We Write What We Like

WRITTEN BY CHRISTINA BASEOS
to all those of you who became experts overnight on Greece, this is what a Greek has to say:

I’m not going to comment or make an analysis right now on the Eurozone crisis, on whether Greece should remain in the EMU, on whether Greece taking a 2nd bailout package or on the austerity measures the Greek Parliament voted for yesterday. One doesn’t need to be Greek or even live in Greece, to be informed, to read articles, to follow politics, to investigate. We live in era that no one has the excuse of not being able to have access in information. Whoever really wants to gain knowledge on something, he just have to ask and search. In our days, a large number of people have the impression that having a computer, a mobile phone and access to the internet, makes them experts, analysts, and most importantly revolutionaries. Well, they are only armchair revolutionaries, who hide behind their computer screens and the internet’s anonymity, who by writing a famous quote on Facebook or on Twitter, think they are part of a revolution, a foreign country’s revolution at that. But there is a rough sea in their brains. Evidently they have no idea what revolution means and moreover they have no idea of the difference between revolution and vandalism and/or intentional property damage. So let’s take a very quick look at what happened last night in Athens.

– More than 150 buildings set on fire and now completely destroyed

– Historical buildings built in the 19th century completely burnt

– More than 200 shops, bookstores, coffee shops, theatres, cinemas, banks burnt

– Shops looted and completely emptied from their merchandize

– Shop-owners threatened by thieves with knives and forced to give their money in return for their lives

– Monuments, pavements, public property, cars, parks, train stations totally destroyed

– The most important: Hundreds of injuries and people taken to hospitals

I dare anyone to try and refute that all above happened last night in Athens. As from this morning Athens looks like a warzone. The damages are countless; the smell of burnt materials is everywhere, shops completely destroyed, broken glasses in every single street, broken traffic lights, broken marbles, broken cars, burnt trees, stones and dust everywhere….in one word: mayhem!

Destruction everywhere! Let’s see what Athens’ next day looks like. Private properties completely destroyed, leaving business owners without a business to run any longer, leaving shop owners without a shop, leaving hundreds of employees looking at unemployment straight to the eyes as of this morning, leaving families without income to feed their children, leaving hundreds of people not being able to rebuild their businesses and reopen their shops, leaving a city with destroyed buildings and public property and last but not least, leaving an irreplaceable gap in the city’s history, as a number of classical historical buildings, that survived two wars, were completely destroyed. And all this for what? In the name of what idea? What ideology? What value? In the name of democracy? In the name of revolution? In the name of resistance?

As a Greek, I know better than any of all those armchair revolutionaries and fake pundits, who copy/paste sonorous quotes from MLK or Che Guevara or Malcolm X that last night was not a revolution. What happened last night didn’t happen in the name of democracy. What happened yesterday was pure vandalism and criminal behavior. Two thousand hooded men, organized in smaller groups, each group with its own leader, using communication codes and pseudonyms, armed with pries, marble stones, fire extinguishers that were stolen from Athens Law School, more than 500 molotov cocktails prepared a few days ago in the premises of Athens Law School and most importantly “armed” with inexplicable anger are the ones responsible for last night’s destruction. What brave men! What spartans! What revolutionaries!

Well no! Not a single one of them who burned, looted, stole, injured, broke, threatened people’s lives is a brave man. Each and everyone of them is a coward in every sense of the word. A coward who hides his face with a hood and a mask, who has not the guts to look in the eyes the old man he threatened with a knife to take the only 5 Euros from his pocket. A coward, who needs a hood to destroy a city’s history and public & private property. A hooded coward, who has a perverted sense of democracy, freedom and revolution. A hooded coward, who doesn’t know that his idols MLK and Che never needed a hood to perform resistance and fight for people’s freedom and dignity, who didn’t need a Molotov cocktail to set ablaze innocent people’s shops and who, for God’s sake, did not purposefully block ambulances from transferring patients to a hospital. Anyone, who sits behind a computer screen, safely in their home, and who supports this kind of “revolution” is as much a criminal as those who destroyed hundreds of people’s lives yesterday.

Whoever supports this kind of destruction is as guilty as those two thousand hooded cowards. Greeks don’t need this kind of support from anyone. Greeks don’t need a lawless state that promotes violence and destruction, Greeks don’t need this perverted sense of democracy and resistance. Greeks know better than anyone what democracy is because Greeks are the ones who invented it. Greeks know how to fight and resist and will always put dignity above all else. Rest assured that not a single Greek, who has one ounce of brain, supports the hooded cowards. And if we Greeks don’t support them, then no one should. Thanks, but no thanks. They should keep the support of destruction and violence for themselves.