The Maidens of the Hill

Girl in Athens

Girl in London

Girl in Athens

Metope in BM

The last metope on the Parthenon (Acropolis Museum)

"Caryatids" is of course a misnomer. They were Korai, and more precisely Choephoroi, namely libation bearers to the tomb of Kekrops who was buried under the very porch that they had been carrying on their heads for so many centuries. Their outstretched hands bearing the phialae have long since been chopped off by jealous time, which has been particularly vicious with regard to the protruding parts of ancient statues such as limbs, noses, male genitals etc. It was this identity-obscuring mutilation that probably led to their association with the girls from Karyai in Laconia who visited the sanctuary once a year  to perform their ritual dance. I dare speculate that this must have been a rather sensational event, given the propensity of Lacaedemonian ladies to strut about scantily clad, as we are apprised in such a hilarious fashion in the Lysistrata.

Be that as it may, a major project is under way in the Acropolis Museum to clean up their torsos, ravaged as they were by twenty-odd centuries of exposure and especially by that suffocating smog that blighted the Attic sky in the eighties and the nineties. That shroud of pollution is now thankfully gone (one of the very few good tidings that one may relay from here), the maidens were replaced on the Erechtheion by replicas and were recently accorded the pride of place they deserve in the impressive new museum. The restoration project utilizing laser beams is  run by the Institute of Technology and Research in Crete, the only one of Greek insitutions of higher learning to rank among the top ones world-wide. The reason for this distinction (to digress a little, but not really as you will see) is that ITR was founded with a charter of its own which was modelled on those of Anglo-Saxon  institutions and therefore had nothing in common with the arrangements crippling the other local universities. This conjuction of classical culture and state of the art technology is a particularly happy one, if only as a sign of what might have been had modern Greece elected to embark upon the road of liberal republicanism conscious of its classical roots and inseminated with the modern scientific spirit. Alas, this destiny -as preached by the great Koraes- never came to fruition as reactionary nationalism eventually smothered all traces of free thinking and the values of individual autonomy in the country. Today we are living through the terminal consequences of that debacle.

At any event, already two of the five maiden remaining in Athens have been cleaned -three if you count the pitiful remains of one of them that was smashed by a Turkish shell during the siege of the Acropolis at the time of the Greek Revolution. And the results are astonishing. The grime of ages has been burned off and the honey-whiteness of the Pentelic stone has surged forth to display its breath-taking vivaciousness. You can sense the alert humanity pulsating through its hidden veins. The faces have sadly been half eaten away, but there is still enough of expression left on them to captivate an eager theoros across the chasm of the centuries.

These spruced up girls, each in her uniqueness, do indeed look so intimately in touch with their lonely sister in Rm. 15 of the British Museum. As I was staring at the latter during my visit this past February I could not help being affected by the sad abandonment oozing from her features, despite her being lovingly cared for. I was struck by the fact that her face is also half clawed off, which shows that even as she was being abducted Time had already been hard at work visiting its wrath. But even so, her almost erased eyes did seem to be beaming southwards messages of a mellow grief. Standing in front of her one cannot help conjuring in imagination the raptures of a family reunion. I have always thought that the only valid argument for the return of the Acropolis sculptures is the restoration of the aesthetic integrity of the Athenian monuments.No other consideration carries the slightest weight. And the sense of loss from that severance is today all the more poignant as one stands before that estranged girl in London, or before her companions in Athens as their shimmering whiteness is once again blooming in plain view.

Another significant event has also taken place. The last metope of the Parthenon remaining in place (the first from the western end on the south side) has been removed from the temple and brought into the Acropolis Museum. It depicts a centaur defeating a Lapith who in turn jabs the monster's thigh as he is being strangled. This piece of sculpture had never left its original place and the muck of twenty five centuries lay thick upon it. Now it has been chiseled away and the original marble has been exposed. Alas, it is seriously corroded, although even in this damaged state the explosive tension that Phidias instilled in the stone still leaps at you in waves. Once again, one cannot avoid the comparison with the condition of the metopes kept in the British Museum: those are immaculate, bar the inevitable fractures. The flesh of the creatures burns with the desire to be stroked. It is clear that their stay in London has benefited them greatly. Arguments, thus, based on the state of preservation of the sculptures would seem to favor those justifying Elgin's effrontery. I am saying this because a few year's ago, at the height of the nationalist frenzy for the return of the sculptures in connection with that foul show of the "Olympics", there was an outburst of indignation concerning some alleged faux pas of the BM restorers in scrubbing the frieze with some noxious substance or other. There may have been a grain of truth to this. But, whatever damage it may have caused, still the BM pieces are in visibly better condition compared to the ones in Athens -although if these are also laser-cleaned they may shine incomparably as well. But all this pales into insignificance compared to the botched repair work inflicted upon the Parthenon and the temple of Nike by Greek restorers back in the thirties (replacing for instance the lead joints with iron ones!). This veritable hatchet job resulted in the marble being fragmented from within. At the same time the loose pieces on the ground were haphardly stuck together thus deforming the architectural structure of the buildings. But this of course does not figure in the inane propaganda of nationalist demagogues, for whom anyway the issue of the sculptures is just a pretext for bashing the foreign "conspiracy" against the chosen race.

