{"id":22370,"date":"2013-10-02T08:44:42","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T13:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22370"},"modified":"2013-10-02T08:44:42","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T13:44:42","slug":"saving-greek-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/10\/02\/saving-greek-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"“Saving” Greek democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sweep of arrests among the elected members of the Greek far-right Golden Dawn party are being hailed as saving democracy, but as Brendan O’Neill<\/a> points out, this kind of action is extremely undemocratic:<\/p>\n

Why isn\u2019t there more discomfort, or at least the asking of some awkward questions, about the arrest of Golden Dawn MPs in Greece<\/a>? Yes, Golden Dawn is a profoundly unpleasant organisation. Virulently racist, anti-Semitic, allergic to the ideals of free speech and free movement, and supported by people who are quite happy to use violence against those they hate, especially immigrants, it makes our own British National Party look like a chapter of the Women\u2019s Institute in comparison. Yet that doesn\u2019t mean we should give a nod to, far less cheer, the Greek state\u2019s incarceration of GD\u2019s leaders and members of parliament, who were democratically elected. Any police sweep on elected politicians should make those of us who call ourselves democrats anxious; that Greece\u2019s military-style assault on GD hasn\u2019t is very worrying.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Far from asking critical questions about what is motivating the Greek state\u2019s clampdown on Golden Dawn, sections of the Greek left and vast swathes of the European left are celebrating it as a victory for democracy. They echo Greece\u2019s public order minister, Nikos Dendias, who described the sweeping-up of GD\u2019s leaders as \u2018a historic day for Greece and Europe\u2019. Greek newspapers are competing to see who can be the most effusive in their support for the clampdown. The brilliant arrests are \u2018Golden Dawn\u2019s Holocaust<\/a>\u2019, said one, rather tastelessly. Another claimed that \u2018democracy is knocking out the neo-Nazis<\/a>\u2019. A left-wing British magazine described the arrests<\/a> as \u2018a victory for democracy in Greece\u2019 and demanded to know why the Greek state isn\u2019t doing more<\/em> to shut down GD. SYRIZA, the left-wing opposition party in Greece which numerous European leftists have excitably hailed as a radical voice against austerity, has stood shoulder-by-shoulder with the state against Golden Dawn, claiming the arrests show \u2018that our democracy is standing firm and is healthy<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

These radical cheerleaders of a state clampdown on democratically elected politicians urgently need to look up the word democracy in a dictionary. To describe the arrest of politicians who were elected by the public, by masked, armed police who were not elected by the public, as a \u2018victory for democracy\u2019 is the most profound contradiction in terms. Some leftists are claiming that the militaristic clampdown on GD has nothing to do with its political beliefs and is just a straightforward investigation of some men involved in alleged criminal activity. It\u2019s hard to know whether such naivety is touching or disturbing. If this is just a criminal case rather than a political war waged by agents of the state against ideological undesirables, then why are so many describing it as a \u2018victory for democracy\u2019, as opposed to a potential victory for justice, and why are so many hailing the \u2018knocking out [of] neo-Nazi ideas\u2019? No number of lists of the alleged weapons found in GD members\u2019 homes (apparently the party\u2019s leader owns three guns<\/a>) can disguise the fact that what we are witnessing here is a state war on a party supported by a significant number of Greeks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sweep of arrests among the elected members of the Greek far-right Golden Dawn party are being hailed as saving democracy, but as Brendan O’Neill points out, this kind of action is extremely undemocratic: Why isn\u2019t there more discomfort, or at least the asking of some awkward questions, about the arrest of Golden Dawn MPs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1526,53],"tags":[304,766,99],"class_list":["post-22370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greece","category-politics","tag-antisemitism","tag-democracy","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5OO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22371,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22370\/revisions\/22371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}