Is the crackdown on Golden Dawn a good idea?

The arrest of the leader and deputy leader of Golden Dawn – alongside other Golden Dawn MPs and party members – has been greeted with applause by liberals inside and outside Greece.

There is little doubt that Golden Dawn is a genuinely nasty party whose members are guilty of rhetorical and actual violence against immigrants and whose leadership revels in paramilitary and fascist imagery. All those who fear that economic turmoil will undermine Greek democracy have been able to point to the gains made by Golden Dawn.

And yet, while the party is undoubtedly authentically horrible, I wonder whether the crackdown is really such a great idea. Mass arrests of legitimately elected politicians should always spark unease. As several commentators have pointed out, the last time this kind of thing happened in Greece was after the fall of a military junta, in 1974.