The national address delivered yesterday from Ithaca by PM Alexis Tsipras on the occasion of the bailout exit, signaled the return of the divisive and civil war-style slogan: ‘We will finish them off or they will finish us off’.
The strategy that has been threshed out over the last weeks in the PM’s office bears the imprimatur of specific associates of Alexis Tsipras. They are the head of the prime minister’s press office, Thanasis Karteros, and the editor-in-chief of the SYRIZA-linked newspaper Avgi, Angelos Tsekeris, who has previously worked in the PM’s office.
The politics of hatred is being disseminated by specific government members and party cadres, such as SYRIZA’s parliamentary representative Nikos Xydakis, who this week attacked New Democracy vehemently.
Xydakis attacked those whom he described as the opponents of the “progressive rebirth of Greece”, “the archpriests of corruption and bankruptcy who rabidly pursue a vindictive restoration”.
He said that many of the above are “self-confessed enemies of democracy”. “They are the appointed hacks of the late dictator [Georgios] Papadopoulos, open lovers of authoritarianism, and fellow travelers of the National Socialists.
