University student Despoina Billia places candles on the ground next to a toy train set at a makeshift memorial for a deadly 2023 rail disaster, outside Parliament in Athens, Greece, on March 13, 2025. [Lefteris Pitarakis/AP]
I have noticed that sometimes developments that first appear in the USA happen also in Greece a few years later. For example the US – as well as a number of European countries – is going through a “peculiar” political time. We are witnessing the rise of a movement, supported by a substantial number of people, which stands not against a particular political party but rather against a system which, in their opinion, is working against the people.
The enemy of the people is, in their view, a system created by “them”; some wealthy and powerful individuals or a ruling educated elite or shadowy organizations. I have noticed that development in the USA and now I notice it in Greece as well. A major characteristic of the movement is its rejection of authority. By that I don’t mean only political authority but scientific, medical and scholarly as well. It started years ago with questions about vaccines; the story went that vaccines are causing a number of fatal illnesses, but “they,” motivated by profit, kept the truth from us; Covid became the culmination of vaccine denial. In the US and Greece there were wild claims circulating about conspiracies to kill people with vaccines because “they” wanted to replace us with outsiders, mostly refugees.
The above, and many other theories, resulted in widespread mistrust towards well-established and respected institutions. The American Medical Association is controlled by “them”; the justice system is a tool of “theirs.” Scientists and professors (this last accusation hits too close to home for me) are the mouthpiece for “them.”
The latest manifestation of this phenomenon in Greece has to do with the Tempe tragedy. I am not an expert on trains, explosions, fires etc. Thus, I rely on expert opinion. Meanwhile in Greece there is a part of the population which believes that the explosion was caused by contraband and that there has been a government cover-up. I was not willing to reject such a theory offhand, but when a number of well-known and qualified experts claim otherwise, most recently a well-respected professor from the National Technical University of Athens, I have to side with the experts. This though is not the case in Greece today. A large number of people reject expert opinion and side with their “instinct” that the government is covering up or relying on dubious “experts” or has its own theories of what happened.
The result is that Greece is about to emulate the USA where there is no common ground anymore. People believe, without a shred of evidence, that the 2020 elections were stolen, or that Canada is an enemy of the US etc. Without factual truth people cannot communicate effectively and reach logical conclusions. Because if we cannot agree on what caused Covid, Tempe etc, but rather half of us believe fairy tales, then what is true and what is not? Will we listen to experts, knowing that none is infallible, or are we going to depend on rumor, innuendo and conspiracy theories?
The Greeks, like other people recently, are losing confidence in science, scholarship and the justice system; are they about to lose faith in their democratic system also? And, if so, what will they replace it with? Will they turn their backs on reality and logic in favor of imaginary solutions which will provide neither a “Greek Solution” nor will they set the country towards a “Course of Freedom”?
John Mazis is professor of history at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.