More and more I wonder if we live in a country of paranoiacs, mentally crippled or just...stupid from the post-traumatic shock of memories. And I am not referring to the chorus of all sorts of suspicious or unruly people who are easily baptized "sprayed".
I am referring to a large mass, mainly young people, of our fellow human beings who behave and behave like helpless goats by the cunning shepherds of social media. Take the Arachova husky for example.
On the day Erdogan came to Athens, about 1500 of our fellow citizens saw fit to post comments on Elon Musk's “X” to express their national concerns. At least ten times as many preferred to talk about the...dog-witness, implying that his torture (if there was any) is connected to the hooliganism of the plutocracy that flocks to the popular resort.
Suddenly Arachova became synonymous with animal abuse. With the moral author of the mayor Yiannis Stathas, a "primitive" fighter of the patriotic left who goes around with hard-working and hard-working arbilas, without any mood for public relations with the "massomenu" who gather in the area.
We're talking multi-cube madness. I personally love dogs and have had them as my companion for many years. But there is also a limit. You know, the deification of the quadruped over man was the quintessence of perverse Nazi zoophilia.
- Hitler bragged about "Blodie", his favorite wolfdog, but at the same time he forbade Jews to have pets because they were...inferior. They didn't deserve it!
I am afraid, then, that we are being drawn into such beliefs. A wonderful woman was turned into mincemeat by the beasts of a delinquent neighbor, a young policeman became a torch and rejoices because he came face to face with the other beasts of the fields, but we are planning demonstrations and mobilizations for the husky, without even understanding what exactly happened to him.
The pathogenicity of this irrationality diverted into forms of mass defiance now dominates all aspects of our lives. Last week I also experienced it on my skin when it was time to present the book of the special Maria Delivanis who I have the favor of honoring me with her friendship.
Just a day before in rural Alexandroupoli, the atmosphere was completely different. Hundreds of people gathered in the event hall of Thraki Palace, where my good friend and colleague Manolis Kottakis was presenting his own revealing book with a speaker, among others, Kostas Karamanlis.
The people who were there, of all social classes and income shades, needed to hear a few but hearty patriotic talks. For Thrace, which is being lost, and their own city itself, which did not become rich from the... landing of the few American "watchmen" of the port, but ended up being fed (and to a certain extent dependent) on the influx of tens of thousands of Turkish visitors.
The warm, patriotic atmosphere of Alexandroupolis came in stark contrast to what we experienced the next day in the ceremonial hall of the old Philosophical School of Aristotle.
- We were about to present the book of one of the greatest personalities in post-colonial academic life with the eloquent title "For Greece that bleeds"...
- Except that we almost got bloody when a battalion of sleazy parastatals from "anarchist collectives" burst into the room brandishing stilettos and shouting "anti-fascist slogans".
The scene was admittedly…surreal. The young rioters were initially protesting because the head of "Niki", Dimitris Natsios, was going to participate in the panel. The…fascist!
I don't happen to know Mr. Nacio personally. We gathered together last Wednesday in Kalavrita for the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust. I personally think that he is a political leader of extremely mild tones, a man of Christ, of the Greek Orthodox traditions and of the Church. Certainly not neo-nazi and fascist.
After the first "doo" which was accompanied by clapping and a display of thuggery, I singled out two or three of the angry little ones to see what was on their minds. "Your event is anti-Semitic," a petite young woman told me in a relatively polite tone. "You don't want a Holocaust Museum to be built in Thessaloniki. We read it on Facebook", he continued and I barely held back, amidst the threatening surroundings, not to break out into shaky laughter.
I didn't need him to know me and my recent book "Javol" which is a cry of anguish against German Nazism and all the suffering it caused in Greece.
- But about Delivani, thrice elected dean, with parchments in the struggle to claim German reparations, the honorable lady of Thessaloniki whose family hid Jews in the Occupation, hadn't the little girl heard anything? Obviously not. And this is our big problem.
You might think what the cancellation of a book launch has to do with Arachova's husky? Well, the same Nazi-style obscurantism governs and directs the sensibility of the youth through the scourge of social media to overreact to staged stimuli. Elevating a dog's life above a human's and consigning books to the fire without even knowing what they are about.
Fortunately, these mixed feelings of surprise, anger and despair left me, temporarily at least, when two days later I found myself in martyred Kalavryta, a guest of the local municipality, on the occasion of my anti-Nazi book.
I had been visiting them for at least thirty years. In the gloomy atmosphere of impoverished, aphasic and lost Greece I found a flourishing provincial town a model of order and cleanliness.
With an experienced mayor, Thanasis Papadopoulos, who left the parliamentary bodies in disgust to serve his country and is rightly elected with percentages...Kim Yog Un.
And when at the memorial service for the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust I saw, along with thousands of anonymous "pilgrims", children with clean faces, without masks and hoods from the local schools singing the national anthem and reverently participating in the invocation of the fallen, my soul rejoiced .
Greece is definitely bleeding, as Delivani says, but somewhere in the local societies of the North and the South, far from the Athenian-centric monster that nurtures the Nazi sects of globalization, a hope also blooms...
* Giorgos Harvalias
Author of the book “Devil! Blood, Oblivion and Subjugation"
(published in the "demokratia" newspaper and on the Hellas Journal website)
photo Pezibear. https://pixabay.com
