“Wired”
All animals are “wired” to strive to survive, to live in relative comfort, and to live symbiotically.
Therefore, humans, as animals, have all these qualities. In addition they have a brain that can think technologically and in a much lesser degree to think scientifically.
Ordinary humans, apply this additional technological ability to survive, live in relative comfort, and live symbiotically. By “ordinary” we mean exactly that: survival, comfort, symbiosis.
However, at some point in human history, some humans, individually or in a group, managed to usurp the technological achievements of the ordinary people and use it to their advantage and then, they elected themselves as “leaders.” Probably, originally it was the physically stronger, but mentally and morally weaker, individuals who started this racket of “leadership.”
Now, a single person or a small group of persons cannot impose their will on the many. So, the leaders have to use violence to impose their will. The instrument to do that was and is the thug.
But before we go on with the “evaluation” of the thug, it is useful to clarify who are “the many.”
Our “western” civilization, already spread over the entire planet by the US [Empire], is based on the ancient Greek intellectual culture. Let us, then, examine what the intellectuals of the ancient Greeks thought about “the many.”
In most English dictionaries there is a strange-sounding Greek entry: “Hoi polloi” [pronounced as hoy poloy, accent on both “o”s]. There is no Greek who would be able to recognize that sound as Greek. Also, if explained to him what are the actual Greek words he will probably burst into laughter. The actual Greek words are: “oi polloi”, pronounced as “ee pollee”, accent on the final”ee”. The “oi” is the plural of the masculine definite article. The “polloi” is the plural of the adjective “polys”, which means a lot, many. Therefore, the dictionary entry “oi polloi” means “the many.” For this article we shall use the form for the correct sound, that is the form “ee pollee.”
The ancient Greeks with the expression “ee pollee” referred to the ordinary people in contrast to those that were considered as the intellectual elites. Especially, for Socrates and Plato “oi polee,” as ignorant and unreasonable, deserved only contempt. Thus, that other august class, the intellectual elites of the West, many centuries ago, swallowed the Socratic contempt hook, line and sinker. For example, Erasmus (1466 – 1536), that great admirer of the ancient Greeks, defined ee pollee as: “the multitude of the gross people,” where, of course, the word “gross” meant: ignorant or untutored. Thus, we find, in 1853, Roget’s Thesaurus defining ee pollee as: “the herd,” “the beast with many heads,” “the great unwashed,” etc. By the way, the Greek word “Thesauros” means treasure!
[Parenthesis: In my Greek high school, in the 1940s, we were reading all about the trial of Socrates in the original texts. The teacher, a rather sympathetic oldster, had the “serious” task of protecting us from the “miasma” of communism. So, he was striving to prove to us that “ee pollee” were simply shit. So, one day standing in the middle of the classroom, he raised the palm of his right hand and declared; “Here, see (!), my fingers do not all have the same length”, and so, after having demolished the demand that humans should be socially equal, he triumphantly returned to his seat.]
Needless to say that through this contempt for ee pollee, the world gained leaders as W. Bush, Ashcroft , or Cheney.
The thug
The thug has been “used” continuously through human history in all places under all kinds of names; “sthag” in India [its birthplace], “trabuco” in Spain, “kabadayi” in Turkey, etc. However, at some point it gained a dignified name full of “patriotism” and “social sensitivity”. The name: “National-socialist”, also known as “Nazi.”
A very interesting and historical ‘’use” of thugs took place in Corinth, one of the most important cities of the Greek antiquity. Corinth was so rich and cultured that there was a slogan that declared: “It is not attainable for everybody to sail to Corinth.” Inevitably, Corinth became the home of, Lais (421- 340 BCE), the most beautiful and expensive prostitute in ancient history.
Around 52 years after the birth of Christ this is what happened in Corinth:
“After these things Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth. … Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision. Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace: … for I have much people [Greek Christians] in this city [Corinth]. … Then all the (Christian) Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the [Jewish] synagogue and beat him…” [The Acts, 18:1-18, The King James’ Version of the Bible].
We have to note that those Jews in Corinth, at that time, were immigrants.
Two thousand years after the incident in Corinth with Saint Paul and the Greek thugs, again in Corinth a certain Greek named Bookooras, the leader of the Greek Nazis in Corinth, repeated the feat with the help of the brave local Nazi-thugs. Two years ago they chased a group of dark-skinned immigrants at the port of Corinth, who to survive plunged into the sea at the harbor of Corinth. That they did not drown was not due to the benevolence of the Nazi-thugs. Finally, Bookooras, a Nazi member of the Greek Parliament, was imprisoned for participating in a criminal organization. When he had to defend himself in the Parliament he started crying asking to be released from prison.