It is apposite to stress here that before the last two decades of the last century the issue of the Elgin loot did not figure at all in public discourse or in educational instruction. It was invented as a great "national issue" with the coming to power of the "socialist" party in 1981 as part of its "anti-imperialist" agenda. That was the same party whose educational policies ruthlessly suppressed classical learning, deformed the Greek language by cutting it down to the requirements of street agitation and in general gutted the school system by putting it under the control of party hacks. For the rest Melina shed crocodile tears before the horse heads of the Parthenon pediment in the British Museum. This crass hypocrisy, based upon utter ignorance of all things classical, has been the hallmark of official state policy.

All in all, even in this toxic environment some good things are happening for those with eyes to see. 

Missives into space

They say no information is lost in the turbulence of the universe, not even when things are gobbled up by a black hole. Hawking thought otherwise at some point, but this was a signal mistake of his early on. He has since recanted. We must be thankful. So nothing is wasted. Radio signals keep traveling on forever, sounds and voices also, hopefuly to be picked up by whatever receivers might be there on the other side when we are long gone. We are all stored as some kind of unique code in this colossal data bank. Existence is self-enclosed in its mathematical eternity. Quite a strange, nay incomprehensible, thought, but also quite comforting. It seems that immortality after all is on offer by pure objective science itself; one need not have recourse to delusion or runaway fantasy to secure it. God, or at least God as various perverted minds have posited him through the centuries, is indeed an "unecessary hypothesis" as Hawking also, correctly this time, asserted (except that this is not logically equivalent to the proposition that "there is no God"). This was a notion that occurred to alert minds very long ago. The finitude of absolute Being was the ingenious insight of Parmenides, the eternal conservation of material existence Epicurus' stupendous contribution to rationality (Epicurus' thought was after all a logically rigorous extension of Eleatic doctrine).

Why is all this relevant? Because when one lives in a society where communication has broken down, one needs some inner theoretical conviction upon which to ground the usefulness of writing and talking. I must confess that I have been going through such a crisis for the past few months, hence my inability to wield the pen -or to be more precise to hit the keyboard- after the thoughts I registered at the end of last year. There was a dismal closure there, a conclusion very much of the nature of a black hole that swallowed all of my expressive faculty -language itself kind of withered within me. I still stand by that conclusion: namely that what we have gone through in this place over the past three years is akin to the death of a star, the forces of entropy having finally suffused the modern Greek national project which for the past two hundred years has been desperately trying to discover or concoct some essence for itself. Well, it is now manisfest that it has failed. Of course, the debris is still burning away, but this weird flame is fast tumbling into terminal darkness.

The most egregious symbol of this is the current Greek parliament, which is the worst in history, a pathetic aggregation of corrupt old hands that actively caused the present implosion together with a bevy of new-fangled extremists of the left and right spouting ideological balderdash and enchanted by violence. The funny thing is that this putrescent set up is still able to express itself (it's not really expression, but a form of grunting and screeching) in the time-honored language of nationalism. The chief motif in this discourse is the hoary myth of malicious "foreigners" conspiring to wipe from the earth the "chosen race". It's the kind of declamation that surged mightily forth from the recent wreckage in Cyprus. The Cypriot situation is another sorry sight that one must dignify even with a passing comment. Still it is another eye-opening symptom of the cultural and ethical decomposition affecting today's Greek-speaking world (I wish we were dealing with Greekness and I wish we were dealing with sensible speech). The Cypriot ruin is entirely of the Cypriots' own making. They joined the EU under the solemn commitment that they would accept the UN plan for the unification of the island -a commitment they promptly and provocatively broke. For them the EU was nothing more than a stick to beat Turkey with. Their joining Europe was a pretense. The Ponzi-scheme of an economy that they erected, sucking in all the dirty money of the formerly communist Russian mafia, was also a deliberate enterprise. Then they affected surprise when the whole thing came tumbling down over their heads. And their first instinct was to fight tooth and nail to protect the Russian oligarchs by massacring their own small savers and nationalizing the working people's pension funds, a scheme that Merkel was right to castigate as the most shameless attempt to expropriate the little man's future ever attempted. Still, they excoriated as "usurers" the Europeans that advanced a 10 billion, 30-year loan at 2.5% and lauded the Russians as "brothers" from whom they had received 2.5 billion for five years at 4.5%, with nothing more forthcoming. In fact it was the Russian governement itself that had to remind them that they were EU members, and that their prime obligation was to strike a deal with the Europeans. And now AKEL, the pseudo-communist party that ruled Cyprus for five years to 2013 and presided over the economic and other disasters (such as the lethal explosion of the confiscated Iranian munitions meant for Syria which crippled the island's electricity grid), is loudly propagandizing for the country's exit from the Euro! How sick can you get.... But you see I broke my promise not to comment on this sordid, little affair.

