Irrational behavior
Whether the prime minister’s outburst in Parliament on Thursday during a debate about the government’s handling of the wildfires was staged or spontaneous, it had its significance. He accused the leader of nationalist Greek Solution of peddling fake news and conspiracy theories. “You say whatever nonsense comes into your head. Enough. I will not let you off the hook,” he said, referring to the fires and the various accusations leveled by Kyriakos Velopoulos.
On Friday, in his speech to the cabinet, he indirectly brought up the issue of fake news again, this time in connection to the people flocking to police stations to renew their identification cards so they can avoid having to issue the modern ones: “IDs have neither chips, nor cameras and microphones, nor various other ridiculous things that we have heard. Citizens should not become victims of misinformation,” he said. At any rate, the hassle of standing in long queues is not worth it, since all old IDs, including those issued now, will become invalid as of August 2026.
By directly confronting this “small minority” – as he called it – he takes a clear political position and distances himself from an audience that has at times found a welcoming home in the most right-wing parts of New Democracy. It seems, however, that the issue of the new IDs is taking on worrying dimensions, requiring the intervention of the archbishop himself, who recommended “caution and prudence.”
It is not the first time that part of Greek society is behaving irrationally – the same was true with the anti-vaxxers. There will always be parties that support them. Furthermore, the negative climate that surrounds the country due to the wildfires is not conducive to calm thinking. Anxiety, anger, loss of life and property, the disharmony of a climatically precarious environment, and the constant transitions to unpredictable seasons increase the chances of people resorting to all forms of irrationality.
Drawing a line under it is a duty of the state. The strict, “paternalistic” tone that boldly declares that certain concepts are “nonsense” and that it is “enough” puts the brakes on it, if only for a while. It also declares that some opinions uttered by politicians should not be ignored as unimportant silliness precisely because they are uttered by elected lawmakers in Parliament.
The damage, of course, has been done. But when the government announces its intention to move ahead with its plans (for new IDs, for example), cracks form on the face of irrationality. It’s a way for the peddlers of conspiracies to start running out of “merchandise.”
