Jailed Kasidiaris using YouTube as his platform

With elections looming, YouTube has become the main platform through which jailed former Golden Dawn official Ilias Kasidiaris is conducting his campaign, despite a recent amendment passed by Parliament which aims to ban the participation of his the National Party-The Greeks.

Kasidiaris’ YouTube channel now has 135,000 followers and his most recent video, uploaded on April 5, received more 150,000 views. In his latest online address, he referred to the assumption of the presidency of his party by the honorary deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court Anastasios Kanellopoulos, while making no secret of his ideology, saying that Greece must rid itself of the threats of “illegal migration” and “Islamization,” while pointing to Viktor Orban’s Hungary as a model state.

Since last January, Kathimerini had sent specific questions to YouTube about the status of Kasidiaris’ channel. The answer came after three months with the platform saying it has strict community guidelines which are enforced.

YouTube’s policies, a spokesperson said, focus on content, not who the speaker is. It added that following an audit, it has previously removed content from Kasidiaris’ channel because it violated the platform’s hate speech policy, which strictly prohibits content that promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups. It also said that it even removed content from his channel for violating its misinformation policy on Covid-19.

However, it has not specified how many these videos were, exactly what their content was and when they were removed.

According to the platform’s regulations, a channel is terminated if it violates the community’s guidelines three times within 90 days.

Meanwhile, the disciplinary board at Domokos Prison where Kasidiaris is serving his sentence for running a criminal organization as a leading member of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, is expected to meet tomorrow regarding his telephone communications and to ascertain if there are any irregularities.