I feel a nostalgic sadness now that the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) has closed – however, it is not the tragedy some people pretend. We Greeks are the best drama queens in the world! Yet, practically and ethically speaking, what matters is whether it made profit or loss. I assume that if it made profit, as some people say referring to the exclusive broadcasting of major sport events, or if there was an alternative to its closure, the Prime Minister would not have done such a thing. Because right now Antonis Samaras and his administration are being caught in turbulence (which he actually expected) endangering what the large majority of the Greeks achieved with blood and tears during the last year – endangering, again, the survival of the country.
The people who question once again what the sacrifices of the majority achieved during all the bloodied years are first and foremost its employees – all of them appointed thanks to a “major political contact” to put it bluntly. Which means a group of scandalously privileged public servants (permanent or seasonal – when it came to “stars”). The people who rebel against the closure of the ERT are the same people who accused the state of interfering in its affairs, the same people who aimed at entering the safety of its – tragically large – bosom. I also have the suspicion that they are the same people who fight for… the right not to pay the part of the Public Power Corporation (DEI) bill that goes to ERT or the right to use the public transportation system without paying for a ticket. They are the same people who target anyone who doesn’t cry or publicly express his anger for the economic situation as “rich” and, automatically, “guilty”.
These people hate what they never gained or inherited – wealth – instead of the actual guilty ones (the corrupt or cowardly and incompetent politicians and – to a lesser degree – some tycoons who systematically adopt a business policy destructive to the country, damaging to the society they are addressed to and unfair to their employess). They are advocates of the “ideal”: what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine; we are family!
You walk at night on Amsterdam Avenue in New York. From “deep” Harlem to the centre of the city, a straight line links the poor to the middle class. Somewhere in between the rich can also be found.
At ten o’clock at night, from Monday till Sunday including holidays, most of the shops are open. In any one of them, no matter how crowded it is – most of them usually are – the employees treat you as if Jesus Christ appeared in front of them.
Here, at the centre of the world, as the city is considered to be, beats fast, like a clock, a big heart that gives life to everything: capiatalism and national pride (to a degree we would call “chauvinism”). The products and services money offers are the most beautiful thing in the world. There is something for every soul: from material products to free and fast access to the Internet, to technological achievements that were unthinkable five years ago. You can achieve great things in this city – you can reach beyond the sky, you can learn ways of life that – if you wish and come from a class that offers opportunities – can help you evolve to another dimension, deeper and higher, of human life. And you can also collapse, vanish, be the object of such “natural” exploitation that the word brutality seems inadequate. It all depends on where you stand. Along the food chain, we are all considered disposable meat of a large productive and consumptive machine, controlled by a state which caters for its smooth operation and longevity. In a nutshell, that’s capitalism. If you don’t like it… you can’t escape. Even in China, Russia or Cuba, you will only meet more primitive forms of capitalism. Unless you go to North Korea…. Maybe that’s the fitting summer destination for the professional unionists and protesters.
Seriously though, the people who protest against the closure of the ERT are “light” leftists and revolutionaries. They are also hypocrites – because they just… whispered something about ALTER and Eleftherotypia while haggling with their owners behind the backs of the unpaid employees. And they are spoiled: They want “communism” wherever it suits them and free capitalism when it comes to their own benefits and to the benefit of living in a free Western country. Let’s be realists: They want to be absolute rulers without ever being elected. Fascists.
