CRACKDOWN ON GREEK NEO-NAZIS

Yesterday, in a rare demonstration of energy, the Coalition Greek government headed by conservative Antonis Samaras moved against the leadership of Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi), the extremist group which apes many of the practices and symbols of the Nazis.

Golden Dawn Leader Nikos Michaloliakos

Golden Dawn has certainly been provocative. Its programme of extreme nationalism, intolerance of immigrants, rejection of Eurozone austerity and contempt for the present political elite presses many positive buttons with a Greek electorate in despair and impoverished after the government signed up to two Memoranda setting out its obligations under the two bailouts. Golden Dawn activists systematically rough up the large inner-city communities of often illegal immigrants, Pakistanis, Kurds, Afghans and now Syrians, friendless among the xenophobic poor Greeks. With crime rates soaring, Golden Dawn dispenses rough street justice as the official police are ineffective. 

The ancient Greek Meandros symbol has been twisted into a crooked swastika, members usually wear black T-shirts with emblems; there are torch-light processions, marches and parades with drum bands beating and Greek and Golden Dawn flags flying. More sinisterly there have been allegations of armed robbery and murder, as yet unproven. But Golden Dawn has gone too far recently: a group of Communist fly-posters were set upon by a mob of Golden Dawn supporters and beaten up badly: the police stood idly by. Worse, after some altercation between opposing factions in a café about a TV football match, on 18 September a Leftist rapper called Pavlos Fyssas was stabbed to death by an avowed Golden Dawn supporter who seems to have been summoned by phone. Golden Dawn denies any direct involvement but many signs point otherwise. As a consequence Golden Dawn has been declared a criminal organisation and about 30 arrest warrants have been issued.

Kasidiaris yells his innocence

The criminal prosecutor’s office has a thick dossier on Golden Dawn’s activities, which begs the question why action was not taken sooner. In any event prominent Golden Dawn figures have been arrested and marched in handcuffs between gaol and court in a surely prejudicial fashion. Apart from the leader Nikos Michaloliakos, an uncharismatic small-time lawyer with a rasping voice and an occasional shaft of humour, the party spokesman Elias Kasidiaris was also detained. He is a violent young man, an ex-body builder and regular soldier, who gained notoriety in June 2012 for assaulting a well-liked lady Communist deputy Liana Kanelli on a prime-time TV chat show. Also arrested was MP Elias Panagiotaris, a thuggish presence in many Golden Dawn incidents. Justice will no doubt take its slow course.

Panagiotaris in custody

                                                              

Golden Dawn has few redeeming features; its policies and personnel are despicable. The extreme right has a following in Greece – after all the Colonel’s Regime, a military junta, ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974 with some successes, though ultimate disaster in Cyprus. An April 2013 poll reported that 30% of Greeks “yearned for the better days of the junta”. The marginal party right-wing LAOS, under Holocaust-denier Georgos Karatzaferis, polled 6% in 2009 and was even in Papademos’ 2011 Coalition before dropping below 3% and losing all its seats in the 2012 elections.

 Golden Dawn is much stronger. It polled 7% in 2012 and now has 18 seats in the 300-seat parliament. The volatile polls show its support at about 15% giving rise to its dubious claim to speak for 1 million Greeks. Yet parliamentary immunity laws are generous in Greece. A member cannot be removed unless convicted of a crime; meanwhile he retains all his privileges. Removing Golden Dawn from Parliament will be a complex exercise. The present uneasy New Democracy-PASOK coalition is unlikely to risk fresh elections.

The emergence of Golden Dawn was a consequence of the Economic Crisis and its mismanagement. History tells us, from experience in 1920-40, that nations in despair will embrace Fascism with its authoritarian and patriotic certainties. One hopes the Greek government can lance the Golden Dawn boil but the process is at an early stage; a reaction of street violence can be expected and the government will have to be fair but utterly resolute.

SMD

 29.09.13.  

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013

SOAP OPERATICS

OK, I can see the curl already forming on your intellectual and sophisticated lip, but I confess I have always enjoyed radio or TV soap operas, and if not an inveterate fan, share much of the popular enthusiasm for this undemanding yet fascinating form of entertainment.

