Under cover of the pandemic, Greece’s right-wing government has passed a slew of new measures to benefit the wealthy at the expense of workers, while massively expanding police powers. On the back of a decade of austerity, the latest laws are set to transform the country into a client state and playground for foreign tourists.
by Matthaios Tsimitakis/Mihalis Panayiotakis
Part 7 - The Emergence of a New Right
To put things in a broader European context, the Mitsotakis government is positioned somewhere between the neoliberal authoritarianism of Emmanuel Macron in France, and the illiberal democracy of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Macron and Orbán, both of whom took advantage of the pandemic to introduce unpopular, authoritarian measures, including the expansion of policing, as well as police protection. But instead of competing with hardline nationalists and conservatives as most right and center-right parties do in Europe, Kyriakos Mitsotakis is incorporating them.
In fact, New Democracy is unique among the right-wing European People’s Party members, having organizationally embraced the far right. It has placed in key roles cadres of the far-right populists LAOS, the party that opened the way for the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, shunned by all democratic parties in the period between 2000 and 2011. LAOS was vehemently xenophobic and anti-Semitic, had ties to a shady ultranationalist underworld, and was disparaged as such by the center-right.
The ultranationalist furor that New Democracy joined and stirred up during the Prespes agreement on the issue of the recognition of Northern Macedonia and the radically anti-refugee policy and messaging that became an essential part of the party’s political identity are evidence of this shift.
The ultranationalist furor that New Democracy joined and stirred up during the Prespes agreement on the issue of the recognition of Northern Macedonia and the radically anti-refugee policy and messaging that became an essential part of the party’s political identity are evidence of this shift.
The Greek experience suggests that faced with economic hardship, the widespread popular resentment of elites leads to social atavism that is perceived as oppositional to the values of the neoliberal elites — leading to such monstrosities as Golden Dawn. But as soon as some sort of precarious “normality” reemerges, it also leads to retrenchment, and thus to the new kind of illiberalism that New Democracy represents.
In this context, the rhetoric of an internal or external adversary — be it the refugees that flooded Greece’s northern borders last January, the youth, students, or the Left — has now been followed by an individualistic narrative of “personal responsibility” and economic winners and losers — despite the government’s gross irresponsibility in protecting its citizens.
In this context, the rhetoric of an internal or external adversary — be it the refugees that flooded Greece’s northern borders last January, the youth, students, or the Left — has now been followed by an individualistic narrative of “personal responsibility” and economic winners and losers — despite the government’s gross irresponsibility in protecting its citizens.
After a hiatus of five years, the forces that attempted — and, to some extent, succeeded — to reshape Greek society during the debt crisis of the last decade, are back in power. The ferocity with which Greek elites responded to an extorted, defeated, and de facto moderate Syriza governance, has deep historical roots and is one key reason why Greece’s Right has regrouped in this very aggressive manner.
Minister of the Interior Makis Voridis, himself a high profile transfer from LAOS — and with a very radical personal history — was clear in this respect when he warned in 2018 that New Democracy’s mission was to “intervene in the state and the institutions so that the left never returns to power because its ideas are defective.” This radicalized and militant New Democracy has found ample space to express its authoritarian inclinations under the state of exception that the pandemic has ushered in, backed by the comically unanimous and unprincipled support of all of the oligarch-owned media.
As the health crisis continues to escalate in a context of illiberal conservatism, popular resistance is beginning to surface — but it is still weak. Indeed, to preemptively discourage this resistance, the government responded to the first signs of unrest with incommensurate violence.
As of mid-April the government, under the threat of an economic meltdown, seems to have given up in trying to contain the pandemic. A lockdown is in effect but is no longer policed. High schools reopened and tourism has been planned to open in early May, while a timeline for removing restrictions on movement has been announced.
As of mid-April the government, under the threat of an economic meltdown, seems to have given up in trying to contain the pandemic. A lockdown is in effect but is no longer policed. High schools reopened and tourism has been planned to open in early May, while a timeline for removing restrictions on movement has been announced.
This is happening while cases and hospital intubations are at a record high and the daily death toll is now above the EU average. As rumors of an early election circulate, and though police have been somewhat reined in, one should be skeptical of accounts that see an exit from this neoliberal gloom without some sort of social mobilization. In the past decade, the Greek left, in its various guises, has managed to channel the energy of social unrest to achieve substantial, if temporary, victories. Ιn current conditions, it must strive for more.
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