Mainstream media (and even us at PWW) seem to have taken our collective eyes off developments in Europe of late. However disturbing things seem to be happening on the continent. I do not believe in sound-bites but I feel the hand of history…
Britain appears to be consumed with issues of gay marriage, Chris Huhne and our own narrow self interest with regard to Europe. In times of crisis nations often start looking inward and fail to heed the warning signs emanating from global events.
There are worrying trends all over Europe:
Cyprus… finds itself on the verge of default due to contamination from Greece. The country, a small island nation in the Mediterranean, has close historical and financial links with crisis-stricken Athens…
The Cypriot problem is nasty, but largely internal; the country is too small to have any real contagion effects. The same cannot be said of Italy and Spain, both of which are sources of increased uncertainty.
In Italy, Silvio’s back! The former prime minister — who, if he were anyone else, would surely be the “disgraced” former prime minister — is running for office on a platform of tax cuts (€4bn of them) over austerity. His coalition is in second place right now to the centre-left grouping, but its standing is improving — and the markets appear to be getting jumpy at that fact.
And in Spain, prime minister Mariano Rajoy has been accused of running an illegal slush fund. Yesterday afternoon, Rajoy issued a not-entirely-convincing rebuttal…
However it is events in Greece which are most disconcerting to students of history; and despite the lack of media attention, problems in Greece have not gone away. In 1919 John Maynard Keynes warned of the damage reparations would do to Germany. We now know the wisdom of his argument, which if heeded may have prevented a human catastrophe of epic proportions. Although Greece in 2013 is different to Weimar Germany (there has been no war and no reparations are being sought) there are stark similarities. The crazy austerity economics Greece is being subjected to is tearing the nation apart in much the same way reparations tore Germany apart. In 1919 Keynes wrote:
What we believed to be the limits of possibility have been so enormously exceeded, and those who founded their expectations on the past have been so often wrong, that the man in the street is now prepared to believe anything which is told him with some show of authority, and the larger the figure the more readily he swallows it.
Certainly the proverbial man on a German or British street appears to be buying into austerity economics for the time being. However the Germans in the 1920s were not a fan of reparations and the Greeks today are certainly questioning the wisdom of austerity. Especially when they are being forced to pay taxes that are well beyond their means whilst suffering huge cuts to public services, pensions and public sector jobs. Most alarming of all, however, is the sinister parallel concerning the rise of fascism which is continuing at an alarming rate in Greece, if recent reports are anything to go by.
Earlier this year, the Greek Minister of Citizen Protection declared he would take up initiatives to restore law and order in the capital of the crisis-stricken country. Nikos Dendias spearheads an attempt by the coalition government produced in last June’s elections to show that while the public coffers are empty and people are seeing their quality of life reduced to shambles, the state is present and it can still provide them with a sense of safety at the very least. Xenios Zeus was one of those initiatives, a crackdown on “illegal immigrants”, its failure (from 73,100 people arrested, only 4,352 were charged with anything) a big problem for the government….
Since the crackdown on immigration didn’t work as the ministry had expected, their next move was to attack occupations and spaces associated with the anarchist movement. This should not come as a surprise since it is exactly these political spaces that have moved to organise in many neighborhoods and stand against the neo-Nazi gangs now roaming the streets of Athens, often with very high cost. But the manner in which this agenda is pursued has revealed something more: this government now sees the anarchists, as well as SYRIZA, as its opponent on the political stage. By cracking down on squats like that of Villa Amalias a month ago, the government is doing a favour for the Golden Dawn thugs who attack people openly with no repercussions – it was squats like that which traditionally stood as an obstacle to the ever expanding activities of the neo-Nazis and which as many locals have stated, helped keep the area around it safe. The spin is to baptise anarchists as the tools of SYRIZA, terrorists who enjoy the support they get from the opposition party. They have gone on the record with this many times.
More concerning still are signs that Greece’s police force are becoming ever more like fascist enforcers. The most recent example was the arrest of two young ‘anarchists’ which resulted in them being beaten so badly that the police doctored their mugshots to conceal the fact they had been tortured.
Alleged Victims of Greek Police Torture – Click for more info
These are indeed scary times for Europe. However Britain is not taking a leading role in fighting the rise of fascism in Greece, corruption in Spain and Italy or the economic damage (which affects the UK as well) being inflicted by austerity. Instead Britain ploughs on with its own austerity regime and selfishly debates how it can squeeze every penny of value out of the EU whilst adding nothing in return. Once again the UK is happy to sit back and allow fascism to flourish overseas. I wonder if, like before, we will be forced to eventually intervene; but only after a terrible price has been paid for our inaction and silence.