At the tender age of about 5, I can recall huddling round the radio at 6.45 every evening and, thrilled by the signature tune “Devil’s Galop” (no, not Gallop), listening avidly to 15 minutes of the BBC’s Dick Barton, Special Agent, relating Dick’s, with his sidekick Snowy White, cliff-hanging adventures battling villains of every kind and always triumphing. It was broadcast between 1946 and 1951 and at its peak had a huge audience of over 15m. 

The BBC worried about Dick’s sensationalism and commissioned a gentler rural serial The Archers to take over the Dick Barton slot. Astonishingly, 62 years later, The Archers is still going strong and is the longest-running soap in the world, charming an audience of 5m. My dear father was a fan and I knew not to disturb him when the romping signature tune, the Maypole dance “Barwick Green”, rang out. I tended to catch the Sunday omnibus edition introduced in the deep rustic tones of the gamekeeper Tom Forrest. Over 60 years the story-lines have evolved starting with Dan and Doris Archer at Brookfield Farm, succeeded by son Phil, wise sophisticate John Tregorran with the various adventures of the yokels Ned Larkin and Walter Gabriel (catch-phrase “Me old Pal, me old Beauty” often addressed to a cow). The events described were not alarming, competitive marmalade-making, the church fete, the sowing of winter wheat and such-like. The great drama was in 1955 with the death in a fire of Grace Archer, wife of Phil, trying to rescue her horse Midnight. It was no coincidence that this episode, a classic “spoiler”, was broadcast on the opening night of BBC’s rival TV channel ITV!

Cast of The Archers

Nowadays we are on second and even third generations. Rich Jack Wooley is beset by Alzheimer’s, Phil has passed away (the same actor played him 1951-2009) Jethro Larkin and ne’er-do-well Nelson Gabriel have come and gone, the rustic proles the Grundys struggle, and there are dozens of sub-plots involving marriage break-ups, bovine TB (Ambridge preferring to vaccinate badgers rather than cull them), eccentric vicars and even (shock-horror!) a gay civil partnership. It is still somewhat middle-class but it brings innocent joy to many.

Before moving away from radio soaps, I must mention Mrs Dale’s Diary which ran from 1948 to 1969. It chronicled the twee middle-class life of Mrs Dale, wife of Dr Jim Dale, at Virginia Lodge, Packwood Hill (they moved later) with her sister Sally (always pronounced “Selly”) and mother in law Mrs Freeman with her cat Captain (always pronounced “Ceptain”). Mrs Dale’s cut-glass tones emanated from the actress Ellis Powell, who became difficult and bibulous before being sacked in 1963. She partly inspired Frank Marcus’ comedy-drama The Killing of Sister George. Her successor, erstwhile musical star Jessie Matthews, could not save this irredeemably bourgeois show with its introductory tinkling harp music and Mrs Dale’s anguished “I’m rather worried about Jim”, but it did command an audience of 7m in its prime.

The advent of colour TV ushered in classic soaps from the US. All the world watched Dallas (1978-91) centred around the back-stabbing lives of the oil-millionaire Ewing family, the offspring of Jock and Miss Ellie with arch-villain, sneering JR (Larry Hagman) and his innocent brother Bobby with JR’s wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) viewing life through the bottom of a well-filled glass of dry Martini. There was a rich cast of characters and the plot-lines strayed into the sensational typified by the cliff-hanging question “Who shot JR?” after one episode.

The dysfunctional Ewing family from Dallas

The other US blockbuster was Dynasty (1981-89) revolving around the life and loves of Blake Carrington (John Forsythe), an oil millionaire in Denver, married to Krystle (Linda Evans) and plagued by his ex-wife Alexis Carrington Colby (Joan Collins). Dynasty was only fun when Alexis was on screen intriguing mercilessly and humiliating Krystle. Joan Collins scintillated in her enormous shoulder-pads, but the story-line plumbed depths of absurdity with “The Moldavian Massacre” in 1985 (60m viewers) when Alexis’ daughter’s wedding to Prince Michael was interrupted by a terrorist attack.

Blake and his Dynasty ladies

Dynasty had plenty of glamour with Joan Collins and Linda Evans but I carried a torch for wanton Sammy Jo (Heather Locklear), just my kind of fantasy girl!

