It is hard to come to terms with a single act of violence; it is even harder to fathom a complete breakdown of order in a supposedly modern European country. When this happens to be your native country and the streets in flames are those that you have been strolling up and down on Saturday evenings ever since you were a kid, understanding becomes painfully impossible. In the last four days Greece has become hostage to extremist elements found in the police and among its students and it has gained notoriety all over the world for being, essentially, a messed up country that is rioting without a sense of direction. I am so bitter and sad about what has happened I can't even start.
But enough with rambling and groaning - it is the very attitude which gains momentum in the Greek media and shifts everyone's attention towards conspiratorial finger-pointing (the reaction of isolated, uneducated, frustrated individuals that most Greeks are definitely NOT). Here are some lessons that I think are worth pointing at:
1) The Greek police should be revamped immediately. The killing of the 15-year-old is not the first incident of a policeman demonstrating that he is more of a thug than a keeper of law and order. Examples of "accidental killings" and "provoked beatings" abound in the records of the police forces. Recruitment and training should be totally restructured and the heads of the police should be ceremonially decapitated. The possibility of getting rid of guns altogether should be seriously considered (they have been doing it in the UK for more than a century).
2) The extremists wearing hoods who burn down Greek cities should be tracked down and captured immediately. Greek democracy should not tolerate anyone who hides their faces when protesting publicly. The investigations should be carried out by an independent prosecutor and, if that is impossible, by an inter-party parliamentary committee. I cannot believe that some of these "known unknowns" as we call them in Greece have ties to the political establishment, but if they do, all politicians involved should be stripped of their asylum and thrown into prison. The fact that nobody has been caught in 30 years is a veritable theater of the absurd. In a truly Greek way, the silent majority is expecting a catharsis.
3) The university asylum should be abolished immediately. It has drifted very very far from its original meaning (it was very much a byproduct of the dictatorship) and it has become a cancerous tumor for the campuses and the society as a whole. Freedom of intellectual expression should and can be maintained through other means.
4) The government should resign within the next few days and call general elections. I am serious. With almost no exceptions they are incompetent and unable to manage any kind of crisis; the longer they cling to power the more demoralized the political class becomes.
And a longer-term goal:
Institutions in Greece have as of late become the laughing stock of average Greeks. Only the military retains some credibility, especially after the latest church scandals. Universities, the media, politicians and the public sector (both employees and services) have experienced a long and painful moral decline. The latest economic crisis has exacerbated collective cynicism. Now an accompanying social crisis proves that young people like me are so cynical that they will just destroy everything in their wake. It 's about time we started fixing our institutions one by one to get rid of uneducated fools and damning practices that deiegitimize any attempt at a collective endeavor. If we don't start soon, more people will get exasperated, lose their sense of direction and will seek to grab the attention (of their friends? their parents? the cameras?) through public-ized destruction.
Of course, the process of reform requires competent politicians and public servants, whom I am not sure the country has. What it does have is strong families and responsible parents - no wonder why the sturdy old-school minister of Public Works (Souflias) essentially asked for their help to control the wild masses. Pretty pathetic for a supposedly modernised country.
This post is deliberately argumentative, too general, perhaps too sweeping and out of sync with the rest of the blog. Yet, I had to get these things out of my body.
PS. There is a smartass BBC correspondent who says that all this is some kind of rite of passage for the Greek youth. This is the sort of logic that compels hotheaded misfits into burning down the properties of others. Well done, Mr. Brabant, for perpetuating this rubbish.
