Sassy and bold Fotini Pipili, one of the most outspoken conservative New Democracy MPs totally fouled up today in our opinion and certainly she lost the respect of many conservative voters today. In a live cat fight that was televised on MEGA channel, Pipili and MP for the Independent Greeks party Mrs. Rahil Makri stretched out their nails and raised their voices to one another over what is "politically correct" and what is a "scientific point of view".
Let us be more specific, Pipili believes that DIMAR MP's Maria Repoussi's denial about the GENOCIDE of the Greeks in Pontus and Asia Minor is a "scientific point of view" whereas Elias Kassidiaris' denial of the Jewish Holocaust is an outright insult on democracy and not a "politically correct" statement to make.
Instead of inviting Elias Kassidiaris to explain why he questions the Jewish Holocaust, the hosts on MEGA channel's morning talk show decided to instead invite two members from parliament to talk about it. Basically their plan was to slam Kassidiaris for expressing his "politically incorrect" opinion, and allow the two ladies to begin bashing the Golden Dawn party and holding them accountable for his statements. But their plan backfired, because they forgot that last week Maria Repoussi, who without shame denied the genocide of the Greeks in Turkey, described the dance at Zalogo in Epirus as a myth!
The debate heated up when Fotini Pipili began to heavily criticize Kasidiaris for his statements, and this is when Makris jumped in and said that indeed criticism should be exercised against him, however parliamentarians should also exercise the same criticism against Maria Repoussi for her statements last week as well.
For some odd reason, this struck a nerve in Mrs. Pipilis and she exploded!
"It is inconceivable to compare fascists to a scientific point of view"!Excuse us Mrs. Pipili? Denying the genocide of the Greek people is a "scientific point of view" because a leftist says it, but when someone from the right says something similar then they are considered fascist and it a "politically incorrect" statement to make?
Are you kidding us?
Exactly which party do you represent in Parliament because we are totally confused!
To be quite honest, I was totally flabbergasted with her statement and although I support the New Democracy party, and have done so for years, I was totally blown away with what she said. Now don't get me wrong, Mrs. Makris is indeed outspoken and from what it looks like she is quite rough around the edges a bit, but what she said today on live television is absolutely sound and true.
But it did not stop there.
I also noticed that when Mrs. Pipilis ran out of points to back up her argument -meaning that she wanted to avoid being grilled for the statement she made about Repoussi- she began to use a very well known PASOK tactic of belittling the person she was speaking to. In other words, she began to take personal blows against Mrs. Makris.
This indeed shocked us here at HellasFrappe, and me personally, because until now only leftists, especially from PASOK, used this tactic.
Let me explain: Whenever PASOK ran out of points to back up its argument they would always result to mudslinging in a ploy to intimidate the person that was arguing with them and to turn public attention away from the topic discussed to where they wanted it to go. Well Mrs. Pipilis did exactly that. Up to now we only saw characters such as Adonis Georgiadis using this tactic, and we never hid our disgust and our criticism, and unfortunately today we saw the same tactic being used by Mrs. Pipilis.
Mrs. Makri should not be looked at as a victim either because when Pipilis began to personally attack her she allowed her nails grow to extreme lengths and began to attack back!
And since Mrs. Pipilis was on a role she turned to Makris and asked: Are you a historian or have a brilliant career? And obviously Makris answered: Why are you?
"Maybe when I reach your age I will have a brilliant career."OUCHHHHHH - Mrs. Makri hit Mrs.Pipilis way below the belt on that one given that Mrs. Pipilis is a more mature woman. (In other words almost twice the age of Makris).
(Mrs. Makris should have asked Pipilis what prompted her to defend Maria Repoussi, but in these sort of cat fights we discovered in the most unpleasant way that there are no rules.)
The conversation continued and both women began raising their voices at each other more and more. Certainly this is good for the ratings, but certainly not something that someone wants to experience early in the morning! (At this point my coffee began tasting like mud, and I needed some asprin to calm down the migraine they were both giving me.)
And when Mrs. Makris took the conversation back to the terrible statement that Mrs. Pipilis said, then Mrs. Pipilis decided to strike harder and she began to question how Mrs. Makris got hired by the Greek public sector.
The following dialoge took place:
F. Pipili - Let us see your resume Mrs. Makri
R. Makri - To see what? What are you implying?
F. Pipili - We've already seen it. You think you are a know-it all.
R. Makri - And you are a racist against Greek parliamentarians!
F. Pipili - Tell us how you get hired by the public sector?
R. Makri - Why don't you tell us since you already know.
F. Pipili - (You did not get hired) with meritocracy ...
R. Makri - (At this point she turns to the journalists) Adise her (Mrs. Pipilis) to stop attacking me personally.
And all of this because Mrs. Makris dared to criticize a statement that Mrs. Pipilis made about what is democratically acceptable by a society and what is not.
I like Mrs. Pipilis, but in all honestly she really struck out today. She has to realize that what sets apart conservatives from leftists in this country is their consistency in their beliefs. They never flip-flop and they always put the interests of the nation and the people before anything else. Adopting tactics from PASOK, or other conservative foreign wannabes like Adonis Georgiadis, is not going to cut it and quite frankly its insulting to all of us who advocate for the New Democracy party.
As for Mrs. Makri, she needs to definitely iron out those rough edges and her approach. Nonetheless, we have to admit that today she was absolutely right in criticizing Pipilis' statements.
Mrs. Pipili should have known better. The statement she made today probably shocked conservative voters in Greece who have had it up to here with all this leftist rhetoric. Does Mrs. Pipilis want to elevate the popularity of the Golden Dawn party even more? Did she even realize what she said? How can one opinion be condemned while the other patted on the back?
As for Elias Kassidiaris and his opinions about the Jewish Holocaust, this is indeed a shame. We most certainly respect a person's right to interpret history any which way he or she pleases, but this is all it is. An interpretation. It cannot be considered as a fact. History cannot be rewritten, and it certainly cannot be revised and whether he likes it or not this is a historical FACT. The Jewish Holocaust was the worse chapter of the Second World War, and whoever does not recognize this needs to do some serious reading.
As for "scientific point of views" over "politically correct" statements... This is a HOGWASH. We cannot close our eyes as a society to Maria Repoussi's statements and only point our finger at people like Kassidiaris for basically doing the same thing. This is undemocratic!
Shame on all of them... Anyway you slice this story, it stinks from all sides.
Signed
Marina Spanos
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