Giannis Panousis, a professor of criminology and Greece's former minister of citizen protection, published an opinion column in Capital.gr on Tuesday warning against what he described as a culture of political victimhood and self-styled heroism in Greek public life.
Panousis opened the piece, titled "Did They Forget?", by quoting the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who said politicians lie, know that they lie, and know that people know they lie, but that this does not mean they will stop lying.
Panousis said everyone makes mistakes in their calculations, estimates and predictions, but argued there is a limit beyond which such mistakes become unacceptable naivety, an apolitical approach or excessive credulity.
Criticism of candidate selection
Panousis said it is inconceivable for serious politicians, across almost the entire political spectrum, to propose people of unknown quality for the offices of President of the Republic and Prime Minister, based solely on the criterion that they might, opportunistically, overturn the political system.
He said politics is not about stardom or empathy handed out to order, and that having been a victim is not a qualification for public office. He said anyone who believes, out of megalomania, that history has reserved them a leading role will be proven wrong by events and will suffer a psychological collapse.
Citizens are not persuaded by miracles and spells, Panousis said, with the exception, in his view, of conspiracy theorists and opportunist politicians.
Warning on 'transitional justice'
Panousis said the greatest enemy of democracy may be a democracy that has fallen asleep, but the greatest enemies of politics are self-heroization, a culture of claiming resistance credentials, and profitable victimhood. He said many people play the hero in battles that have already ended, without ever facing real danger, while others are treated as saints for acts they did not commit.
He said justice is not revenge, and that the parallel "justice" carried out on social media and in public squares is far removed from establishing the truth. Any exploitation of traumatic memory, he said, will end up as farce rather than as a genuine movement of new martyrs.
Panousis said memory punishes those who insult it, wherever they are, and that holding grudges does not clear the guilty of a dark past. He argued that instead of grand rhetoric and condemnations, Greece should adopt what he called "transitional justice", moving from an unjust past to a just present, apologizing for mistakes and omissions.
He said it is not morally or politically acceptable, however, to pretend to forget how some people, through populism and excess, contributed to the risk of the country being governed by what he called a mix of superstition, neo-puritanism, "woke culture" and false displays of purification.
