Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras just appointed a minister with a horrendous record of anti-Semitic comments

After his surprisingly solid election victory over the weekend, returning Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been appointing his government.

Because of the scale of his win, he was able to return to his coalition with the Independent Greeks (or ANEL), a small party, rather than any of the country's centrist or centre-left blocs.

Among the new ministers Tsipras has appointed is Dimitris Kammenos, a politician for the Independent Greeks, Syriza's coalition partner.

He's now the deputy minister for infrastructure, transport and networks.

Unlike Syriza, which is on the radical left, the Independent Greeks (or ANEL) are right-wing and nationalistic, while sharing an anti-austerity viewpoint.

But Kammenos goes much further than right-wing and nationalistic - he's got a back catalogue of awful and conspiratorial comments about Jewish people.

Most recently, Dimitris Kammenos posted a picture on his Facebook page which changed the words "arbeit macht frei" over the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp to "we're staying in Europe."

A blog that covers anti-Semitic incidents in Greece has a couple of other similar comments from Kammenos.

Kammenos has deleted his Twitter account, where many of the particularly grim comments were made.

On Twitter, The Greek Analyst and journalists Damian Mac Con Uladh and Loukia Gyftopoulou have catalogued some of the new deputy minister's posts before his account disappeared, which you can see below.

 

 

 

 

He's not the only one in his party with a record of conspiratorial comments about Jewish people - at the end of last year, Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos suggested on TV that Jews receive preferential treatment in tax terms, according to Greek newspaper Kathimerini.