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"Greece is not an
exception. It is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic
model of potentially unlimited
application: a depoliticised
technocracy in which bankers and other experts are allowed to demolish democracy."
Slavoj Žižek
"Corruption is
a tree, whose branches
are of an immeasurable length:
they spread everywhere; and the dew that drops from thence hath infected
some chairs and stools of
authority."
Beaumont
and Fletcher, The Honest Man's Fortune
This is
a fascinating perspective on the financial situation in Europe from
Slavoj Žižek which appeared in a recent edition of the London Review of Books. It reads like a modern variation of an age
old script with dollars
and bankers replacing bullets and shock troops, at least for now.
The role of Goldman Sachs and some
of the other banks, with their attendant politicians who are in many cases now their direct representatives in
the erosion of freedom in
Europe, is fascinating to
watch, in the manner of a
train wreck in slow motion.
The monied interests are
putting forward their own agendas and candidates while
maintaining the charade of popular
government, goose-stepping
to the tune of financial expediency
and the 'iron law of oligarchy'
that helped to spawn the cult of the Übermensch at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The counter example is Iceland, and at an earlier period Sweden, which took a
different course of action with
their banks, direct
confrontation and resolution of crony
capitalism and the debt trap, rather than accomodation and appeasement.
The US and UK are little better
off, having established a
temporary equilibrium in which the monied interests are consolidating their gains. How else can one explain the lack of investigations and prosecutions
of financial frauds, that become increasingly
blatant and brazen, while the national economy
continues to stagnate under
the burden of crony capitalism and the most powerful political agenda is more tax cuts
and sinecures for the super rich?
And freedom continues to be
assaulted and deconstructed
in the name of the endless
war on terror.
At some point the people will make a stand, and the Banks will make them an offer which they
think that they cannot refuse. This is playing out now in Greece, and is coming to a country near you.
London Review of Books
Save us from the saviours
By Slavoj Žižek
25 May 2012
Imagine a scene from a dystopian movie that depicts
our society in the near
future. Uniformed guards patrol half-empty downtown streets at night, on the prowl for
immigrants, criminals and vagrants.
Those they find are brutalised. What seems like
a fanciful Hollywood image is
a reality in today’s Greece.
At night, black-shirted
vigilantes from the Holocaust-denying
neo-fascist Golden Dawn movement
– which won 7 per cent of the vote in the
last round of elections, and had
the support, it’s said,
of 50 per cent of the Athenian police – have
been patrolling the street
and beating up all the immigrants they can find:
Afghans, Pakistanis, Algerians.
So this is how Europe is defended in the spring of 2012...
The prophets of doom are
right, but not in the way they
intend. Critics of our current democratic
arrangements complain that
elections don’t offer a true choice: what we get instead
is the choice between a centre-right and a centre-left
party whose programmes are almost
indistinguishable. On 17 June,
there will be a real choice: the
establishment (New Democracy and Pasok) on one side, Syriza on the other.
And, as is usually the
case when a real choice is on offer, the establishment is in a panic: chaos, poverty
and violence will follow,
they say, if the wrong choice is made. The mere possibility of a Syriza victory is said
to have sent ripples of fear
through global markets. Ideological prosopopoeia has its day: markets
talk as if they were persons, expressing their ‘worry’ at what will
happen if the elections fail to produce a government with a mandate to persist with the EU-IMF
programme of fiscal austerity and structural reform.
The citizens of Greece
have no time to worry about these
prospects: they have enough
to worry about in their everyday lives, which are becoming miserable to a degree unseen in Europe for decades...
Here is the paradox that sustains the ‘free vote’ in democratic societies: one is free to choose on condition that one makes the right choice. This is why, when the wrong choice is made (as it was when Ireland rejected the EU constitution), the choice
is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately
demands that the ‘democratic’ process be repeated in order that the mistake may be
corrected. When George
Papandreou, then Greek
prime minister, proposed
a referendum on the eurozone bailout
deal at the end of last year,
the referendum itself was
rejected as a false choice.
There are two main stories about the Greek crisis in the media: the German-European story (the Greeks
are irresponsible, lazy,
free-spending, tax-dodging
etc, and have to be brought under control and taught financial discipline)
and the Greek story (our
national sovereignty is threatened by the neoliberal technocracy imposed by
Brussels).
When it became impossible to ignore the plight
of the Greek people, a third
story emerged: the Greeks
are now presented as humanitarian victims in need of help, as if a war or natural catastrophe had hit the
country. While all three
stories are false, the third is
arguably the most disgusting. The Greeks are not
passive victims: they are
at war with the European economic establishment, and what
they need is solidarity in their struggle, because it is our
struggle too.
Greece is not
an exception. It is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic
model of potentially unlimited
application: a depoliticised
technocracy in which bankers and other experts are allowed to demolish democracy. By saving Greece from its
so-called saviours, we also save
Europe itself.
Read the entire article here.
 
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