The Lawspeaker
11-02-2011, 05:25 AM
Who’s to blame, anyway?
A PROTESTER at this week’s anti-austerity demonstrations held up a sign reading “Greece belongs to the Greeks and not to Hitler” - a distasteful reference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and to those German politicians who have taken a hardline stance in dealing with Greece’s financial crisis.
For some Greeks, like veteran film director Dimitris Kollatos, Germany is to blame for Greece’s plight. Earlier in the month, he headed a rally of a group of people in Nazi uniforms, one of them impersonating Adolf Hitler, and showed up with Nazi flags and insignia outside the German embassy in Athens.
Although these ideas are confined to a fringe of the population, they do epitomise the frustration that has gripped a country teetering on the brink of the abyss where toxic-laced jokes about a new German occupation - albeit an economic one - abound.
Olympiakos’ midweek triumph over Germany’s Borussia Dortmund did not put food on the table but it did offer a sense of “We showed ’em” and probably did much to briefly lift the spirits of a frustrated people.
It’s true that Greek morale has sunk to its lowest level in decades, yet the quest for national redemption via scapegoating Germany cannot be the way out of the country’s impasse.
Greeks resent being called lazy, inept and the black sheep of Europe, and rightfully so. It is equally absurd for German and other European commentators to attribute Greece’s problems to the perceived shortcomings of its population.
Most right-minded Greeks know that the problem is not the Germans but the failings of their own political system.
Lashing out against “bad Germans” may be a convenient way to let off some steam. But it is truly disheartening to see that Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras failed again this week, for the umpteenth time, to find common ground and unite in the face of such financial and social adversity.
It’s easy to blame the Germans, but unless Greece’s political establishment finds a way to create a common front in the face of adversity, the country is doomed to more misery, self-inflicted or not.
Source: Athens News (http://www.athensnews.gr/editorial/49476) (October 24, 2011)
A PROTESTER at this week’s anti-austerity demonstrations held up a sign reading “Greece belongs to the Greeks and not to Hitler” - a distasteful reference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and to those German politicians who have taken a hardline stance in dealing with Greece’s financial crisis.
For some Greeks, like veteran film director Dimitris Kollatos, Germany is to blame for Greece’s plight. Earlier in the month, he headed a rally of a group of people in Nazi uniforms, one of them impersonating Adolf Hitler, and showed up with Nazi flags and insignia outside the German embassy in Athens.
Although these ideas are confined to a fringe of the population, they do epitomise the frustration that has gripped a country teetering on the brink of the abyss where toxic-laced jokes about a new German occupation - albeit an economic one - abound.
Olympiakos’ midweek triumph over Germany’s Borussia Dortmund did not put food on the table but it did offer a sense of “We showed ’em” and probably did much to briefly lift the spirits of a frustrated people.
It’s true that Greek morale has sunk to its lowest level in decades, yet the quest for national redemption via scapegoating Germany cannot be the way out of the country’s impasse.
Greeks resent being called lazy, inept and the black sheep of Europe, and rightfully so. It is equally absurd for German and other European commentators to attribute Greece’s problems to the perceived shortcomings of its population.
Most right-minded Greeks know that the problem is not the Germans but the failings of their own political system.
Lashing out against “bad Germans” may be a convenient way to let off some steam. But it is truly disheartening to see that Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras failed again this week, for the umpteenth time, to find common ground and unite in the face of such financial and social adversity.
It’s easy to blame the Germans, but unless Greece’s political establishment finds a way to create a common front in the face of adversity, the country is doomed to more misery, self-inflicted or not.
Source: Athens News (http://www.athensnews.gr/editorial/49476) (October 24, 2011)