Latent State of Emergency: Aspects of a continuous social crisis in Greece –

Sotiris CHTOURIS (14.12.208 )http://chtouris.wordpress.com/2008/12/

The revolt of Greek young people, triggered by the murder of fifteen-year-old Alexis Gregoropoulos, has revealed Greece’s fundamental problem: its inability to preserve the existing social and political model: A model that has been mostly a post war construction and has been partially transformed, during the past two decades, by the two main political parties alternating in power: New Democracy and PASOK. In contrast to the Prime Minister’s dangerous and ‘naive’ view that apparently this is a “minor incident”’ that will eventually fade away, there is a growing realization by a lot of people that right now we are facing an impasse: Unless we deal, even in a partial and fragmented way, with a host of fundamental problems, we cannot talk about long term and effective solutions.
These young people, who mobilized in a spontaneous and massive way, stressed repeatedly the significance of their participation in acts of ‘pure / divine’ violence (W. Benjamin 1921) and self-defence. The sheer violence and unrelenting continuity of these events give us an opportunity to try and understand the seriousness of the problems we face as a society.
Most of these disaffected young people are High School students, in the process of preparing for university entrance exams, devoting almost all their creative time in tackling a hard and rigid selection system, which will lead to university studies that objectively will have little professional or market value. Their participation in this system is a one way road, with no exit or alternatives in sight. The main promise that had been offered to them is a university degree and, at best, their possible employment in the public sector, as civil servants (Chtouris 2006).
It is a well established fact, however, that the Greek public sector offers employment of rather low quality; nevertheless, it is the only employer that can guarantee a steady job, a relatively decent salary and adequate social protection. In Greece, today, the segmented and fragmented labour market does not leave room for young people to make individual plans, build strategies of their own in order to make the best of their strengths and merit. The all powerful concept ‘to be connected’ describes perfectly the pervasive practice of clientelism: Having the ‘right contacts’ is the only way to find a job. This means accepting and becoming part of a corrupt and alienated system mediated by political and other interests. It involves extensive political clientele networks that are of course directly linked to corporate interests, public organizations and agencies, trade unions, etc. Its primary task and political interest involves a day to day complex bargaining upon which its survival and legitimacy heavily depends. At the same time, this system subordinates young people and their prospective socioeconomic integration efforts under its own clientelistic and petty interests. Moreover, this practice, namely, political or other mediation in job seeking – and not only- originates from the so-called government parties and the central political stage but extends across almost all vital sectors of public life: Local government, judicial authorities, universities , opposition political parties, across civil society institutions and initiatives, i.e. sports clubs, cultural and scientific associations etc. This political Clientelistic Network is the cornerstone of what I call Tacit Fascism, namely a latent state of emergency, a totally alienating and oppressive regime. This regime is based on a specific ideology, which wants to impose always “our people” and “our children”, catering exclusively for the promotion of individualistic / family interests, while, at the same time, coercing citizens to obedience vis a vis a rigid and partial bureaucracy. The regime I call “government parliamentarism” is the other side of the coin, namely an established token parliament, playing the role of government’s accomplice, which has renounced its true legislative and monitoring role, its right of initiative, being of course useful for supporting clientelist Networks and exchanging favours with votes.

Because of the fact that Tacit Fascism is deeply embroiled in a labyrinth of mutualism and complex relations, representing a big range of corporate, media or other interests, it does not need a central authority anymore, i.e. a central government.
On the contrary, it has broken down in multiple rival subsystems of patron-client /domination relationships: Political Parties, Professional Associations/ Chambers, Trade Unions, Banks, Big Corporations, Major and/or Illegal Landowners, Local Government bodies, aspiring politicians, etc. (Chtouris 2004) .In this way it has integrated multiple decision centres that monitor distribution of various favours and benefits, often linking this mutualism to illegal or semi-illegal practices.
This system, as I describe it, is not a transient one; on the contrary, it has come to occupy, in its network form, the totality of Greek public life, to the exclusion of any other non political institution or initiative: an exclusion involving all kinds of active civic participation and relevant political rights.
In contrast to the monolithic totalitarian regimes of recent history, such as described by Hanna Arend(1962), this regime does not depend on practicing open violence; it rather tends to exercise a continuous coercion and intimidation, to those indebted to it, thus creating an alienating and submissive network of relationships that permeate all sectors of public and economic life. Another interesting feature is its deeply anti-parliamentarian character, since it is the absolute prerogative of the prime minister and his government to exercise political power and manage political crisis, to the exclusion of the parliament or other decision making political bodies.
This absolute prerogative goes hand in hand with new absolutist forms of “governmental democracy”, trying continuously to balance and manage rivalries and conflicts between national and translational interests, namely, foreign investors and creditors, EU funds, trade unions, corporate interests, mass media, social security beneficiaries, financial heavyweights etc.
The regime’s fragmentary violence is addressed regularly against all kinds of disobedience. We see, all the time, police forces brutally confronting demonstrations organized, for example, by destitute pensioners, or workers protesting against fatal industrial accidents, young people demonstrating for their rights, etc. It involves a situation of extensive dysfunction throughout cities, i.e. disrupted public transport, illegal building schemes, selective sanctions, etc. suggesting that this regime of Tacit Fascism does not really want to impose law and order but only obedience, indifference, apathy and submission. Using your “connections” is always the best way to solve your problems: “I’ll go to X to delete the fine…I’ll bribe the tax official, I’ll give money to the urban planning office to legalize my illegally built house” and so on.

