The murder of Manolis Kantaris shocked Greek society because it condensed in a few seconds the absolute absurdity of violence.
I, however, every year on days like this, when it comes back into the news – because of anniversary – the murder of Manolis Kantaris, the father who was taking his wife to the maternity hospital to give birth to their child, and was killed by three Afghans in 14 seconds for a video camera that cost Monastiraki 120 euros, I, for one, remember a conversation that I will never forget.
So, every year, on days like this, I remember very well a conversation I had with a girl my age, who belongs to the extra-parliamentary Left, and when I was telling her how shocked I was by this brutality, she turned to me and said the unthinkable: “What can we do, they were poor, they were hungry!”
It is beyond the comprehension of any sane politically minded person to understand how an ideology dehumanizes you, how an ideology stops you from becoming human, how an ideology makes you separate people into two categories: those whose ideology has taught you to justify even the murders they commit, and their victims, who are now invisible in your eyes.
The murder of Manolis Kantaris shocked Greek society because it condensed in a few seconds the absolute absurdity of violence. A woman was going to give birth and instead of holding her husband’s hand, she saw him brutally murdered in the street. At that time, the debate about criminality and the sense of insecurity in the centre of Athens opened up strongly. But the most frightening thing was not just the crime. It was the ease with which some people were quick to justify it ideologically.
When political blindness leads you to look for extenuating circumstances for the killer instead of standing by the victim first, then something deeply human has been lost.Society cannot operate with two weights and measures against life and human dignity.
