Today is Greece, tomorrow is Spain and Italy? ("Publico", Portugal)
SYRIZA considers the crisis a struggle against foreign yoke for national independence.
On the night of the victory of SYRIZA, the Italian philosopher and radical Paolo Flores Arcais wrote: "Today in Greece, tomorrow in Spain, the day after tomorrow in Italy." The leader of the winning party, Alexis Tsipras, promised to make a reorganization of Europe. “January 25 is just the beginning, after the victory of SYRIZA will be followed by the victory of the Podemos party in Spain, and next year - Sinn Féin in Ireland”.
In turn, Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, made the following statement: “2015 will be a turning year for Spain and for Europe. We will start with Greece. ” The end of the “era of austerity” and the new domino effect, opposite to the one that Greece provoked in 2010 in the euro zone, is announced. The most courageous dreamers are talking about a new “spring of nations”, similar to the one that happened in 1848 year.
Three facts overshadow this joyful picture. First, SYRIZA chose the Independent Greeks party of the right-wing radicals as an ally. This news became an icy shower for Rome and Paris. Daniel Cohn-Bendit called this coalition "unnatural." This is not a secondary point, we will return to it. April 19 parliamentary elections are scheduled in Finland. “True Finns”, a populist and critical party in relation to the European Union, is counting on the negative example of Athens in mobilizing the electorate against Brussels and the south. The victory of this party can be the first in a whole series of similar "anti-Greek" electoral victories. Greece’s partially written-off debt will provoke a whole wave of reaction in the Nordic countries, where ultra-right forces and nationalist parties can rise, said British analyst Gideon Rahman.
The south is also heterogeneous. In Portugal, they continue to follow two-party logic. In France, the struggle against the euro and austerity measures is turned in its favor by the National Front Marine Le Pen, who, according to the polls conducted this week, are ready to cast their votes for about 30% of voters. Marin supports the party SYRIZA - or rather, uses it to redefine the “criticism” of the European Union. Similarly, in Italy, the victory of SYRIZA is taken advantage of not by the left radicals, but by the followers of Beppe Grillo and the “League of the North”, who are now close to Le Pen. Tsipras and Iglesias clearly forgot to include Marin in their wish list.
New radicals
SYRIZA and Podemos are a new political phenomenon - these are radical left parties, which, however, should not be confused with the former extreme leftists from whom they originated. Iglesias best describes this distinction. The old leftists sought to preserve the purity of their doctrine and ideological myths, thus remaining a by-product political force. Iglesias explains that for his party it does not matter how many votes she gets in the elections - 10 or 15%, and we know that this is the main aspiration of the Portuguese “Left Block” or extreme left parties of Europe. For “Podemos” it is important to drag the electorate from the center or even from the right sector to one’s side. She wants power. This is not about class struggle — a relic of the 20th century — but about the confrontation between “top” and “bottom”, between “people” and “caste”.
Using the experience gained from Venezuela or Bolivia, she is not going to equate the situation in Southern Europe with what was happening in Latin America. Its goal is to find new mechanisms for political action. The former left radicals dreamed of "changing the world without resorting to power." Podemos wants power. Therefore, the subject of her research was the experiences of the "conquest of hegemony" by Bolivarian populists. “Winning elections does not mean winning power,” Iglesias writes. For now, the goal is elections. The rest, as well as everything that follows, remains in a haze of uncertainty.
The “first commandment” of the party is to stop turning to the left, but speak to the “people.” The second is to be in harmony with the "state of mind" (and not with the ideological attitudes) of the Spaniards themselves. Podemos aims to express "what people think." Large parties are only now beginning to comprehend a phenomenon that had previously been neglected (Ponto de Vista from 30.11.14).
Podemos understands that it has cleared the territory not only from the economic crisis, which has given mass hostility to Brussels and Berlin, but, above all, the degradation of the two-party system, which the Podemos adherents intend to destroy. Like SYRIZA, the party rejected the former strategy of the alliance with the left social democrats - the goal is to “PASOCIZE” the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ”(PASOK is the Greek center-left party, ed.).
SYRIZA began with a coalition of various extreme left-wing political forces in their classical form, which, as we see, are now forced to function as a single party. Their style is more canonical than that of Podemos. But lately, the rhetoric of its leaders has become increasingly reminiscent of Iglesias with his appeals to "the whole society", to the "nation", on top of the barriers between the left and the right.
SYRIZA's success was due not only to "public despair" but also to the discrediting of the two-party system and the fall of the "Greek dynasties." The party then managed to transform social discontent into a feeling of "national humiliation." The crisis is perceived in the context of historical of the past.
“The left radicals interpreted the crisis of recent years as a struggle for national liberation from a foreign yoke,” notes Manos Matsaganis. - They promised a light and painless return to the good old days that preceded the “troika”. The party has an allergic reaction to the reforms, which it sharply rejects even the most innocent of them. ” Its internal spring is nationalism. It is not without reason that SYRIZA united with Anel, “reactionary rightists and xenophobes”, to whom anti-Semitic views are not alien.
“Europe is led by German neo-Nazis,” is the thesis of Panos Kammenos, the leader of Anel. Ideologically, the parties are at opposite poles, if not the central question: austerity and Europe.
The unification of the left and right radicals is no longer the first and not the last time. Considering the current situation, one should not exclude the possibility of unexpected political reorganizations that are not associated with the usual division into two political poles. Recall the French referendum on the European Constitution in 2005. The left party members from the “other Europe”, sovereigns and Euroskeptics, from the left and from the right, as well as the ultra-right, led by Le Pen, united to defeat the treatise.
“Creditors and Debtors”
The Greek government takes a weak position in the negotiations on economic issues: blackmail about leaving the euro zone stopped working. But he has a strong political position. It plays on the wave of sympathy, on the denial of austerity in other countries of southern Europe, as well as on the pressure exerted on Berlin. Greece set the negotiations a maximalist tone, in order to dramatize the process and achieve mediation by countries such as Italy or France.
German politician Joschka Fisher notes: “Because of the impact that elections in Greece had on Spain, Italy and France, where the attitude against austerity measures is equally strong, pressure on the Eurogroup will increase significantly, both on the right and on the left. The Greek elections have already led to Merkel’s undoubted defeat and austerity strategies aimed at protecting the euro. ”
“The weak link in European theory is political,” Gideon Rahman wrote a few weeks ago. “There is a risk that voters, outraged by tough economic policies, may cast their votes to“ anti-system ”parties that reject the European treaty on the preservation of the single currency.” Athens is counting on this, but without taking into account the boomerang effect that it can create.
What does this mean politically? In the north and south, sovereign anti-European sentiments will intensify. Does Merkel have enough authority in Germany to retake the initiative? How will Paris and Berlin respond to the divergence of north and south, which are intensifying and capable of changing the EU? Europe is increasingly divided into two blocks: creditors and debtors.
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