Greece has its own Dominic Cummings — and things are about to get scary
By: Marita Vig
Tags: Cummings, Politics, Right Wing, Greece, Tourism

“Greek summer is a state of mind” is the slogan of a spot launched by the Greek Government, in collaboration with the Greek National Tourism Organisation and ‘Marketing Greece’. The campaign’s launch was marred from the beginning by the transparency around its funding.

Minister of Tourism, Haris Theoharis assigned a 32million euros fund to a production company, called ‘Marketing Greece’. Bypassing procedures that safeguard the transparency of public spending led to the resignation of four senior members of the Greek National Tourism Organisation. Eventually, ‘Marketing Greece’ decided to cover the campaign’s overall cost.

Aside of its turbulent launch, the campaign is worthy of further reflection as it is linked to a newly emerging approach to politics, inspired by Britain’s Dominic Cummings and rapidly spreading to countries aspiring to establish a similar relationship between new right-wing politics and advertising.

Relying mostly on tourism, the Greek economy has been heavily affected by movement restrictions in Europe this summer. Confronted with the dilemma of keeping the public safe or safeguarding the economy, the Greek Government had to find a way of managing the possibility of a touristless summer on a communication level, without taking political responsibility for it (i.e. safeguarding the country against a new pandemic, funding pandemic research and protection programs, hiring staff for hospitals in remote areas, bailing out the tourist sector, or furloughing hospitality staff).

The government is currently aiming at managing an imminent tourism-led crisis purely via aesthetics and rhetoric. This becomes evident in the campaign ‘Greece for Home’ conceived by Steve Vranakis — Mitsotakis’ closest advisor.

The campaign — of which the above spot belongs to a series of media events to come — plagiarises, rather alarmingly, the Dominic Cumming’s campaign tactics. It adopts a meaningless, emotionally manipulative slogan that confuses, disorients and blurs the boundaries between political communication and advertising.

What does it mean that the ‘Greek summer is a state of mind’? Is this a suggestion that maybe we do not need to visit Greece this summer? Should we just hold on to the image of the Greek empty beach, and forget about actual holidays? Is it all in the mind?

This is a campaign that seductively says: ‘we want you to visit Greece (because we financially depend on tourism), but we don’t really want you’ (because we wish to avoid another perilous health crisis). This ambiguous messaging, which echoes Boris’ latest tactics, is meant to confuse and disorient and in doing so, to displace the responsibility to the travellers. This is not a clear policy suggestion. This is rather the Greek government saying: ‘we want you, but we don’t want you. Read into that what you will’. It’s up to your state of mind.

This way the Greek government cannot be accused of not doing its best to safeguard the economy, but at the same time cannot be accused of not protecting the population either.

I feel alarmed by this pairing of politics and marketing. Like the Brexit campaign, ambiguous messaging serves to conceal a profound lack in policy suggestions, an ignorace over real social issues, political vision and leadership capability.

The Greek government’s adherence to Cummings-inspired tactics, I think, indicates that the damage of the Brexit campaign’s approach to politics is rapidly extending way beyond Britain.