The term ‘Polytechnic’ conjures great sentimentality and commands a strong
loading of intense feelings, has always been a plateau for political conflict,
argumentation, differing positions and interpretations about what it was, who
instigated it, what it has become a symbol of in today’s Greek society. Also,
for some persons, like me, who have a beloved one in the call list of the
victims, the Polytechnic has branded a dark reminder of the moment in our lives
that changed them irrevocably.
Before stepping out of the door to leave and include himself to this call list,
my father, who, while being an extremely active Citizen and against every
authoritarian / fascist / antihumanitarian regime, saw the whole student
mobilization of 1973 both sympathetically but also sceptically and critically,
had these last words for me: ‘these lads are being used, and their ideas alike,
just as we were used when we were lads. He promised that he would explain what
he meant when he returned home. Of course, he never returned except in a box and
it took my whole life for me to understand what he meant and also for him to
divulge other things to me, not of the present moment to discuss.
It is true that unfortunately the Polytechnic and the young people who made it
happen, writing in the process one of the most glorious pages of our recent
history as a Nation, were used, were betrayed, and were marred by all those who
even today exploit, betray and mar the Greek People for the profit of their
dynasties, as well as the oligarchic fascist centres whom Polytechnio threatened
then and which today’s politicization of Greeks still mounts a threat against.
How many are those who have attacked the so-called Polytechnic generation
putting in the same bag people like Damanaki and Laliotis with people who never
used this day and the bloodshed of that day for personal purposes, other than
the unquenchable thirst for due process and justice served, to uplift themselves
to offices and preferential treatment over and above the rest (and on the backs
of) co-citizens?
It is therefore time we saw two things: who are the real generation of the
Athens Polytechnic and what did they do to this generation, and how similar is
what they did to that generation then to what they do to all of us, who are not
party cronies or sold out, today.
In every struggle there are two kinds of people: those who fight to bring on
results and those who fight to succeed in securing power for themselves, totally
oblivious about any other result. In fact many times, they wish against the
success of the said result and declare in a range of pompousness that they wish
to make sure that the ‘necessity’ of their being around will never go away from
the post they have clang to.
I think it is superfluous to say who the people that truly shed their blood are,
and who the ones who declare that they will do the same are, while they
themselves stand and watch the others do it for them. Even today every governor
of the likes of GAP announces so light-heartedly that ‘we shall bleed’ but
sticking the knife deep everywhere else but his own flesh, protecting and
securing his own blood – in every meaning of the word.
The Polytechnic generation cannot but fall under the same rule, whereby
Damanakises and Laliotises stepped on the flesh of the unknown and unsung rest,
shredded their ballots and their banners to secure power for themselves
fraudulently fooling the Greek People who trusted the shed blood and whatever
this blood stood for: the motto ‘Bread-Education-Freedom’ which in fact
encapsulates the sum total of Human Rights. In other words, the target of all
Greeks, from the foustanella-wearer of the 1821 Revolution, who also dreamt of a
State of Justice, till the heroic private on the rocks of Albania fighting
against Nazism and Fascism, a fight that turned the whole of Greece into a
1941Thermopylae, to the young people, pupils, students and adults of various
ages who also refused to submit to the open oligarchy, autocratism and fascism.
The Polytechnic generation does not differ from any other generation of Greeks
who, against all propaganda that they should feel less worthy and incapable of
having substance, dignity and will, as much for themselves as against oligarchs
within and without Greece, raise themselves much higher than any other People
would have done, so fast that they caused surprise and awe-inspiring admiration.
I did not even refer to the other Polytechnics during the Occupation of 1940-44
which thwarted Nazi-backed Bulgarian irredentism, decimation and genocide of our
nation, forceful and involuntary conscription in the Axis powers, and so many
other occasions. I attempt such a reminder now so as to show precisely what my
father had then said to me: that young and not so young Greek people carrying
all this heritage and thirst what we all seek fervently even today via all
peaceful means, were exploited, after of course they were decimated or disarmed
in various ways, so that they could forcefully become a fake banner and a mask
for precisely the same group who had installed royalties and juntas, and fascism
when they could no longer officially hold on to their tsiflik based on
pasha-written firmans or supported by the then Great Powers.
After the outburst of depravity and corruption during the post-junta period the
dead of the Polytechnic were marginalized, divested of glory and left to rot and
shoulder the responsibility for the rotten and corrupt system that used them
shamelessly, and were thrown to the side to usher neoliberalism in.
The meaning of desecration of the dead is incapable of describing the magnitude
of the lechery committed on their blood whereby the killer and the executioner
become adorners the grave of their victim with a wreath, while at the same time
they mar, vilify and deny their existence via the mass media on their beck and
call, just as GAP, who has pulled the Constitution to shreds, has the affront to
commit a lecherous act on us, under the protection of the physical distance and
the one-sidedness characterizing the current television setting, by telling us
that he is here to protect and respect us.
The Polytechnic generation is just another example in the plethora of examples
in our history where our sacrifices as Greeks and the fights for Human Rights
are pilfered by appointed scions or bought-out Ephialtes and Pilios Gousises to
keep the same dynasties, no matter what, onto the same power posts, to allow
them to keep feeding off out flesh and to spread what they have pilfered and
snatched until they drain it of all symbolism that rightfully belonged to it.
Now however, we have reached a point, owed respectfully to all this blood shed
so that we remain Free, Independent and Self-ruled, and with an officially
sanctioned anchoring of the State of Justice and Human Rights, whereby we can
distinguish the real Heroes and their generation from the Pilios Gousis of every
period, and to forbid any further desecration of their blood and posterity and
stop such qualities from being used by these insatiable cancers.
This is the only way we have to secure our future and stop them from shedding
more blood than this which has already been shed but covered by the mass media
on their payroll.
Only in this way will we honour not only the Polytechnic dead but every single
one who honours with his blood the Unknown Soldier.