There have been countless discussions so far and are still going strong as to
whether the Greek People react to or passively accept particularly heavy-handed
and targeted attacks against itself, especially during the last two years (given
that the attack against the People and its Rights / prospects has already been
going on under different wraps and paces for a number of decades now).
Comparisons are attempted between older signs of Greek resistance and current
resistance as this is communicated to us via the mass media of other Peoples and
in general we all tend towards the dispiriting verdict that the People is ‘dead
meat’ or ‘apathetic’, ‘has sold-out’, ‘imbecilic’ or ‘in cahoots’ , such that
we, and you and the many other co-citizens who have rejected and rebelled
against the present order of this admittedly scything hurricane against or
livelihood and Human Rights to the best of our ability, think and feel that we
are simply various voices crying in the desert.
We, or most of us, are waiting for the People to react at last, to do
something, to show to everybody that it is the same People who wrote the Epics
of 1940 and earlier on, these of the 1821 Revolution, and more recently against
the Junta, etc.
Reality, during times that goebbelism of the mass media and of every
news-broadcasting medium is soaring to new hights, just as every time
Authoritarianism (whether it is named ‘majority government, ‘clergy’, ‘the pope
/ mufti / patriarch / archbishop’, ‘aristocracy’, ‘capital’, ‘the king’, ‘the
emperor’, ‘a dictator’, ‘party’, etc) attempt to reduce the People (at all times
and places) into an amorphous mass – fuel for those who are part of it, is
difficult to discern even to the most observant and analytic of us.
Goebbelism sets its net and spreads its veil hiding the truth by manipulating
sentiment and completely-controlled information. It does not describe the true
picture, and the picture that it does present, it distorts at will so as to
achieve control of the masses, so that this mass will never come to realise that
it is in fact the People. It undermines beliefs, destroys confidence and leads
all this people to despair, who, while resisting and generally showing an
anti-regime stance and behaviour (i.e., rejection in attitude and behaviour of
the inhuman and absurdly pathological politics working in favour of
authoritarianism, whether they are called bankers, parliamentarians,
prime-ministers, markets / investors or E.U., etc), they feel sloth and
politically and socially unnerved.
Thus, we are led to expect to see signs of revolt and resistance where
goebbelism wants us to expect to see: in the demonstrations, which goebbelism,
via its effect propaganda, totally controls and thus is confident that those
expected signs awaited by the People will never be shown, the signs that we
fervently are waiting for, so that we shall feel that at least we have begun to
deconstruct a regime that wants us to believe that it is still viable. The truth
is that at this moment and time, the regime itself is virtual: in reality the
regime has collapsed and the period we are going through is a transition to a
new one. The whole game that is afoot is about what this new situation will be
like.
But how can we have tangible proof of all these that I have referred to above?
Let us first start with the issue of the control exercised in regards to the
expected signs which would show us that there is Popular resistance and hence,
that the Fight has commenced, on our side at least.
Which are those signs we all are waiting for?
Great demonstrations, drastic takeovers of symbolic landmarks (see Parliament),
general boycott of the State, and forcing the treacherous government who still
has the affront to make proclamations, suggestions, and, judging by the blatancy
of prime-minister’s inter-channel address, forcing him out of the country
fearing for his life (by secret helicopter bailout).
But all these are things that authoritarianism totally controls and thus
constitute threats from which, at least at the present time, they feel safe.
This is because (a) all mass media are under its control and they will play
down – distort – cover up any such event and because (b) the hypothetical
coordinators of such mass movements are their own people who single-handedly
will boycott all will for such mobilizations, or cull their impetus and force
when, under general Popular pressure, when unwillingly, they are obliged to
accede to organizing.
Also, no mass movement EVER stops the trajectory of the ‘majority government’
who, precisely because it controls the majority vote based on an election
mandate, it claims that whoever participates or mobilizes, or no matter how
massive the participation is, they DO NOT reflect the ‘majority’ who gave them
the mandate in the first place. This argument subdues Popular sentiment and the
People’s feeling that they are the ruling People, the truly Sovereign People.
This is of course regardless of the fact that even the strongest majority
government these days gets to power with in fact a MINORITY vote if seen against
the total of the electoral body. This can be easily verified by simple
arithmetic – and recalculation of the percentages, if we are aware of the
alchemies of each electoral law and the percent of abstention vote.
We already have proof of this fact, not only from the great demonstration of May
2010 but also from the general demonstrations taking place internationally,
resulting in no apparent and tangible effect, as for example, the recent
mobilizations in France in regards to their insurance framework.
On the other hand, we have the ‘unionists’: people who were supposed to
coordinate and promote the rightful expression of Popular will, particularly
when this involves their own occupational branch. The fact that these unionists
are traitors of the People and pledge allegiance only to their party or to
authoritarianism becomes apparent simply from the fact that they themselves are
granted access where the People are fought against with S.W.A.T. and are gagged,
from the fact that all these unionists finally become parliamentarians and get
rich while the People and workers in their own occupational sector get poorer.