The upshot is that in this whirl of nonsense and depravity there is no point in arguing, or talking even. The media and the universities are abuzz with anti-European, Stalinist and racist clap-trap. With the result that about 75% of the people believe that the proper way for Greece would be to follow the Cypriot example of rushing headlong into isolation and destitution to save its "national honor". Yet something inside will not let go. Thought is silent and that is as it ought to be. On the other hand, one ought not to be doing any favors to the baying cadavers of perdition. In the immense empty spaces of the cosmos a dissenting cadence ought still to be registered. But with no illusions, of course, as to its effect.

Pictures from an exhibition

If a museum of human perversity were ever to be built, the following tableaus would undoubtedly occupy pride of place in it:

Exhibit A: A screaming mob hunts down and corners a middle-aged gentleman. He is pinned against a fence and physically and verbally attacked. He is struck by fists, and various objects such as bottles and cups of coffee are hurled at him. His glasses are broken. The person in question happens to be the German consul in the city of Thessalonica and his crime is that he is on his way to participate in a Greek-German meeting organized by a local association to promote trade and sponsored by the mayor of that city. The stampeding herd is aroused to holy fury because a couple of days earlier another German official had made a statement to the effect that Greek local governement is overstaffed and inefficient. This is deemed an insult to the honor of the nation and its working class and open season is therefore declared on all Germanic-looking types who dare to walk the streets. After some time the police reluctantly intervene and lead the hapless diplomat away. That evening the whole country watches the incident played on its television screens. A junior government minister makes a tepid response to the outrage and the consul himself, wisely trying not to stir the fire, makes light of it. A couple of days later the police identify on the video three of the leading attackers and charges of causing disorder and grave assault are brought against them. Because they are arrested almost immediately after the event, their trial proceeds forthwith. And all three are acquitted. The judges decide that there was no mass violence, but only individual "indignation": individual "indignation" inspired by the right kind of political motives is thus officially declared as within the law even if it results in wanton violence against innocent persons. And the political motives of the attackers, needless to say, were as right as they could be: they were after all protesting against the "occupation of Greece by the 4th Reich" (namely against the frantic and clumsy efforts of the Europeans to save the country from its self-caused destruction even against its own will). The judges, further, wisely opined that the consul should not have decided to go to the meeting in the first place, because he thus provoked (!) the righteous fury of his would-be assassins. He was the real guilty party. So, next time you are in Greece before you foolishly decide to attend any function be sure to submit an application to the revolutionary police of your neighborhood to verify that the committe of public safety approves of it: for this is true "democracy" of the kind that you imperialists cannot even imagine. It has to be added that to his great credit the prosecutor in the case has appealed the despicable verdict of the court of first instance which has placed this country beyond the pale of civilization. The trial, I read today, will be repeated. I would like to hope that second time around a modicum of decency will prevail and the shame that has besmirched us all by the public lynching of foreign envoys will be mitigated. But -if I were to guess- this is not going to happen (I would gladly put on the hairshirt if I am found wrong). The courthouse will be besieged, as it was the first time, by enraged "unionists" trying to invade it in defence of their comrades' right to class struggle and the judges will at best impose some slap-on-the-wrist suspended sentence. If, contrary to expectation, they choose to act in accordance with their oath, they will be putting their physical safety in danger. Apart from this, though, it helps to keep in mind that the judges themselves are currently a shining example of a group shamelessly violating the law in order to protect the scandalous privileges of their profession against the foreign "ogres": the constitution expressly prohibits a strike by judges, but for the past couple of months they have been doing exactly that.

