it finished third in the 1931 election, behind the DNVP (its close partner) and SDP; Zentrum fell into a distant third, but Papen would only be named Chancellor after the 1932 general elections, when his party won the most seats, due to Hindenburg distrusting his Catholicism and joy wanting to alienate moderates.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Given the deteriorating economy and war reparation crisis, the DNVP become the largest party in the Reichstag for the first time, allowing it and the other two right-wing parties to form a coalition government.

The KPD won 25 seats, meaning they lost 46 of them, due to the radical right surge and the DKP's breakthrough into the Reichstag.

The national communist DKP continued to grow in support, becoming the largest far-left party in the Reichstag and subsequently getting official support from Moscow. Its platform appealed strongly to unskilled workers and the unemployed, as did the charisma of Hitler and Strasser, who blamed Jews and the economic elites for the depression. However, its ultranationalism arguably limited the party's appeal.

The League of German Catholics Cross and Eagle, a conservative monarchist party, became the third-largest party, and won the Catholic vote due to appealing to Catholics, and monarchists who disagreed with Hugenberg's populism. It believed in a temporary dictatorship before the restoration of the monarchy, cameralism, rearmament and anti-communism. During the campaign, Papen, who became Chancellor after 1932, put a heavy emphasis on his war record and international service, promising to undo the Versailles Treaty. However, the DKKA was still brand new and finished third in number of seats and the popular vote, only getting a majority the following (regular) election.

Paul von Hindenburg refused to name Papen or Hugenberg chancellor due their Catholicism and lack of government experience, respectively, choosing an old close friend of Papen's, Kurt von Schleicher, to be chancellor. As Chancellor, Schleicher left economic policy on the hands of his cabinet while focusing on rearmament and cracking down on communism, a job continued by Papen when he became Chancellor on 18 December 1932.

The KPD won 25 seats, meaning they lost 46 of them, due to the radical right surge and the DKP's breakthrough into the Reichstag.

The national communist DKP continued to grow in support, becoming the largest far-left party in the Reichstag and subsequently getting official support from Moscow. Its platform appealed strongly to unskilled workers and the unemployed, as did the charisma of Hitler and Strasser, who blamed Jews and the economic elites for the depression. However, its ultranationalism arguably limited the party's appeal.

The League of German Catholics Cross and Eagle, a conservative monarchist party, became the third-largest party, and won the Catholic vote due to appealing to Catholics, and monarchists who disagreed with Hugenberg's populism. It believed in a temporary dictatorship before the restoration of the monarchy, cameralism, rearmament and anti-communism. During the campaign, Papen, who became Chancellor after 1932, put a heavy emphasis on his war record and international service, promising to undo the Versailles Treaty. However, the DKKA was still brand new and finished third in number of seats and the popular vote, only getting a majority the following (regular) election.

Paul von Hindenburg refused to name Papen or Hugenberg chancellor due their Catholicism and lack of government experience, respectively, choosing an old close friend of Papen's, Kurt von Schleicher, to be chancellor. As Chancellor, Schleicher left economic policy on the hands of his cabinet while focusing on rearmament and cracking down on communism, a job continued by Papen when he became Chancellor on 18 December 1932.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The sides of World War II (1942–1947)


Dark gray: Axis powers upon joining the war¹

Blue: Western Allies upon joining the war

Red: Soviet Union, Sheng Shicai's Xinjiang, Mongolia and Tannu Tuva

Silver: Countries that remained neutral throughout or until the end of the war

¹ = Poland is supposed to control all of East Prussia and much of Ruthenia and Ukraine.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Ioannis Konstantinos was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, on 17 November 1953, to a military father that had fought against the communists in the Greek Civil War, and his second wife.

Konstantinos attended an elementary school in the city and later Athens Polytechnic University, graduating in 1975 with a PhD in business administration. By then, he already stood for the right-wing political views he has implemented in Greece, criticizing the university uprising against the military junta as an "anarcho-communist revolution".

In 1978, the 25 year-old Ioannis Konstantinos founded a construction company, IKAK (IK Anomymous Society), that participated in public works across Greece and had an internal code surprisingly fair to workers. IKAK also provided financial donations to New Democracy's electoral campaigns, and by the mid-1980s was a thriving business.

It was during the late 1980s when Konstantinos began expanding his business empire beyond construction, founding electronics (1989), logistical (1987) and chemical (1993) companies. He turned into one of the richest people in Greece, and tried to pay as little in taxes as legally possible; when Konstantinos entered politics, his sons inherited his non-football related businesses.

