Many friends and acquaintances have been asking me for more details
on what is currently happening in Greece. The misinformation and scare
tactics that are coming out of the corporate media as well as from the
officials of most governments has created a very different image about
what is at stake in the upcoming elections and even more in the months
that will follow these elections. In this article I will try to distance
myself from the dominant economic analysis narrative as I believe that
the economic torments of the Greek society (and of all European
countries) are mere symptoms of a failed socio-political system; what we
euphemistically call "Free Market Representative Democracy".
In order to understand the current situation one has to know a little bit of Greek history which I will try to make as synoptic as possible. In my opinion, the political history of Greece is a lot more pertaining to the current situation than the deficit-bail-out-austerity triptych dominant narrative.
Since 1936 Greece was governed by a fascist dictatorship. From 1940 to 1944 Greece was brutally occupied by German, Italian and Bulgarian forces that left 1 in 10 Greeks dead, millions malnourished, the totality of the infrastructure destroyed and empty vaults in its central bank (as Germany took the equivalent of 120 billion € as a loan that she never returned). The biggest part of Greece was liberated by mainly leftist partisans by 1944. The collaborators of the nazis allied themselves with the English and the USA in order to retake Greece from the leftist government that had been established on the mountains of Greece.
The civil war that ensued (with the strategic, material and aerial support of the USA and England) was even more destructive with hundreds of thousands of exiled, refugees and dead. From 1949, when the civil war ended, until 1967 hundreds of thousands of leftists were jailed, exiled and tortured in order to make them repent.
From 1967 to 1974 the CIA sponsored military dictatorship finished the work that the previous regimes had started. From 1974 when the dictatorship handed power to the Conservative party of Nea Dimokratia (the same one that is in power today) to this day, the country has been governed by 2 parties (PASOK and Nea Dimokratia, pretending to be sworn enemies for 35 years while implementing the same policies, that are currently in a coalition government) which, with the exception of 3 years in the beginning of the 80ies when the "social-democrats" of PASOK governed based on populist policies and rhetoric and liberalised a lot of the structures and institutions of the Greek society, have governed mainly based on the principles of neoliberalism, cronysm, nepotism and suppression of radical movements. These practices along with the integration of Greece in the € currency, in combination with the speculative attack against Greek bonds allowed for the rest of the structural and sociopolitical problems to come to the surface.
The current regime has used the riot police to mercilessly suppress any protest or resistance against their neoliberal policies. From resisting pharaonic gold mining projects inside virgin forests, to disabled people protesting the cuts to their social aid and from striking steel workers to evacuating self managed cultural centres. Amnesty international and foreign journalists have often denounced the torturing practices exercised by the security forces; the Greek regime has often responded with threats. Moreover, there have been many cases of journalists, satirists and photoreporters having been attacked by riot police, arrested or right-out threatened for revealing serious corruption scandals, satirising religion or documenting abuses of power.Tens of strikes have been deemed illegal through passing of special legislation by decree.
Public property, enterprises, services and infrastructure has been given away to multinationals, oligarchs and personal friends of the prime minister for pennies. Labour rights such as collective agreements, minimum salary or 40 hour working weeks have been eliminated. The results have been catastrophic. Apart from the worst humanitarian crisis of western Europe since WW II, 60% of the population close to or below the poverty line, 55% youth and 26% total unemployment (despite the complete lack of labour rights and regulations), the more than 200,000 mainly young well educated migrants and the rate of 32% of unserviced loans, the social fabric has been broken. The regime has systematically turned social or economic groups against each other and has publicly defamed as lazy, criminal or corrupted whole sectors of society such as the immigrants, school teachers or the journalists of the public mass media that were abruptly closed in June 2013.
In the campaign leading to Sunday's elections the regime has waged a terror and scare campaign in the event of electing the leftist official opposition to power. The neoliberal, extreme-right, nationalist, corrupted oligarchs, fraudulent social-democrats, authoritarian and racist mix of people that has been in power for most of Greece's modern history is faced with the unthinkable: "To lose the grip of power, have their deep and generalised corruption revealed and not be able to control the justice and executive branches of power". This is why almost the totality of the mass media (mainly owned by construction and ship owner magnates) has followed along in the terror campaign waged by the regime.
This is why Sunday's elections are a lot more than a choice between extreme austerity and socially progressive measures. Within the framework of the EU there is little leeway for progressive social policies and redistribution of wealth. The neoliberal project of the EU has tied the member states with austere and explicit treaties and agreements concerning privatisations, privileges for the financial sector and priorities in public policy. Of course there are choices to be made by the national governments, such as tax rates for the rich (the current regime wants to reduce the top tax rate bracket from 43% to just 27% and the corporate tax rate from 27% to just 15%), reduction of military expenditures (Greece has consistently been in the top 5 spenders for arms purchases for the past 15 years mainly importing from Germany, USA and France under scandalous agreements that included tens of millions of € in kickbacks and bribes), reorganisation of the state etc. but the main goals are set by the technocrat bankocracy of the EU.
