Dimitrios' World

I was proud of my country and its institutions on Saturday, 28 September when numerous arrest warrants were issued for members of the neo Nazi,  national  socialist gang that calls itself a party -- Golden Dawn. Among those arrested where its party leader as well as other standing members of parliament. I am still proud that they will be tried for their numerous hate crimes including their organized crime activities. It was about time to crush them even if if they cannot be nipped in the bud anymore.  A week has passed. So much has changed, yet much remains the same. Instead of witnessing and experiencing a mass sensation of relief, and a wider debate around the issues of hate, racism and tolerance, all we have seen is much ado about nothing....an embedded suspicion of the political system and within it where the so called 'democratic' political parties of the left and the right continue to snipe at each other in public about the objective of the arrests and the cra...

Question: what does a frustrated and desperate citizen do when he realizes, as a horrified onlooker at the developments in his country, that not one of the parliamentary or extra-parliamentary parties (or constructs) expresses him? What does he do when the democracy he believes in and wants to constructively engage in is broke?  It has taken the murder of Pavlos Fissas by a member of Golden Dawn, Greece's brand of neo-Nazis, to shock society into action....a society that has been largely silent when the Nazis murder or rough up immigrants. Yet even this call for a higher calling that this ideology minimizes us and should have no place in mainstream politics or otherwise has brought us closer by awakening most to the danger of extremism but has polarized us further as other mainstream political and social actors seek to equate extremism on the right with extremism on the left. Roger Cohen correctly coins it when he writes that " [t] he perfect political storm for violent e...