Redux
Every journey circles home
George Gavriel became the target of bullying. Nationalist zealots, ELAM-affiliated candidates and anonymous voices online sought to lecture society on respect for the divine and their so-called higher ideals through vulgar comments, threats and fabricated posts. This is often the price paid by those who challenge dominant narratives.
Alongside them stand politicians. Efthymios Diplaros, an elected Member of Parliament and a representative of democracy, is a case in point. For the purposes of this column, politicians, parties and MPs are those who in recent years have been eager to introduce legislation restricting rights online, even if this simultaneously gags journalists, largely to shield themselves from the mockery and criticism of commentators.
Diplaros himself shared on social media a fabricated collage falsely attributed to the artist and educator George Gavriel, apparently without grasping the danger of distorting an artist’s work to discredit and expose him. It is a stark illustration of how populism deepens when misinformation is legitimised by political office.
Yet the most disturbing aspect of this affair lies with the media. When journalists, the custodians of freedom of expression, adopt the methods of bullies, the threat becomes institutional. Intolerance is normalised. Intimidation is amplified. Media outlets that reproduce or endorse falsehoods do not merely report events; they actively undermine art and artist alike, dressing verbal aggression up as journalistic duty.
Bullying by the media is not simply an extreme opinion. It is a violation of journalistic ethics and an erosion of democracy itself. If journalists believe that art should not provoke, disturb or challenge, then they should limit their own work to voices they agree with, avoid questioning power. That, however, is not journalism. It is a profound injury to any society that claims to value freedom.
Journalists should be the first to refuse silence and to resist any attempt to restrict expression, creativity and the act of questioning that artists produce by their very nature.
Oh yes. Journalists, above all others, must protect George Gavriel as the apple of our eye. Once artists are bullied into silence, we lose courage but mainly vision.