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The behaviour of the Greek police has come under scrutiny, again, following a number of incidents over which officers have been accused of using unnecessary and excessive force.

In this episode, we take a look at why police tactics have triggered public protests, what ails the force and how it can be fixed.

MacroPolis features editor Georgia Nakou speaks to co-host Phoebe Fronista about recent events and what kind of political reactions they have stirred.

Photojournalists Louisa Gouliamaki and Nikos Palaiologos describe their experiences with the police at street level while covering demonstrations.

While the popularity of the far right in Greece appeared to wane with the defeat of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn at the polls, there are worrying signs that some of the extreme ideas once associated with the fringes of politics have been absorbed into the political mainstream.

In particular, popular debate around Greece’s demographic crisis appears to have been hijacked by a nativist, quasi-religious agenda, which has adopted the vocabulary of the “great replacement” theory popular in the European far-right.

At the top of the agenda, migration policy is being informed by outsize claims and pseudo-scientific theories, while the subject of abortion rights has been brought to the fore by fringe religious groups exploiting an information vacuum. In both cases, the proponents of the ideas have found appeal at the heart of government, influencing key policy areas.

The “unborn child” campaign

On December 29, 2019, sports daily Sportime featured a special edition wraparound cover with the unusual theme of “honouring the Day of the Unborn Child”. The cover featured the outline of a foetus nested in a human hand, accompanied by the bold headline “Let Me Live” and a number of brief statements in the form of bullet points. Among the assertions made on the cover was the claim that 350,000 abortions are performed in Greece annually, and that if they were prevented the country could increase its population by a million people within four years.

The Sportime cover received a great deal of media attention when it was tweeted by Development Minister and New Democracy vice president Adonis Georgiadis, accompanied by the comment that “while in Greece the right of a woman to an abortion not disputed, this does not mean that we can’t acknowledge that having twice the number of abortions as births begets questions of survival for our Nation”.

Άδωνις Γεωργιάδης ✔ @AdonisGeorgiadi Συγχαίρω την Εφημερίδα παρά τις αντιδράσεις. Στην Ελλάδα δεν αμφισβητείται το δικαίωμα, της γυναίκας στην άμβλωση, αυτό όμως δεν σημαίνει ότι δεν αντιλαμβανόμαστε ότι το να έχουμε διπλάσιες εκτρώσεις από γεννήσεις γεννά ζητήματα επιβίωσης του Έθνους μας https://www.kathimerini.gr/…/…/dhmografikh-vomva-gia-th-xwra …

View image on Twitter 774 1:19 PM - Dec 29, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 401 people are talking about this

While Sportime had a circulation of just over 3,600 at the last count in January 2018, the cover quickly went viral on social media.

A few weeks later, it was followed by a very similar poster campaign in the Athens Metro, featuring an emotional appeal to “Choose Life”, this time clearly sponsored by an organisation calling itself “Let Me Live”. A furious debate ensued both about women’s right to abortion and the right of the advertisers to free speech. The poster was removed within 24 hours by Athens Metro after an intervention by the transport minister, on the grounds that its content was divisive, and that it “insulted women who had made the difficult decision to use their right to an abortion”.

As a subsequent investigation revealed, “Let Me Live” is an umbrella organisation made up of 19 religious groups with loose church affiliations, who deny any involvement in political activities. Several, however, have been involved in campaigning on political issues, particularly those of a quasi-religious or nationalistic nature, such as the anti-Prespes movement and the protest against new ID cards; their educational activities have at times been promoted through official Education Ministry channels, while others have been sponsored by mainstream political figures such as ND’s Giorgos Patoulis, who is currently serving as governor of the Attica administrative region.

While many of these groups have been in existence for decades, their membership has been steadily dwindling, and their finances are opaque. However, with limited resources raised through a special appeal – the Athens Metro poster cost around 4,500 euros – they managed to propel an issue which historically held limited public interest to the top of the agenda. While its member organisations rely on pamphlets and printed media to communicate with their members, “Let Me Live” also runs a very active social media campaign to spread its message.

The organisation’s relationship to the church also raises questions. The Church of Greece officially condemns abortions, which have been legal in Greece since 1986. It takes a more liberal stance on other issues that “Let Me Live” member organisations campaign against, such as organ donation. In 2019, “Let Me Live” persuaded the Holy Synod to declare the first Sunday after Christmas the “Day of the Unborn Child” as a contribution to solving the demographic problem. The organisation itself is cited in the official announcement.

Effectively, an obscure and unaccountable confederation representing often extreme minority views has successfully positioned itself at the nexus between church and state in such a way as to allow plausible deniability by all involved parties.

Aside from the opaque financing and undeclared political links, the “Let Me Live” phenomenon is notable because most of the claims made in the campaigns have been debunked as false or misleading. The Athens Metro poster copies an anti-abortion internet meme which misrepresents the stages of foetal development. There are no official statistics for the number of abortions in Greece, but the closest approximations from surveys put them well below 100,000 annually. This has not prevented much larger numbers from gaining traction in the public debate, and making their way into the public record.

