Blogging in Greece: The dark side

It seems that the Greek state has joined that illustrious list on enlightened regimes that feels that it can use the full force of the law to gag bloggers who have unpopular opinions. It seems that the the owner of a Greek blog aggregating service BLOGME is being sued for hosting a blog with some satirical material about a famous person. Antonis Tsiropoulos, Blogme's administrator was arrested and hauled off to the spend the night in jail and later to taken in handcuffs to the District Attorney. This is akin to arresting the owners of Technorati or Google as they hosted something you disagree with.

As the Greek blogger, Xpsilikatzoy says;

"In Greece of 2006 we have the first sue against a site that (through rss) published some satirical posts (from a blog) about a famous person. You see, in my country WE ARE NOT FREE. The owner of the site was handcuffed and driven to prison for one night and now he is free until the day he testifies in court. His computer with all his work was taken away from the police and now we are all waiting for the court to decide.The site I am referring to : BLOGME

Excuse my bad English but this was the only way to inform all foreign bloggers that my country is not free anymore.

Please tell everyone you know."

According to kierenmccarthy.co.uk, the person behind all this is none other than Dimitris Liakopoulos, one of the most hateful and racists figures to disgrace Greek TV. A man whose national chauvanism and anti - semitism are on view every night of the week on the local TV channels here in Thessaloniki. I too have talked about him in less than glowing terms and have linked to videos from YouTube (see here) that make fun of his racist rants. So, I guess that I, too I'm guilty of slandering a man whose views are so foul that they would make most far right thinkers blush.


"Update: The man arrested was Antonis Tsipropoulos and the target of the satire was Dimosthenis Liakopoulos - a controversial Greek tele-evangelist. The satire site that mocks Mr Liakopoulos can be found at funel.blogspot.com, but since it is hosted in the US, neither the Greek authorities nor even Mr Liakopoulos can get at it.
What Mr Tsipropoulos has been charged with, god only knows. But this is a spectacular own goal by the Greek authorities on the eve of the IGF. (Internet Governance Forum) Particularly since making a crime of linking to someone else’s content is pure, and legally foolhardy, censorship."

kierenmccarthy.co.uk

For more information in Greek click here.
For more information in English click here, here and here.

Satire (2)

LIKOUROPASSION



I'll translate this anti-Liakopoulos parody when I have time and access to a fast internet connection, hopefully today.

TRANSLATION

"The secret gospel according to Liakopoulos

The Romans are Greek

The orthodox are Greek

Christ is Greek

fiends are everywhere

Aliens are everywhere

Vile jews are everywhere

Putin watches on

Sintalkas surveys from on high

UFOs patrol

Mary Magdalene plots

He too, was there"

Basically, this short video is a parody of the insane rantings of a local TV presenter, Liakopoulos.

Satire (1)

Liakosferatu



A small sample of Liakopoulos's rhetoric. BTW It is in Greek. Still, Goebbels would be proud. For some strange reason this has taken over a day to appear on my blog.

Dimosthenes Liakopoulos - The Voice of Salonika

Well, I feel a tad let down by Mr Liakopulos, to tell you the truth. I went downtown this morning to check out the hordes ravenous for truth and enlightenment, ready to find out about the secret organisations and cabals that control our lives, to finally discover the real story behind UFOs. After listening to his TV performance last night I was ready to fight my way into the book store here in the centre, I had even brought my own shopping trolley, ready to stock up on his precious works. Alas I must have missed the crowds as when I passed by the place was empty, however, there were still plenty of great works on display. Phew, I thought I'd missed my chance to finally see into the heart of things.



My particular favourite is the series of books that “proves” every single civilisation on Earth was in fact Greek, that indeed the whole planet is Greek. Something that must come as quite a shock to scholars of , say the Aztec, Inca and Zoltec cultures. Indeed nearly every single scientific discovery or technological advance is Greek as well. I'm eagerly waiting for them to prove that the Ipod was the work of Plato, still give them enough time and they'll get there.

Snide comments aside though, The smaller TV channels here are full of like - minded, chauvanist crap, each one spewing hour after hour of revanchist hate talk aimed at establishing the superiority of Greeks and Greek culture while denigrating other nations and ethnic groups. Anti-semitism walks hand – in - hand with lectures of the alleged superiority of the greek language, while talk of secret Vatican plots easily blends in with anti-immigrant rants. It would be easy just to write off these idiots as a crazy, lunatic fringe, yet history teaches us that such people can have disasterous effects on the body politic. The Nazis, for instance had their mystics and ideologues, who mixed racial theories with Nordic mythology.

The other problem is that such groups have access to TV broadcast technology which means such racist outpouring is not just limited to beer kellers or church halls but has a potential audience of millions.



If you've seen V For Vendetta's Voice of London then you will have a pretty good idea of what is going on here. Hell, Prothero and the presenters here even look alike.