Youth violence in an adolescent society
When, truth be told, do we talk to children about violence? The answer is, practically all the time: when we’re giving it our blessing for national, social, class or political reasons; when we’re justifying it as hot-headedness or a response to a presumed provocation; when we’re baptizing it a “genetic disease,” be it among Greeks who “have division in their blood” or attributing it as a trait in certain specific social groups.
Generally speaking, violence is not, per se, abhorrent to Greek society; there’s ample proof of that in the fact that it elected a party into Parliament on the promise that it would “beat the tar out of the politicians who bankrupted us.” Domestic terrorism reared its ugly head all over Europe; in Greece, however, it was tolerated for decades. “Terrorism is the ‘tail end’ of the statistical distribution of violence, a tail that leans much farther than in other parts of Europe to the left and the right of the political spectrum,” Professor Dimitris Psychogios argues in his book “Political Violence in Greek Society” (published in Greek, by Epikentro).
Violence in Greece is weighed according to the person exerting it, the person on the receiving end (and what that person symbolizes) and, above all, the purported reason for that violence. There is no exaggeration in saying that youngsters beating up other youngsters in Glyfada and elsewhere is an extension of the people applauding the mob attack on Kostis Hatzidakis, then a former minister and now a minister once more, in front of Parliament in Syntagma Square in 2010.
Violence in Greece is weighed according to the person exerting it, the person on the receiving end and, above all, the purported reason for that violence
Today’s youngsters grew up believing in the notion of “justified rage” because that is what they were taught by the adults. We tend to forget that when violence is justified because of its “cause,” the “causes” for using it will change all the time. Today’s teenagers are driven by and worried about their popularity and image on social media, and this is something adults today are condemning, often referring to “Back in our day…” It doesn’t matter a single bit what we did back in our day or why. The fact is that unless we uproot the notion that violence can be a solution to some problems, we will continue to be shocked and surprised by the phenomenon, which will constantly manifest in new forms.
Of course, it’s one thing to talk about uprooting a notion and quite another to set about getting it done. It is an enormous challenge, a difficult and lengthy process that requires the engagement of politicians, intellectuals, journalists, educators, parents – society as a whole. It takes conversation and education. First and foremost, it demands that the older generations get over their hang-ups: “the left-wing ‘agonistic hermeneutics’ of history, which is responsible for tolerance of terrorism in the post-dictatorship era, and for violent protests and occupations (…) the right-wing ‘agonistic hermeneutics’ (…) responsible for the recent rise and rapid advancement of far-right ideology and violence – a devious violence which claims to seek to replace law and order,” as Psychogios describes them.
An electoral cycle is way too short to accommodate such a mentality shift, which is why the government keeps resorting to the ludicrous tactic of “stricter penalties.” It’s not just the futility of the thing – look at the United States, for example, which carried out the third largest number of executions in the world in 2023. It’s also the message such a tactic sends: that more violence (albeit legal violence) is the solution. Don’t get me wrong; there should be penalties and they should be strict where necessary. But the stale joke the government utters every time it deals with complex social problems does nothing to educate society or raise awareness. It just makes for a good press conference and sexy “zero tolerance” headlines, while propagating the disease.
And then there’s social media and all the other paraphernalia. Technology is not neutral. This means that it can exacerbate certain social trends to the detriment of others or even breed them. If we don’t look the monster in the eye, we will never be able to fight it.
