Redux
Every journey circles home
There is a young man I admire deeply. He is humble, hardworking, generous. He stands by migrants, helps those in need, and takes part in his community. He isn’t the kind of person who sits behind a desk drawing a salary. And precisely because he takes part in public life, he is angry at the system. He is frustrated with politicians, journalists, and bureaucracy.
He tries to stay outside the bubble of the establishment that only ever talks to itself. When I ask to interview him, to highlight his work, he always says no. He does not trust easily. And it matters that this young man, who is neither cynical nor self-interested, carries such a genuine sense of resistance within him. He does not think he is someone yet. “Not yet,” he tells me, with a touch of mischief, almost pleased that I cannot persuade him. He is in control of his own fight, and believe me, his path is only upward.
This young man smiles ironically when he sees the political system shaken by Fidias. He is glad when he sees traditional parties lose votes because of a YouTuber. And when I ask him about Fidias’ work, he says we should give him time. I tell him then, should we give all politicians time? Fidias has nothing measurable to show. A year after his election, he has achieved nothing. He himself admits that he cannot do anything alone. His simple answer is that Fidias disrupts the system, he annoys it.
It saddens me that he cannot see that this is all there is. That Fidias’ only “achievement” is to stir the waters. Not through action, but through the algorithm, and his political office is technology itself. He became a politician because he learned how to provoke, like Charlie Kirk in the United States, whom the international media call an activist, even though he built his career on a rhetoric of hatred. Fidias is the same phenomenon in Cypriot form, the child of the algorithm.
And now Fidias, wearing his clown’s nose, announces a political party. He steps into the circus, ready to deliver the final blow to the system and put it out of its misery. I will admit it, I felt the same strange satisfaction. I half-jokingly made the sign of the cross at the thought that if even half his voters stand by him, he could make a clean sweep in Parliament. I bit my lip and thought, maybe this is our revenge after all. Since abstention achieved nothing, maybe Fidias has become the voice of disillusionment, its symbol. Taking back, even through a false image and calculated deception, the sense of justice we lost.
Fidias launched his political party ‘Direct Democracy’
But that is the great misunderstanding. The problem with the Fidias phenomenon, like that of the algorithm itself, is that success never translates into quality or integrity. The louder you shout, the more clownish and provocative you become, the more visible you are. But that is not politics. It is not substance. It is only spectacle.
And so, the real victims are not the “system” that supposedly trembles, but all those decent people, inside or outside the parties, who keep fighting quietly, who lose battles but carry on, who do not know or do not want to play the communication game, who do not travel to Russia to say foolish things. They are the real politicians, but unfortunately the algorithm never shows them.
And yet, it is from them that hope should begin. Not from those who make noise, but from those who in their silence keep building something better. Because at the end of the day, the algorithm forgets. Society remains, and it will need once again real people, not phenomena.