During the Yugoslav Wars, Konstantinos supported the "Orthodox patriotic" Serbia against the "Turk barbarians", and denied the Srebernica massacre had taken place, a position he publicly maintained until 2009. These positions put him out of step with ND, and although the businessman supported Konstantinos Mitsotakis' economic policies, he shifted his support to Political Spring until 1996.

In 2004, Konstantinos – who had opposed the Lisbon Treaty in the meantime, and strongly campaigned against its ratification – bought AEK Athens for €500 million, reforming the team's structure to be more like that of a business, increasing the role of fans in decision-making, using the internet to gather football fans, and buying several new players. Those measures helped AEK win the 2006–07 SLG season.

On 10 January 2007, he nominally resigned from his football chairmanship to lead the national conservative, right-wing populist and economic nationalist party he founded on 7 September 2005 and legally registered on 11 February 2006, while continuing to control the team through a subordinate.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

On 7 September 2005, businessman and owner of the AEK Athens football club Ioannis Konstantinos announced he was leaving New Democracy and creating the Party of the Greek Nation (Κόμμα Ελληνικού Έθνους).

The new right-wing party also had the involvement of dissenters from LAOS and Golden Dawn, and several military officers. Konstantinos was announced to be the party's chairman, with Kyriakos Veuopoulos and Vasilis Stigkas also being founding members. On 11 February 2006, the KEE was officially registered with the Ministry of the Interior, allowing it to participate in that year's local elections.

The KEE fielded 42 candidates during the election, including in Athens and other PASOK strongholds like Crete and Thrace, but the majority of them ran in rural districts. Konstantinos self-funded the KEE's campaign efforts, and refused donations; the party elected two councillors, both of whom were in conservative small towns, and only won 0.34% of the vote in Athens, the majority of which is speculated to have come from AEK fans.

Throughout the rest of 2006, the KEE tried to capitalize on right-wing discontent with the European Union, and especially Turkey's proposed entry in the EU. It also fought against multiculturalism and immigration, and demanded that Germany pay Greece war reparations. The KEE manifesto (released to the public on 15 February 2006) did not make any mention of economics, which were not a winning issue for them before 2008, but in power, the party has pursued Keynesianism and economic nationalism.

On 10 January 2007, Konstantinos stepped down as AEK's official chairman, allowing him to focus on politics. During the legislative election, the KEE fielded 98 candidates for the Greek Parliament, and again refused to receive public funding, its wealthy leader funding the campaign instead. Party campaigning focused on anti-immigration and eurosceptic views, supporting the restoration of drachma as a step towards Grexit, a points-based immigration system and border fence with Turkey, and a limit on how many refugees Greece could receive a year.

KEE eventually won 70,655 votes, 0.99% of the nationwide vote. Much of it came from rural districts that heavily supported ND, with football aficionados playing a lesser role, although many of them understood Konstantinos remained the power behind the throne. This low percentage of the vote (two percentage points below the electoral threshold) had an effect in the election, as ND fell two seats short of a parliamentary majority, forcing a confidence and supply agreement with the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) to be formed.

During his second term, Kostas Karamanlis was forced to take a harder line on immigration and social issues in order to please his coalition partners, moving closer to the right wing of the ND, subsequently leading to the Party of Growth being formed as a centre-right schism from the ruling party. The 2008–09 financial crisis subsequently led to a vote of no confidence on his unpopular government, and PASOK won a landslide at the 2009 legislative election. Karamanlis also announced his opposition to Turkey's membership in the EU, and threatened to take the Macedonia naming dispute to the International Court of Justice, leading to international embarrassment.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The ND-LAOS coalition government followed a more conservative policy than previous administrations, opposing Turkish membership in the EU and threatening to sue Macedonia over its name.

The privatisation and deregulation policies of Kostas Karamanlis' first term were continued, as was European integration, generating tensions with ND's coalition partner while members of the ND establishment broke from the party to form the Party of Growth (KA). The KA's 2009 campaign was substantially hyped, but it won 168,953 votes and 2.46% of the vote, meaning it did not win any seats.

After his vote of no confidence pushed by the PASOK and dissatisfied ND politicians who opposed his inconsistent line and handling of the financial crisis, Karamanlis was replaced as its leader by Dora Bakoyannis, Foreign Minister of Greece, and formerly the first female major of Athens who hosted the 2004 Olympics. With two popular far-right parties, a broken economy and recently impeached head of government, voters agreed the ND was doomed from the start, and it had a historically poor result.

