Paris Demetriades
Alongside relentless economic precarity, the erosion and impoverishment of the middle class, environmental and public health crises, and of course the grotesque wars that have returned to Europe and the Middle East with a shocking savagery after decades, the 21st century seems to have ushered in a spiritual backslide, a collapse into the cheap and the populist. And this decline has, unsurprisingly, created fertile ground for simplistic narratives to flourish and become mainstream.
One of many symptoms of this rotten state of affairs, one that only seems to be rotting further, is the adoption of fan-like ideological fixations regarding the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. It’s as if the political hang-ups of the last century have returned, out of sync with the times, just to prove how little we've learned from recent history. Double standards have now become the rule: zero real empathy for war victims, wherever they may come from, without footnotes and without "yes, buts."
These thoughts returned to me, yet again, while reading the entirely justified public backlash against the frankly unhinged antics of our supposedly "anti-system" MEP, Fidias Panayiotou, who, along with a handful of other caricatures, visited Moscow and unblushingly regurgitated first-tier Russian propaganda.
Beyond, of course, the overheated and overhearty support his delusions received from his ever-eager social media fanbase, complete with predictable comments like “thank God for you, saying it like it is,” and other such nonsense, what really struck me was this: many of those who rightly condemned the MEP’s dangerous idiocy in Moscow are the very same people who, for over a year now, have not found the strength, or perhaps the courage, to clearly denounce the unimaginable bloodshed in Gaza, or more importantly, the indefensible conduct of Netanyahu’s government. For their own reasons, and despite being so vocal on Ukraine, when it comes to the massacre of civilians in Gaza they either cling to "both sides" rhetoric or, worse still, adopt Israel’s toddler-level propaganda.
Likewise, many of those who have been and remain, again, rightly, on the front lines of protest against the endless suffering of the Palestinian people, are the very same who, three years on, still hesitate to call Russia’s invasion an invasion and to call war crimes what they are; war crimes. Without yes, but, and without caveats.
In short, precious few voices remain unaligned, unbending, and principled when it comes to international law and the urgent need for it never to be violated, by anyone, ever. A cause that, for us in Cyprus, is supposedly our flagship in the fight for our own national issue. What we’re left with, then, is hypocrisy at its worst: “Yes, but” from every direction.
*This article was translated from its original Greek.
