A tourist boat carrying more than 270 souls capsized off the coast of Kyrenia. Hundreds of people are in the water; seven deaths have been confirmed, and dozens are missing. And how did the proud, patriotic Greek-Cypriot online community react?
With the classic digital cesspool ranging from relatively mild reactions that criticize the media outlets reporting the news for not writing “occupied Kyrenia” (yes, that is their problem) all the way to hardcore Greek-Christian hate speech that includes “death threats,” wishes for “everyone reach the depths,” and poetry confirming that we have culture coming out of our ears (“Good bulgur wheat, let not a single nostril be left intact”) and queries about the crying emojis the website posted, since “They’re Turks; not even the sea can stand them anymore.” The value of human life seems to be strictly quantified based on origin and DNA.
And they’re writing this publicly, with their faces and names visible. Unabashedly and passionately, believing they’re fulfilling a national duty. I don’t think anyone needs to tell them that no lost homeland has ever been liberated through online rants, and that the mountains are there for anyone who wants to take up arms and start a guerrilla war (let’s just spout some nonsense to pass the time)—after all, who exactly are you supposed to talk to? A conversation with a brick would be more productive. Just think—with that cesspool for a mouth, they kiss their mother, their children (who they’ve probably shaped to be just like them), and the icons in the church (which, if miracles really happened, would be a good reason for them to weep black tears).
They’re also predictable, too. You know what kind of crap you’ll find in the comments section of such news stories on very specific websites (which, of course, don’t delete them—vultures feed on corpses, after all); they swarm like sharks around an open wound. Do you remember the deadly earthquakes of February '23 in Turkey and Syria, where among the countless dead there were also 34 Cypriots, including 22 of the 35 members of the volleyball team from occupied Famagusta? They wrote the same things—and worse—back then; in fact, they attributed the earthquake to… divine punishment. The same God who allowed the disaster of '74 to happen in the first place, but let’s not get bogged down in details. Looking for logic in this nonsense is even more futile than expecting a minister to resign out of a sense of decency.
Of course, this wretchedness is neither new nor accidental. It is a deep-seated, deeply ingrained social pathology rooted in deep, incurable complexes, obsessions, and repressed feelings that have absolutely nothing to do with the traumas of '74—at least for most of them. This utterly misguided “patriotism” is in reality a smokescreen for their utter inability to come to terms with half a century of occupation, political stagnation, and their own pettiness, as they desperately seek cheap victories. They don’t have the guts to confront the real occupier, so they rejoice at the death of any unrelated compatriot of his (of course that makes sense, right?). They spew hatred from the safety of their couches to feel, even if just for five minutes on Facebook, like national heroes at no cost and without having contributed the slightest thing to their country. It’s the revenge of the cowardly wimp who, as a kid, used to bully the younger kids but would run for cover when their older brothers showed up. You surely remember him from school; he remained the same jerk because progress doesn’t sit around waiting—it passes you by and leaves you still drawing on the walls of your cave.
Hate has now become performative. The commentators so aptly referenced by the (sarcastically) far-right icon Dirty Harry (“opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one”) are essentially putting on a show in front of their digital herd, with “likes” and “preach, man” comments serving as algorithmic reinforcement. The more inhumane you become, the more of a “patriot” you’re labeled in the microcosm of your online a**hole. Brutality is legitimised as national consciousness because this is precisely the “nation” we have built on delusions, Grand Ideas, and a fictitious sense of cultural superiority.
For half a century now, the perennial question remains whether we’ll be able to live in a shared state with the Turkish Cypriots, as if we’ve already solved the problem of coexisting in the same state with our own scum.
Source: OUR COLLECTIVE WRECK
