Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is carefully preserved for historical and informational reading.

Foreigners remembered the word chaos as soon as the prime minister announced his intention to hold an immediate referendum on whether to approve the so-called new support package. In other words, the taking of still more loans from the same lenders...

They cannot understand what is happening in Greece. On the one hand, we anxiously ask for loans in order to face the stressful economic crisis; on the other, we call a referendum to confirm whether we want the loans we urgently need in order to exist.

This is the message sent out by our country, which has ended up erratic.

The other Europeans do not understand what is happening here, and they believe chaos prevails as they watch on television the continuous demonstrations, clashes, tear gas, injuries, road blockages, fires in bank and business buildings, the "strikes" even by ...lawyers, the abstentions of judges, oil on roads to overturn tourist buses, banners with kitschy slogans on the Acropolis, blockades of islands, cancellations of the October 28 parades, attacks with banners and little flags, occupations of ministries, the intrusion into the Pentagon, and everything else broadcast every day.

At the same time they see the Greek prime minister breaking speed records, traveling around the whole world like a beggar and pleading for European and German pity.

They cannot grasp how this country functions amid chaos, and they wonder why there is so much noise about a referendum when we are already in a state of complete economic incapacity and effective bankruptcy.

Yet the Europeans are wrong to believe that a state of chaos prevails in Greece. On the contrary... The word chaos means nothing.

You see, they do not know the right word to describe what is happening to us. They do not know that here the tone is set by personalities who essentially live in other eras and not in the twenty-first century. They cannot perceive the scale of misinformation, populism, distortion of facts, the slimy daily flattery of the people, the lack of any sense of reality, rampant party spirit, trade-union lawlessness, and the greed of the few financially powerful people who accumulate wealth in the hope that they will take it with them when they leave us.

The European citizen is not in a position to recognize what the Greek citizen experiences in daily life. He does not understand what it means for schools to be occupied by pupils, even primary-school pupils.

He does not understand that anyone with the surname Varvitsiotis, Tzitzikostas, Alevras, Liapis, or Mitsotakis, to limit ourselves to a few descendants of our feudal lords, must necessarily become a member of parliament, minister, governor, and ruler. After all, Europeans either beheaded their feudal lords or sent them away for good. They cannot imagine judges who strike, nor soldiers who parade "on their own initiative", outside any notion of discipline. It still seems mad to them that one should be forced to hire a lawyer in order to buy a house, and that one should maintain a supreme ruler in the luxury of a Persian emperor and a sultan of the Emirates.

Ultimately, European citizens cannot grasp the notion of extreme factionalism, lounging, sitting idle, and inertia when the country is in danger of total collapse. Nor do the so-called third-world peoples understand it, for they have already woken up and are also wondering about us [Nomika Epilekta, "electricity and third-worldism" by G. Fourlanos, where the Malaysian who sent the message is mentioned: "How can somebody save the Greeks when they spend their time protesting instead of working harder to get out of the crisis?"].

Consequently, the Europeans and the newspaper Liberation which wrote the word "CHAOS" in Greek on its front page on 02.11.2011 are wrong to speak of chaos. Chaos does not prevail in our country. What is happening here is havoc. And this kind of havoc cannot be translated exactly into another language. Only we understand the meaning of the word, and only we, when we wake from the lethargy and brainwashing we have suffered for decades, can turn that havoc into a force of progress and existence with honor and dignity.