In the winter of 2003 about 10 months before the Olympic Games were due to start in Athens a number of articles started appearing in the British and German press (maybe in other countries too but I only read the news in English, German, French and to a lesser extent Greek so I have a bias in my perception of things) doubting that Greece would manage to hold the Olympics: stadiums would not be ready on time, the infrastructure need was not ready, the country was too chaotic…etc.
I don’t live in Athens and have little interest in most sports so I was not really in a position to make an informed decision on how things stood. Maybe things were late…time-keeping has never been a strong point of Greece. Maybe things were chaotic..a Greek word by the way. But as time went by and more and more articles were appearing it was obvious that some organs of press were positively waiting with trepidation for things to fail, a kind of anticipatory Schadenfreude (a German word for which there is interestingly no translation in English) and that really surprised me.
Why were some journalists hating Greece and Greeks so much? What had Greece, a small country with less than 1.5% of Europe’s population done to offend them?
At the time my conclusion was that it was probably derived from jealousy, envy. Greeks might be poorer but their food is nice, their sea is bluer and warmer than in Britain, Holland or Germany. The sun shines more often. Greeks know how to enjoy the good things in life.
When the 2004 Olympics came and turned out to be a huge success with possibly the best opening ceremony ever staged I was incredibly please for Greece. They showed the world that they could. And they shut the nasty comments…for a while.
Since the beginning of the Greek crisis (that seems to be going back a while now) the press have had a ball again. Back with the old clichés, lies and a huge amount of….Schadenfreude. It seems that many people are not happy enough with criticizing Greece and pointing out the mistakes it made (and there have been plenty, nobody in Greece is disputing that) they want to see its people crushed, humiliated and made into pariahs. Why? Is this maybe for the same old reasons already noted?
If you have any theories, please give me some of your answers below…
I agree with you. My own thoughts were that the Greeks should never have joined the Euro. Like Britain they should have stayed out. Whatever they do they must clean up their politics and get rid of those who have let them down so badly.
What should/could have been done is on the past.
It is definitely time to clean the Augean stables – another Greek myth and a Herculean task. And fortunately I see some Greeks getting ready to take up this challenge.
What interests me in this post though is what others think is the source of this negative attitude to Greeks and or Greece?
Certainly jealousy, envy, resentment, all these may be one, but play a big part in this negative reporting by journalists that either come to Greece for a short period only or just see pictures and reports about Greece from faraway places, and them sit down to write their negative pieces. All this beauty wasted! If it was us….
But negativity is what sells in the press, not good news stories. We had the same disaster scenarios being reported here in Australia before the 2000 Olympics but all went well. The same with China’s Olympics, they can make only cheap things that last only a few days, but they were wrong again.
Unfortunately there is no international policing body to stop mischievous, malicious and plain wrong press reporting. I am sick and tired of hearing and reading about the 130 euro rescue package for Greece! Hey! All of it goes to bankers who otherwise will lose all their loans made recklessly to Greece, not to the Greek people. Get real!
And thank you Jean for the opportunity to vent my frustration with all this negative reporting.
Jean,
I do not agree with you, but somehow I do not disagree either. The olympics are a huge arrangement, and attracting huge attention from all around the world. Spectators from all the countries will watch, either by going there or by broadcasting. In fact it’s the largest sportsevent in the world.
So do you actually wonder why the Olymoics and the building and preparation of the stadiums, infrastructure and all the rest of things concerning the Olympics het loads of attention? I don’t. And if things are not as it should be according to the schedules made, then there will be loads of negative articles.
Right now there are ( or has been recently), at least here in Norway, a lot of negative focus in front of the upcoming European championship in Ukraine/Poland. Especially in Ukraine they had been a lot behind the plans for getting the stadiums ready for the championsghip. If they don’t make it, it would be a scandal, and damage both of these countries chances of getting a big arrangement later. So it’s good there are some watchdogs howling over them.