Exhibit B: in 2011 a new law regulating the public universities was passed by a three fifths majority in parliament. This law excluded the students and the admistrative staff (secretaries etc.) from the process of electing the academic authorities (president, rectors, deans etc.). Under the provisions that the law abolished (a bizarre arrangement unknown unknown in the rest of the world) anyone wishing to be elected to academic office had to negotiate with the student organizations of the various political parties (with those of the left, the hard left, the extreme left and the terrorist left at the forefront) as well as the unions of the admistrative staff. To gain their support one had to concede their demands, which as far as the "politicized" students were concerned amounted to two basic things: firstly giving free reign to these groups to do anything they wished within the university perimeter (including disrupting the educational process for months on end through occupations of buildings, regularly trashing them even when they magnanimously allowed classes to go on, occasionaly even putting them to the torch, as well as abusing and physically attacking teachers they did not like); and, secondly, abstaining from all educational regulations that make university studies worth the name, i.e. the requirement to attend classes, the insitution of pre-requisites, the requirement even to pass the final exams in a particular class in order to go forward -they had, and still have, the right to take the final exams for a given class an endless number of times!). The predictable result of this "democratic" arrangement was the disintegration of higher education in Greece. To right this situation the law of 2011 restricted the right of election to members of the faculty only. The body of teachers now elects a fifteen-member University Council, eight of them from the given insitution's teaching staff who then elect seven outside members among individuals of proven academic merit and distinction in Greece and abroad. The "revolutionary" stormtroopers predictably objected to this reform, with the specious argument that it abolished democracy (it did abolish their sick travesty of "democracy" by the jackboot). To prevent the application of the law their stick-wielding bravi occupied the polling stations on election day threatening to beat up anyone who dared approach. Finally voting had to be conducted electronically. But even then they did not flinch: at the University of Athens they occupied the building housing the main server of the school, causing damage to costly equipment. In this way they prevented, among other things, the functioning of four university hospitals. For two days we were without access to the internet. Needless to say the current president (elected under the previous regime and a vehement opponent of the new law) pleaded ignorance of any illegal acts being committed and refused to call in the authorities. It was only when the staff of the computer center found a way to circumvent the disabled university server, thus making it possible for the faculty to vote from home and not through their working stations at the university, that the election was held. The call for a boycot of the elections was ignored. 80% of those eligible participated, thus dealing a crushing blow to the lie that the "revolutionary" hooligans had been peddling for months, namely that the law was opposed by the teaching staff. At other institutions which also went through the same ordeal the levels of participation were between 80 and 90%. This is a ray of hope. The small beginning of a new beginning has been made. The external members of the University Councils that have been since elected include brilliant and distinguished members of the international academic community both Greek and non-Greek. But nothing has yet been settled.

Exhibit C: At the University of Thessalonica the outgoing president was elected under the old system and is also a rabid opponent of the new law. His administration, continuing the policy of previous ones, has been hiring on time contracts hundreds of cleaning staff through private agencies. When a pay dispute arose between the cleaning workers and their agencies the president encouraged the workers' unions to press their case by occupying the central administration building of the school and also to demand that they be hired by the university (i.e. the Greek state) as permanent public employees. This they proceeded to do about two months ago. At that time they also stopped refuse collection. You can imagine, possibly even smell however far you may be, the result. At this point the university is a sprawling, stinking garbage dump. The students health is directly threatened, classes have been mostly suspended, the school has practically ceased to exist. The organized detachments of "revolutionary" hoodlumry appeared immediately on the scene in support of the occupiers. Students and teachers tried to organize cleaning teams, but they were immediately attacked by the guardians of the revolution. They were spat upon, reviled, threatened, some of them had to actually go into hiding. Whatever garbage they had managed to collect and put away was taken out of the bags and strewn all over the place once again. At some point even the president himself had to intervene, appealing for an end of the occupation which he had instigated, and at long last asking for help from the police. The police did intervene and evict the occupiers of the administration building, but the president immediately made a heart-rending appeal that those arrested be set free. In any case the very next day the building was re-occupied and is still being held. The school is still suffocating under tons of rotting, oozing garbage, proudly under the control of the "revolution" and marauding armies of rats. This infinitely sad image of a dying university is a fitting symbol for a whole dead social system.

The most distressing part the story is that the activities described above have the full political and ideological backing of the main opposition party, the one claiming to be ready to form the next government.

All told, if the museum I mentioned at the beginning is ever to be built no prizes are given to anyone guessing what its location is likely to be.

As a Greek I feel the deepest shame to be in a place and time stamped by such deeds, which even to think, let alone write, about makes one filthy. As a human being I feel violated to the very core of my being.

Marx and science: afterthoughts

I wrote in the last post that Marx's definition of ideology as "false consciousness" makes sense only within the context of a logical opposition between (subjective) falsity and (objective) truth, the latter paradigmatically instantiated by the methods and theories of natural science. If this bifurcation is done away with, then the concept is voided of meaning.

