Pollution, bonded labor, alienation, castes. In a celebration where supposedly we celebrate the paragon of Humanity, the beauties and achievements of the culture of the hosting Country every four years and the symbolic honouring and exultation of Human Rights, the organizers of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Games in London chose, squandering the money of the already challenged British Citizens, to leave the billions of Citizens of the world watching it the impression of a country that eradicates its environment, converting it into a nightmarish industrial and obscurantist immense hell where disease, death, war and childrenʼs nightmares are reigning. Nowhere did we see anything of what the British culture has to show for itself, even from Britainʼs past as an aggressive imperialistic force, assuming that Slumdog Millionaireʼs director was seeking to exact revenge on the English with the show he presented.
None of the contributions of the English to the world culture was chosen, even with a goal of presenting the hosting country in a pleasant manner: no king Arthur with the knights of the round table, no Geoffrey Chaucer, no Shakespeare, not even Jane Austen assuming they wanted to pay homage to the not so flattering imperialistic facet. But even if they wanted to show the power of their People, as claim some of the British commentators in electronic media today, where is Cromwell, where is Guy Fawkes, where is Florence Nightingale, where is Alexander Fleming, especially since they wanted to turn the spotlight to their health system?
On the contrary, they presented the creation of Mordor of J.R.R. Tolkien as he very correctly had depicted it: the industrial Victorian and mid-war era of Great Britain where pollution and filth reigned in the name of profit and abject exploitation of man. Within this Mordor, miserables from Charles Dickens are slaving and toiling under the smug overseeing, oppression and tyranny of the over-rich ʽnoblesʼ and industrialists that were smoking cigars.
The suffragettes were blurred forms while the one and only extract from Shakespeare is smothered between the sounds and waste of the industry and drums of wildness, and it feels unrelated and alien to the setting.
The homage paid by yesterdayʼs opening ceremony was not to the power of the British People to overcome obstacles (where, indeed, is Bernard Shawʼs Pygmallion to demonstrate that?) or even their stance during World War II with the classic ʽKeep Calm and Carry Onʼ. On the contrary, it was homage paid to the successful oppression and total leeching of the Peoples, indigenous as well as those of the colonies, the energy of whom and exploits of whom are exploited by the only ones who stood on a pedestal yesterday: the classic caricature of the parasitically living great industrialist and capital owner, with the suit and top hat, who is smoking a cigar and is waiting with pleasure for the masses he is squeezing to feed him.
And when the floor was given to the British People, what was shown about them? A flock that needs facebook and a cell phone to communicate, whose family is not cohesive, whose children are wired to a video game while the teens are out in search of mating, something they consider as their ultimate success. So, from all of the post-war achievements of the British, what was presented was teenage promiscuity without any further meaning or framework, while even staples of the music scene were glossed over rather than be shown for what they truly had been: the Beatles as well as the Rolling Stones characterized an entire era where young people had political conscience and stance that threatened the sum of the ruling class as it preceded the bands in yesterdayʼs presentation- that ruling class that smoked while watching workers toil in unacceptable circumstances, sick children in innumerable beds that reminded of a german concentration camp with all the striped pajamas and the forest of iron bars, and innumerable dead fighters from the World Wars and the colonial wars.
But even the phenomenon of J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter was presented through Voldemort and the Death Eaters, that is, the symbolism of the Nazis and the KKK within the novels, who are unleashed upon the sick kids. Where are the heroes of those novels? Where are the elements that symbolize light, love for Humanity, thirst for life, exultation, development and civilization? Where is the triumph of the spirit and overcoming matter in its name, the recognition of the supremacy of the ideals over limitless and total materialism and consumerism?
Where are, that is, all those that the Olympic Games stand for as they were gifted to Humanity by Greece and the Hellenic Spirit, from antiquity as well as from the rebirth of the Olympic Games by Pierre de Coubertin and Dimitris Vikellas?
But if they undermined so much the British People, the ones that were truly erased of the presentation with unexpected hatred and malice that definitely doesnʼt fit the so called organizers and representatives of the Olympic Games was everything Greek, from the Greeks themselves to the very contribution of Greece in the existence, let alone the content of the Olympic Games. If there werenʼt a definite protocol for the parade and the formalities of the Olympic Hymn and Flag, it is mathematically certain from the couple of points I shall present below that they would have completely expelled the minutest of taste of Greece as central and vital for the Olympic Games, putting themselves in the role of the parent of the Olympic Idea and Games, rivaling the Skopjans in usurping.