Before the Olympics in Beijing it was some of the same issues, but when it all was ready it was nothing but articles about fantastic stadiums and awesome prepartions. I think the same for the Olympics in Athens. Now I have to say that my impression is from the massmedia in Norway.
I think that there were delays but there was a very nasty slant to the reporting about them. Maybe not in the Norwegian press, I can’t judge that,but certainly in the British and German press. Far less so in the French press who seem not be much into Greece bashing.
The press are all ways the first to knock you down when things are bad.All i would like to says is keep. going on your holidays to Greece that must help their economy a little.Yes it may be a little more expensive now ,ive been to many places but never found people as kind and friendly as those i have met in Crete .I hope Greece can overcome her problems and get things back as before. with their old currancy
Pingback: Alarmist noises | West Crete Blog
You ask for reasons for the negative attitude to the Greeks? Here are some suggestions:
- the participation in the Euro currency was achieved or at least brought forward by faking national economic balances
- the financial problems – mainly or at least at a great deal – come from bloated expenses of the public sector: retirement pensions paid for pensioners who died years ago, relatives of dignitaries who are paid as civil servants but don’t have a workplace nor any tasks at all; retirement ages which are very early compared to (afaik) all countries of the northern EU (Sweden thinks about a retirement age of 75! I have never heard of similar thoughts of the Greek – not even in the present situation)
- a lot of Greeks enjoy the benefits of the EU but in return are not willing to waive any traditional positions which do not match European economic or legal standards, e. g.: concessions for taxis or trucks. The conflicts concerning these topic regularly lead to …
- strikes! Strikes on all and everything. And who suffers from the Cretan strikes? The tourists who
provide the greatest part of the income of Crete!
- the disastrous taxation system
- the spreading of “Fakelaki”
Opposite to you I don’t think that the attitude towards the Greek is envy or schadenfreude. It seems as if the Greek way to deal with things is quite accepted as long as it works. But if the conditions described above collides with the expectation to receive huge amounts of Euros from nations dealing themselves with similar problems the understanding of the Greek way is limited very soon…
PS.: “Schadenfreude” – there are several translations as well! I found: gloating, malicious joy, mischievousness and spitefulness. So the English seem to have known the feeling before
Full circle to where we started: “Greece bashing…I just don’t get it!”
Bashing again the Greeks here, I don’t think, has enlightened us at all.
My thought too Yorgos but I thought that if Peter wants to believe ALL that he reads, let him.
OMG!! If it doesn’t match to your view of the world it is not true, huh? I think you ‘d better focus on Crete mountain summits and flowers…
I believe much of the bashing of Greece in the media right before the Olympics was fuelled by bigger nations and had to do with forcing Greece to spend money on expensive security measures. And who sold these security measures? The ones who did the bashing. I also believe that in general, Europe, the US and the UK limit themselves to viewing smaller nations as corrupt lazy parasites who beg for money instead of working for it and this creates a negative perception from them. Nowadays, Europe and the world markets are using their “corrupt lazy parasite” argument to more easily force austerity measures that squeeze the Greek people in what will prove to be another unfruitful attempt to protect themselves from the economic crisis. The truth is that the crisis is the result and the cost of an ill prepared European Union plan that was never meant to be a federation but rather an attempt to create a bigger market to compete with China and the US. So I guess bashing Greece and the Greek nation is because of a bit of greed and a bit of arrogance (mixed in with a bit of jealousy).
I fear my namesake Peter fails to make a distinction between inept, greedy, ambitious and incompetent politicians and the the majority of the Greek population. To stigmatise Greeks as a nation because of the catastrophic failure of their politicians is naive and plain wrong. To continue parroting derogatory slogans is unhelpful and offensive and only serves to reinforce mistaken stereotypes. I find it faintly amusing that those EU politicians who encouraged Greece to join the Euro when it was clearly not in in the countries best interest to do so are now whingeing at the cost of repairing their mistake.