2024-01-14 20:53:00
In Greece, the tradition of avoiding – at all costs – individual and collective responsibilities, both at the level of society and at the level of institutions, has led to the mentality of the “bad moment”: “We couldn’t know it”, “we couldn’t predict’, ‘unfortunately, things could not have turned out differently’. Our attitude towards crime is largely fatalistic, which serves both the goal of abdication and our Mediterranean temperament. So blowing the whistle nonchalantly before and during the great evil, waiting for it to finally happen so we can cry with ostentatious drama afterwards, has fit us like a temperamental glove. Except that in cases like the 41-year-old pregnant woman who was murdered by her partner in Thessaloniki, the trick doesn’t work. History is too heavy to throw it all into our comfortable ignorance. The alleged perpetrator had convictions for serious crimes, while two of the complainants are his ex-wife and his own sister. The 39-year-old wasn’t just prone to flamboyance; he acted as if he wanted to get caught, or as if he knew he never would. The fact that he was free was the state’s way of rewarding him for what he did and, at the same time, a national normality.
Farewell to the state
Regarding this femicide, it is not very interesting to hear what the state has to say; at the end of a contest, you don’t ask the opinion of the one who stepped on it. The laws that do not correspond to the lived reality, the Justice that is cancerous with bureaucratic laziness and the police that are unable to organize themselves operationally and to diagnose the sense of urgency in everyday crime, have failed miserably in the protection of citizens and especially minorities. Women are really defenseless; if a person who systematically commits crimes against women is free to continue his activity without the slightest restraining interference from the state, then he can practically do anything. To finish unhindered what he starts and then stoically await his punishment (if it comes). Of more interest than that of the state would be the opinion of the staunch defenders of legal leniency: would it have been too much if the 39-year-old had been tried in time and severely punished for his crimes? Would he have been right-wing, reactionary and medievally anti-European if the state had restrained him before he went from beating to murder?
TV freaks
The attitude of the unrepentant television media, which for more than a week gave the alleged perpetrator a platform to portray his partner in despair, is also important; another long Greek tradition. Shows of unrecognizable nonsense blatantly ignore any ongoing police investigation, but also common experience, which throughout time indicates that in every case of disappearance, those close to the disappeared are considered suspects. They approach the victim’s partner as if he were their friend, treat him sympathetically, listen to his fabricated story as if it were valid testimony, and turn the crime into a theatrical act. However, the problem in this case is not only theoretically moral and aesthetic; it is completely practical: popular media shape the consciousness of vulnerable people, without access to more serious sources of information. Instead of deciphering the modus operandi of abusers for the benefit of the uninitiated, they are playing the first (with the indemnified) game and contributing to the ongoing social confusion about how abuse begins, escalates, and ends. We can complain about the situation, but we can’t wonder: femicides happen because there are people capable of carrying them out, but also people willing to roll out the red carpet for the criminals.
#Social #fatalism #DAILY