by NIKOS RAPTIS
There are 300 deputies in the Greek Parliament (for a population of about 10 million). Of them 21 are (Stalinist) communists, 13 are (former) Eurocommunists, and 266 are rightists or “socialist”-rightists.
These 266 male and female individuals, cannot walk on any Greek street, cannot go to a restaurant (alone or with their family and friends), cannot visit their home town, cannot stand on the usual elevated platform as officials during national or religious holidays to honor the parading military and students, and so on.
Yet, these 266 persons, although they live every minute of the above situation and are naturally terrified not only for their “reputation” but even for their physical safety, ridiculously, pretend that all is normal and all is business as usual.
Their nemesis is the majority of their fellow Greeks, who up to now have used as “instruments” of protest and insult yogurt, eggs, tomatoes and the “moutza”.
[“Moutza” (pronounced: moo’tza), a palm-gesture with all fingers extended apart. For the Greeks the “moutza” is more potent an insult than the Anglo-Saxon middle finger, plus the verbal “mother f…”, plus more. There have been cases of one driver killing another one in a traffic incident after the exchange of such an insult.]
March 25th is the “4th of July” for the Greeks, as that date is supposed to be the day in 1821 that the Greeks revolted against the Ottoman Empire, after four centuries of occupation. Actually, you can find towns in the US that were named to honor that revolt. For example the town of “Ypsilanty” in Michigan. Inevitably, on that day, all over Greece, there are parades of the military, the police, the students, the elementary school pupils, etc., etc. Also, inevitably there is an elevated platform for the officials to be honored by the parading … “robots”. The familiar nationalistic and comic stuff.
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