Now, this thesis might be construed as endorsing Althusser's infamous claim that there is a "break" between the "ideological" ingredients of Marx's thought (typically associated with the earlier work) and the supposedly "hard science" of the later writings. But such an interpretation of my suggestions would be utterly misguided. The reason for this is that for all the obsessive repetition of the mantra of "science" in connection with Marx's theories, Althusser's use of the word "science" is, firstly, pure homonymy (in Aristotle's sense): i.e. the same sound (word-sign) is employed in order to denote something which has nothing to do with what is generally understood as scientific procedure.

Althusser does not (care to) understand what science is in the ordinary sense (in the sense that Marx himself understood it). Instead, he surreptitiously substitutes an understanding all of his own, which if spelled out in plain terms is straightaway convicted by its own presposterousness. According to this fanciful notion "science" amounts to the theories contained in certain selected works of Marx as interpreted by Althusser himself. "Truth", thus, resides in certain "canonical" texts as interpreted by the authoritative exegete. This is Talmudism pure and simple. The scripturae auctoritas is thus raised in opposition both to common sense empirical knowledge of facts as well as to all other interpretations (including Marxist interpretations) of his chosen texts (and the totality of Marx's oeuvre). Surely we can recognize here the gist of Augustine's epistemology, which was the staple of the schooling that our "scientific Marxist" received during his youthful stint at the seminary.

The most egregious feature of the Althusserian account is a sustained polemic against "formal logic", common sense and empiricism: all three are terms of abuse. That science in any intellible sense cannot possibly subsist without the above elements is disdainfully left out of the discussion. To the extent that one can follow its abstruse verbiage Althusserism is, thus, a fanatic denunciation of science rather that its defense. It is not accidental, therefore, that "post modern Marxism" (a silly contradiction in terms, anyway) as spawned by Althusser's verbal abracadabra is saturated with a hatred of the scientific spirit and its core pre-requisites such as intersubjective testability, factual adequacy, falsifiability, epistemological equality with your dialectical opponent etc.

It is, however, instructive to note that their rejection of empiricism does not employ the standard criticisms of empiricist epistemology with which the philosophy of science is replete. Of these they are unaware. Their anti-empiricism is premised on purely political considerations: to be an empiricist means to be a political conservative, where "conservative" means not to be a Marxist (which is the only "scientific" world-view). The circularity of this is worse than puerile.

Furthermore, they do not get that their ignorant raving against empiricism actually undermines their own dogmata. For through pure epistemological empiricism one can very well reach the position that they want to espouse, namely that all theory is ideology pure and simple sustained only by political power. Experience is the world as perceived from the standpoint of a certain individual or collective subject: esse est percipi. Their claim that only Marxism is true is based upon the alleged fact that it expresses precisely the experience of the proletariat and that it will triumph when the power of that class is brought to bear upon social conditions. Thus, by discrediting empiricism you ipso fact saw off the branch that your proud Althuserism is sitting on. Since no other comprehensible epistemology is supplied, apart from unfathomable talk based on the notion that logic has no value (or in other words that anyone upholding the tertium non datur principle is a despicable counter-revolutionary who does not deserve to exist), then we must conclude that the Althusserian enterprise amounts to nothing more than a glorious exercise in self-nullification.

A significant sleight of hand in all this is the identification tout court of theory with practice. Philosophy is supposedly "philosophical practice". This shibboleth may mean a number of things, all of them wrong. It may imply that theoretical insight (ideological conviction) can make or create the world of reality in accordance with its visions. This is another age-old theological fallacy: facts that do not conform to the demands of ideological faith (or individuals that uphold these facts) do not exist -or do not deserve to exist. Only philosophy (more precisely, only the "true" philosophy possessed by "us") has the right to declare what the world is. There is no natural or human (social) world outside the webs of concepts spun by theory.

Alternatively, that dictum may mean that there is no self-contained world of ideas -apart from those ideas which the physical power of victorious social groups allows to exist because they serve their practical purposes (wealth and power). If there are ideas which cannot be pressed into the service of the political interests of the dominant groups (or individuals upholding these ideas), then they ought to be destroyed. Individuals and their idea(l)s have no inherent theoretic (and hence ontological) worth. They are mere "place-holders" in "structures". Only those idea(l)s have the right to exist that serve the "good" structure as the only "true" theory (the one held by "us") defines it. It all coheres in one appalling, groundless circle of empty talk.

