On Thursday Venizelos accused small bondholders of a 'fascistic mentality' because they dared to interrupt his campaign speech.
The bondholders who lost all their savings during his reign at the Ministry of Economy in 2012 (or during the PSI that was engineered by Venizelos himself) were suddenly "fascistic" to his majesty because they lost their lifetime savings.
(It should be reminded that Venizelos' 2012 debt write down, deprived about 15,000 Greek citizens who bought Greek bonds as a secure deposit of their entire life savings. During the haircut, Venizelos failed to exempt small bondholders from the write-down, claiming it was impossible to negotiate that with the troika of Greece's creditors. Before the 2012 elections, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and Venizelos had pledged to rectify a situation which they admitted was an injustice, but -as with many other moments over the last three years- Samras had remained purposely vague on precisely how this would be accomplished and with what funding. That is why no action to remunerate the thousands of impoverished bondholders has been taken in the last two years. It should also be wise to remember that the total deregulation of the Greek labor market was pushed through during Venizelos' tenure as finance minister.)
And if that wasn't enough, a half dozen security guards descended on the small group of protesters to contain them as well. They were forcibly removed from the Benaki museum where his Majesty Evangelos the Large was speaking and then dragged to a local police station for doing the obvious... demanding answers as to why his mistakes wiped away all of their life savings.
His spontaneous remark about them having a 'fascistic mentality' sparked quite a few eyebrows to be raised, and that is why he later confessed that certain small bondholders suffered an injustice, but quickly defended his actions noting that it was for the "general good" of the Greek economy.
Nonetheless, he complained that they now want to hold him accountable for the repercussions of this action.
Dahhhh.... Some would say. It was his decision and jurisdiction to steal their life savings.
It is not the first time that Venizelos - and other government members, such as Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis – have accused protesters and political opponents of being fascists. In an appearance last year on a town hall-type political talk show, Venizelos hysterically attacked a citizen by calling him a fascist because the man dared to criticise his policies. Some may remember this scene on the E-nikos live show where his majesty Evangelos furiously banged his fist on the table (in a bullying manner).
Top government officials and pro-government media have routinely likened vocal protests at political events to fascist practices. In most cases, they attempt to link such disruptive protesters to main opposition SYRIZA or to "corrupt" trade unionists.
To some degree this is true, in other cases they are supporters of incompetent George Papandreou -an arch rival of Venizelos-, but most of the time they are simple citizens who have had it up to here with Venizelos and his corrupt PASOK/Elia party.
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