Kathy Sheridan: Rebellion in the Greek DNA, with some self-delusion

Last Sunday night, I had a flashback to a disco on a Greek island in the early 1980s. A young Greek with a wide smile and three words of English. The words were "Bobby Sands" and "Ireland", accompanied by an emphatic thumbs up. We danced while he and his mates whooped "Bobby Saaaands" to the frenetic tempo of Move On Up. Stories of plucky little Ireland had travelled far to a nation that embodied resistance.

On Tuesday, over the headline "Greek 'No' may have its roots in her heroic myths and real resistance", the New York Times ran a story recalling doughty Greek fighters who blew themselves up rather than submit to the Ottoman; legendary women who threw their children off a cliff "and danced after them" rather than be sold as slaves; gallant Greeks who beat Mussolini's army back into Albania only to be tragically undone by the Nazi advance from Bulgaria; and more recently, angry students in brave and bloody demonstrations against the military junta.

Glorious resistance

Glorious resistance against all odds is written deep in the Greek psyche, commented an analyst; such moments as Sunday’s No vote are written into the conscience of every Greek. Most Greek schoolchildren were brought up on stories of resistance, some of which were invoked last week by the No campaign. One historian suggested they were fighting the war of independence again, “standing up against the European Union”.

A theatre critic celebrating in Syntagma on Sunday night said they were rebelling against Germany and France "who were going to govern all Europe, as before the second World War. It's another kind of colonisation."

It sounds like a parallel Irish universe. The piece even quoted “experts” asserting that tax evasion had developed as resistance to the Ottoman occupiers.

Could we have triggered rebellion at the Merrion by evoking the spirits of Wolfe Tone, Emmet, Parnell and Fr Murphy?

Or has the narrative of good and evil gone too far ?

On June 22nd, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskite tweeted this helpful nugget: “The Greek government still wants to party but the bills have to be paid by somebody else.”

Back in May, however, she had been in radically different mode: “#WWII was driven by aggression and hatred. #Europe was rebuilt by unity and solidarity. History lessons must be learned.”

Conflicted thoughts

The messages seem contradictory. Then again, perhaps Grybauskite has captured precisely the conflicted thoughts of many Europeans, including some Greeks.

Last December, Transparency International published its 2014 corruption perception index. Best in class for Europe was Denmark, which had upped its score by legislating to create a public registry of companies. At joint bottom were Greece and Italy.

A linked report in the Guardian – no right-wing stooge – focused on Greece (pre-elections, pre-Syriza), where the paper's Athens correspondent noted that "five years after the biggest bailout in global financial history, Greeks are still cheating, bribing and evading their taxes – spurred on by the lack of punishment meted out to offenders". The writer pointed out that the conservative-dominated coalition had made headway in purging the state sector since assuming power in 2012, but sceptical attitudes were proving difficult to erase.

Anti-corruption officials were still on the take, doctors were pocketing bribes wholesale, and the self-employed were failing to declare their true income. Meanwhile a “dysfunctional” judiciary had resulted in few suspects brought to trial.

There were two wars Greece had to win, said Costas Bakouris, head of Transparency International’s Greek chapter. “The first is to become a society that respects law and order... Our second fight is the long-term one of instilling individuals with values, turning them into good citizens, and that will take a generation at least.”

Corruption purges

Of course rising poverty and rampant unemployment are hardly conducive to corruption purges but it’s fair to say that had such conditions prevailed in Ireland in the bailout years, the self-flagellation would have been violent and relentless.

Meanwhile, on the other side of good and evil, there is the great European project that – as Jean Monnet, a founding father, said – was always meant to be about uniting people and not just states. By no one’s standard can a floundering EU and its member states be viewed as living up to Monnet’s ideals. They are perceived as squabbling, anti-democratic, mediocrities.

Something precious is being lost.

EU sceptics thrive on populist scenarios of good and evil. There is a real danger of Monnet’s project withering on indifference or lazy assumptions that all will be well. It’s time for the modern idealists to emerge, to dispense some tough love, to pinpoint the failures, to demand reform, constructively.

Failing that, it may take Brexit to jolt us out of our complacency.

Dalia Grybauskite was right. The second World War was driven by aggression and hatred and Europe was rebuilt by unity and solidarity. There are history lessons to be learned by new generations.