The allusion, of course, is to Jacques Rogge who said, word for word “in a sense, the Olympic Games are coming home tonight… The British approach to sports had a profound influence on our founder, Pierre de Coubertin who developed the framework for the modern Olympic movement at the close of the 19th century,” while earlier, in 2004 he was recognizing Greece as the one who had the deep and profound effect and caused the inspiration for Coubertin to revive the Olympic Games and of course the Olympic movement. The idea of armistice during the holding of the Games, fair play, brotherhood and peace and harmony amongst the Peoples and the Spirit through the event through which the limits of human existence are pushed even further towards the better (and not towards the worst) with a goal of achieving more and more of the conquest for perfection of the human kind are ideas and ideals that are Greek. Something which not only he didnʼt recognize on 2012 (as opposed to 2004) but he also tried to usurp.
Of course, many will try to argue that Rogge didnʼt mean anything like that and he only mentioned one thing or another concerning some fact about London and the British, in his effort to flatter them (and letʼs not forget he was standing before all those royal and high castes of Europe) as he typically tries to flatter every hosting country. But there is a difference to offering a compliment from stealing achievements of others to please them, as if they donʼt have anything of their own to say for themselves regarding the Olympic Spirit and movement.
Because even if the careful phrasing he selected would protect him before a court, every communications expert, social analyst and psychologist interested in objectivity would attest to the fact that the general idea communicated was not that the British offered good organization or something like that, but that they offered the Olympic Games themselves.
The general coldness bordering on hostility towards Greece culminated with the hoisting of the Olympic Flag with just the music of the Olympic Hymn and not the singing of the Greek lyrics. They didnʼt even sing the English translation of those verses, assuming they didnʼt feel comfortable or couldnʼt pronounce Greek. Even Beijing sang the Olympic Hymn in perfect Greek.
But Beijing is also proud of Chinaʼs course through the ages, and doesnʼt feel the need not to recognize the achievements of other civilizations since China herself is one of the leaders in the evolution of human civilization. Also, it was still 2008 and the targeting of Greece and the Greeks as the enemy of the entire Globe had not yet been officially launched.
Even in English the Olympic Hymn was inappropriate because it speaks about values and concepts that directly and powerfully oppose everything contained in the opening ceremonyʼs show of London 2012 in terms of messages and ideas presented as ʽpositiveʼ (arbeit macht frei, the environment is there for uprooting, everything worthwhile is about industry, iron, smoke and money, sickness, institutionalization and helplessness are fun except when Voldemort gets to you before Mary Poppins). In any case, how would they have been able to claim that the imperialists inspired the Olympic movement, with the Greek ʽAncient and Immortal Spiritʼ they never had, because back in those times there were assorted peoples interested in different things on their lands, being sung over their heads?
It has often been discussed and accepted in analyses that the Olympic games hide right underneath their surface political games, motivations and goals and that everything is translatable on a propaganda level for the buildup of a political capital.
We should, therefore, take action to face the organized, systematic and successive carpet bombing of the Greeks in every facet of our existence, from our money that has been stolen with the synergy of local and international types in top hats smoking cigars to our lands and islands coveted by everyone, from Austrogermany to England and Turkey, not to mention the bludgeoning of our Struggles, our civilization, our offers to Humanity in blood, work, culture, sciences, philosophy and art: that is, to protect the wealth we have been giving freely across the ages because we feel rich and we know that aside of what weʼve given, we can create more, having wanted up to now in return only a happy recognition and a thank you.
In the end, though, it is proven in practice that it has been and still is our mistake. Because for someone to be able to appreciate a gift of value, a sacrifice, something altruistic, a rise above oneʼs self, that someone has to have already risen above animalistic materialism where everything is expressed in terms of stealing and grabbing, and a false sense of power that is empty and usurped, because otherwise weʼre facing the situation where we give “pearls to pigs”.
