If by some miracle the “faces” of Ancient Greece appeared in today’s Armenia, they would undoubtedly first record that their democracy does not exist in our country.

Moreover, they would not have missed the fact that today’s Armenia is more like a tyranny.

However, they would not stop there. Analyzing the current political and social life of our country, they would make two more important diagnoses, one of which I will talk about now.

There is no politics in today’s Armenia. This bitter truth would not escape the eyes of the wise. Instead of politics, we witness violence, from verbal to physical. If everything is clear in the sense of physical, then it is necessary to explain a little more about verbal violence.

After 2018, political discourse is increasingly replaced by shouting, and these are not a sign of discussion, but of violence. At the initiative of the ruling regime, the relationship between the government and the opposition was filled with noise instead of content, and this game is unequal, because even in this “sport” imposed by them, when the government gets hit back, its response is dishonest. the war of words turns into actual physical violence against the opposition.

Figuratively speaking, the regime first turns the political fight into MMA, and then, when the other party resists with the new rules, trying to defend himself with MMA methods, he is removed from the ring by “security” forces.

The political life of our country is antagonistic, and antagonism leads to conflicts, conflicts to violence, violence to the end of politics. This is the matrix of modern authoritarianism. outwardly pluralistic, ultimately repressive.

And this is anti-political, because politics is inherently, inherently about differences. Doing politics means dealing with differences.

The current antagonistic model is Pashinyan’s conscious choice in the hope that the authorities have an undisputed advantage in the event of violence: a state monopoly on violence.

However, this is a flawed calculation, because the moment is inevitable (proved by many cases in history, – A. A.) that in case of prolonged and illegitimate abuse of the monopoly of violence by the government, that constitutional monopoly ceases to be a restraining factor for the constitution maker, the people, which becomes destructive for the entire state.

Of course, antagonism has an alternative, which the Greeks called agonism, when political conflict is limited to content, ideas, and competing values. But since in this game the ruling regime is playing in white, it is he who has chosen antagonism as a model and purposefully replaces real politics, which implies fair competition, with violence, where he has in his hands the constitutional and de facto lever of monopoly.

We will talk about another diagnosis given to modern Armenia by the ancient Greeks in the next publication.

(To be continued…)

ARMEN ASHOTIAN

Vice President of RPA

“Vardashen” Prison

11.07.2026

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