THE ACTIVE CITIZEN
The meaning associated with being an active Citizen is something that has been
subject to warp and definitional contortion such that it has become virtually
impossible for us to effectively and immediately tell who the active Citizen is
and who is not.
In fact, if we look at things objectively, there are two categories of
Citizenry: those preferred and liked by the parliamentarian dictatorship and
those who are despised by it.
Depending on whom you choose to listen to, the definition of what an active
Citizen is changes as a function of belonging to one of those
objectively-defined categories of Citizenry, and which we shall presently
examine so that you will be able to select which of the two is the most viable
one.
A parliamentary dictatorship requires obedience and a generous dose of
depression both of which lead to such fatalistic mottos as ‘misfortunes never
come singly’. Fatalism comes in very handy to parliamentarian dictatorship as
much as in every dictatorship / oligarchy since no normal person will ever wish
to invest in something that he or she considers already futile. And we shall see
that the goebbelist propaganda of oligarchy has made sure that the average
Citizen will regard a series of issues mandated under the Constitutional Popular
Rule as simply futile, and which, had that Citizen not considered them futile,
would have effectively put a stop to many wrongdoings (both at the personal and
the National sovereignty levels).
This is the central cause that has led to Vatopedia , pamper boxes loaded with
cash, bribing hurricanes, siemens / shady armament deals, questionable gray-area
politics with Turkey, Skopje, etc. The fatalistic belief in the futility of
Popular movement / mobilization / active participation in the political life of
the country in the inter-election interim periods was cultivated primarily
during the Andreas Papandreou era, via the excessively repeated demonstrations,
pupil school takeovers either for real or imagined causes and which led to no
effective result and devolved into ludicrous, ridiculous and useless barriers to
the everyday normal functioning of the average Citizen, effectively fizzling out
to nothing. Of course this futility was totally endorsed and cultivated by every
subsequent government, blue or green, while at the same time the ‘might’,
intransigence and totallitarianism of each such government were systematically
projected. Of course all these were taking place in collusion with the various
unionists – worker paterfamilias who made sure that the only benefits accruing
in return for their services were reserved only for the party-faithful Citizens
and of course themselves.
All these meanings were sowed in an era which, although difficult and harsh in
its daily terms, did not directly attack a wide swath of vital issues directly
linked to the survival of massive social groups, and so, under the unspoken fear
of the all-mighty dictatorial government and its praetors (see, blue and green
gatekeepers and all such kind of party cronies, either issuing forth from
Perissos (the Communist Party headquarters) or inter-party ones), every Citizens
opted for small compromises rather than come to heads with the establishment and
in which clash he or she could see no incoming support from other Citizens.
There is a saying abroad according to which, for you to be able to boil a frog
alive without giving the frog the chance to jump out of the pot, one has to warm
the water very gradually so that when the frog realizes that the water will kill
it, the frog will have already been boiled to death because the gradual rise in
the water temperature would have stopped it from sensing the danger in time.
This is what happened in the post-junta Greek society: in the name of modernism
– approaching the European standards, in conjunction with the ridicule, apathy
or disgust for a number of particular reactions / safeguarding of already
fought-for gains (for example, our current history, particularly this of post
WWII, was either regarded as banal, parochial and essentialist), we allowed
ourselves to be alienated from vital institutions, such as family cohesion, the
eight-hour work limit, active protection of childhood and pubertal ages before
rushing in the premature adult sexuality, we conceded to the downgrading of
education, etc. Within this goebbelist-fuelled propagandistic hurricane of
misplaced enthusiasm and blind, unconditional and unguarded effort to approach
an opaque European cultural ideal, we alienated ourselves from basic safety
valves built-in the Greek culture and set to preserve an identity and point of
historical reference, which at least since 1910 had been defining the Greek
Citizen. That is, the modern, current Greek who sought to excel, who was
politicized but not necessarily party-led, and who had the capacity to set a
limit to blindly following every party line, even during periods of
dictatorships (i.e., the pre-1940 War period).
So we have reached the point whereby the water around us is sizzling hot and
parts of us have already started to boil, that is, massive segments of our
population are being straggled, such as the low-income holders and the
self-employed. I will not make any distinction between private employees and
civil servants, because whoever has strings to pull, he or she will always enjoy
special treatment in either the private or the public sector, while the rest
will simply find themselves in the same (s)pot with very few actual differences
which either illegally or under a façade of legitimacy are quickly being wiped
away (such as tenure, for example).
The vertical categorizations with which the oligarchs or our time attempt to
divide and rule, must simply be expelled from our frame of mind and allow
ourselves to realize that it is simply not possible for all civil servants to be
aggregated under one sweeping vertical category (putting for example, the 1,000
€ per month employee in the same bag with the General Secretary of 8,000 € per
month) as much as it is equally impossible to equate the 700 € net pay private
sector employee with the 10,000/20,000 € CEO. Instead, categorizations should be
horizontal: Income level is what in general terms determines Citizen social
classes and it also the index that shows who is the lamoge or the crony in most
of the cases.
