Before the Olympics have even officially opened, a member of the Greek Olympic team, triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou (disrespectfully referred to in hostile news accounts by the nickname “Voula”), has been removed from the team for posting a joke on Twitter.
News reports seem to indicate that her membership in an “extreme right-wing” Greek political party [highly prejudiced Wikipedia article] was an additional factor in her expulsion from the team.
The offending tweet read: With so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!
The international press, including such relatively conservative British papers as the Telegraph [quoted below] and the Daily Mail, fell into PC-lockstep, describing the young lady’s private joke as “racist” and “offensive.”
[T]he Hellenic Olympic Committee came under pressure from within Greece to take action against 23-year-old Papachristou, who had also publicly supported the Golden Dawn politician Ilias Kasidiaris, when he criticised Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s immigration position.
She had previously retweeted promotional videos from the political party, which gained seven per cent of the vote in the recent Greek elections.
The head of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, Isidoros Kouvelos, said Papachristou had “showed no respect for the basic Olympian value†in her latest tweet.
“She made a mistake and in life we pay for our mistakes,†he told Skai TV.
Papachristou took to social media sites Facebook and Twitter to apologise for the “unfortunate and tasteless jokeâ€, adding she was sorry and ashamed for the negative responses, especially to her family and coach George Pomaski.
“I never wanted to offend anyone, or to encroach human rights,†she said.
Papachristou said she dreamt of doing well in London and argued that she respected the Olympic values and apologised to friends and athletes whom she may have insulted.
“My dream is connected to the Olympic Games and I could not possibly participate if I did not respect their values,†she said. “Therefore, I could never believe in discrimination between human beings and races.â€
Pomaski said the expulsion from the Olympic team was harsh and out of proportion, especially as she had apologised.
This is the way we live now. There is no freedom of speech on social media. We all live under the supervision of an international authority representing the consensus of the elite community of fashion empowered to punish any case of speech or expression it finds objectionable. Europeans additionally can be punished for affiliation with inappropriate political parties. Unelected bodies like Olympic Committees and the NCAA can apply whatever punishments and penalties they like without appeal.
I’m not myself precisely sure just when it was that we were actually subjugated and occupied and lost our freedom of thought and expression as well as our right to due process and democratic institutions, but it certainly has happened, hasn’t it?
SDD
Does anyone think that if her tweet had been an insensitive joke about conservatives or Christians there would have been any action whatsoever?
This is the way it unfolded in Nazi Germany and the Soviet countries. You were warned what sorts of things you would be rewarded for saying and what sort of speech would be punished. All of the “wrong” speech went away. Life was wonderful — especially among the Hitler Jugend.
No Man
Does her father own a liquor store?
GoneWithTheWind
Well at least she didn’t say she was opposed to gay marriage.
xwris
I dont care at all about the story of this uneducated racist s**t, but i’d like to remark that the wikipedia article about golden dawn has been re-visited, extended, completed, and now full of bibliographic references and quotations from its own members that only a mythomaniac lunatic could still refuse to accept, in order to remain in his violence-driven psychotic bubble…
So if you still think the article is prejudiced, you’re probably one of them and should get back to school to learn how study, research and argumentation are made.
Let’s how much your thrive for “freedom of speech” can last with this comment.
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