How much will the fatal accident affect the political landscape Pace; Are mobilizations, demonstrations and protests evidence of a resurgence of the anti-system current that caused the 2012 electoral earthquake? Or are these fears premature and exaggerated?

Questions have been tormenting the party headquarters for the last 24 hours. Poll analysts can’t provide answers yet as the count hasn’t been completed yet. However, indicative of the climate is a phenomenon observed by an experienced sociologist. “For the first time in years, so many people hang up on us,” he says. This fact not only complicates the work of sociologists, but also makes their conclusions unreliable, since the final sample will not include those who are currently obsessed with a sense of general rejection of the political system.

The protests that followed the train crash have some features that distinguish them from the demonstrations of the “outraged” against the memorandums. Perhaps most impressively, a very large proportion of the youth are mobilizing – even young students are taking to the streets – it seems that the great mobilization of young people is also affecting elders, parents and relatives who share the need for protest action. Protest events, with the exception of isolated cases, are peaceful in nature, without violent outbreaks, and an interesting feature is that they spread throughout the country, not limited to two large urban centers, and even there, outside the center, mass gatherings of people, regional, in some regions, protest actions are organized with noticeable participation.

Can we see this trend in the anti-parliamentary form that it had during the years of the memorandums, with attempts to invade parliament, hangings, violent antics? “The event that sparked the protests is very strong and shocking in itself, but we also need to take into account the wider environment,” notes PULSE CEO George Arapoglu. He adds that while no one can exclude anything, “there are no conditions that would make us consider it possible to develop with extreme attitudes and reactions like those in the first memorable years. Such a scenario is unlikely due to the different conditions in society as a whole,” he adds.

“What we’re seeing has many elements of what political science calls a ‘transformational event,'” says Kostas Gussis, coordinator of the Generation Z – Voice on Air project at Eteron, the Institute for Research and Social Change. “Every time we see it, it’s a harbinger of something bigger,” he adds. The head of Eteron, Gavriel Sakellaridis, believes that the mobilization that followed the accident in Tempe is in many ways similar to what followed the assassination of Alexis Grigoropoulos. “They share common characteristics in terms of mass and dispersed mobilizations that did not have the violent outbreak of 2008,” he says. And he emphasizes that what happened in 2008 did not cause serious events on the central political scene, but formed the identity of radicalization among a part of the new generation, the results of which were visible later. “It is open to what extent this will have political consequences right now,” he emphasizes.

“They hang up on us,” says a well-known sociologist, reflecting the mood of the day.

University of Macedonia political science professor Nikos Marantsidis sees the tragic accident at Tempe as a realistic reflection of the Lost Generation experience, which seems to be ingrained in people under 35. “These are those who in 2010, at the beginning of the crisis, were about 20 years old, and they were the youngest. The economic crisis is a crossover point because children, teenagers, young people start to lose things and subsequently begin to experience degradation in the labor market with great uncertainty, high unemployment, flexible forms of employment, low wages. This generation is failing. And the second section follows, a pandemic for the smallest. Children who survived the pandemic in their student years are outraged because they believe that from a very young age they made the most victims. They were deprived of sociability, company, carelessness, student life, relationships, forced to live more with their parents. All this is summarized in the experience of the lost generation, and this generation identifies with the real loss of lives that were lost in Tempi,” says Mr. Marantsidis.

The accumulated oppression of the pandemic can also be traced to the current mobilizations of Mr. Gusis, who explains that already in 2021, in the Eteron survey, the profile of the new politicization of the new generation appeared in every fourth young person, 25%, claims to have taken part in protests on a number of issues (environmental, gender identity, university police, anti-fascist, on all issues except anti-vaccination).

With mobility established and the search for safety valves in a new generation whose endurance is being put to the test, the question is whether and how all of this will be expressed politically. A common view seems to be that anti-systemic tendencies are on the rise.

“We cannot ignore the impact of social media. By the age of 30, traditional media such as television tend to disappear and social media takes over. These are not just other shows, but also other performances, other instruments. Different rhetoric, different prioritization, different content, which forms a completely different direction,” emphasizes Mr. Marantsidis, who believes that “the anti-system element absolutely dominates among young people, and this will be reflected in the elections. N.D. already having difficulty at this age, but I don’t think SYRIZA will see anything spectacular as a win either. I think small parties will be strengthened.” He adds that what appears as a protest probably cannot have the characteristics of a political party. “In Greece, we don’t have generational parties,” he says, adding, however, that “because it’s done in the form of a tsunami, it could influence political events.”

“It is difficult to assess whether and how all this will be politically expressed in the elections. We definitely have an increase in anti-systemic tendencies,” Mr. Goussi also assesses. Mr. Sakellaridis emphasizes timeliness. “The accident happened when we were actually in the pre-election period. No matter how far the election moves, the problem and its imprint will still be alive, so its effect will be greater.”

But will this affect anyone other than young and old voters? Mr. Sakellaridis thinks so. He explains that in the case of Grigoropoulos, the young people who took to the streets, it was quite difficult for the family to identify with what happened. “Now, however, it really could be anyone. Everyone’s child traveling in the theoretically safest way. This experiential element is a multiplier that affects parents, affects grandparents, and has the potential to lead to a larger effect on the political level,” he comments.