John Pilger — The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie.
The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind - but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's finance minister, an imperial thug.
Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as "liberal" or even "left", Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, "schooled in postmodernism", as Alex Lantier wrote.
For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza's luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but "better terms" of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor.
When merged with "identity politics" and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. "Mainstream" political life in Britain exemplifies this.
This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.
johnpilger.com
3 comments:
The Trotskyists at WSWS called it months ago, but it is refreshing to see Pilger's perspective.
Right. Pseudo-leftists.
No, I don't think they're pseudo-leftists. Not even Tsipras. They're just wrong. Too many of them scared themselves to death about a problem, Grexit, which a calmer look would indicate is not so fearsome, and as all here understand, would have been a great benefit eventually.
As I said in another comment, but in another way, the absence of war in Europe is the problem! Those younger than Manolis Glezos may not be able to measure other problems as accurately he did. Grexit would have been the biggest thing to happen to Greece for a generation, so it was easy to blow up into a bugbear. But it wouldn't have been as big as a war! The fears about it were appropriate for a real, bloody war, or Iraq level sanctions.
Pilger criticizes Varoufakis's on the British Left under Thatcher. But Varoufakis is right. Labor back then worked hard at losing several elections it could have, should have easily won, if it hadn't been excessively ideological and certain of ultimate victory - insisting on things like unilateral disarmament. That's what communist Eric Hobsbawm said and fwiw was my view at the time. The British leftists back then were good guys. But they should have gotten just a teensy bit realer.
There's a point to negotiate and compromise on lesser principles, not try to "win" on everything all at once - that's politics. But there's a point and a time to stand firm. British Labor made an error one way. It looks like Syriza erred the other. Both managed to thwart a pretty clear popular will.
It's interesting that YV ultimately seemed to veer to the Left Platform side. The core of Syriza, the Left platform, plus perhaps Varoufakis are still there. Battle scarred. The one thing the Eurocrats are not going to stop doing is creating crises. It's what they do. Geico should put them in commercials. Maybe next time it will be Syriza (or a descendant) plus Podemos with a side of Brexit.
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