[D66] Hospitable Zeus

[Antid Oto]

http://greekleftreview.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/hospitable-zeus/
	
Hospitable Zeus
by SOZ

by Yannis Hamilakis 8 August 2012 originally posted at London Review of Books

Since the weekend, the Greek police have rounded up around 6500 immigrants in
Athens. About 1500 have been found to be without documents and are currently
imprisoned awaiting deportation, in overcrowded detention centres where
conditions are ‘dire’.

More than three-quarters of the people targeted by the police are completely
innocent. But most of the media (even the Guardian) have described it as an
operation against lathrometanastes or ‘illegal’ immigrants. They also seem to
have reproduced verbatim police reports which claim that indiscriminately
pouncing on immigrants is a way to crack down on all sorts of criminal
behaviour, from drug use and prostitution to breaches of health regulations in
shops.

The official codename for the operation is ‘Xenios Zeus’. The name of Zeus,
usually invoked only by hoteliers and the Greek tourist board, has struck many
people as an odd choice, especially with the epithet xenios, which denotes his
role as the god of hospitality, the protector of foreigners. Some critics
thought it outrageous, offensive sarcasm, a direct and blatant provocation.
Others thought it unintentionally ironic. But ancient mythology, classical
figures and monuments have often been deployed by authoritarian regimes to
justify or mask repressive policies. During the Greek Civil War (1946-49) the
prison-island of Makronisos, used by the government for the ideological
‘rehabilitation’ of left-wing citizens and soldiers, was known as the New Parthenon.

Most of the immigrants rounded up this week came to Greece from Asia or Africa.
Calling the operation ‘Xenios Zeus’ is an appeal to classical authority, part of
an attempt to assert a perceived difference between ‘western civilisation’ and
‘oriental barbarity’ going all the way back to Ancient Greece. According to the
public order minister, Nikos Dendias, ‘the country is being lost. Not since the
coming of the Dorians, 4000 years ago, has the country seen an invasion of such
scale… This is a bomb at the foundations of society and of the state.’ Never
mind that there’s no archaeological evidence for the ‘coming of the Dorians’;
never mind that 4000 years ago there was no Greece as such; never mind that
ethnic labels such as ‘the Dorians’ are seriously questioned today by
archaeologists and historians.

The rhetoric of ‘invasion’ echoes the language of neo-Nazi groups. A couple of
months ago, in the run-up to the elections, another minister described
immigrants as a ‘health bomb’. This was presumably an attempt to undercut the
Golden Dawn, who asked Greeks to vote for them in June so that they could ‘clean
up the dirt’. The far right makes extensive use of classical antiquity, staging
ceremonies at archaeological sites such as Thermopylae. These are the same
people who organise blood donations for ‘Greeks only’, and who make a big show
of distributing food to the needy in Syntagma Square but ask for ID to make sure
that no foreigner receives any.

It seems that the government wants to occupy the same rhetorical ground as the
most extreme and openly xenophobic groups in Greek society. ‘The problem of
immigration is perhaps even more serious than the financial one,’ Dendias has
said, as another package of severe austerity measures is waiting around the corner.

SOZ | August 8, 2012 at 8:00 pm | Tags: amnesty, asylum, greek police,
Immigrants | Categories: Politics, Society | URL: http://wp.me/pZhHk-Ux