generalspeaking

Violently Uncivil Rage

Somehow one always thinks of Greece as a civil society. And why not, after all? In antiquity they brilliantly created societies well ahead of their contemporaries in politics, social structure, philosophy, sculpture, architecture and athletics. They had their internecine wranglings, when the geography was comprised of city states, each ruled independently and often at war with one another, but the originality of their thought processes and culture and traditions infused the world with the luminous light of their genius.

Latterly, Greece has suffered internally through political unrest, overturning a military government and installing a series of democratically elected ones. Yet the country appears to be polarized by a wealthy class and a severely impoverished one. That in and of itself is a reflection of what occurs everywhere in the world, with a large demographic of successful wealthy and middle-class citizens, and an underclass of underprivileged poor struggling to make their way in their world.

Like the existence of the grievance-infested refugee slums in Paris, the banleieus that breed young toughs who rule their district with violent reactions to the country's more advantaged portions of society and into which areas the police dare not venture, Athens has its own Exarchia too dangerous for its police to attempt to create order from its disordered chaos. But nothing appears to have been done to re-enfranchise the slum-dwellers, to cleanse them of their grievances.

In Exarchia the local police station gets firebombed, and its teams of special forces garbed in full riot gear stand on street corners where they are often threatened by young mobs of social dissenters sporting by lobbing rocks at them. Two such special guards, surrounded by stone-throwing youth, were involved in a social collision that saw one of the guards shoot a 15-year-old youth dead. Resulting in a three-day series of riots erupting clear across the country.

The rioting mobs shout "killers in uniform" as they self-righteously throw gasoline bombs on riot police. Some of the violent protesters took refuge in the National Technical University of Athens, where by law police are unable to enter. These violent protests where angry young men, mostly secondary school students, rampage, are taking place in over ten cities across the country. Ironically enough, the young man who was killed came from a well-to-do family; he was just hanging out in Exarchia.

Thousands of furiously angry protesters, taking their cue from the outrage expressed throughout society, have been running amok through central Athens, plundering, setting shops on fire, destroying banks and attacking civil institutions. A huge Christmas tree set up for the holidays was torched. How very symbolic of the overturning of traditional values, demonstrating a holiday spirit unlike that most people might ever imagine in their nightmares.

"We are experiencing moments of a great social revolution", exulted one mature activist, among those occupying a university building. "The protests will last as long as necessary." Empty rhetoric redolent of sanctimonious entitlement to destabilize society. It is not necessarily the poor and the downtrodden who are enjoying themselves, defying their government and their society.

These far-left opportunists celebrating the anarchic chaos they've brought to the country have even astonished the residents of Exarchia by the extent of their mindless violence. Over 130 shops in the commercial centre of Athens have been destroyed. In the face of the global economic crisis, hopes for any semblance of normal retail business have been trampled into burning embers.

"This doesn't happen in a civilized society", observed one owner of a department store, mournfully observing his destroyed three-story building. Academics place the blame on government policies that ignore the plight of the disadvantaged, with an estimated one-fifth of the population living below the poverty line. One might venture the opinion that this situation is roughly analogous to that which exists virtually everywhere.

To further stir the pot of unrest the country's trade unions are making plans to unleash a 24-hour general strike in protest against new tax increases, pension reform, privatizations and the cost of living. Their target is the government, to force an election to unseat the fragile majority of the ruling New Democracy party.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis claims that "Extremist elements have exploited this tragedy (the fatal shooting of the young man) for their own purposes. Their motive is only violence. Their target is catastrophe." He's surely correct in his estimation, but as head of the government he also must take ownership of the civil unrest.

Starting, one might suggest, with normalizing the societal mess that exists in the notoriously riot-prone Exarchia. One can only wish them better luck in that enterprise than what obtains in France, with the simmeringly resentful and violence-prone residents of their infamous banlieues. In France's case it's more an instance of poor integration of a large foreign refugee component.

Citizens of a country must, as an integral portion of the civil contract, respect their institutions of governance. But they must also be given very real reasons to respect them. Sounds as though those reasons have been too long overdue in presenting themselves.

Labels: Political Realities, Societal Failures, World News

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, December 09, 2008