In 1991, the year the Cold War era ends with the dissolution of the USSR – the term (cold war) is first recorded by George Orwell in his essay titled You and the Atomic Bomb which was published in the British Gazette Tribune on October 19, 1945 and theoretically marks its beginning -, in Greece we are experiencing an unprecedented event; a truly successful sitcom the Unacceptable appears on the newly established Greek private television, which officially begins its course in July 1989 by the Tzannetakis government (ND - SYN cooperation) which passed the relevant law. About three and a half months later - as long as the aforementioned government lasted -, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall falls and on November 20, the first private television station in Greece, the Mega Channel, begins its operations.
A new era begins.
In the collective Greek unconscious, the era is recorded through Spyros Papadopoulos' repeated remark "What happened guys" during the 46 episodes of Unacceptable in the two seasons 1991-1992 and 1992-1993.
Before we have time to identify the mental leap that connects world-historical events that determined modern world geopolitical and political history with the appearance of private television in our country, let alone with a line from even a super-popular series, we can take a breath, take a step back and remember on the one hand the power of pop culture, which is always shaped within the broader socio-political contexts of each era, and on the other hand to use these milestones schematically in order to perceive the parallel or divergent trajectories that create communicating vessels, and perhaps in this way we will be able to answer to the constant bewilderment of Spyros Papadopoulos about what is happening.
The post-World War II era on a global level is strongly marked by the period of the Cold War that lasts, as we said, from 1945 to 1991, where the great intersection in the political history of the Western world occurs. In Greece, this time period intersects in 1974 with the fall of the junta and since 1975 we have experienced in the country the post-colonial era, which instead of completing its cycle with the beginning of the 90s and coordinating with the rest of the West , is limited to small sections/revolutions such as the appearance of private television for example, and remains to this day trapped in its post-political self, with the result that Greek society is still forever asking "What happened guys?".
The main characteristic of Postcolonialism in Greece is the negotiation of Greek society with the space of the Left. Even though we experienced the advance of the phenomenon of the socialist PASOK and the new political dipole created between it and the ND which dominated and shaped modern bipartisanship as we experienced it until 2012, Greek society still experiences the complex of the Left, which at the same time sustained on the one hand by the narrative of the moral superiority of the Left and on the other hand by the non-opportunity of a left-wing government to take the lead; the 2015-2019 four-year term of the SYRIZA government failed to lighten the burden of Post-Revolution, as it coincided with the Troika, partners and memoranda .
The interest of Greek public opinion that has manifested itself in recent weeks to a superlative degree around the appearance of Stefanos Kasselakis and the internal party elections in SYRIZA, even though it happened at the same time as the unprecedented catastrophic floods that paralyzed the entire country and highlighted his failures and inadequacies staff state of the right, confirm the above reasoning.
It is as if in Greece the Right cannot define and define itself, delimit and define itself in Greek society without the opposing awe of the Left. As good cannot be defined without evil, light without darkness, light and so on.
But what has not been noticed in any way in Greek society is that the right-left dichotomy, a consequence of the structural dichotomy of capitalism-communism as an economic and political model, is historically obsolete. In theory it has ended with the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Historically "capital" was the dominant theme that preoccupied the 20th centuryThe century. The 21stThe it is "information," but information is not the desired subject for analysis in this text; it is enough that it is no longer capital.
Having overcome as societies the issue of capital, the post-capitalist era has to negotiate new issues and demands, which are shaped by the new social movements that are to a large extent deeply concerned with the management of a deep-rooted guilt in the collective unconscious of humanity, a product of both religions , as well as human history. Labor, colonialism, wars, poverty, theocratic and dictatorial regimes, Nazism, Stalinism, sexism, patriarchy, immigration, ecology, climate crisis...
And somewhere in the period of redefining the identity of mainly Western societies, the left seems to occupy a new role, in which capital and the proletariat are replaced by social and mainly activist movements that are mostly leveraged in America, creating a new soft power dimension of the penetration of American culture into the West, and not just thought.
This new role of the Left does not seem to be perceived, let alone assimilated, both by its political representatives in Greece and by its voters, who - both - on the whole remain loyal to the known post-political left formation.
At the same time, the left-wing Greek imbalance combined with the prolonged weakening of the centrist space and the strengthening of the far-right – Greece seems to be more in tune with the western trend of increasing the influence of far-right formations – creates an imbalance in the right space as well, which although which for the second four years remains highly strengthened and dominant, fails to fill the void in the Greek political scene created by the weakening of the left and centrist forces and to respond to the demands of a society that, in the absence of a strong opposition, asks him to play all the roles.
And as long as the post-political Greek complex remains alive, the imbalances will intensify.
As long as the need to redefine the Greek socio-political identity is not perceived, the more often Greeks will look at each other and wonder "What happened guys?".
*Photo cover: Photo Art By@nikolator Via #photographize