I have been at a loss for words over the past week. What can you say? The violent closure of ERT, the public broadcaster in Greece has struck us dumb in more ways than one. The crass stupidity of it being perhaps what strikes one most, initially. The lack of ay planning. The failure to take any repercussions into account. And perhaps worse, or what adds insult to injury, the vilification of all ERT employees. Branding them without exception as being lazy, corrupt, inefficient. In short, using the original German inspired propaganda against Greece, against the hapless employees.
I won’t go into the idiocy of cutting off the Greek diaspora throughout the world from the motherland. Nor how the Greek Aegean islands now watch Turkish TV without subtitles, and Salonika has been invaded by FYROM TV and things like that.
These lazy, corrupt, useless employees, however, have proved they are nothing of the kind. They have kept up a ‘pirate’ programme being supported and streamed by the EBU. And persecuted with a vengeance by the the Samaras regime. The quality is superb. The level of intelligence in debates is higher than anything ever seen on Greek TV before. In a way the Samaras regime has shot itself through the foot with this senseless act of dumb barbarism.
But what struck me most, was an image. The closures summarily fires all the employees. ERT’s excellent orchestras and choir, set up by Manos Hadjidakis no less, are to be disbanded never to reappear. So no more classical music on Greek airwaves from anywhere any more. This is really the kind of reform we need so dearly. Brutalise the population completely.
And the image. A concert by the ERT orchestra broadcast by this “pirate’ station. They were performing a requiem, quite fitting. A violinist, a woman in early middle age, had tears of silent pain streaming from her eyes as she played her violin, contributing to the beauty of the music they now want to silence.