“Let Me Live” and their supporters have struck a chord on an issue which goes beyond reproductive rights. Domestic policy makers and international organisations have been trying to raise awareness of the demographic challenge in Greece from an economic and actuarial perspective (as a threat to the economy and the pension system) for several years, to little avail until recently. Boosting the birth rate is a key component of the ND government agenda, resulting in a series of measures such as the “baby bonus” of 2,000 euros introduced at the start of the year.

While it is couched primarily as an economic imperative, ND’s demographic policy has also been supported by arguments that closely resemble those of the “Let Me Live” campaign. In a parliamentary debate on the demographic crisis, then-opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis also cited an unsubstantiated figure of 150,000 abortions a year. Mitsotakis went on to argue that “if we could prevent 10 percent of abortions we could have 10 percent more births, therefore the matter should concern us seriously”.

An MP in his party recently clarified that the measure should be limited to those who are “morally” entitled to it “so that it doesn’t become an incentive to make money and alter the composition of our country’s population”, adding that “the survival of our nation is at stake”.

Preventing abortions as a matter of national survival (economic, genetic or both) has emerged as a notion that unites ostensibly reform-minded liberals like Mitsotakis with populist right-wingers like Georgiadis. The latter have shown their willingness to promote fringe groups like “Let Me Live” and convert their minority views into mainstream talking points.

The “illegal colonisation” meme

While the anti-abortion campaign has reignited an issue that was long considered settled, the debate on migration has been close to the top of the national agenda since the war in Syria propelled more than a million migrants to enter Europe through Greece. However, public debate on the issue exhibits some very similar features, most notably the use of unsubstantiated statistics and pseudo-scientific concepts in support of a nativist agenda. Here, too, language and concepts that might once have been considered shockingly retrograde have been normalised thanks to support from politicians and public intellectuals.

In Greece, this is encapsulated by the use of terms such as “illegal colonisation” to describe the recent waves of migration from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Up until recently, this language had been the preserve of the neo-Nazi and far-right fringe as represented by parties like Golden Dawn, LAOS and more recently Greek Solution. However, it has now become common currency in more mainstream political discourse.

Its most high-profile public proponent has been former PM Antonis Samaras, who offered his views to rapturous applause in a speech at the last ND party conference in late 2019. “Our country”, he claimed, “is now suffering an informal illegal colonisation”. Samaras referred to the migration issue as the “illegal immigration issue” on the grounds that most people arriving in Greece today are economic migrants rather than refugees. He went on to say that this was a problem that “threatens to blow up all European countries separately, and the European Union itself”.

When local communities recently took to the streets to protest against the government plan to build detention centres for migrants on the northeast Aegean islands, the governor of the North Aegean administrative district and former dean of the Athens National Technical University, Kostas Moutzouris, spelled out the perceived threat in greater detail. Moutzouris alleged that NGOs were bringing migrants to the islands as part of global conspiracy of “population replacement”. He cited a UN report which he said proposed the movement of 250,000 million new people into Europe and alleged that businessman George Soros was behind the plan. “They want to impose on us a different way of life, a different religion”.

The notion that the arrival of non-European, and particularly Muslim, migrants is part of an elite-sponsored plot to undermine traditional European values and displace European genetic stock, otherwise known as the theory of the “great replacement”, is one that has gained popularity in European far-right circles. According to the theory, high migration flows and low birth rates attributed to a decline in traditional values in the native population will bring about the end of European civilisation within a couple of generations if the current trends are not reversed. Based on a 2010 book of the same name by French author Renaud Camus, the theory has been adopted by key figures in the European nativist and identitarian movements such as the Le Pen family in France, Italy’s Matteo Salvini and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, while it has also been cited in support of extreme right terrorist acts worldwide.

Such pseudo-scientific theories are given credence through reference to supposedly “objective” facts, which almost inevitably turn out to be unfounded or exaggerated. For example, senior figures in the government, including more moderate politicians, routinely inflate the numbers of migrants arriving in Greece, overstate the proportion of young males in the migrant population, and dramatically underplay the proportion of migrants from war zones such as Syria. A survey by independent media outlet Solomon published in December 2019 highlighted a number of such inaccuracies that are easily identifiable against official figures, but have gone largely unchallenged in the media.

So-called “emotional innumeracy” - people’s tendency due to psychological biases to extrapolate from personal experience rather than believe official figures - is a great gift to proponents of displacement theories, who are able to piggy-back on widespread misperceptions about the scale of migration.

A recent Eurobarometer report found that Greeks believe there are almost two-and-a-half times more immigrants in the country than the official figures show. In fact, in 19 out of 28 EU member states the number is overestimated by at least a factor of 2, sometimes much higher.

It would be a mistake to attribute this turn in the popular debate exclusively to the influence of “imported” ideas. The “great replacement” meme owes its appeal in Greece to prevalent popular beliefs which link national identity inextricably with Orthodox Christian religion combined with a deep-rooted confidence in the superiority of (native) Greek culture and the widespread belief that immigrants have a detrimental effect on Greece and migration should be reduced. On the subject of abortion, despite its protection in law less than half of Greeks believe it should be legal in all or most cases.

