Kasselakis and conflicting ‘gardening’ theories
There is no shortage of conspiracy theories in Greece, as we all know, so there’s nothing surprising that the tendency went into overdrive with Stefanos Kasselakis.
There’s a lot that can be said about the election of the new opposition SYRIZA leader and analyzed in the context of “post-politics,” the tug-of-war between substance and hype, the rift that has appeared in the country’s second biggest party between those who see Kasselakis as a symptom of ideological decay and those who see an opportunity to penetrate the center ground, not to mention the willingness of a significant number of voters in a society often described as conservative to back an openly gay candidate who may one day become prime minister.
A serious discussion can – and ought – to be held also about whether the media sufficiently delved into the 35-year-old’s professional and general background, or whether it adopted a superficial approach to the new opposition leader. The public has a right to a complete and – as far as this is possible – objective picture of the person who could become the country’s prime minister one day.
The prevalent approach, however, seems to be a bizarre combination of conspiracy and innuendo. The people who dismiss Kasselakis also believe that he has been planted in the Greek political scene by the Americans. Where it becomes even more interesting is that they adopt two conflicting arguments to support their theory, begging the question of how they ended up with the conclusion they did.
One part of that camp claims that the Americans planted Kasselakis in order to trigger SYRIZA’s downfall so that there is no real opposition to stand against Prime Minister Kyriakis Mitsotakis – their man, as the argument goes – hence allowing him to proceed with policies that are favorable to the Americans, in terms of the war in Ukraine as well as in terms of talks with Turkey. In other words, in short, Kasselakis is here to divide the Left and bolster the Right.
The other part of the same conspiratorial camp, however, believes that he has been planted by the Americans so that they can eventually replace Mitsotakis with another politician who will do as the US wants. They argue that they have placed the person who can beat the present prime minister and then serve American interests unimpeded. In this version of the “gardening” theory, the Americans want to undermine the Greek Right and help the Left.
The interesting thing is that the gardening theory is expounded with equal passion by proponents of two entirely different paths of reasoning in the same conversations among the same groups of friends.
If we listen to the conspiracy theorists, the only conclusion to come to is that Kasselakis is an extraordinarily rare kind of “plant”: with the ability to both cause and cure the same disease.