Nevertheless, practices such as contraband gasoline and cigarettes that cost billions of € to the state every year, that has been tolerated (if not encouraged by the corrupt oligarchy), the breeding of racist and neonazi groups within the security forces, passing laws as articles in irrelevant bills without debate just to serve the interests of the oligarchs or of their friends, interfering with the justice system in order to acquit their own or condemn political activists, appointing people without relevant experience or education in positions of power such as managers of hospitals, public organisations, general secretaries of ministries or advisors with salaries of hundreds of thousands of €, implementing reforms that will allow participatory enterprises, mass media or solidarity structures to flourish, using open source software and hardware in the public services and governmental organisations, establishing a transparent and merit-based process for staffing the public sector are all reforms that can happen without any cost or obstacles set by the neoliberal structures of the EU and the IMF.
From what I feel and hear around me the vast majority of the people who will be voting for SYRIZA on Sunday are doing so with the sole intend of kicking the nepotism and corruption out of government for the first time in modern Greek history. Most of these people (apart from the 50% of the young voters under 30 who will be voting for SYRIZA according to the opinion polls) have been voting for these corrupt parties for the past 40 years; therefore, they did not suddenly become leftists or hope for a socialist state to be established in the underbelly of neoliberal Europe. They are just giving a chance to some people that have never governed to prove themselves and for the very minimum to bring to justice the people responsible for the total collapse of the Greek economy and society. At the same time, a very common theme that is heard amongst future SYRIZA voters is that "if they do not do as the say then we'll overthrow them in no time". On the other hand, the leftists who have been struggling for this all their lives seem ecstatic but at the same time are ready to resist and protest the new "leftist" government; many mention that if SYRIZA disappoints them, they are ready to abandon the bourgeois left for anarchism.
People seem to not believe in promises, magic solutions and the whole representative democracy (or elected oligarchy) system any more. In my opinion, this is a very big step forward for much deeper changes. For a radical shift of consciousness the current paradigm has to be discredited and de-legitimised. While this is currently happening all over the Western world, nowhere is this process more advanced than in a country that through the neoliberal reforms being implemented for the past 30 years was promised a consumerist paradise and was given impoverishment, fascism, corruption and extreme oppression.
Sunday's elections are not just about austerity measures and the Euro; these elections are mainly about democracy, justice and solidarity becoming realities in the hands of society. Moreover, such a shift will likely unleash the progressive masses of Europe and elsewhere in the world that will see that a people that has undergone the biggest terror campaign by EU officials, bankers, corporate oligarchs, mass media and their own government in history, has managed to defy fear and disobey the commands of the elites. A possible wide-margin win of SYRIZA will be the first (and certainly not the last) setback of the neoliberal onslaught of the past 35 years that has been waged on the European people.
In order to understand the current situation one has to know a little bit of Greek history which I will try to make as synoptic as possible. In my opinion, the political history of Greece is a lot more pertaining to the current situation than the deficit-bail-out-austerity triptych dominant narrative.
Since 1936 Greece was governed by a fascist dictatorship. From 1940 to 1944 Greece was brutally occupied by German, Italian and Bulgarian forces that left 1 in 10 Greeks dead, millions malnourished, the totality of the infrastructure destroyed and empty vaults in its central bank (as Germany took the equivalent of 120 billion € as a loan that she never returned). The biggest part of Greece was liberated by mainly leftist partisans by 1944. The collaborators of the nazis allied themselves with the English and the USA in order to retake Greece from the leftist government that had been established on the mountains of Greece.
The civil war that ensued (with the strategic, material and aerial support of the USA and England) was even more destructive with hundreds of thousands of exiled, refugees and dead. From 1949, when the civil war ended, until 1967 hundreds of thousands of leftists were jailed, exiled and tortured in order to make them repent.
From 1967 to 1974 the CIA sponsored military dictatorship finished the work that the previous regimes had started. From 1974 when the dictatorship handed power to the Conservative party of Nea Dimokratia (the same one that is in power today) to this day, the country has been governed by 2 parties (PASOK and Nea Dimokratia, pretending to be sworn enemies for 35 years while implementing the same policies, that are currently in a coalition government) which, with the exception of 3 years in the beginning of the 80ies when the "social-democrats" of PASOK governed based on populist policies and rhetoric and liberalised a lot of the structures and institutions of the Greek society, have governed mainly based on the principles of neoliberalism, cronysm, nepotism and suppression of radical movements. These practices along with the integration of Greece in the € currency, in combination with the speculative attack against Greek bonds allowed for the rest of the structural and sociopolitical problems to come to the surface.
The current regime has used the riot police to mercilessly suppress any protest or resistance against their neoliberal policies. From resisting pharaonic gold mining projects inside virgin forests, to disabled people protesting the cuts to their social aid and from striking steel workers to evacuating self managed cultural centres. Amnesty international and foreign journalists have often denounced the torturing practices exercised by the security forces; the Greek regime has often responded with threats. Moreover, there have been many cases of journalists, satirists and photoreporters having been attacked by riot police, arrested or right-out threatened for revealing serious corruption scandals, satirising religion or documenting abuses of power.Tens of strikes have been deemed illegal through passing of special legislation by decree.
