In the crossfire…?
A demonstration in central Athens earlier this week, whose aim had been officially declared as a protest against the growing hysteria over terrorism, actually only succeeded in further nurturing this hysteria by offering the media fresh fodder with which to continue their systematic poisoning of public opinion. During the rally’s live TV broadcast, our attention was drawn to the top of our screens where titles such as «Night of Terror in Athens» were superimposed on footage showing not even one stone being thrown. So, as this «night of terror» did not actually materialize, we have to assume that it is rather the wishful thinking of those projecting the title. It is a fact, after all, that television favors the extreme and the titillating. Why else would it so frequently fill its live debates with experts in provocation? The praise for criminal acts by a handful of hooded individuals (it is a paradox that self-proclaimed anarchists mythologize the murderous activities of an organization whose written proclamations may have announced their Stalinist beliefs but whose bloody acts only served to feed the State’s repressive mechanisms), the repulsive desecration of the memory of November 17’s victims and the subsequent arson attack on the Apogevmatini newspaper offices are acts that may not shake the State but do oblige us to think. Otherwise, we risk of getting caught up in a type of civil war where passions masquerade as ideology, falsehoods as truths and vested interests as altruism…