In Britain the soaps prospered and Coronation Street (1960-), set in grim Salford, keeps a huge following (10m viewers) and years ago made Ena Sharples (Violet Carson), with her hairnet and milk stout and Hilda Ogden (Jean Alexander) in her curlers, national institutions. Yet I neither follow it nor cockney EastEnders – their grittiness does not appeal. More recently British soaps have been curiously regressive, being set in past times and harping on class distinctions long disappeared in contemporary society. Highly popular was Upstairs, Downstairs in the early 1970s, a chronicle of the London household of Sir Richard Bellamy MP (David Langton), with the toffs lording it upstairs and the plebs slumming it downstairs. The action stretched between 1903 and 1930 with the first Ladyship going down with the Titanic, the second expiring in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. The loyal Scots butler Hudson (Gordon Jackson) ran the household and had a respectful relationship with splendid cook Mrs Bridges (Angela Baddeley) and coped with the casualties of the Great War and all manner of turmoil above stairs and in the servants’ hall. Jean Marsh, an originator of the series, also played a maid (Rose) and the acting standards were high.

Ena Sharples (Violet Carson)

Aristocratic Downton Abbey

    

The current British favourite is Downton Abbey written by Julian Fellowes, an acute observer of the mores of the former upper classes. I have only seen a few episodes and it covers similar ground to Upstairs, Downstairs, the production values are high and the acting is polished as one melodrama after another unfolds.

Here in Greece, there is a long tradition of importing soaps and serials (they were even bamboozled by Coronation Street) and we have had a succession of Turkish soaps, upon which I have already written. Recently we have been regaled with Latin American soaps from Venezuela, Mexico and now from Brazil. The current favourite is Avenida Brasil launched in 2012; Brazil came to a stop when the final episode was run (80m viewers!). It tells the story of the quest for revenge by Nina, abandoned as a child by her gold-digger step-mother Carminha, to eke out a living on a landfill site. She is helped to escape by a boy Jorginho who in turn is adopted by Carminha and her rich husband ex-footballer Tufao (she has a long-term affair with ruthless brother-in-law Max). Nina insinuates herself into Tufao’s household as a maid. I have no idea how it will all end but the picture of Brazilian middle-class society is appalling. The often drunk men are covered in bling and tattoos, the women are loud and quarrelsome, table manners are wholly unknown. It is a scenario of the utmost vulgarity: the Greeks love it.

Heroine Nina from Avenida Brasil

Lady villain Carminha

Soaps are melodramas laced with humour, not unlike Life itself. They are not great examples of the playwright’s art, but they are mightily entertaining. I say to their producers – “keep ‘em coming!”

SMD

27.09.13

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2013

STABILITY OR PARALYSIS

There is said to be a Chinese curse, May you live in interesting Times, complacently promoting the opposing merits of the quiet life, the predictable future and what we call “stability”. This desire for stability is very human but life is dynamic and constantly evolving; statesmen who seek to put a lid on change and direct national energies in a prescribed direction are walking a tightrope where success only comes to the fortunate and the sure-footed. “Stability” can perpetuate an outworn status quo and an unjust society. Prudent conservatism needs always to be accompanied by a clear agenda of what really needs to be preserved and what must be altered to fit the new society in which we live.

A North Korean parade, the ultimate in Stability?

There are extremes of stability. The Kim Il Sung dynasty has oppressed North Korea since 1948, 65 years of murderous nightmare and rigid totalitarianism for its luckless citizens. A revolution there is long overdue, even at some human cost. Post-Mao China retains institutionalised communist party rule and her leadership can look geriatric; a change of its ruling group every 10 years, even though imposed by a self-appointed oligarchy, is a useful reform. After Mao’s upheavals, China’s relative stability allows her to concentrate on her own distinctive and fruitful state capitalism. Russia under Putin is “stable” and is inching towards some form of free national dialogue despite an overhang of attitudes from dictatorial times. Yet Russia’s role in the world needs earnest internal debate.

Hamlet-like Obama

The West should not look on these Russian and Asiatic nations condescendingly. In our self-satisfaction, we too have our rigidities and lack of focus. The United States was once confident in its power. Now it seems diminished, with President Obama stumbling and faltering and the two great parties failing to engage the people in substantive debate. Maybe the Economic Crisis has undermined the “we-can-do-it” ethos, although financial recovery is gaining pace. Maybe a problem like Syria is just too complex and the American appetite for organising global change has understandably withered. If it has, she must now limit her commitments and review her alliances. In smaller things too, the US clings to an ultra-conservative agenda. The Constitution allows citizens to bear arms, but surely sensible gun-control can be agreed in Congress to avoid the sickening monthly massacres in schools and campuses perpetrated by unbalanced psychopaths toting freely-available AR-15 semi-automatic rifles. The US government really needs to take a grip on issues of this kind.