Through people like them, authoritarianism is in a position to control these
demonstrations that each and every one of us is waiting for so as to gauge how
much the People is resisting or not against the government. The wish or demand
that the unionists are bypassed and for great mass mobilizations to
spontaneously materialize by the People without an agenda or proclamation by
these unionists, is at least impractical and difficult: it is quite difficult to
coordinate the whole mass of people in a day and time and place where they will
demonstrate all together for a certain time previously agreed upon and after
which they will disperse. And this is because firstly, no-one trusts these
unionists and rightly so since the unionists who have been ordained for this
sort of thing, have betrayed the People and used it to promote their own
interests (at least after the post-junta period) and secondly, it is very
difficult for a new person to become known and take the place of the traitors
and do the job they were supposed to do properly and promptly.
Also, the routes to becoming a unionist go through the parties themselves in one
way or the other, thus making it virtually impossible for persons who are
outside the bipartisan regime to be able to promote themselves such that they
become alternative choices for the wide public.
Thus, unionism, under the guise and manner it operates has become a tool for
authoritarianism and not of the People.
At this point I must also bring your attention to the fact that the unionists
themselves blatantly undermine and boycott the various mobilizations of their
own trades, proceeding with acts or statements who give the necessary handle to
the mass media to mar and isolate whatever movement of a specific trade or
occupational sector takes place (for example, the statements made by the
unionist in charge of the Ministry of Culture contract holders regarding the
recent events at the Acropolis). On top of that, the mobilizations are designed
so that they never constitute a real threat or a real problem (such as the
day-long strikes or cordoning off of a particular landmark, or the whole
strategy of the lorry drivers).
So, the general conclusion so far and the one we have to keep in mind is
two-pronged: (a) we are in no position to gauge whether there is Popular and
mass reaction and resistance on the basis of how often or how much such
demonstrations, irrespective of their size, take place because on the one hand,
such setup and organization lies in the hands of those who do not wish for such
mobilizations, and on the other because even in the cases of massive
participation, the mass media will shamelessly refer to them as small and
insignificant; (b) the leader, and in general the people who have the capacity,
the resolve and the methodology to organize a mass movement which will be
effective enough, and then continue at the state level with a proper
representation of Greece and of Greeks within and without borders, holding on to
the complete and utter buttressing of the Rights of the latter , CAN NEVER get
them themselves into the party-led unionism because, simply put, there is no
chance for people like them to enter such scenery successfully without first
having compromised and disarmed themselves.
There is only one exception that confirms the rule in unionism: the only true
unionists are countryless and promote only their sector-specific interests
(which is a basic expression of the authoritarianism that is decimating us):
they are the unionists of the bankers – shipowners, large –scale industrialists
(see Michalos – Daskalopoulos). And it is them only who are treated by the State
as proper to unionists – representatives of whole occupational classes. The only
thing that we can retain from this exception lies precisely with the particular
behavior of the State, which means that the State is truly interested in helping
with and serving the interests these unionists represent.
So, where should we turn to, to gauge just how much the People wants and
attempts to react to and resist the regime?
We will search into the various behaviors that are being covered up by the mass
media but which we ourselves bear witness to: The People reacts and resists
whenever they can find ways to bypass obstacles they consider unjust and
catachrestic so that to preclude parts of that People from things that are due
to them. For example, the rise in the 1.5 hour-limited train fare of ISAP to 1
euro prompted the people to offer used tickets to others, but also valid tickers
to cut on the cost of transport to their jobs and so that no passenger remains
without ticket while on the train and risk being persecuted. This has been a
whole silent, spontaneous movement. It was also met with a non-publisized
regulation that outlawed that practice as well. The mass media never bothered to
pay any attention to this solidarity movement.
But this is nonetheless proof that the People react. The People possess reflexes
and common sense and most important, retain the feeling of solidarity during the
time that alienation and individualism is systematically and relentlessly being
inculcated as is the feeling that one is surrounded by enemies.
The examples which I could make reference to are many and if we, the People
start observing, we shall be convinced that we are not sloth, television-struck
couch potatoes but human beings, who, like every normal person, will get off the
couch when he or she will realize that chances are he or she will not get
betrayed and that the move to be made will not be in vain. These are people who
will certainly get off the couch having as their leader and coordinator their
despair, their anger even if they never learn where to search for true leaders.
In any case however, it is clear that they are not sloth or apathetic in the
face of governmental lechery – the representative of the authoritarian regime.
And so, to fall along the line of the mass media and to deprecate the People
when they do not wish to participate in any demonstration led by Panagopoulos
and the likes of him and feel afterwards a fool for having achieved nothing, is
precisely what goebbelism wants to achieve.
And so we arrive at the two vitally important questions at this time:
A. What happens with the November 7 elections?
B. How must we act to help People react, that is ourselves, so that we can at
long last undo this cancerous growth of authoritarianism that each ‘democratic’
oligarchy represents, regardless of whether it is bipartisan or not, with overt
or subvert dictatorship and terrorism, so that we can rid ourselves from the
parliamentary dictatorship imposed on us by the international
banking-industrialist capital?.
Those two questions will precisely be taken up in our next articles.
Translation courtesy of Michael T.