A dangerously charged climate
In transforming a crisis into a spectacle, it is inevitable that television channels will elevate the self-styled anarchists who have been clashing with police over the past few weeks into protagonists. After all, these hooded anti-establishment protesters have all the necessary qualifications for a great career in our television democracy. They are faceless, dark, destructive, reckless, tough fighting, with no political platform or ideological restrictions and with a real zeal to vandalize all that is sacred. They are, without a doubt, the bad guys. And all this constitutes a very attractive model for certain youngsters, chiefly those who feel suffocatingly trapped in a drab present with an uncertain future ahead of them, but also the offspring of the middle classes who see an opportunity to rebel against everything they don’t like. So there is no shortage of anti-establishment protesters. And over the years we have seen the development of a hard core of «professionals» who are well-organized and operate as fire starters during peaceful demonstrations. It is they who carry out commando-style raids such as the recent one on the central offices of the country’s main labor union. The fact that successive governments have studiously avoided the implementation of measures to disrupt these groups is strong evidence that their existence is convenient for them. After all, all scenarios need bad guys. They activate the conservative reflexes of the public and spur them to demand law and order. But today, there is something much larger and more significant than television sensationalism and masked thugs. The real protagonist is the directionless student movement, to the creation of which Education Minister Marietta Giannakou herself has contributed. Behind the sweeping and often misguided demands of protesting students, there is a much more far-reaching concern. Indeed, today’s crisis is only partly about education. It has been provoked by chronic social contradictions and indirectly expresses the general discontent of the rest of society about the unreliability and inefficiency of our political system and its institutions. The atmosphere is very heavily charged, the burden of youngsters’ anger very heavy. Opinion polls may show that ruling New Democracy enjoys a comfortable lead but the situation is far more fragile than it seems. Even those fed up with demonstrations and violence believe the government is partly to blame and demand that it take the crisis in hand rather than allow forthcoming elections to influence its actions. We are experiencing a unique sociopolitical crisis which will spin out of all proportion if someone is seriously injured or killed in the increasingly violent protests.