After the global economic crisis began in September 2008, KEE ran on economic interventionism, returning to the drachma, and protectionist trade policies, occasionally bringing up restrictions on immigration and law and order. Konstantinos continued to self-fund his party's campaign efforts, and often emphasized how his movement did not receive any government money, unlike the majority of competitors. On 28 May 2009, he and Georgios Karatzaferis agreed to a nonaggression pact between KEE and LAOS.

The 2009 general election produced a hung parliament for the second consecutive time, and again, one of the two major parties had to form a coalition government with a smaller, anti-estabilishment movement. George Papandreou, on the other hand, only agreed to govern as a 1970s social democrat and resist any further neoliberal measures.

KKE had a strong performance, getting double digits of the popular vote and 36 seats, while kingmaker Syriza and LAOS remained static. Over the next three years, Greece's economy continued to worsen, allowing KEE to form a majority government after the 2012 elections. Democratic backsliding and efforts to control government institutions have led to it governing Greece as of May 2024.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The PASOK-SYRIZA administration attempted to return to social democracy, but a crushing debt crisis made itself the main issue facing the country, and the left-wing coalition's policies failed to fix it.

As such, in 2011, the left-wing coalition government was replaced by a grand coalition of the ND and PASOK, which obtained a far greater margin in Parliament. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras felt betrayed and broke with the PASOK, challenging it from its left and attempting to attract the working class and students.

In the meantime, the KEE, which proposed a Greek withdrawal from the Eurozone, protectionist economic policies and restrictions on immigration, continued to grow in support, attracting socially conservative workers who blamed immigrants and other minorities for the recession. In the 2010 local elections, it was the third most voted party nationwide and fourth in Athens, winning three city council seats in the capital, and actively used the internet for campaigning, the same strategy Konstantinos had used as a football chairman. By late 2011, it was polling second in general election surveys, behind Syriza, which was not blamed for the economic situation by voters due to having 15 seats.

Some pundits feared scheduling a new legislative election would hand over seats to the KEE, and those fears proved prescient, as it went from the second smallest to the largest party in Parliament, although 80 seats below a majority. The three days after the election were marked by pessimism, and the Athens stock market dropped noticeably.

On 7 May, Ioannis Konstantinos called Antonis Samaras, and offered to compromise on the Euro by supporting a referendum on the national currency instead. Polling showed the electorate to be split on whether or not to readopt the drachma, although the majority of them went on to vote for it, restoring Greece's sovereign currency. Later that day, he contacted Panos Kammenos, who was unaware of the compromise, and asked for him to support a right-wing coalition government; the ANEL leader accepted, and the governing majority was formed two days later – having a bare majority of 151 seats, and forcing Konstantinos to govern in a more moderate manner than expected.

The KKE lost eight seats to the Syriza, effectively realigning Greek politics between a national conservative and a democratic socialist parties. They have finished first or second in every Greek legislative election since, with SYRIZA having won the lastest due to the KEE administration getting unpopular.

The right-wing coalition went on to increase their seats the following year, as it did not take any further loans and instead focused paying down Greece's debt, implemented a balanced budget amendment, and closed corporate tax loopholes in order to stop tax evasion.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

During the RWC's first year in power, it carried out economically nationalist policies, refusing austerity, implemented a points-based immigration system, lowered taxes, and privatized some industries.

On 15 February 2013, it held a Eurozone referendum where 54% of Greeks voted Leave. The drachma returned as Greece's currency on 31 December of that year, after Konstantinos successfully negotiated that Greece would remain in the EU, as not all of its member states lack their own currency.

The RWC ran as a single electoral bloc for the 2013 general elections, as it did in 2015, but not in 2019, as the coalition broke down shortly before. It focused on the catastrophic state of Greece's economy and how its policies were helping fix them, which they eventually did, with the economy recovering by early 2015. They attacked Syriza for its stance on immigration and open borders, which were blamed for crime and violence committed by Middle Eastern and African refugees, contrasting this to the points-based immigration system.

The democratic socialist parties' gains in the election mase this strategy appear to have backfired, as Syriza won 26 seats and increased their percentage of the vote by 13%, while the RWC lost their majority and DIMAR won one seat and improved by 1%. Campaigning on the economy damaged the governing bloc, as it had not recovered yet and was still in a deep crisis even with those measures.

PASOK had the weakest showing in its history, winning 8.8% of the vote and only 28 seats. They have performed better in more recent elections, but came nowhere close to winning, making the populist parties the dominant ones in Greek politics. However, the unity government implemented after the election made the centre-left party relevant for a short period of time, as some of its proposals were adopted by the government.