Another recent “use” of the Nazi-thugs in an extremely obscene way, was that in Ukraine where the U.S. Embassy “used” the historically very “effective” murderous Ukraine Nazi-thugs to, in essence, initiate an occupation of the Ukraine by the U.S., through the EU, as a proxy. A repeat of what happened in Greece in the 1940s and which lasts up to this day.
The ruling world elites while “creating” their “instruments” of violence spread the work of the thug over a short spectrum. On one end of the spectrum there is the “lumpen-thug” and on the other end there are the rather aristocratic military. In the middle there is the policeman, a combination of both ends: the “militarized thug.”
[Note: That, among the military, there are some individuals who are “normal” persons, does not diminish the universal truth about the spectrum of “instruments” of violence.]
So, who are the people who become lumpen-thugs, that is, Nazis?
A general remark: These individuals have a common characteristic. They have crooked personalities and that crookedness was mostly acquired through the family, the elementary school, poverty, etc.
– We start with the most obvious candidates: the sadists. A choice based on the testimony of a world class expert: Rudolph Diels, the “creator” of the “GeStaPo” of Hitler.
– The regular crooks with a criminal record.
– Many males that happen to have or create [chemically] a massive muscular system.
– Persons that feel weak in body and personality, who seek protection through a violent group.
– Complex-ridden, patriotic persons. [Scoundrels according to Samuel Johnson.]
– And so on…
Concluding, we can say that the the “lumpen thugs” are a very valuable instrument for the “rulers”, especially during the initial stages of their “rule.” As was mentioned elsewhere, this stage can be called the “Roehm-phase” of the Nazis, in “honor” of Hitler’s master-thug, Ernst Roehm.
The lumpen-thugs, due to the innate honesty of ordinary people, are not numerous. However, after the task of the lumpen-thugs succeeds to initiate the process of Nazification, follows the phase of recruiting of the crypto-Nazis, the protest-vote proles, and finally the politically conservative persons.
The present Greek case of Nazis
As in all societies so in Greece the “thug” had and still has a prominent role, especially as an instrument of foreign powers. Today, the Nazi-“lumpen thugs” in Greece probably constitute the “Roehm-phase.” It seems that at this stage of the Roehm-phase the task of the Greek Nazi-“lumpen thugs” was that of provocation, nauseating provocation. As members [!] of the Greek Parliament the only pejorative they have not used against the rest of the parliamentarians, during the sessions of the Parliament, is “mother f…s.”
More than half of the Greeks [6 million out of 10.5 million] are at or below the poverty level. Consequently, there is a part of the population that are protest-voters. The Greek protest-voters are the people that have being jobless for about three years, have kids, do not have electricity, do not have medical coverage, do not have heat in their homes, and live in total misery. These are; the laid off public servants and private employees, shop-keepers of shops closed in the hundreds of thousands, jobless young people with university degrees, etc.
Unfortunately, here there is a sad phenomenon. A number of these people who are completely destitute and who up to now voted for conservative parties today vote for the Nazis. On the other hand, a part of these conservative and destitute people vote for the Left, that is SYRIZA.
[Note: The family as a “voting unit” is an important factor in contemporary societies. The role of the father is important in relation to the children. The rule is the children follow the ideology of the father. The mother and the daughters, as females, have more pronounced the innate anarchistic tendencies, yet there is the biological instinctive preference to the good-looks of a politician, at least at this stage of the human evolution. For example, for the last couple of years, according to all the opinion polls, SYRIZA of the Left was ahead of the governing extreme rightwing New Democracy (ND) by 3% to 3.5 %. Yet, in the meantime, the approval for Samaras, the ND leader and Prime Minister, was about 10 percentage points above the young and handsome Tsipras. My explanation: many Greek women consider Samaras more good-looking.]
To close this article here is the situation of the possible results for the January 25, 2014 parliamentary elections in Greece according to an opinion poll published January 15 in the satirical paper “To Pontiki (the Mouse)”:
– SYRIZA of the Left: 32.4 %
– New Democracy, Extreme Rightwing: 28.9 %
– “To Potami (The River)”, a supposedly center-right party, created very recently, in an effort to dissuade protest-voters to vote for SYRIZA: 5.3 %
– Nazis: 5.2 %
– Communist Party (Stalinist): 4.2 %
– PASOK “Socialists” [!]: 3.7 %