Greece’s political plight, sophistry aside
It is one of the wonders of democracy, and the freedom of expression it allows, that an individual can freely attack a democratic government through public argument. However, the wonder does not extend to magically granting any such attack the merit of truth. As the Greeks living in Athens in its eight decades of democracy, in the 5th century BC, realized, a public argument contributes to public discourse by the fact that it can be itself freely attacked, tested and held to account for both its factual content and the conclusion it purports to draw from them.
Mr Alexander Clapp published an opinion piece in the New York Times titled “The rot at the heart of Greece is now clear for everyone to see,” which concludes with an ironic mention of Greek Prime Minister Mr Mitsotakis’ reference to “the ancient Greeks,” as he addressed the joint meeting of Congress some months ago, and his words that they “thought arrogance, extremism and excess the worst threats to democracy.” The irony, according to Mr Clapp, phrased in the good old Greek form of the rhetorical question, is “why Mr Mitsotakis does not feel the same way?”
Gorgias, the most famous of the Greek Sophists, was renowned for his claim that he could speak on any subject and deliver a persuasive and moving oration defending any thesis whatsoever – and its opposite. Anyone who has watched the prosecutor and defense lawyer argue in a criminal trial knows what he is talking about. But though Mr Clapp’s article does not reach Gorgian heights, it is an excellent example of the sophists’ tradition, abounding in their techniques for making a non-truth seem like a truth, techniques that the general public is, alas, increasingly familiar with in our age of rising populism.
It always helps to begin with incontestable facts, as does Mr Clapp, stating that it was recently disclosed that the telephones of an investigative journalist and the leader of a Greek opposition party were being wiretapped by the Greek intelligence agency. Sadly, this is true, and a great failing of Mr Mitsotakis, under whom the secret service operates. But Mr Clapp uses this undeniable truth on which to build an edifice of untrue, maybe true (but maybe wrong), and/or unsubstantiated or quasi-substantiated arguments in order to support the dramatic statement of his title, thus creating a false image of present-day Greece as a dark, undemocratic state.
The recent scandal of wiretappings is, he writes, “dubbed the Greek Watergate.” He fails to mention it is so dubbed by Greek opposition media. Also, he does not take into account the obvious difference: at the heart of the Watergate scandal was a US president refusing to reveal the fact of his complicity in a gross abuse of power, while in the case of its Greek purported namesake it was the prime minister himself who corroborated the scandal and took immediate measures, firing the chief of the intelligence agency and also his powerful general secretary, for his “objective responsibility,” as he had been assigned the task of overseeing the agency.
As a democratic Greek, I am as abhorred as Mr Clapp at the wiretapping. But, unlike him, I remember that what distinguishes a democracy from an authoritarian state is the existence of checks and balances. And though these are meant, ideally, to preempt failings, they also operate, if that does not happen, by chastising and correcting them. The first sadly did not happen in the case of the wiretappings. But the second did, a proof that the checks and balances are in place and in operation.
Most of Mr Clapp’s digital references, meant to corroborate his views, are to militant anti-government media Greek media. So, in order to show that “a darker reality festers” and that “corruption and conflict of interests” rule in Greece, Mr Clapp links us to articles where we read the purportedly scandalous fact that the US-educated son of the prime minister works as an assistant in the office of a Spanish member of the European Parliament (the horror! the horror!) and also the possibly libelous claim that an actor and director with a long distinguished career, who was appointed director of the National Theater, was later found by a criminal court guilty of rape – the scandal here allegedly being that he was appointed not on merit but because he was the prime minister’s “friend” (he was not) and the government tried to cover up his misdeeds (it did not).
Mr Clapp states that wiretapping has been “a sinister feature of the Greek state” – as of any state, I might add. He doesn’t like it and I don’t like it, when it is not justified by solid evidence. For full disclosure, though, I add that since I was being secretly monitored by the previous government’s security services because of my activism in support of Turkish refugees’ rights, I cannot endorse Mr Clapp’s righteous tone, especially as he never spoke against that government’s horrendous attempts to control the free press and media by law, and other un-democratic practices.
Unlike a sophist, a person aspiring to objectivity must not generalize from a few claims, especially if they are not supported by evidence. And so I disagree with the general tone and implied conclusion of the said article, which I read as an effort to persuade the non-expert reader that Greece is sliding into an abyss of authoritarian rule, rotting heart and all. Well, it is not.
If Mr Clapp’s article had any vestiges of objectivity, it might make sense to refute it by expanding on Greece’s achievements in the past couple of years, which resulted, among other things, in its exiting, last week, from the European Union’s so-called “enhanced surveillance framework” of 12 years, putting an end to the Greek crisis; I might also write of the great blow on bureaucracy effected by a successful digital transformation, the handling of major crises and more, a transformation which he dismisses as “seeming.”
But I am not a spokesman or even an advocate of this government. I write because I react to the offence I take as a Greek citizen reading Mr Clapp’s biased opinion of my country. And so I end noting that the most respected world evaluators of democracy, the Freedom House, founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Economist’s Index, deem that Greece in the past three years is markedly more, not less, democratic than previously.
Apostolos Doxiadis is a writer. Among his books is the No 1 New York Times bestseller, “Logicomix.”
