Last week we witnessed the absurdity of the State Literary Awards. The chairman of the judging panel asked the Deputy Minister of Culture to intervene and overturn the decision of the committee he himself chaired—claiming the panel members lacked the requisite competence to judge and reach “correct” decisions.
He humiliated one of the winners by selectively presenting excerpts from his work, humiliated one of the panel members for how they presented themselves on social media, and made prescriptions about what specialisms should constitute such a committee. Views he could have put forward in advance whilst simultaneously submitting his resignation. But he didn’t—not until the majority’s choices failed to align with his own. So we saw a representative of the intellectual class demanding state intervention and, in essence, censorship—abolishing the principle of majority rule.
Two months earlier, a writer (who’d also served as president of the Writers’ Union) posted online accusing the poet Kyriacos Charalambides of “exposing Christ, the Virgin Mary, and saints” in his poems. But he didn’t stop at stating his opinion—he called on the Archbishop and the Academies of Athens and Cyprus to react.
Two examples from the upper echelons of the country’s intellectual life. The day before yesterday, we had the president of the teachers’ union speaking dismissively about the Education Minister as a woman who’s turned up after 50 years to change the teacher evaluation system. After the backlash, not only did he refuse to retract it, he said anyone who can’t handle scrutiny should leave—doubling down on his tone.
The OELMEK president isn’t an intellectual in the sense of a writer or poet, but he’s no ordinary trade unionist either. He’s someone who spent decades in schools, in recent years as head of educational units, with a mission to cultivate minds and help transmit knowledge.
In all these cases there were—thankfully—strong reactions, which should reassure us that the spirit still functions. That even though those who represent us far too often appear to flirt with authoritarianism and the demolition of democratic principles, there’s still hope. As long as we can recognise that it’s unreasonable for intellectuals to demand gags be placed on those who express contrary views, as long as we can defend people and values, we can still hope.
