Another Dorian invasion
The government’s strongest weapon against protesting university students and teachers is not Education Minister Marietta Giannakou, who showed whose side she is on a few days ago when she attended the meeting of a New Democracy-affiliated trade union rather than that of the Hellenic Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (POSDEP). The government’s best weapon is not Public Order Minister Vyron Polydoras, who exonerated a police guard who fired a warning shot to disperse protesters instead of waiting for a court ruling. Not even the riot police, with their batons and tear gas, are a reliable tool. The government’s strongest weapon is television – state channels because they have made it their duty to indiscriminately defend the government’s actions, and private channels because they have transformed their news bulletins into Spanish Inquisition-style grilling sessions whose verdict is ready from the outset: namely that students are lazy, misguided and violent. Even if 50,000 students joined a protest, we would be unlikely to hear about the size, or motive, of this rally on TV. A few days ago, one of these TV judges feigned shock and concern at the news that students from Thessaloniki, Xanthi and Patras had come to Athens by bus to attend a rally. He found it strange that 1,000 people would bother to travel so far due to concern about the education sector or their professional futures. If a much larger group of Athenians traveled to Thessaloniki for a soccer game, we would not bat an eyelid. If you travel to join a protest, you are viewed as a potential troublemaker. It is no surprise then that most of those arrested at last week’s protests were from Thessaloniki or Xanthi. In any case, during their surveillance of these buses, the police had concluded that they were dealing with a new Dorian invasion, just as catastrophic as the first.
