by Sandra Robb
For the Greek populace and their diaspora the question of where one stands in this debate has long been established. From cafes to tavernas and social media sites, discussions about how exactly the country found itself in this toxic mess abound.
There are voices of moderation that recognise the fault on both sides. And there are others who argue that the measures the Troika imposed were and are fatally flawed.
But there are also a number of Greeks who lay the blame almost exclusively with their fellow Greeks. The notion that “We deserve this” and “we brought this on ourselves” is very much out there.
This group, the self-loathing Greeks, argue that the root of the problem lays in corruption and the peculiarities of the Greek psyche that encourage corruption. The Greeks, they say, care only for themselves and have little notion of civic duty.
They believe that unless “we” change, things will always stay the same in the country. The self-loathing Greek especially likes to point to the public sector as a prime example of Greek worker laziness and inefficiency. “Have you ever queued for IKA?” (Greece’s social security body) they ask me. I have. And it’s maddening.
Syriza is routinely dangled in front of their detractors’ eyes as the catalyst for the disastrous events that have unfolded. The premise being, ‘idiots voted in these idiots and look where we are now!’
It is positive and indeed necessary to consider views from all sides of an argument, we live in a democracy after all…well we did. But in this instance there is a danger too, because the rhetoric of the self-loathing Greek closely mimics the same rhetoric we have heard time and again in large sections of the foreign media.
The German media, in the greatest coup of all, has successfully exported and entrenched a catastrophically damaging idea of Greek people. This stereotype of a “lazy, coffee drinking,” and “tax-dodging corrupt,” people will blight and plague generations of Greeks for decades to come.
In Nicole Sandler’s American based ‘Radio or Not’ show, I asked her pointedly what she knew of Greece and Greeks prior to the crisis. Before the crisis, “I knew Greece had beautiful islands,” she said. And what about after the crisis? “They’re all lazy.”
Nicole knows that that this line of thought is propagandist pap, but there are hundreds of millions of Joe Bloggs, John Does, Monsieur Bruns and Ashok Kumars out there who do not.
When the self-loathing Greek repeats their jaundiced beliefs, sticking to them no matter what contrary evidence or developments materialise, they become an unwitting part of a toxic smoke screen that seeks to disguise the real issues that have brought their motherland to its knees.
The notion that the Troika, with their combined know-how, power and oodles of cash could not solve the problem of Greece because of the Greeks is fantastical.
Puzzled American press-pundits ask time and again why the EU cannot get its house in order and help a country whose economy is the size of teeny tiny Tennessee. The answer clearly lies elsewhere.
Yes, Greece is awash with corrupt individuals; with high concentrations in the political sphere and yes there are inefficient public sector workers and yes oftentimes an attitude of selfishness among individuals does prevail, but all those things are not unique to Greece. They are present, to varying degrees, in every country.
Perhaps a dose of perspective is needed. Corruption, for example, exists the world over and the parameters for measuring corruption country-by-country are well defined.
Yet those parameters do not take into account erroneous political decisions – a prime example being the lies and manipulations that led to the Iraq War and the death of half a million people. UK and US politicians lie too, and some lies are far costlier than others.
The ability to compare and contrast in this way is absent from self-loathers generally. Psychologists cite something called “fundamental attribution error” as a typical self-loather trait. It means, in essence, a desire to defer to personality based explanations instead of situational explanations.
Extraneous factors that might influence a situation are therefore lost upon the self-loathing Greek. The fact that the Troika knew from 2010 that the bail out plan was a dubious one at best, and that Merkel reiterated this in 2012 and the sheer vindictiveness of the most recent plan, are wholly irrelevant. The problem is, they maintain, the Greeks ineptitude to execute properly what is asked of them.
This unwillingness to consider the bigger picture is what makes the opinions propagated by the self-loathing Greek so unsound.
A case in point is the much-repeated argument that, before Syriza, the Greek economy had returned to growth and therefore Syriza are responsible for dragging the country backwards yet again.
This is factually true. Before Syriza took the reigns in January Greece was back on the growth track with far healthier economic forecasts than had been seen for some considerable time.
But what the self-loather fails to bring to this point is some context. The country hit growth but at what cost? That same celebrated growth had plunged a huge section of society into poverty. What do percentage points in growth mean when you cannot feed or clothe your child?
By the end of 2014 Greece’s poverty had reached humanitarian crisis levels. A swathe of society had been thrown from middle-class to a nothing-class where they were left to languish alongside those already in deep poverty.
Syriza’s core voters were borne of this desperate group. The party played an instrumental role in the solidarity and cooperative movements that have, literally, saved many Greeks.
That certain Syriza members have committed a number of transgressions since then is undeniable. No political party in the world can claim perfection. But it does not detract from the fact that a people hungry for change and relief voted in the only party truly willing to try and deliver that. And try they did.
There’s little doubt that intractability on both sides put any meaningful solution out of reach. But here was one party, unlike their gilded predecessors, that were approaching the problem from a human level with questions of morality at the core.
That Prime Minister Tsipras still maintains a relative degree of popularity despite his disastrous pact with the “EU” is evidence of the Greek peoples recognition of the underlying compassion he brings to his politics.
For the majority of Greek people the bottom-line is not about numbers and indicators and measurements, it’s about fairness and compassion.
A 2013 survey by the US based Pew Research Centre found that public opinion in Europe cited Germany as the least compassionate nation. Perhaps there’s something in that. Many psychologists say that one of the most important emotions for a self-loather to learn before they can heal is that of compassion.
The ability to understand what poverty, not just fiscal management, means in real terms is intrinsic to grasping why Greece, and indeed no other nation in the world, “deserves” this terrible fate.
No parent should be forced to give their child up for adoption because they cannot afford to keep them. Where is the fairness, compassion and morality when a people are brought to this?
The damage the self-loathing Greek does to their compatriots is incalculable. For those in the disapora, tucked away in their blissful little bubbles, their words are fuel to the fire of misdirected blame that has so disadvantaged Greece and divided Europe.
Worse still for those self-loathers with children who little realise that the cycle of self-blame will live on in their words and that their Greek-named children will find it just that little bit harder to make their way in the wider world thanks to the negative image of Greeks they persist in exporting.
Self-loathing Greeks, like their country, are in urgent need of an effective bailout – not one of the fiscal kind – what they need is a moral bailout, and they need it now.