Europe is not an encouraging template.  It rushed into the Eurozone without adequately establishing its institutions and created 6 years misery for the Mediterranean members. Despite its manifold failures the unelected EU mandarins (Barroso, van Rompuy, Rehn et al) insist on ill-conceived programmes of austerity and now on a unified fiscal and banking regime – a classic case of “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. The EU is a world class enterprise but its leaders have simply over-reached themselves. Retaining the Euro is given priority over the sovereignty and well-being of Eurozone members, a recipe for major trouble and instability. If such instability leads to a re-think at Brussels it would be useful, but previous leaders who questioned the Euro, George Papandreou and Silvio Berlusconi, were deposed in party coups probably orchestrated by Brussels.

Merkel wins but Europe loses?

                                                  

Angela Merkel has been the driving force behind EU austerity for Club Med. She invokes the simple good housekeeping nostrums of her “Swabian Housewife” but the issues are not so straightforward. Germany has manoeuvred herself into a system where her currency is substantially undervalued, her exporters prosper at the expense of her weaker Eurozone partners and she builds up large trade surpluses year after year. She must appreciate that this comfortable but anomalous position is untenable but Germany seems deaf to all intellectual arguments. Merkel will stay on as Chancellor following the German elections but Europe will hardly react with much enthusiasm.

Nowhere will that lack of enthusiasm be more marked than in Greece, whose citizens are in their 6^th year of self-defeating recession for which Merkel and Germany get much of the popular blame. True, the blame really lies with the many Greek politicians whose greed, incompetence and blatant embezzlement created the Hellenic mess, but Germany is a convenient and partly plausible scapegoat. The current New Democracy-PASOK coalition is an alliance of all the elements who created Greece’s crisis and is held in public derision. Alarmingly, the continuation of the coalition is polarising opinion with the Left-wing SYRIZA holding about 28% of support according to polls, but not making a profound public impact, while the noisy and violent Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, with some 15% support, gains ground. Talk of civil war is probably exaggerated but instability is growing and firm government is required. New elections might help clear the air and give legitimacy to a new regime.

Golden Dawn street politics

Britain is stable enough and threats to that stability can be overcome. There seems little prospect from the polls that the September 2014 Referendum will grant independence to Scotland, so agonising on that score should hopefully be consigned to the dustbin of history. Labour leader Ed Miliband (“Mili Minor” as he has been recently dubbed to differentiate him from his brighter ousted elder brother David)) contends that Britain needs “more socialism” – a politically suicidal belief anywhere other than in a Clem Attlee Memorial Meeting Room in Hampstead, so Labour is unlikely to surge forward. Certainly the maverick UKIP party will make hay in the 2014 European elections, maybe even winning a majority of British seats in Strasbourg but one-issue UKIP’s support will melt by the 2015 general election.

David Cameron and the Tories should win, as they are professedly Eurosceptic and vigorous ministers Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt have tackled key issues in education and health respectively for which electoral credit will be earned. Continuing a coalition with the Lib-Dems may be necessary and even be in accordance with the public mood. It is well within Cameron’s managerial competence to fix this.

David Cameron, a likely winner in 2015

Cameron’s failure to persuade Parliament that Britain should intervene in Syria was an exemplary lesson and reverberated in Washington. This brings us to the final area of instability, the “Arab Spring”. Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us that the Great Powers meddle in the Middle East at their peril and the outcome is unlikely to be pleasant. Arab society is in turmoil and the various forces of religion, nationalism, secularism and democracy need to be played out on the ground by the local populations and their political leaders. Violence is endemic, but the West and Russia should not intervene and depend instead upon Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League to resolve the conflicts themselves and limit the conflagration.

Hot air only please, Mr Hague

We can tolerate the vacuous rhetoric of William Hague (and Barack Obama) expatiating upon the horrors of using chemical weapons and extolling the values of Democracy, as long as they are just words, hot air, and are not accompanied by action of any kind. The politicians will have satisfied their vanity and their publics will sigh with relief, conserve their treasure and not sacrifice any young soldiers’ lives.

SMD

22.09.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013