mara karagianni on Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:42:12 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> On the Greek binaries of controversy |
a first impression... --------------------------- The episodes that are going on now in Greece are the result of a continuing series of its government's policy of privatization and corruption scandals that came into surface since the beginning of 2008; the 25 % of the public telecommunication [OTE] stakes sale to the Deutsch Telecom company[2], the Siemens scandal that secured the German company's contracts with the Greek state for constructions during the Olympic games[3] and the most recent exposure of land swaps ruled by the Orthodox church with the aid of parliamentary officials from both the previous social governing party Pasok and the current Karamanli's right party[4]. Those scandals dealt with millions of money laundering and a big loss of public money. And the list goes on; the forthcoming closure of the Olympic airlines and its foreseen privatized new launch with a huge reduction of working staff[5], the decision to render private institutions' diplomas equivalent to the public universities' ones in a country where entrance into public education goes through very harsh exams, while the financial support for studies such as loans and funding is out of the question [the only existing public funding supports only post graduate education and it becomes more and more limited]. And finally an overall pessimistic feeling among the young people about a precarious future. Giving money to bankers and withdrawing money from the education, the pensions, extending working hours and the retirement age cannot be plausibly accepted by public opinion. In Den Hague the European summit for space exploration managed to gather its funding for the next 3 years. Esa's director argued; 'In space, you are investing for the next five or 10 years, meaning that space cannot be dependent on economic cycles which are disturbing the situation of today but which will not disturb the future'[1]. Of course they have to look into the future of the outer space stations if people on earth are dying of food shortage, epidemics and even by police officers. Car industries close down but space companies may flourish. And of course they should secure the earth's monitoring of the climate change [instead of actually doing something about it]. But the riots now in Greece has turned to fuel a profound rupture between property owners and a radical youth, extreme rightist groups and anarchists, and even between communists and alternative radical leftists. The two first conflicts are being nurtured by the mainstream TV media that have manipulated and censored audio files [Mega channel was accused to add sound effects in an audio file that was recorded during the arrest of 2 teenagers and Alpha channel demanded a take down notice to the same file that was posted online, without the effects, for copyright infringement] and have been emphasizing on reports about immigrants looting shops and generally about the destruction of private property. But also local TV channels across the country spread rumors about organized anarchic attacks that want to bring down Karamanli's government and foster the state into chaos. The third split is related to the fact that the new radical left party [Syriza], which by the way has entered the political realm very dynamically, found the riots sound as a consequence of the accumulation of scandals and the socio-economic problems that Greek society suffers from. This was condemned by the Communist party [KKE] which accused Syriza of backing up the violence of the riots. Friends that joined a demonstration within the communist body were forced to open their bags to show that they did not carry with them any threatening widgets. On Thursday the entrance of Pantios University, the school of Philosophy and other schools, were safeguarded by the youth of the communist party [KNE] that did not allow anyone to enter in order to eliminate any possible insurgents. In addition, the public general disillusion by both major political parties, which stems from their involvement in the mentioned financial scandals, seems to have caused a crisis in the Greeks' political identity. The attempt to reach a new consensus over which party best represents them is not obvious. And this is an extra layer of confusion over a Greek society that carries a history of civil war full of controversies. The civil war in the 1944-49 [the first proxy war in the Cold War] between the Communist partisans [ELAS] and the Royalist army had provoked very bitter after effects and had divided public consciousness into an extreme political dualism[6]. Until 1974 [the date of Papadopoulos dictatorship came to an end] the civil war was used as a tool for anticommunist propaganda through the history school books [in Greece the only history books that can be taught in class are published by the state], and afterwards when Pasok came to govern in the '80s it was used as a support for a national unity. Now KKE is being criticized of allying with Karamanlis party because it is against the character of the riots. But it seems to me that KKE strict deprecation of violence and the urge to suppress it may derive from the burden of violent accountability carried by the communists after the civil war and the failure back then to reach a wider Greek population that felt intimidated by the partisans' attacks. Another option may be that KKE tries to stumble a possible coalition between Pasok and Syriza, if new elections take place. The possibility of a governmental coalition between the two big parties [Pasok and New Democracy] is left out, even if their differences are less than their similarities, because this is more of a taboo issue; If you are not with us you are with the others. If you are not a nationalist Christian you are a leftist anarchist. If you do not protest against the country of Macedonia that wants the official recognition of its name but which first belongs to the Greek Northern region [Greek state uses instead the name FYROM for its neighboring country] you do not see the jeopardy of your country's borders[7]. You are not respectful of the ancient heritage and history of the Great Alexander, who was Macedonian and thereby of course Greek [even though the concept of the Greek state came into existence in 1829 and at that time the broad region of Macedonia was a land over which Bulgarians, Serbians and Greeks were fighting to assimilate into each one own territory]. But the Macedonian and Balkan wars are another subject of controversy in the history school books that also serves the construction of the national imaginary. Why did, in 2004, a football game between Albania and Greece, in which the latter lost[8] light Greek nationalistic mobilizations, racist slogans and led to the killing of an Albanian man on a Greek island? Because the majority of the public was full of pride with the success of the Olympic games and the country's European Football Championship 2004 that could not have accepted such a defeat. And I do not have to go far, only a couple of weeks ago there was an extreme anti-foreigner protest held by the residents of an Athenian suburb [Ag. Panteleymon]. They asked the police to take drastic measures in order to send away the migrants from the neighborhood because they have grown in number and have been breeding animals in their houses [since when is this forbidden?], and all these frightened the Greek residents[9]. Shall I also recall here that children of migrants born in Greece are not legitimate for the Greek nationality? But to go back to the riots, a phrase that was frequently repeated after the teenager's shooting by the police, was 'what would you have done if it was your child? Wouldn't you go out in the streets as a kamikaze terrorist'? However this is one more sign of people's inability to get the bigger picture of the seriousness of social, cultural and economic problems that Greece is facing and whose intensity led to the riots that do not need the owing of a child to follow up. At the same time the authorities and media steer public attention towards the 'questionable' manners of the killed teenager [this is what the defense lawyer of the two policeman has declared along with his account of the shooting as an accident, or do I need to mention the CNN news allegedly reporting that the youngster was holding a fuel filled bomb?[10], the high cost of the destroyed private property and the tale of an underground organized anti-governmental plan. Before it was the migrants and the name of Macedonia, now is the anarchists' violence. The public announcement by the students' occupation of the Athens School of Economics [ASOEE] is right to claim that they do not just wish for the government's resignation. They struggle for a deeper social change against the bourgeois democracy and the system of the capital. But if history continues to be written under narrow perspectives to reassure nations' collective memory, and promoting friends/enemies political concepts, then the production of such violent conflicts and public division will remain inescapable. -maria rotterdam --------------------- [1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7744270.stm [2]http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1486182020080514 [3]http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/01/europe/EU-Greece-Corruption-Siemens.php [4]http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/26/europe/greece.php [5]http://www.xpatathens.com/news/18853 [6]http://makedonika.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/incompatible-allies-greek-communism-and-macedonian-nationalism-in-the-civil-war-in-greece-1943-1949/ [7]http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/15251/ [8]https://www.indymedia.ie/article/66489 [9]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5eiMULfs9U [10]http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/12/09/greece.riots/index.html # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org