The
Global South is growing unintelligible from the European South amid
harsh austerity measures and other maneuverings that suit the rich
and powerful at the expense of the poor and working class.
by
Michael Nevradakis
Part
6 - Familiar Tactics
Escobar
refers to the “toolbox” of tactics employed in Brazil leading up
to Rousseff’s ouster. This set of strategies included the creation
of manufactured consent amongst the populace, for the impeachment and
the new regime.
This
bears a great similarity to the cases of countries such as Greece,
where public opinion polls conducted by polling firms which are not
independent of the state and which are commissioned by pro-austerity
media outlets have repeatedly shown vast majorities purportedly in
favor of EU and eurozone membership at all costs, while the very few
independent surveys conducted in Greece, such as those by Gallup
International, have actually found such majorities to be slim or
nonexistent.
Manufactured
consent is used to legitimize the austerity policies which then
follow, and to characterize any dissent as belonging to a small,
marginal minority.
Indeed,
similarities between the case of Brazil and the case of countries of
the European South such as Greece abound. Just as the Temer
government has not been elected and overthrew a government which
apparently did not go “far enough” in its austerity regime, the
EU imposed a non-elected technocrat prime minister, Lucas Papademos,
a former banker, on Greece in late 2011 to ensure that a new package
of austerity measures and “reforms” would be railroaded through
parliament.
At
around the same time, a non-elected prime minister, Mario Monti, was
also installed in Italy, with the blessings of the EU — technocrats
from which described this unelected government as “the best
thing that ever happened to Italy” during a visit of mine to
the EU in 2013 as part of a week-long academic program. Italy is now
being governed by no less than its third consecutive non-elected
prime minister.
The
Greek referendum overwhelmingly rejecting EU-proposed austerity was
shot down in short order, replaced by an austerity package even
harsher than that which had originally been proposed, and even more
onerous than the two prior memorandum agreements signed by Syriza’s
predecessors, the New Democracy and PASOK (“socialist”) political
parties.
The
manufactured consent and “shock doctrine” which imposed the
“bitter medicine” of austerity on Greece could be viewed as a
pre-emptive strike against any thoughts of “Grexit,” a Greek
exodus from the Eurozone or even the EU, much like the “hybrid war”
against countries like Brazil and Russia described earlier by
Escobar.
Kat
Moreno identifies certain parallels between the Global South, of
which Brazil is part, and the European South, which has in recent
years experienced much of the same IMF-supported austerity which
Latin America is all too familiar with. She highlights the “clear
relationship” between being a part of the Global South and
being dependent on and the hostage of the international financial
system.
And
in looking to the future, it is difficult to say who can lead these
countries, whether it is Brazil or Greece or Spain or Italy, out of
their current death spiral unscathed. Guilherme Giuliano points out
that what has been happening in Brazil, as in Greece, Argentina
(where the Kirchner government was replaced by one much friendlier to
Washington and to global capital), or even the United States, are
symptoms of a global crisis — a crisis which, according to
Giuliano, “nobody has a progressive way out.”
Indeed,
many progressives and much of the global left seem to be focused more
strongly on identity politics and a notion of a world without nations
or states. In doing so, they have supported such undemocratic,
austerity-driven institutions as the EU, while demonizing phenomena
such as the “Brexit” as the exclusive realm of racists and
xenophobes, widening their chasm with vast sections of the poor and
working classes in the process.
Meanwhile,
a blind eye has been turned to the actions of former President Barack
Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who in
conjunction with Wall Street, supported right-wing coups and
electoral takeovers all across Latin America, from Brazil to
Venezuela to the Honduras. In this vein, James Petras chastises “left
politicians who speak to the workers and work for the bankers.”
As
for Brazil, Moreno describes the country as finding itself at a
crossroads.
“People
are seeking autonomy over their destinies, but where it is going we
are not sure,” she said. “It can lead to neo-fascism, or
it could go towards leftist positions.”
***
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