Resilient anachronisms
Before email and messaging, we had regular mail and envelopes, which candidates for the national or European Parliament would send off to voters, only so they could form huge piles in the entrances to our apartment buildings. What was the point of this enormous profusion of advertising material, which came in glossy or regular form depending on the budget of each given campaign, with photographs of retouched, smiling candidates? Did it somehow help acquaint the public with the candidates, did it affect how people voted, did it create some form of impression that had an impact? Over time, it became a tactic that was dismissed as mundane, as a waste of resources and a blight on the environment, with little, if any, political purpose.
The new century brought the technological revolution and, with it, traditional forms of communication were swept aside; not so traditional mindsets. Stereotypes continue to hold strong, both because they are convenient and because they create the illusion of informing and being informed. But the high speeds of this day and age and the changes that have taken place convey one very important message: that nothing should be taken for granted.
The mass email sent by the campaign of ruling New Democracy MEP Anna-Michelle Asimakopoulou to expat Greeks who had signed up on the digital platform for the postal vote in the upcoming European Parliament elections was not just alarming in terms of the potential massive breach of privacy that allegedly took place and all the other aspects that the justice system is now tasked with investigating. There is another aspect worth noting: The anachronism. That for purely campaign-related reasons, Asimakopoulou went ahead and did something that would, in the past, have been considered okay. And she ended up getting in trouble for doing so. In another indicative incident, we heard the head of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) trying to make himself appear “modern” when voicing his opposition to the government’s plan for nonstate universities, in which he said that private education would compel young women to look for “sugar daddies” to bankroll their studies. The reactions to his statement were swift and fierce.
He returned on Friday with photographs that he believes somehow prove his point and the orthodox KKE terminology on “the rot eating away at your ersatz perfect world.” He meant the capitalist system, of course.
These incidents are different but they are two sides of the same coin, the most powerful currency around today: communication. They are examples of how a deeply rooted mentality has the tendency of getting in the way of efforts to keep up with the times, to reach out to a new audience. But how can we shed beliefs and prejudices, practical and ideological, that have prevailed for so long? Going modern proved too bitter in one case, and the old-school too resilient in the other.