Unlike previous years, Greece did not receive much international media coverage in 2017. One wonders whether no news is good news. On the surface, the answer is yes. Since memories of the Greek government’s bizzare negotiation tactics in 2015 are still vivid in most observers’ minds, the apparent stability of the past year is a welcoming change. The European institutions’ decision to defer many contested reform issues for the next evaluation of the Greek stabilization program clearly suggests that both the Greek and European sides are interested in keeping Greece out of the international news cycle.
However, recently released official statistics reveal a bleak economic forecast for Greece including very anemic growth and decreasing investment. For the economy to show any meaningful improvement, it will require much more than wishful thinking. Greece deserves much more attention than it is currently receiving and not because of its economic performance. For those of us who believe that populism and post-truth politics are serious threats to western democratic societies, Greece has definitely become Ground Zero for fake news, conspiracy theories and weaponized information.
Greece remains the country with the lowest trust for news media and journalism as recently revealed in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017 published by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Due to this mistrust, more people get their news through social media with all the well known negative side effects (accuracy and bias) affecting this form of news distribution.
Amidst the crisis, Greece’s political class has turned into self-preservation mode, changing its story depending on whether they stand in the government or the opposition. With the passage of time, this trend intensifies with the current administration breaking every past record of inconsistency between pre-election unrealistic rhetoric and post-election practice. One can compare this government’s conduct to Donald Trump, whose practices bare many similarities. What clearly sets Greece apart though, is the gullibility that the judicial system has exhibited by being susceptible to the conspiracy theories that many members of the political class perpetrate, mainly to protect their personal legacy at the expense of society.
A prime example of this pathogeny is the judicial adventures of Andreas Georgiou, former head of the Hellenic Statistical Authority (Elstat) between 2010 and 2015. Opposing Elstat board members accused Mr. Georgiou of artificially inflating the government deficit in order to force Greece into a bailout agreement. Overzealous prosecutors opened a criminal case against Mr. Georgiou without consideration that the bailout agreement preceded the first release of data that the newly independent Elstat published or that the data was certified by Eurostat and served as the basis of all subsequent agreements signed by the Greek government.
The case was repeatedly set aside as baseless by the investigating judges, but was reopened several times, finally by the head prosecutor (a political appointee of the current government). Eventually, Andreas Georgiou was convicted on a technicality and received a suspended sentence. If it wasn’t for all the suffering he endured, the whole case would have been a total farce, especially since the Greek government had already agreed with the European institutions to assume all of his legal expenses. A small price to pay for spreading the propaganda that the bailouts and the “bad Europeans” are responsible for Greece’s persisting economic woes.
Another very interesting case that did not receive much publicity involved the alleged plot by western intelligence agencies to assassinate Kostas Karamanlis (former Greek prime minister between 2004 and 2009) in order to block his pro-Russian energy transport policies. The Russian FSB (successor to the KGB) raised this scenario to the Greek authorities without any serious corroborating evidence. This conspiracy theory circulated on a few nationalistic blogs and fringe print publications and was eventually picked up by the judiciary in 2011.
With the addition of other broad allegations, the prosecutor filed charges for conspiracy against the state. In 2013, the investigating judge joined it with a wiretap case pending since 2005 which unlike the nefarious conspiracy scenarios, was solid.
Ultimately, the FSB-fed conspiracy case was set aside due to prosecutor’s inability to name any defendants while the wiretap case against a Greek-American CIA agent (William Basil) is proceeding. The bundling of the two cases, certainly gave the appearance of some legitimacy to the conspiracy case. Supporters of Kostas Karamanlis continue to argue that the case demonstrates an international conspiracy against him, which allegedly undermined his administration and led to its failure and the subsequent financial meltdown of Greece in the hands of his supposedly incompetent successor George Papandreou.
Nine years after the outburst of the financial crisis, Greece remains mired in it, still arguing internally about its causes. Contempt for the press, weaponized information delivered through social media and gullible institutions make for a toxic mix that stifles progress. Greece remains the canary in the coalmine and should be watched more carefully.
* Research Scientist and the Director of Computing at MIT’s Media Lab. He was a member of the core technical and design team for the “One Laptop Per Child” initiative which created OLPC’s pioneering, award-winning “XO” laptop. He has been involved with startups in many diverse capacities: co-founder, advisor, director, investor, consultant. Over the years, he has advised governments around technology policy issues and provided expert opinion in technical matters to top-level officials.