Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen

From ancient writings and modern films, we are presented with an image of the Spartans as fearless warriors, born for war and always ready for battle. We are left to imagine a brutal system in which boys, if they were not thrown off a cliff at birth, were trained from an early age to live for war. This gives the false impression that Sparta was more of a military camp than a functioning Greek polis. But much of what we think we know about Sparta comes from outsiders who admired, feared, or deliberately mythologized Spartan discipline……..Continue reading….

By: Elmedin Salihagic, MA History

Source:  TheCollector

.

Critics:

In the late 1980s, Vasilis Stigkas first joined New Democracy for a few years at the time when Konstantinos Mitsotakis was Prime Minister. Unsatisfied with the party, he followed then Foreign Minister Antonis Samaras into his new Political Spring party, after the latter was dismissed from his position over his stance on the Macedonia naming dispute.

In the early 2000s, Stigkas joined the LAOS party of Georgios Karatzaferis. He left after the party’s support for the memorandum in 2012 while it participated in the coalition government of Lucas Papademos. He created the Spartans party in 2017, while participating in political programs on the YouTube channel of Konstantinos Plevris and Tasos Simigdalas.

During that time, he interviewed different political personalities such as leftist Panagiotis Lafazanis, centrist Vasilis Leventis and Golden Dawner Ioannis Lagos. For the European parliamentary election of May 2019, an electoral alliance was announced with the party Union of Centrists of Vasilis Leventis. Stigkas received 752 votes nationwide.

In the national legislative elections of 2019, Stigkas participated once more on the Boeotia ballot list of the Union of Centrists, receiving 35 votes. In December 2020, the formation of a coalition was announced by ELASYN, the Popular Hellenic Patriotic Union (LEPEN), the “Spartans” party, the United Front of Greek Ideology of Compatriots (EMEIS) and the Front Line, with the prospect of a joint electoral descent with the name K.Y.M.A of Hellenism.

In February 2021, the coalition announced the collaboration of the formation with the retired captain and chief of the Popular Citizens Movement (LAKIP) Andreas Petropoulos. On 8 June 2023, the party Spartans was allowed to participate in the upcoming June 2023 Greek legislative election by the Supreme Court of Greece. Following the exclusion of the far-right National Party – Greeks of Ilias Kasidiaris from both the May and June 2023 elections, Kasidiaris announced his “full support” for the party of Stigkas.

Subsequently, the party gained a 4.68% in the June 2023 Greek legislative election, winning a total of 12 seats in the new parliament. The party gained significant traction in national polls in mid-June, following an endorsement on Twitter by Ilias Kasidiaris, a former Golden Dawn MP and nationalist politician who had been convicted in the trial declaring Golden Dawn to be a criminal organisation. Kasidiaris urged his supporters to vote for Spartans in the June 2023 election.

Given that many of its members of parliament have previously been associated with either Golden Dawn or Kasidiaris’ party Greeks for the Fatherland, which was banned from participating in the 2023 elections, Spartans has been seen as a continuation of Golden Dawn. Some sources have even labelled it as Kasidiaris’ “trojan horse”. Less than three months after the elections, three MPs were expelled from the parliamentary group by Stigkas, with the party’s president citing their absence from the parliament as the reason for their expulsion.

In early September, two more MPs became independent, leaving the party with 7 out of its original 12 seats. On 7 September, four of the newly independent MPs were reintegrated into the party’s parliamentary group. Since August 2023, a prolonged internal party crisis all but dissolved the Spartiate parliamentary group. The crisis erupted over the support of most of the party’s MPs for Ilias Kasidiaris and his candidacy for the Municipality of Athens in the upcoming local elections.

Party leader Vasilis Stigkas reacted to these initiatives by his MPs and expelled three of them, referring to MPs led by extra-parliamentary foreign centres acting like the Greek mafia. Stigkas’ allegations prompted a judicial investigation by the Prosecutor of Greece’s Supreme Civil and Criminal Court, leading to the indictment of the entire parliamentary group—except Vasilis Stigkas—for electoral fraud, with Ilias Kasidiaris also charged for instigating the fraud.

In May 2025, the Court of Appeal unanimously acquitted all 11 accused MPs, including Kasidiaris, finding no evidence that they had misled voters.”
On 27 May, the Appeals Prosecutor’s Office filed an appeal against the first-instance decision, deeming its reasoning erroneous. According to a decision by the Special Highest Court, three Spartans MPs were stripped of their office and ceased to be members of the Greek Parliament.

This decision was based on the opinion that these MPs were elected by misleading the electorate, concealing that their true leader and guide was Ilias Kasidiaris. The party’s parliamentary group, now consisting of only two members, was dissolved on 12 June 2025, as it fell below the threshold of five MPs required to form a parliamentary group. The two MPs joined the Independents.

The party was barred from participating in the 2024 European Parliament elections, an action that was endorsed by New Democracy, PASOK, New Left and Syriza while it was rejected by Afroditi Latinopoulou and her Voice of Reason party. The party is considered to be ultranationalist, ultraconservative, anti-LGBT/homophobic and positioned on the far-right of the political spectrum.

Why the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history is becoming more challenging  21:38