Since, then, the only thing they understand is money, and they believe that it gives them power to trample over cultures and Peoples and humans trying to enforce on all of Humanity Aldus Huxleyʼs ʽBrave New Worldʼ (another Briton whom they also trampled on and used to achieve exactly what he wanted Humanity to avoid), there has come the moment to show them that their stolen and usurped money is nothing before the true power that we enclose in our tiny Country, that has been looted so much and yet still remains so rich and coveted by all those who feel so poor and incapable and talentless that they feel they have to steal after they have razed everything the (in this case the British) People they oppress has to show, and which People of course has far greater capacities than those parasites that for all their lives have known only to set Peoples against each other, so that they can rule during the hubbub. Because there would be no other way for them to achieve that being so unbelievably crass:
There has come the time to demand that we be paid for every use of the term ʽOlympicʼ, for every anniversary of the Olympic games, every event bearing that name, every request for the ceremony of the Olympic flame, for the lyrics of the Olympic Hymn and its music, and of course to be officially thanked by every state that managed to benefit from the idea of ceasefire during the Olympic Games, given that this concept is also Greek, if and when it is upheld. To demand that we check on every aspect of the organization of the Games and be reimbursed for every breach of the Olympic Ideals after popular mandate of Greeks worldwide, and an official apology for harming the cultural gift we have given to Humanity. Carnivals of consumerism where humans are turned into degraded victims of a small group of embezzlers and enforcers be forbidden under pain of monetary fine payable to us, and to demand that the culture of each hosting country be exulted, not its shames and dark aspects.
If all those ʽcommittee membersʼ do not agree, to hereby deny to hold any flame-giving ceremony and forbid any torch relayʼs naming as ʽOlympicʼ, refusing to send our Flag or allowing to play the Olympic Hymn with or without its lyrics, because of the affront being done to humanityʼs heritage. And in order for the Olympic Spirit not to be extinguished, to hold the Olympic Games correctly, with a true revivification of them permanently in Olympia, without sponsors and consumerism, with an open invitation to every athlete that, via their life and polity declare themselves as “non-barbarians”.
And since they have such disdain for Greece and the Greeks, but donʼt seem to unglue their hands from our heritage and our fortune, let us show them that we know how to fight bloodlessly just as well as we fought with real weapons: let them keep the Parthenon marbles, since they need them so much for tourism in order to make a profit, but by paying us annual lease, calculated on the percentage of fame the marbles have afforded their museum and the turn over of income based on this fame, as well as for every other Greek artifact. Let us add to that a downpayment, immediately payable to Greece as fine for the vandalism incurred by Elgin who attacked the Parthenon with saws, like the basest heathen, as well as a reimbursement for every year the marbles have been displayed for money up to this date. Also, we should demand an extra fine for the dreadful conservation by the museum employees, of these marbles that has lost them the aging and surface details of the reliefs, along with the signing of a special contract where it shall be stated clearly that Greek specialists that actually know what to do will oversee any further maintenance of the marbles, and should anything happen again, custody of the marbles shall be revoked along with a monetary fine. The marbles then shall be rendered unto a more responsible museum with the same terms and conditions, or they shall return home. It goes without say that they will need to place collateral with their crown jewels, since those jewels are cheaper and far more easily replacable than the Parthenonʼs marbles who are OUR unique and irreplaceable heritage.
They shall become again an international heritage only when Greece and the Greeks that gave birth to the civilization that created them enjoy the respect, thanks and honour by all those who dared raise their hand against us, to fool us, to install in our country foreign kings we never wanted, to execute us and commit assorted genocides of us, to lock us out of our very own institutions by installing their own stooges and lackeys as they have been doing ever since 1832, because the concept of a Free Greece that amongst empires and kingdoms raised a Humanistic and Democratic Constitution, while rising from an exhausting period of bondage during which rebellions were constantly quenched in blood terrified them, and is still terrifying them, because as Nietzsche said, next to the Greeks, everything finds its measuring rod.
But of course, from rulers and committee members that keep the People that paid for the Olympics of London, 2012 out of the whole celebration by a giant electric fence and land to air missiles on their terraces as if theyʼre hosting a war and not the symbol of world peace, you can only expect conformity only when they get to realize that persecuting Greece is going to cost them so much money, that the only thing they brandish as their power is going to dissolve into thin air. Thatʼs the only way you can treat the cast of the capitalist holding, feudal caste of barbarians.
Translation by Tanya Geritsidou