{"id":6253,"date":"2012-05-07T20:21:56","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T01:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=6253"},"modified":"2012-05-09T10:26:56","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T15:26:56","slug":"false-dawn-or-challenge-to-germanic-hegemony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=6253","title":{"rendered":"False Dawn or Challenge to Germanic Hegemony?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2026 and when they danced in the square,
\nthe ceilings trembled in the houses,
\nand the glasses rang on the shelves.\u201d
\n— from Romios\u00edni<\/em>, by Yannis Ritsos<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>An altered Europe emerged from yesterday\u2019s elections. France chose mild socialist Fran\u00e7ois Hollande for its next president and Hellene voters deep-sixed the two major parties which made them captives of predatory lenders that sank the nation into poverty and misery. Both just before and just after the elections, IMF, ECB and German leaders issued the expected threats, intoning yet again the \u201cfears for contagious instability\u201d, warning they would stop all \u201cbailouts\u201d (aka high-interest loans) if the new Hellenic government tries to change the corrosive repayment terms (one mandates paying the loan interest before attending to the country\u2019s basic needs), and calling the change \u201ca victory of the South\u201d \u2013 shades of the evil swarthy Southron hordes in The Lord of the Rings.<\/p>\n

Personally, I suspect that Hollande will prove as \u201cradical\u201d as Obama. The Hellenic elections boosted the leftist coalition SYRIZA to the same levels as the (barely) first-ranking party, leaving little room for the usual cozy arrangements \u2013 reaching even a bare majority will require the cooperation of at least three parties. SYRIZA has a young charismatic leader who is not free of demagoguery and has not articulated an alternative program beyond repudiating the debt. More disquieting, a neonazi party, Golden Dawn, has managed to enter the Athens Parliament for the first time. If anyone is thinking with dread of the Weimar republic and the results of the humiliations of the Versailles treaty, they\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

Granted, Hellas is not Germany in more ways than one. The obvious difference is that Hellas is a tiny (estimated: 2%) contributor to European economy. But there are other differences. For one, contrary to the accusations of laziness, Hellenes work longer hours and have fewer holidays than Germans \u2013 and the habit of closing for a noon nap makes perfect physiological and environmental sense in a Mediterranean climate. For another, the post-WWII Marshall plan for Germany was a real bailout, not a loan. One of its terms, that Germany would repay lenders after reunification, was never mentioned when the Berlin wall fell. Nor does anyone dwell overlong, if at all, on the fact that the Americans agreed (without consulting the Hellenes) on the suspension of German war reparations to Hellas, because the latter\u2019s resistance movement was primarily communist.<\/p>\n

Unlike Germany, Hellas did not bomb, invade, or slaughter anyone \u2013 yet it was given more punitive and humiliating terms than Germany by titular friends and allies. This was partly so that the country could function as yet one more canary in the mine for the \u201cneoliberal\u201d economic kill-the-patient \u201ccure\u201d (despite the fact that it proved an unmitigated disaster wherever it was tried, from post-USSR Russia to Haiti, whereas Iceland and Argentina fared far better by rejecting it), partly to frighten other European outliers into surrendering without terms to the austerity straitjacket. These were the same friends, incidentally, who forced the Hellenic government to buy their defective airplanes and submarines, refusing to play a part in securing the borders of the only-in-name European Union; the same allies who accused Hellas of not caring for the veritable tsunami of its illegal immigrants, while deporting theirs to Hellas as part of their \u201ccleansing\u201d programs and re-election campaigns.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t misunderstand me, I don\u2019t think that Hellenes bear no responsibility for the crisis — the ruling family dynasties and the tax-dodging plutocrats, in particular. But they don\u2019t deserve 23% unemployment (the rate among women and the young is 50%, a recipe for depopulation and brain drain) nor forced sales of national resources at cut-rate prices to circling looters. They don\u2019t deserve to have kids faint from hunger in schools, adults in their prime commit suicide from despair. The austerity recipe has primarily penalized two groups: the law-abiding, and small businesses, which are the lifeblood of Hellenic economy. Finally, if half the members of a federation are ailing (Portugal, Ireland, Hellas, Italy, Spain\u2026 on to Belgium, Holland and France, to say nothing of Britain who is trying to pretend otherwise) it cannot be solely their fault, especially when their details differ as much as they do in this case. When banks count more than people, financial speculators expect risk-free profits, and decent lives with civil rights and safety nets are called \u201cmarxism\u201d instead of \u201cminimum requirements for civilization\u201d, something is seriously off in the equation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Hellas changed history several times, sometimes as leader, sometimes as gadfly. It may do so again. Hellenes do badly when ease descends upon them, but when their spirit is aroused they plant their spear and don\u2019t retreat. At the very least, the election results signal that people will take only so much rapine before they react \u2013 and trying to foist wrath on scapegoats doesn\u2019t work indefinitely as a safety valve. Now if only the US voters do the same in November, instead of repeating the mantra of \u201cBend over when told \u2013 the rich deserve to have it all \u2013 why do you hate FREEDOM?\u201d, perhaps humanity has a chance for a different trajectory than slavery and disenfranchisement of 99% of its members.<\/p>\n

Images:<\/strong> Marianne, the French enblem of liberty (Luxembourg palace, anonymous artist); W. Eugene Smith’s iconic WWII photo: this quintessence of stoic defiance almost certainly was \u00c1ngelos Kl\u00f3nis, an immigrant from Kefaloni\u00e1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2026 and when they danced in the square, the ceilings trembled in the houses, and the glasses rang on the shelves.\u201d — from Romios\u00edni, by Yannis Ritsos An altered Europe emerged from yesterday\u2019s elections. France chose mild socialist Fran\u00e7ois Hollande for its next president and Hellene voters deep-sixed the two major parties which made them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}