The shot against Alexis was meant to be a punishment, aiming specifically at his presence in a place synonymous with disobedience, the Exarchia square. It was also indirectly planned in the sense that the killer – who has been serving as police officer for the last eight years (!) in Exarchia – had expressed similar intentions. However, a host of “punishments” are imposed daily around Exarchia, or in other places, unknown and unseen by most of us. The courts are full of petty crime offenders, Roma gypsies, junkies, immigrants, cannabis smokers etc, all of them prosecuted not so much for what they have done but for their refusal to obey orders from police authorities. The recent prisoners’ riots all over Greece amply manifested that the regime of Tacit Fascism holds in custody thousands of petty offenders, abandoned at the mercy of lawyers, judges and gaolers, while they could be freed just in one day – as it eventually happened, under the pressure of the above mentioned riots. Freeing all these prisoners – “decongestion of prisons” as it was called – was obviously an acknowledgment of the fact that keeping these people in custody or in prison was not morally or legally justified, but imprisonment was largely symbolic of repression, specifically against all those who are “weak” and vulnerable vis a vis abusive exercise of power: This is a system that does not take care of its citizens.
All these citizens, feeling anger and injustice inflicted upon them, seek, in vain, justice, as they collide with the amorphous mass of Greek Law, namely a compilation of regulations, norms and edicts that originate from the “dark” past, reflecting authoritarian regimes of that time: A confusing aggregate of legal regulations and decrees that were established even before the creation of the Modern Greek state! (e.g. Golden bulls). This confusion serves a very specific purpose: the selective application of Law through provision of privileges and exonerations to Clientelistic Networks. In reality, our legal apparatus is at the service of the political regime’s priorities and purposes, leaving the majority of its citizens defenceless vis a vis state bureaucracy and abusive political power. A telling example of the above constitutes the innumerable political and financial scandals that afflict Greek public life regularly: in most cases no one is found responsible or guilty, and even if they are prosecuted, their punishment is fictitious and a joke. On the contrary, heavy penalties are inflicted on offenders, by courts, for minor offences. I would not suggest that our democracy is sliding towards a rather traditional totalitarian state; however, we have to deal with a fragmented system that in its effort to integrate its decisions and actions constitutes indirectly a very dangerous tacit authoritarian regime.
This is amply illustrated by a generally accepted tolerance when police officers abuse their power, either by illegal use of their firearms or brutal behaviour against the most vulnerable citizens – e.g. immigrants – following subsequent lack of sanctions or prosecution. Constant persecution and harassment of those characterized as “disobedient” and “dangerous” are common practices.
Thus, our recent Greek democracy looks like an unfinished and incomplete project which can, at any time, go down the way of an authoritarian regime. The difference with past openly totalitarian regimes is the diffusion and discontinuity of authoritarian practices, as well as their alternation with equally fragmentary democratic practices, which, however, are significantly limited and controlled by an undeclared permanent sate of emergency. Giorgio Agamben describes it clearly in his book “The State of Emergency”:
“The Western political system thus seems to be a double apparatus, founded in a dialectic between two heterogeneous and, as it were, antithetical elements; nomos and anomy, legal right and pure violence, the law and the forms of life whose articulation is to be guaranteed by the state of emergency. As long as these elements remain separated, their dialectic works, but when they tend toward a reciprocal indetermination and to a fusion into a unique power with two sides, when the state of emergency becomes the rule, the political system transforms into an apparatus of death”
In modern times, Greek politics tend to a fusion of this kind, mainly through imposition of an external legal rule and because of an inherent inability to integrate the Greek people’s will and aspirations into a comprehensive nomos.
The state of emergency – even if it has never been officially declared since the seven year dictatorship’s fall – is in substance applied and reproduced, justified each time by important contingencies, such as our financial commitments to EU institutions and the EMU, servicing our external debt, constant external threat against our nation, terrorism etc. In this way, sovereignty is transferred outside the people’s will and, at the same time, all the necessary conditions are met in order to maintain an internal authoritarian regime which I call “tacit fascism”
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References
-Hannah Arendt,(1962) The Origins of Totalitarianism, THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY, N York,
- Giorgio Agamben from a lecture given at the Centre Roland-Barthes (Universite Paris VII,Denis-Diderot).
-Walter Benjamin (1921). Zur Kritik der Gewalt. [.Critique of Vio-lence,. 1921]
-Walter Benjamin.s Philosophy: Destruction and Experience, ed. Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne (London and New York: Routledge, 1994),
-Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Original work published 1972).
-Chtouris, S. , Zissi A., et. al, The state of youth in contemporary Greece Young Young 14(4), 2006

-Chtouris Sotiris, Rational Symbolic Networks, Nissos,
Athens 2004 (in Greek )
- Heidenreich E., Chtouris S., Ipsen D, Athens, The Creation of a Mediterranean Metropolis, Exantas. Athens 2007 (in Greek ,in German 2003)

~ by chtouris on December 18, 2008.