Public property, enterprises, services and infrastructure has been given away to multinationals, oligarchs and personal friends of the prime minister for pennies. Labour rights such as collective agreements, minimum salary or 40 hour working weeks have been eliminated. The results have been catastrophic. Apart from the worst humanitarian crisis of western Europe since WW II, 60% of the population close to or below the poverty line, 55% youth and 26% total unemployment (despite the complete lack of labour rights and regulations), the more than 200,000 mainly young well educated migrants and the rate of 32% of unserviced loans, the social fabric has been broken. The regime has systematically turned social or economic groups against each other and has publicly defamed as lazy, criminal or corrupted whole sectors of society such as the immigrants, school teachers or the journalists of the public mass media that were abruptly closed in June 2013.
In the campaign leading to Sunday's elections the regime has waged a terror and scare campaign in the event of electing the leftist official opposition to power. The neoliberal, extreme-right, nationalist, corrupted oligarchs, fraudulent social-democrats, authoritarian and racist mix of people that has been in power for most of Greece's modern history is faced with the unthinkable: "To lose the grip of power, have their deep and generalised corruption revealed and not be able to control the justice and executive branches of power". This is why almost the totality of the mass media (mainly owned by construction and ship owner magnates) has followed along in the terror campaign waged by the regime.
This is why Sunday's elections are a lot more than a choice between extreme austerity and socially progressive measures. Within the framework of the EU there is little leeway for progressive social policies and redistribution of wealth. The neoliberal project of the EU has tied the member states with austere and explicit treaties and agreements concerning privatisations, privileges for the financial sector and priorities in public policy. Of course there are choices to be made by the national governments, such as tax rates for the rich (the current regime wants to reduce the top tax rate bracket from 43% to just 27% and the corporate tax rate from 27% to just 15%), reduction of military expenditures (Greece has consistently been in the top 5 spenders for arms purchases for the past 15 years mainly importing from Germany, USA and France under scandalous agreements that included tens of millions of € in kickbacks and bribes), reorganisation of the state etc. but the main goals are set by the technocrat bankocracy of the EU.
Nevertheless, practices such as contraband gasoline and cigarettes that cost billions of € to the state every year, that has been tolerated (if not encouraged by the corrupt oligarchy), the breeding of racist and neonazi groups within the security forces, passing laws as articles in irrelevant bills without debate just to serve the interests of the oligarchs or of their friends, interfering with the justice system in order to acquit their own or condemn political activists, appointing people without relevant experience or education in positions of power such as managers of hospitals, public organisations, general secretaries of ministries or advisors with salaries of hundreds of thousands of €, implementing reforms that will allow participatory enterprises, mass media or solidarity structures to flourish, using open source software and hardware in the public services and governmental organisations, establishing a transparent and merit-based process for staffing the public sector are all reforms that can happen without any cost or obstacles set by the neoliberal structures of the EU and the IMF.
From what I feel and hear around me the vast majority of the people who will be voting for SYRIZA on Sunday are doing so with the sole intend of kicking the nepotism and corruption out of government for the first time in modern Greek history. Most of these people (apart from the 50% of the young voters under 30 who will be voting for SYRIZA according to the opinion polls) have been voting for these corrupt parties for the past 40 years; therefore, they did not suddenly become leftists or hope for a socialist state to be established in the underbelly of neoliberal Europe. They are just giving a chance to some people that have never governed to prove themselves and for the very minimum to bring to justice the people responsible for the total collapse of the Greek economy and society. At the same time, a very common theme that is heard amongst future SYRIZA voters is that "if they do not do as the say then we'll overthrow them in no time". On the other hand, the leftists who have been struggling for this all their lives seem ecstatic but at the same time are ready to resist and protest the new "leftist" government; many mention that if SYRIZA disappoints them, they are ready to abandon the bourgeois left for anarchism.
People seem to not believe in promises, magic solutions and the whole representative democracy (or elected oligarchy) system any more. In my opinion, this is a very big step forward for much deeper changes. For a radical shift of consciousness the current paradigm has to be discredited and de-legitimised. While this is currently happening all over the Western world, nowhere is this process more advanced than in a country that through the neoliberal reforms being implemented for the past 30 years was promised a consumerist paradise and was given impoverishment, fascism, corruption and extreme oppression.
Sunday's elections are not just about austerity measures and the Euro; these elections are mainly about democracy, justice and solidarity becoming realities in the hands of society. Moreover, such a shift will likely unleash the progressive masses of Europe and elsewhere in the world that will see that a people that has undergone the biggest terror campaign by EU officials, bankers, corporate oligarchs, mass media and their own government in history, has managed to defy fear and disobey the commands of the elites. A possible wide-margin win of SYRIZA will be the first (and certainly not the last) setback of the neoliberal onslaught of the past 35 years that has been waged on the European people.
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