So all in all, this stupefying conceit of the Theoretician-as-God has absolutely nothing to do with good old Marx and his rather common sense idea of science taken from the real scientific activity and achievement of his time. In Marx's idea of science empiricism is indeed the only epistemological means of getting at reality as it is in itself. In this view of science empiricism is indispensable, but science does not end with empiricism (which in and of itself is solipsistic and relativist, and only to be rescued from these traps by a theistic postulate in the manner of Berkeley and Descartes). Scientific empiricism is underpinned by a realist metaphysic, namely the belief that there is indeed an objective world separate from and ontologically independent from our theories, whose truth depends upon whether they allow us to make a connection with this self-contained sphere of objective Being. Now, how this is possible is a mightily vexed issue in the philosophy of real science -as opposed to that caricature of pseudo-science the Althusserians specialize in. It is also extremely problematic how one can apply this understanding of science to historical knowledge -as Marx too readily assumed. And this is of course the reason for Marx's endless vacillation between a positivist and a historicist model of knowledge. There is indeed a tortured confusion about these issues in the very heart of Marxian theory. But this confusion derived from too great a respect for natural science as practiced by real scientists. And it is an insult to call "Marxist" the obscurantist mysticism of our structuralist and post-structuralist friends with its rabid hatred, born of utter ignorance, of the scientific spirit.

The cultural quagmire

It has been fun over the last few weeks teaching my graduate students a few things about medieval Greek political and intellectual history. They had never heard of Procopius' Historia Arcana for instance -they are graduate students of political science mind you, some of them holding diplomas from departments of philology. They were equally ignorant of the circumstances of Photius' assumption of the patriarchal office in the 9th century or of the exegetical controversies surrounding Constantine VII Porphyrogennitus' De thematibus. I don't blame them and I must say that their response has been rather encouraging: many of them are open to looking at these things through different glasses. But the obstacles are formidable.

Throughout their schooling they have been taught that "Byzantium" (the Eastern Roman Empire) was an ethnically, culturally and politically Greek state in the "national" sense that the official ideology of the 19th century defined it -minus the considerable subtlety that even the national historiography of the time (e.g. Paparrigopoulos) displayed. To the average modern Greek person Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian were great Greek leaders, in exactly the same way that Pericles, Alexander, the last Palaeologue, Kosmas the Aetolian, Kolokotronis and Venizelos were. If you ask them to explain the "greatness" of Justinian the embarrased silence is well nigh universal -with the possible exception of some garbled noises referring to his military conquests in the west and the building of Hagia Sophia.

In this ludicrous tale the military dimension in is always pre-eminent. For the chief idea underpinning it is that once "we" were κοσμοκράτορες: "we had" the whole world which was then wrested from us by succesive onslaughts of the "bad guys", i.e. the Romans, the Franks, the Turks, all the way to the present with the role of the ravenous wolf feasting on the entrails of God's chosen race currently played by the "troika" in collusion with the inevitable Americans. On this reading the history of the world over the last two millenia has been stamped by a gigantic anti-Greek conspiracy. Of Roman law and its despotic slant, of Justinian's oppressive and anti-Hellenic religious policies and the ruinous internal consequences of his military and edificatory megalomania not the slightest awareness.

So it is always very enjoyable for me to read to them from ch. 8 of the Historia Arcana the passages describing the dullness (ὄνος νωθρός), meanness and rapaciousness of this ruler that rained material and spiritual destitution on his subjects thus preparing the eventual dismemberment of his realm. But of course it is a veritable riot to cite from ch. 9 the sexual exploits of his consort Theodora. One has to tread very thin ice here in trying to avoid becoming pornographic.

The serious challenge, however, in all this is still to explain the "greatness", i.e. the overarching historical significance, of this emperor in particular, as well as the crucial value for European civilization in general of the Hellenic language and culture saturating the apex of East Roman society -all the while eschewing nationalist trash. I am saying this because among academic circles (especially the faction of the "Lacanian left" which has controlled manu militari Greek academia over the last couple of decades) the anti-national spirit has been indeed pronounced. But this stance has been underpinned by the arcana of post-structuralist balderdash. Their entanglement in a web of pure theory (that only they themselves understand) derives from and in turn enhances a monstrous ignorance of actual history, camouflaged by their elevation of "history itself" to the chief theoretical category. The aim of this project has been to demolish, along with the nationalist myth, the notion of Europeanism, of civilization, of rationality itself, culminating with a strident denunciation of the very concept of meaning in life and in discourse.

If you do it this way, then myth, arbitrarily constructed world-views, mystical flights of fancy, the spasms of emotionality and even biological animality itself are ensconced in the very heart of intellectual and political endeavor. This is not the defeat of nationalist ideology, but its triumph.

