Following the 2013 murder of antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, three women from the inner circle of Greece’s ultra-right-wing Golden Dawn busy themselves with the functioning of the party when their leadership is thrown in jail, including most of the GD’s 18 elected MPs. Among this little cell of PR–courting women is Ourania, daughter of troll-shaped party founder and professional rage queen Nikolaos Michaloliakos.

Full credit goes to these ladies for their principled stance on semantics. We see GD goons trashing immigrant market stalls, punching lesbians on live TV, chanting about turning communists into soap, chittering affectionately as their kids play with real guns, and blaming all their problems on the International Jewish Conspiracy—but for God’s sake don’t call them Nazis!

From the Embedded With Extremists miniseries curated by journalist Geoff Dembicki, this must-see doc ends with a remarkable conversation between filmmaker Håvard Bustnes and the Disney-film-collecting, dog-loving Burzum fan Ourania. He tries to tease a smidgen of human decency from beneath all that “sacred resistance” garbage. The close reader might describe her response as vulnerable and sad. Haunting, even.

May, 2018