Let’s be very careful however. Categorizing without having any safety valves so
that we will not blindly exclude special cases, always leads to fanaticism and
scapegoating and affords even greater power to totalitarianism, be it capitalism
or soviet socialism.
So, it should have by now become apparent that the Citizens liked by the
Oligarchs are the ones who seek to belong to some mothering organization because
whatever else is simply futile. They become the Citizenry on who the oligarchs
step and also the ones who are by nature weak and of insignificant import. They
exist only as long as the rest of the mass of the Citizens do not realize their
power nor the fact that they are not isolated cases but in fact the very
expression of common logic, which, precisely because it is common, exists always
in the majority.
Citizens not liked by the oligarchic government are those who in their basic
beliefs and behavioral standards are not affected by any kind of goebbelist
propaganda (that is, they reject baseless and unsupported impositions of
behavioral models without any justification other than ‘it is European /
globalist/ it is what the markets want / it is so as to preserve good
neighboring relations / to modernize ourselves / for preserving the one-sided
rights of certain groups / to preserve the profit margins of banks and bankers
or market investors / because that’s the way of things nowadays / to preserve
stability / to effectuate structurally necessary innovations – refurbishments /
to preclude ‘chaos’ from coming onto us).
They are the Citizens who will apply Constitutional laws but who will also
attack unconstitutional ones, they are the Citizens who will show respect for
the Human Rights of the immigrants but who will tolerate under no circumstances
undermining their own in favor of those of the immigrants’. They are the
Citizens who desire and strive for the just punishment of all those involved in
scandals, bribes, fraud, illicit exchanges, ceding of National Rights,
undermining one’s own country, demoting, trespassing and encroaching of Human
Rights of Greeks, and who above all set the pursuit of Justice in their
everyday reality. They are the Citizens who will not let they country die
because they consider debugging her from the ticks draining her blood futile,
and who think that the right way to start would be from the large and overgrown
ticks and not the small ones, because they are not cowards and hypocrites.
Above all, these are the Citizens that have not believed in futility, just as
they do not believe that a country can be saved by utterly impoverishing its
Citizens, while at the same time protect and promote the scions of its
oligarchs.
How does this translate in our everyday living?
We attack the unconstitutional laws that concern us and we are prepared to bring
our case to the Human Rights Tribunal, when and if some corrupt judges decide to
protect their oligarchic masters.
We support and strengthen every Citizen who tries to do that, but without
becoming any sort of followers, but by simply remaining allies and supporters
for particular struggles.
We never pay unquestionably, or without proof that we have not been charged
excessively or illegally / or counter to our human rights and dignity whatever
the state claims we have to pay: we do not make the siphoning off of our money
and possessions easy to them. We will in fact make it as hard as it gets, so
that they never consider it again a given by any autocrat / oligarch up until we
get to wipe the charge off completely and be paid restitution for damages for
it.
We shall not tolerate corruption at our expense and we shall not commit acts of
corruption either, because we know that at the end, it will be us who will get
the stick.
We do not forget the long litany of lamoges and of cronies who got fat and rich
on our expense by pocketing stolen property: for every tabling and time-limit
erasure there are ways to undo it. For every judicial trick, there lies another
that annuls it. Under unconstitutional governments and suspect democratic rule,
no Justice can be enforced and whatever rulings seem unshakable can be annulled
when the real Democratic Governments returns.
To be truly active Citizens, there is but one central axis, there is but one
basic criterion: to have an unshakable belief that NOTHING IS FUTILEand to act
accordingly.
What we should do now: there lies ahead a series of legal battles waged by
various parties and individual Citizens against the government and all of its
unconstitutional acts. We have to be there and support these legal battles and
continue them one way or the other until final victory: From the challenge of
the memorandum at the Supreme Court, headed by the Athens Law Associations (DSA)
(who, after seeing the popular demand, have altered and strengthened their
arguments against unconstitutionalism) to individual but highly significant
legal movements, such as this requesting safety measures against GAP that I have
personally applied for and which is heard before the judge on the 30th of
November 2010, and which furnish documents that prove beyond doubt GAP’s own
fraudulence and presence of malice when during his pre-election campaign he
OFFICIALLY knew the state of the economy and of the society (and so these
documents will prove that he rose to power under false pretenses, committing
the act fraudulently and in the presence of malice). We all ought to be there in
support.
For every act of lawlessness / dissolution of Constitutional order and Human
Rights, we should shower them with lawsuits, and resistance anchored in the Law
and Constitution and Human Rights, in addition to the street demonstrations
which are also our constitutional right.
If we have rejected this economic situation and possess common sense, it is time
we acted in support of each other, an act of solidarity and cohesion we Greeks
have always done in the face of danger of our extinction by a foe common to all
but who simply changes a series of face masks.
translation courtesy of Michael T.