racist – Observations and Misunderstandings

I wrote a piece earlier about Greece and the current situation with the refugees crossing from Turkey and attacks on them by the fascists. Fascist is a term thrown around far too easily, I should know I’ve been one of those people calling everyone fascist for years, but in Greece it is genuinely a word you can use to describe people. Greece has actual fascists, everywhere does don’t get me wrong, but in Greece they are numerous, hold varying positions of power and the police are absolutely riddled with them like a disease. The piece I wrote earlier though turned into a rant because these fucking morons are arseholes and they piss my off. I’ve met them, not too often but enough to know how they think. Also Greeks in general can be quite volatile, the possibilities of what could happen in Greece worry me. They’re also just human and I love them for this, they’re genuine in their own way. I am really struggling to stop this turning into a rant again…oh fuck it I’ll just paste the first one below…

Greece appears to be fucked at the moment. Fucked doesn’t appear to be a strong enough word but I’ll use it anyway. Turkey has opened the gates to Europe using people for political gain and power, while Greece is attempting to shut them also for political gain and power. The Turks are exaggerating the numbers they’ve let through and the Greeks deny they’ve let through many at all. There have been videos online of all sorts of actions against refugees this last week. The Greek coastguard firing live rounds into the water near a boat they had previously tried to sink with a stick and turn over by ramming. When you have about seventy people on a boat designed for fifteen and only just above the waterline it is remarkable that didn’t happen. It is a shocking video and had it not been for political point scoring by the Turkish coastguard who are guilty of the same and worse, it would never have been shown. These things have been going on for the last few years in that narrow strip of water between Greece and Turkey but just away from the cameras. You then have refugees, NGOs and foreign volunteers being attacked on the beaches by roving bands of fascists, as the police look on doing nothing. The police themselves in Greece have an horrendous reputation for being indiscriminate racist morons who will only make the situation worse. New Democracy, the right-wing government in power since last summer doing all they can to attack left-wing squats, attack refugees and turn the islands into prison camps. Greece has a rich history of right-wing military dictatorships in the last hundred years and one thing they loved doing was throwing communists on prison islands to die, history repeats itself yet again. Moria camp on Lesvos has a capacity of three thousand but contains something like twelve thousand at present. I don’t blame the locals on the island for being pissed off at the national government for wanting to build more and larger (prison) camps on Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Kos but as per usual they’re going after the wrong people. The reality in Greece is that the fascists are real and they’re very much at the front of an angry populace. It is not hyperbole. Once there was Golden Dawn the far-right party but to win power New Democracy just appealed to the lighter elements of their message and then gave them free reign once they came to power. I remember when I was living there it was pretty clear that it wouldn’t take much for Greece to descend into another bloody civil war and with the right-wing violence of this last week just feels like another step in that direction. An incredibly polarised country in which they hate each other. Tourists always say about how nice and welcoming the Greeks are and it’s true, they are great at looking after guests, as well as their own families but outside of this they can be total arseholes to each other. Give them a divisive issue when they’re already struggling with no work or money and a country that is falling apart and doesn’t give a shit about them and the violence is inevitable. Who gets hurts, the innocent people once again. As the EU commends Greece for shutting the gates to Europe it ignores the abuse of innocents, of children being tear gassed, women being clubbed and boats being rammed. The Greek government has said they will stop taking asylum requests, I may be corrected here but surely there must be some kind of international law they’re breaking with that. But commend them our governments will. Commend the fascist thugs terrorising with impunity they will. Commend the brutalising of an already beaten populace they will. This has been a little bit of a unthought rant and I’m wary of doing so. But I also know people who have been threatened and attacked. This is a rant because it’s an emotive issue and it scares me and I worry about people I know in Greece. As I said a few days ago about the fascists in Spain, in Greece they have been and continue to be just as real. The Nazis were never short of collaborators, neither were the British and Americans backing the right wing in the civil war of the late forties. So nothing has changed in seventy years, it’s the same old bullshit as our governments feed the monster before distancing themselves once the job is done and letting everyone else pick up the pieces. Fuck them, that makes the Brits collaborators, the EU, everyones a collaborator. We’re all collaborating with right wing extremism because they’re doing in our name. How much do we love the EU now? Perhaps they’re not that perfect after all. Blood on everyones hands.

It can be incredibly difficult sometimes to have an opinion and stick to it. This might just make me unreliable and indecisive but it also seems to allow for flexibility of thought. It means that I am capable of being influenced by whatever mood I find myself in in that moment too which is probably not a great thing, inspired by emotions over intellect or something equally damning. Yesterday I was outraged at outrage and today I am outraged again but this time outraged at my previous outrage of outrage. That is a lot of outrage. Perhaps we do need some outrage without any tangible benefit or outcome that can be measured. Every group needs people of all levels to function as one holistic entity. There must then be a place for those who are outraged by news and share it but do little else. How do I read it after all if someone is not sharing it with me. Equally then you need people below them who are outraged and then have a little rant later to their mates about it. Either the mates will tell them to shut up because they don’t care, will argue with them or will take it in. And finally those who are outraged at injustice but then do nothing, not even talk to people about it, at least they’re one less right wing racist. Clearly there does seem to be some measure of value to the outrage.

It is a hard lonely existence sitting on the fence. The ability to see both sides of the argument without the absolutist dogmatic approach to beliefs is one which rarely wins you many staunch allies. It probably results in more friends but who needs those when you can have allies in the fight, or a fight, or whatever it is you think you’re doing. The world is not black and white, there are benefits and positives to everything if you choose to see them. They may be tiny and outweighed by the negatives but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. That is of course a rather positive attempt to spin a lack of decisiveness. Sometimes it is hard to truly think something when you keep on seeing the other side of the argument.

While the danger of just sitting behind a screen, getting angry and doing nothing is the potential harm to your mental state, equally at some point; you may just have a conversation with someone about that issue which previously outraged you, setting off a chain reaction that results in something actually measurable happening. At the same time logically that makes you another link within whatever chain was sparked into life at some earlier date. Does that mean it is all out of control anyway? What’s the point of worrying about the outrage if we’re just another piece of an uncontrollable chain reaction. Perhaps we just need to sit back enjoy the moment of outrage, see it for what it is and let it go before smiling in recognition when the time comes for it to be useful. What a joy life would be if we were really that present, objective and aware of our actions and thoughts. What an existence it would be if we weren’t able to be angry before forgetting we were angry and deciding the next day we actually think something else. Ah the pleasures of life on the fence.

Tag: racist

Fucking Fascists

Life On The Fence