With
the Greek psyche itself the victim of a relentless shaming campaign,
the idea of Greece “going it alone” begins to seem outlandish and
quixotic. It is not. But it is as much tied to a revival of spirit
and self-esteem as to the nuts and bolts of economic transformation.
by
Michael Nevradakis
Part
1
Eight years
into the deepest economic depression that an industrialized country
has ever experienced, we are now being told that Greece is a “success
story.” Having accepted the “bitter medicine” prescribed by the
“troika”—the European Commission, the European Central Bank,
and the International Monetary Fund—the storyline today is that
Greece is on the road to recovery, firmly within the European Union
and the eurozone.
This
narrative was recently echoed by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras
in his annual speech at the Thessaloniki Trade Fair, Greece’s
equivalent to the State of the Union address. In this speech, Tsipras
triumphantly declared that talk of “Grexit”—or a Greek
departure from the eurozone and the EU—has been replaced by that of
“Grinvest.”
Within such
a context, there is seemingly no room for discussions about whether
it is in Greece’s best interest, even after so many years of
implementing the troika’s austerity diktats, to consider a
departure from the eurozone and the EU. Indeed, the narrative is that
the people of Greece overwhelmingly have never supported the prospect
of “Grexit.”
All
throughout the economic crisis in Greece, it has been reported that
polls have consistently shown clear majorities favoring the country’s
“European trajectory” and rejecting the possibility of a
departure from the eurozone and EU.
So the
Greeks want the euro at all costs, even if it means more harsh
austerity measures and cuts to wages, pensions and social services.
Or so we are told. These claims would be believable if they were the
product of robust public debate and deliberation on the respective
pros and cons of remaining within the “European family” or
departing. But in Greece, and in most of the global mainstream media,
there is no such debate and never has been.
Instead,
what has taken place in Greece during the economic crisis has been
the complete elimination from public debate of opponents of the
prevalent economic and political doctrines. Those who oppose the
eurozone, the EU, or simply the austerity measures, are stamped with
the “scarlet letter” of being “nationalists,” “xenophobes,”
or “fascists.” Such rhetoric became even more polarized following
the Brexit referendum result. The Brexit result and the rise of
“populism” have themselves been demonized, while poll results
that contradict the mainstream narrative are habitually buried by the
supposedly “objective” major media outlets.
Following
the first installment of this series –in which the
less-than-democratic roots of the EU, the zeal with which the EU is
lionized by the global media today, the EU’s present-day democratic
deficit and hypocrisy, and the attempts to discredit opponents of the
EU and neoliberalism were analyzed–this piece will focus on what
has long been the “elephant in the room” in Europe: the
possibility of departure from the eurozone and from the EU, and why
it must, at the very least, be debated on equal terms in economically
suffering countries such as Greece.
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