With leftists like these, who needs any enemies?

It is always the same old thing here in Greece. If any type of organization gathers for a rally of any kind, a handful of anarchists arrive with molotov cocktails in hand, poised and ready to create the violence of the evening. They always refer to these so-called anarchists as leftists, but it seems the American idea of a leftist is completely different from the Greek idea of a leftist. What we consider "left" in America is generally "socialist" here. And I don't mean socialist in a Marxist sense, either. I mean socialist as in a "provide for your citizens" kind of way.

I may be misunderstanding the nuances of Greek (and possibly European) politics, but things here don't work quite the same way they do in the U.S. You don't have two party system (yes, I understand there are other parties in America, but they generally don't win seats in Congress, except for an Independent here and there, which isn't really a party now, is it?), you have multiple parties in Parliament that cover every possible shade of conservatism and liberalism possible. You don't elect Parliamentary members separately like Americans do their Congress, you vote for a party, and whichever party wins is the one whose leader gets to be Prime Minister. Parliament is filled by members of each party according the percentages won in the vote, I believe (someone correct me if I am wrong here, my husband is sleeping so I can't verify). At first I found the system strange, but it seems to make a bit of sense. EDIT: Ok, I got this a bit wrong. Greeks don't vote for their Prime Minister by name, but by party (so I got that right). Each prefecture has a certain number of seats in Parliament so they vote in their Parliamentary members separately. Or something. It is confusing me a little bit now. At any rate, it doesn't work entirely like it does in the U.S.

Now, as one would expect, there is constant fighting amongst the parties, just like in the good ol' U.S. of A. It seems that second place party is always mudslinging the party that is in power (gee, imagine that) and that smaller parties get on board with the second place party. In the end, it is all a bunch of bullshit, just like anything else, but it is occasionally fun to watch, and listen to the heated exchanges that ensue. I've said before, Greeks are loud talkers in their normal tone, so just imagine the decibel level of political invective.

I digress. In light of all this, you can imagine that there is always some group that is dissatisfied with the government or its policies in some way, and so they stage rallies. These rallies are almost always planned and announced ahead of time, and they are almost always infiltrated by these anarchists/leftists who have nothing better to do than throw cheap bombs, beat up cars and destroy neighborhoods.

And so again, it has happened, and this time they interfered with the neo-Nazi rally I mentioned a couple of days ago. It is one thing when this happens to a simple protest, but when the protest is about peace, or combatting Nazi-ism, this kind of behavior really ruins things, and the real cause loses all credibility. Devious Diva made a good post about this tonight.

It is really a shame, I think, but I am not sure any of these battles will ever be won. Then again, I'm a pessimist. Perhaps I should spend my time posting about funny things, and just stop paying attention to anything political. But god forbid a mouthy American ever manages to keep quiet about anything. Hell just might freeze over.