Under this view everything (all theories, values, ideals) are mere self-validating ideologies. And in this case nationalism (along with Nazism, Stalinism, Polpot-ism, Ayn Rand and Tea Party lunacy) becomes a legitimate choice. The post-structuralist current of thought usually styles itself as "Marxist". But in Marx ideology (as false consciousness) is defined as the opposite of scientific meaning and truth: the concept has validity only in the frame of this antithesis. If you abolish this contrast, then all consciousness is false (or true) at the same time -i.e. we are now talking nonsense. Then each individual or group is at complete liberty to define as axiomatically true its own ideology and to blast as false all the others. The procedure is completely arbitrary and beyond all logical, moral or social control. The only means of adjudicating among all these theoretic Machtsprueche is the possession of raw power.

And thus the militaristic spirit, the most deleterious ingredient of nationalism, becomes the condition of existence and "historical success" for all ideologies. The adulation of violence, open or disguised, has been the bitterest fruit of this malignant line of thought. It is no accident, then, that our "Lacanian leftists" have been the most dogged proponents of political violence. Behind their fake anti-nationalism they have been weaving a gauze of "historical" legitimacy around the most apalling acts of arson, vandalism and even murder that have plagued Greece for the past three years.

In a country that has barely been touched by modernity, post-modernism is in academic vogue. It feeds into and is cheered on by a repulsive cast of rotten media types and populist dunces faking the politician, all stirring up the most virulent version of the traditional nationalist lie: that of the "immaculate people" expiring in the clutches of their western enemies. If this knot is not untied then all "rescues" of Greece by means of European loans etc. are exercises in futility.

Mirage

Nothing was decided by the elections. In fact the ominous trends prevailing before were reasserted, even if slightly decelerated. If the "radical" left had come first, then Greece would be exiting the Eurozone at this very moment. As it is the inevitable will occur probably around the end of the year.

The supposedly "European" parties that won and formed the tripartite government ran a decisively non-European, if not outright anti-European, campaign. They peddled the barefaced lie that the agreements with the EU concerning deficit reduction and structural reforms were somehow non-operative and subject to complete renegotiation. The Hollande victory in France was the chief circumstance cited in support of this analysis, despite the fact that Hollande himself and everyone else in Europe, whether follower or opponent of the Merkel line, repeatedly declared in crystal clear terms that Greece was under obligation to honor those agreements.

So the position of the collective victors was actually tantamount to that of the "radical" left, minus the shrill tone of voice. After the election they drew up a common programmatic statement that flies in the face of all the commitments undertaken to secure the second bail-out and debt forgiveness of October last. The disgust of European officials was quite plain, but our politicians were busy doing the only thing they are expert at, namely jostling for posts in the new government.

When the governement was actually formed it was composed largely of old-line politicos who had excelled in the crony politics that ruined the country. There was a mix-up with the crucial post of finance minister. The person who was finally selected is indeed a competent and reform-minded individual, a member of the team that guided Greece into the Euro a decade ago. But he is just a lone individual whose presence at this point seems a mere sop to Europe. Given the delusional mood prevalent in the three ruling parties, namely that with Merkel's alleged "defeat" in the latest Brussels summit it is now opportune to renege on Greece's legal commitments with a view to going back to the old regime of kleptocratic corruption paid for out of the pockets of European taxpayers, it is doubtful how much the new minister can accomplish.

So with their lying electoral campaign and government manifesto the current rulers have painted themselves into a corner. They have promised the people to keep the country in the Eurozone without in fact sumbitting to the discipline of sound and honest public finance which has been demonized as a diabolical German invention. They will of course soon run up against the hard facts and be obliged to eat their silly words. If, then, they decide to go for real reform (privatizations, reduction of the bureaucracy and encouragement of private investment), they will lose the support of a public they themselves have educated to consider these things as fiendish "neo-liberal" impositions from abroad. They will also face the crippling sabotage of the entire civil service whose rapacious unions have been a chief cause of the Greek state's ruin. If, alternatively, they decide on confrontation with Europe in order to maintain their internal position, the country will go instantly bankrupt and they themselves will be engulfed by the public rage that this folly will engender.

In either case the beneficiary will be the "radical" left, accusing them as lackeys of the imperialists in the first case or as ineffective leaders of the "fighting nation" in the second. Why do I keep putting radical in inverted commas when I refer to the leftist opposition? Because that party in fact fulfills the very definition of a reactionary political force. Their "ideal" is a nebulous anarcho-soviet utopia, the rags and rubbish of twentieth century history woven together into a comic nullity, while in practical terms they advocate the return to the filthy regime of debauchery by the party elites, the regime that died in 2010.

Still, they can rest assured that he people currently in charge are working for them. They did not win on June 17, but they will certainly win big next time around -unless something cataclysmically good happens. Their triumph will of course be short lived, for they will be managing smoking ruins. They themselves will go under in no time and then their natural and inevitable successors will be the neo-nazis, with whom they share anyway sizable chunks of their totalitarian, anti-European, conspiracy-theory laden ideology.

