Golden Dawn shows its true colours

It was only a matter of time, but now Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has shown its true colours on live TV:

Greece's election campaign turned ugly on live TV: The spokesman of the extreme-right Golden Dawn party, after trading insults of "commie" and "fascist," lunged at two female left-wing politicians on a mainstream morning talk show, throwing water at one and smacking the other three times across the face.

The violent display reminiscent of trash TV, a week and a half ahead of crucial elections, stunned Greeks as they seek to avoid a catastrophic exit from Europe's common euro currency. A prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Ilias Kasidiaris, whose party alarmed Europe by gaining 21 of Parliament's 300 seats in Greece's inconclusive May 6 elections.

And in the aftermath, Golden Dawn supporters have apparently attacked two PASOK candidates.

make no mistake: Golden Dawn is not a "patriotic" nationalist party. They are a group of violent thugs happy to use violence for political ends. The question now is exactly how many Greeks really support that style of politics.