What is notable about the recent phenomenon, however, is that it has provided a package of ideas through which the far right and the religious fringe have been able to set the agenda for public debate, igniting a peculiarly Greek version of the culture wars and steering public policy in unproductive and potentially harmful directions. It is also notable that the ideas are employed primarily to challenge and pressure a government that characterises itself (at least to the outside world) as centre-right, by the populist right wing both within the party and beyond, in “grassroots” groups and local government.

"One of the key objections to targeted “brain gain” policies is that they indirectly denigrate the efforts of those who stayed and took risks setting up businesses or accepting low-paid jobs in the toughest of times. If the aim is to create a better, more productive workforce, perhaps the easiest place to start would be to heed employers’ calls for re-training and upskilling schemes for the talented people currently in Greece who lack the skills for a modern workplace.

Even limited solutions need to pursued with a long-term vision. As an earlier programme providing public-sector employment for 5,500 graduates on 12-month contracts draws to a close, the government has promised to bring in a new version in the spring. However, information is not yet forthcoming, and the resulting uncertainty undermines any potential benefits flowing from the scheme.

It is also important for policy makers to be clear-headed about what the objective of “brain gain” really is. Much of the public rhetoric on the subject is mixed with emotional calls to “bring our children home”. However, a vibrant economy with good job prospects will attract workers regardless of nationality, many of whom will not be held back by the negative experiences cited by Greeks.

A report commissioned by the government into the causes of wildfires in Greece has identified a number of systemic failings behind the increase in the scale and frequency of destructive events, culminating in last summer’s fire at Mati, the deadliest on record.

The report was commissioned by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in the aftermath of the Mati wildfire which resulted in 100 deaths in a seaside community close to Athens on July 23-24, 2018. Following the fire, the heads of the police and the fire service, the head of the Civil Protection and the Alternate Citizens’ Protection Minister were removed from their posts, and there were widespread calls for an investigation.

The independent committee was chaired by Professor Johann Goldammer of the Max Planck Institute, and convened under the auspices of the Global Fire Management Center, a research institution coordinating fire management policy on behalf of the United Nations, the Council of Europe and other international bodies. Its remit was to identify the underlying causes of wildfires in Greece, examine the existing fire management framework and put forward specific recommendations for preventing similar events in the future.

Greece’s Covid-19 vaccination strategy has been closely aligned with the coordinated EU approach. This has guided the mix of vaccines acquired, the rate of delivery and the policy guidance on administration, while the roll-out process has been perhaps surprisingly smooth and free from controversy to date.

The slow pace of delivery resulting from the EU-led approach may, however, delay the reopening of the economy and in particular the all-important tourism sector. The government has recently begun to hint that it may switch to a more targeted roll-out of the vaccines in a bid to stimulate economic activity.

On August 30, a flotilla of 13 inflatable boats carrying 547 migrants arrived on a beach on the north coast of the island of Lesvos. Photos showing rows of beached dinghies and lifejackets triggered memories of the height of the migrant crisis in 2015/2016, and sparked media headlines warning of new dangers.

The noticeable surge in arrivals over recent weeks has brought the subject of migration back to the top of the political agenda and has put the spotlight on the New Democracy government right at the start of its term.

Political battleground

The government reacted to the increase in arrivals by announcing a series of emergency measures. They include accelerating the transfer of vulnerable migrants and refugees from the east Aegean islands to the mainland, and the reunification of unaccompanied children with their families in other European countries. On the other hand, the government announced that it would support the coast guard with new technology, strengthen border checks and introduce stricter asylum procedures, including abolishing the right to appeal first-degree asylum decisions, and intensifying police checks to identify and deport failed asylum-seekers.

As the largest party in opposition, SYRIZA has been critical of New Democracy’s handling of migration, accusing the new government of being slow to relocate migrants and refugees from the east Aegean islands to mainland Greece, of grandstanding over border protection and of violating international law and human rights by denying the right to appeal asylum rejections.

The government has responded by accusing their predecessors of preaching humanitarianism while allowing living conditions for asylum-seekers to deteriorate and leaving the borders open to human traffickers. The Ministry of Citizens’ Protection has issued a detailed response in which it criticises SYRIZA for leaving asylum programmes understaffed and underfunded, of failing to absorb European funds and of disregarding the needs of local communities. It also blames SYRIZA for allowing migrants to get stuck in overburdened reception centres on the islands, and for failing to provide organised accommodation on the mainland.

The Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn burst onto the parliamentary scene overnight in 2012, to the alarm of democratic forces across Europe. Seven years later, the party finds itself out of the national and the European Parliament after losing more than half its voters.

A lot has happened in the intervening period. Golden Dawn’s leadership remain on trial for forming a criminal organisation and a laundry list of other criminal charges. Greece has completed its economic adjustment programme and exited the tight supervision of its creditors. There have been changes in the political environment, including the resurgence of the traditional centre-right and the emergence of competing ultra-nationalist parties.