One final thought: personalities count. For all the European facade put up by the current ruling team (which has not even started ruling yet, due to various medical accidents!), the leaders of the tripartite bloc have been instrumental in whipping up the anti-European, populist and nationalist frenzy that has vitiated public life here for the past generation. The new prime minister has distinguished himself as a leader of the nationalist primitivism, especially in respect of Macedonia, that errupted after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Also from 2009 to 2011 he was a rabid opponent of the first bailout pact with Europe, thus empowering the fascist-nationalist wing of his own party and indirectly the neo-nazis. The leader of the rump Pasok party is also a prominent populist, a virtuoso practitioner of crony politics, whose first ingenious act after he became finance minister in June 2011 was to throw out the foreign negotiators demanding what he is also demanding now, namely the annulment of all standing agreements. This led to the near bankruptsy of the country then. As for the third leader, in charge of a "moderate" left party, he is simply a old-style leftist unable to shake off the benighted collectivism of his ilk, except that he expresses all this in a mild manner.

We all hope certainly to be pleasantly surprised, especially by the new finance minister if and when he takes up his office and he begins to put his ideas into effect. But it is a hopelessly tall order.

Foolishness and Shame

In today's Greece the worst case scenaria always materialize, and I was silly to forget this capital truth on the eve of last Sunday's election which put the tombstone on the country's prospects as a member of the European family of nations. As I have repeatedly argued and explained here and elsewhere its European identity was a big lie anyway, and lies do not last. But I allowed myself to be carried away by the vain hope that the the majority of the people would rationally assess nothing more than their personal material interest before casting their ballots.

In the event they did nothing of the kind and instead they followed loud-mouthed charlatans who offered them the pie-in-the-sky of a return to the parasitic bliss of former times through the unilateral renunciation of the economic discipline agreed with the European Union. They also convinced them that the Europeans and the rest of the world would meekly bow to this reversal and would continue to shell out the billions needed to fund the thousands of fake pensions and other outrageous privileges awarded in the past to the clientele of our political parties. The repeated warnings from abroad that reneging on the obligations formally undertaken by the Greek state would result in the cessation of the foreign subventions and hence the sudden financial death of the country were denounced as "blackmail" by foreign enemies -the very same "enemies" who borrow on the international markets at 5 and 6 percent in order to lend Greece at 3,5.

The result was a mindless insurrection of "national pride", a choice for outright penury, destitution and starvation. It appeared to them preferable, instead of forfeiting a quarter, let's say, of your income for five years with a prospect of a gradual recovery afterwards, to lose all of it for good. Instead of submitting to painful cautery they elected to kill the doctor. They will soon enough taste the bitter fruit of their self-destructive choice -not later than the end of the year I reckon. But of course the calamity will by then be irreversible. The country has already lost all the international sympathy it could count on throughout this ordeal. It has presented itself in the ugliest light, what with a political elite consisting of ignorant and delusional demagogues and a public opinion thoroughly corrupted by decades of vulgar brain-washing by the brutish (and shamelessly thieving) media moguls and manniquins. It will be abandoned to its miserable fate, not least because that fate will have been self-chosen.

It is a sad, but rather remarkable, fact requiring thorough investigation by experts in psychosocial pathology that the competence for elemental rational thinking has vanished in this society over the last generation or so. The demise of education, as I have repeatedly argued, is the prime cause of this human disaster: the school as a hive of critical thought was the first target and victim of the party mafias that have ruled this country for so long, hiding their merciless plunder of the commonweal under "socialist" and "communist" slogans. Now we have come to the end of the road. The emperor is wearing no clothes and his body is unbearably ugly. This is not the end of the post-junta period (μεταπολίτευση) as many people say, but rather the despicable triumph of its worst features and tendencies.

So much for the stupidity in the latest developments. But there is also the shame. And this is the powerful presence of the neo-nazis in the new parliament. Of course one hears a lot of hypocritical cries of consternation about this, but they come mostly from people whose mentality and political behavior is identical, apart from the external trimmings, with those of the humanoid apes of Golden Dawn. The legitimization of lawlessness, political hatred, violence and -not least- antisemitism is widespread among various groups and through them among the populace at large. It was just a matter of time that its neo-nazi variant would profit from this general climate. Still, this is a new abhorrent peak in our political evolution that we have reached. The parliamentary presence of the neo-nazis has thus obliterated the last vestiges of this country's image as a nation of civility and civilization. From now on the course is pre-determined. We are tumbling into an abyss of social misery and civil strife, while the authors of this descent to hell are full of glee at their triumph. The only thing that people of good will around the world can offer us now is prayer.