The Forces of "Stability" Win in Greece; Social
Disintegration Continues

by Kostis Karpozilos

Dissent Magazine June 22, 2012

http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=786

"I ask the Greek people to demonstrate their
patriotism, national unity, and trust that with the
help of god we can do our best to exit this crisis as
soon as possible." This first official statement of
Antonis Samaras, the winner of the elections on Sunday,
marks Greece's entrance into a twilight zone of renewed
conservatism. The right-wing New Democracy managed to
win the elections - gaining 30 percent of the popular
vote and 129 seats in parliament - and now has formed a
coalition government with the participation of the
center- left PASOK, which won 12 percent of the vote
and thirty-three seats, and the moderate Democratic
Left, at 6 percent with seventeen seats.

To those unfamiliar with the situation in Greece, this
might seem a strange coalition of forces, but it is
not; over the last months these three parties had
formed an unofficial group centered on the idea that
Greece should remain in the Eurozone at all costs,
while striving to reform the memoranda that have been
negotiated with the European Central Bank and the IMF.
Their cooperation after the election demonstrates how a
new polarization around these "bailout" agreements has
altered the dominant political dichotomies of the past.

The election results also reflect Greece's rising
social polarization due to the disintegrating effects
of the depression. The relatively crisis-immune
agrarian Greece, elite and upper-middle-class suburbs,
pensioners, and housewives voted for New Democracy.
SYRIZA, the leftist coalition that transformed the
Greek political scene and gained 27 percent in this
election, was supported by the working-class
neighborhoods of Athens and Piraeus, along with those
that have less to lose and not much to hope for - the
youth, civil servants, and small businesspeople
competing with "big business." These are two worlds
apart: voters for New Democracy and its partners wanted
stability, feared the exodus of Greece from the
Eurozone, and detested the leftist rhetoric of SYRIZA;
the others were united in their opposition to the
memorandum, but from various standpoints - from the
radical Left to those who wanted to express their
despair but cared less about a specific political
program. At the end of the day, the "silent majority"
for stability prevailed. Only some dozens of supporters
of New Democracy were in Syntagma Square to applaud
Samaras upon his victory.

The lack of enthusiastic support for New Democracy
reflects its lack of aspirations and a political
program for the day after the election. Like many
traditional right-wing parties, New Democracy banked on
fear: the "perils" of a possible SYRIZA victory, the
"danger" of returning to the drachma, the "threat of
illegal immigrants," and the "insecurity" of everyday
life. It was a successful choice, but not one conducive
to creating an atmosphere of excitement and hope. New
Democracy has guaranteed the prolongation of the
current stalemate, with the possibility of minor
concessions - a proposition that appealed to those who
feared that worse days were ahead if SYRIZA won. In the
ten days preceding the elections, New Democracy, with
the support of the mass media, managed to present
SYRIZA as the equivalent of the Bolsheviks and at the
same time as a bunch of amateurs from the "loony Left."

These were not only tactical maneuvers. They correspond
to the rising anti-immigrant and anti-left tendencies
in Greek society, a parallel and antithetical
development to the growth of leftist radicalism. In
2004, when the conservative Konstantinos Karamanlis
came to power, he and his party made overtures to the
Left in the name of forgetting a contentious past. The
present-day militancy of the conservative Right and its
determination to "uproot" the "ideological hegemony of
the Left" point to divisions that have less to do with
the past than with contemporary challenges. New
Democracy emerged as the legitimate institutional
medium for expressing these tendencies.

The election results attest to the fact that economic
depression does not lead automatically to progressive
change. For months commentators focused on the rise of
the Greek Left, paying less attention to the growing
anti-political and nationalistic tendencies that
targeted the old political order, interpreted the
crisis in conjunction with immigration, and mixed
despair with hatred. For the time being, New Democracy
has managed to claim the mantle of these new forces by
proposing a conservative social agenda and promising to
halt further financial decline. It is more than
plausible that the new government will emphasize social
issues to skirt around an economic deadlock; if it does
achieve a minor revision of the memorandum, it will be
presented as a "national success." Samaras is
experienced in this field. He was instrumental in the
nationalistic fervor of the early 1990s regarding the
Republic of Macedonia. In forming the new government,
New Democracy eagerly designated technocrats, such as
the promising Vasilis Rapanos, to financial positions,
while retaining the ministries of Public Order and
Interior Affairs for its hard-line, right-wing
representatives.

The far-right Independent Greeks and the neo-Nazis of
Golden Dawn retained sizeable percentages of the vote
(7.5 and 6.9 percent, respectively), but they remain
outside the new governing coalition. The success of
Golden Dawn has been met with the usual hypocritical
cries about the "danger of extremes," with no actual
discussion of the links between the established
political order and this paramilitary formation. When
it comes to immigration issues it is difficult to
distinguish between the dominant rhetoric concerning
the "invasion of illegal immigrants" and the
"extremist" slogan of Golden Dawn: "Immigrants out of
Greece." In this context, Golden Dawn seems merely to
guarantee implementation of the "law and order" on the
streets of Athens that other forces on the right also
wish for; it isn't a coincidence that Golden Dawn has a
strong following among the police force. During a
popular TV show earlier this month Ilias Kasidiaris, a
Golden Dawn MP, physically attacked two female MPs from
left-wing parties, and many thought that this action
would deter those that had voted for Golden Dawn in
May. But Kasidiaris was re- elected, and many praised
his action as an attack on a corrupt political order.

These developments do not signify the end of what's
been called the "short summer of the Left," but they
highlight its insufficiencies. Over the last weeks
unemployment has risen again, violent attacks on
immigrants have become a daily routine, and hospitals
have moved to the edge of collapse. Even though the
Left has no responsibility for this social
disintegration, condemning the consequences of
austerity measures - even from the most radical
standpoint - is futile if not accompanied by action: a
social and political movement that will link particular
changes and demands with a coherent agenda of
alternative policies. This missing link, evident in the
inability of the Left to respond convincingly when
challenged over the European Union and the euro, was a
decisive factor in the elections. That link will be
necessary if the Left is to become not merely an
ethical force on the outskirts of society, but a
political force demanding change.

[Kostis Karpozilos is a historian of Greek-American
labor radicalism.

Kostis Karpozilos is the historical consultant and
script- writer for the documentary Greek-American
Radicals- the Untold Story. He has earned a degree in
Modern Greek Literature at the University of
Thessaloniki (2002), completed an M.A. in Historical
Research at the University of Sheffield (2003) and a
Ph.D. in History at the University of Crete (2010).

His doctoral thesis entitled "Greek-American Workers,
the Communist Movement and the Labor Unions
(1900-1950): In Search of Labor Americanism in the
Years of Great Depression" focused on Greek-American
labor communities, social transformations in the
Depression Decade and the New Deal dynamics,
challenging thus the traditional viewpoint that
presented the history of Greek immigration as a series
of "ethnic successes" and "business accomplishments".

He has worked as an external researcher at the
Historical Archives of the Benaki Museum -his book on
the socialist intellectual Stavros Kallergis is
forthcoming in 2012- and since 2010 he works as
reviewer for the literary supplement of the leading
Greek daily Ta Nea. In 2011 he was a short-term
Visiting Scholar at the Center for the U.S. and the
Cold War at New York University. He is currently
teaching at the University of the Peloponnese,
Department of Philology as an adjunct lecturer.

For more information on the documentary, Greek-American
Radicals- the Untold Story --
http://www.greekamericanradicals.com/about/ ]

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