New measures, until the next time
Michalis Katsouris, whose life was cut short at the age of 29 on Monday night in the Athens suburb of Nea Filadelfia by organized killers, is not the first victim of hooliganism in this country. His family and friends are not the first to mourn the loss of a loved one on the altar of the colors of some soccer team’s jersey. And they won’t be the last.
Violence has become the rule in Greece’s sports arenas: Verbal violence with despicable slogans; smoke bombs, flares and laser pointers; pitch invasions and storming the other team’s stands. What comes next? Fighting outside the arena and organized rumbles. We’ve seen it all. And it’s all discussed and organized openly over social media.
The gang that descended on Nea Filadelfia came armed and ready to kill and terrorize. It was acting according to plan, organized, like a so-called assault squad
Like Alkis Kambanos last year, Michalis Katsouris was stabbed to death. Again, it was over a jersey, though for a different team, in a different city and at someone else’s hand.
One of the people arrested in connection with last Monday’s violence was on the police’s watch list, yet he enjoyed complete freedom of movement. How wrong it all is. And nothing has been done to right all these wrongs; not by successive governments, nor by the managements of the country’s teams. Yet there is something bigger at play.
The gang that descended on Nea Filadelfia came armed and ready to kill and terrorize. It was acting according to plan, organized, like a so-called assault squad. And like other assault squads before it, the gang had a clear ideological profile: extreme right-wing, neo-Nazi. It is part of the dark wave sweeping across Europe. That did not come as a surprise in Greece; it was not treated like an “imported” phenomenon.
We’ve had assault squads here, gangs with Nazi symbols tattooed on their skin, acting with impunity for months, wielding the same deadly weapons, taking lives and spreading terror. It wasn’t the color of a sports jersey that motivated those attack squads; it was the color of their victims’ skin and their ideology. They weren’t acting in the name of a team, but in the name of the “purity of the race,” to preserve the “traditional values” of religion and homeland.
Yes, we are looking at something a lot bigger here, something that has to do with the mindset of voters who continue to support those driving these assault squads at the ballot box, giving them political legitimacy and, by extension, a shield. And this shield arises from the selective stance of the state mechanism.
