It was Sunday 7 March 2021. Since everything is closed for more than four months of non-stop lockdown and a curfew that begins at 21:00 on weekdays and at 19:00 on weekends, people were just hanging out in Nea Smyrni square. Suddenly, motorcycle cops circle the square trying to intimidate and scare people away. They single out a family and issue them a fine (300 euros each) for sitting alone on a bench, despite the fact that they had taken all safety precautions like wearing masks. People, curious as to what has happened, approach the cops, asking them for the reason that they have fined the family, since the family had taken all health precautions. Like mobsters, the biker cops single out one guy and begin to beat him up with solid steel batons (which are illegal for cops) and call for back up. Dozens of biker cops appear and unleash a chase in the area, arresting anyone they see running. The result was 11 people being arrested.
– The rise of right-wing fascism within the greek government –
Even by the elastic standards of what was used to be known as a parliamentary democracy in Greece, the right-wing regime that governs Greece has gradually turned, in just one year and a half in power, into a neo-fascist state. While Athens is still on lockdown for more than the last 4 months, the right-wing government of “New Democracy” has used that time to act like a mafia organisation, settling scores with its perceived enemies, the greek people, human rights, and freedoms.
In a violent legislative crescendo, the government has managed to establish a junta-like police State, using the pandemic lockdown as a period to quash rights and freedoms with no resistance by the people, (since the right to protest has been indefinitely revoked), that no other greek government even thought to destroy, since the military junta regime was overturned in Greece back in 1974.
From establishing police stations inside the greek universities to the banning of gatherings and protests above a certain number of people and the ban on the freedom of journalists to move freely and report the news, and their plan to criminalize anti-establishment speech and lyrics in songs and art, the ironically self-proclaimed “New Democracy” governing party has decided the hiring of thousands of new policemen as the answer to everything, even the pandemic.
