SUNDAY KRISTALLNACHT

Whether Christos Christou’s appearance on Christiana Aristotelous’s Sunday Night TV show constitutes a normalisation of the far right depends entirely on a) what you consider “normalisation” to be and b) what you believe the far right actually is.

A sizeable portion of society declares its blind allegiance to the lads in black because they genuinely believe they’re “clean”, “anti-establishment” and “pure patriots”, whilst conveniently overlooking the fact that they spout racist, nationalist, bigoted, homophobic and occasionally conspiratorial/anti-science rhetoric. And this is either because they share the same views, or because they don’t consider human rights—particularly those of minorities and vulnerable groups—important, or at least not as important as their own problems. At best, they recognise the hate speech but simply aren’t bothered enough by it to ignore the aforementioned “virtues”. Each to their own priorities, I suppose.

This recent lifestyle whitewashing of the far right isn’t new, of course, nor is it even original. Like most Greek trends that take their sweet time reaching these shores, we’ve seen this film before with Golden Dawn, of which ELAM is essentially a branch—it’s just that since the parent company’s board of directors is rotting behind bars, the Cypriot subsidiary is operating under new management. The branding may have changed, but the hatred still lies coiled at its core. So when Golden Dawn was at its peak, it became far too hot and trendy to be confined to political reporting, with the result that photogenic members or supporters like Ilias Kasidiaris, athlete Voula Papachristou (a racist mug who threw away an entire career with one idiotic tweet—the far right aren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, after all) and others migrated to the trashy-baroque lifestyle universe with endless “features” about how they partied, who they were feuding with, and why their comments had caused offence yet again. When the criminal organisation’s true, murderous face was revealed, many lifestyle gurus threw their hands up Artemakis-style [Editor’s note: Artemakis is a character in the popular TV show “Vourate Geitonoi”] and exclaimed “it wasn’t me”, but here’s the thing: whatever you do, say or write is out there forever. When you stare into the abyss for too long, the abyss stares back into you. And the Greek media stared into the abyss for many years, through the keyhole and beyond. The monster didn’t just become familiar—it became an integral part of the tragicomic post-bailout Greek lifestyle.

Fast forward a decade and the same story is repeating itself as farce in Cyprus, which follows gasping and clumsily copying, particularly when it comes to pop (sub)culture matters. The ELAM president’s “humanising” appearance on Aristotelous was preceded by Christiana Artemiou’s rather cringeworthy attempt to “take the piss” out of ELAM by going with her Omega show’s team to their headquarters before Christmas to sing supposedly “satirical” carols. The key word is “supposedly”, because satirical they most certainly were not—instead, they sang an anthology of ELAM positions (“out with the illegal immigrants / you’re radicals”) that made the party’s members (basically some employees and Pelekanos—the leadership demonstratively gave them the cold shoulder, naturally) puff up with pride. The backlash was quite intense; no one expected this from Artemiou, whose political stance and character we all know. When I asked her why she did it, her answer didn’t differ much from the standard refrain of those who generally joke around with ELAM supporters: “They’re going to be the third party in Parliament, I couldn’t ignore them” (she also did DISY, AKEL and DIKO). She also disclaimed responsibility for her choice by saying “they’re in Parliament and I didn’t send them there”. Fair enough. But there’s a difference between them being treated in political terms by their parliamentary colleagues or journalistically as guests on talk shows, and being whitewashed with pleasantries and lifestyle hagiographies. It makes a massive difference. The former is a necessity, the latter a conscious choice.

Aristotelous, on the other hand, isn’t interested in politics, couldn’t give a toss about hate speech, and doesn’t hide behind pretexts of “fair representation” and “plurality of voices”. She’s only interested in her programmes’ struggling ratings on a tired and outdated medium that ceased being relevant a decade ago. This is someone who sat there grinning whilst Kostas Malekkos [Editor’s note: Costas Malekkos is a former footballer who appeared on Aristotelous’s TV show last year and said that “a man has the right to do whatever he wants… Women must accept that the man is the leader. Full stop!”, drawing a backlash from society] (another… stellar personality with all the depth of Lake Mackenzie) told her women should stay at home or that he’d… kill her if she left her husband—would she really baulk at the lifestyle whitewashing of Christos Christou? She simply needed to find the new Malekkos who’d make her show the talk of the town, even for all the wrong reasons, and she thought she’d found him in the ELAM president. But it’s not Saint Malekkos’s day every day. The segment with Christou turned out more tedious than watching paint dry, sending even his die-hard supporters into a boredom-induced coma. It didn’t even luck out on viewing figures, recording single digits despite the generous lead-in from “Bemba” [Editor’s note: “Bemba” is a TV show]. Sometimes you don’t need online campaigns or fiery articles to combat fascism—simple, ordinary, pure-bred… indifference will do.

In both cases, the attempt to “normalise” the far right failed spectacularly. In Artemiou’s case it backfired, alienating a large chunk of her regular audience; in the second instance, the television audience—what’s left of it—simply didn’t care, whilst on social media not a leaf stirred. Of course, it’s worth noting that these attempts were made, and that matters. If we’re lucky, it might serve as a cautionary tale that the far right isn’t suitable for cutesy antics and lifestyle banter—just as you can’t keep a Nile crocodile as a pet and then complain when it keeps treating you as lunch.

Because trust me, when ELAM reaches its peak and shows its true, worst face (not if, when), you do NOT want to be the ones who once tried to humanise the beast. That’s practically the Alpha and Omega of common sense… [Editor’s note: “Alpha and Omega” is a wordplay on Alpha TV and Omega TV, the two Cypriot television channels mentioned in the piece. The author is making a pun whilst also invoking the traditional meaning of “from A to Z” or “the beginning and the end”]

This article was first published on 03.02.2026

Source: SUNDAY KRISTALLNACHT