Bruno Waterfield on the destruction of democracy in Greece and what it will mean for the rest of the European Union:
What happens in Greece will mark the opening of a new era in European politics. It is important therefore to understand what is and isn’t going on. The crisis is not, as many believe, being driven by ‘neoliberal’ economic policies. It isn’t caused by any Greek cultural propensity to fecklessness either. And, despite the protest graffiti and the timeless appeal of Nazi references, the Greek tragedy is not a plot to restore an explicit German hegemony in Europe. Angela Merkel is no Adolf Hitler.
What is happening in Greece is a crisis of European proportions because it is the sharpest expression of a destructive trend common to all countries in the EU: the twenty-first-century elite mission to place institutions, policy and statecraft above society. The Greek catastrophe, then, is an indicator of what happens when the question of interest or politics becomes the sole preserve of bureaucratic or state structures decoupled from, and increasingly defined against, the public.
Measures imposed on Greece are explicitly declared, even celebrated, as being in opposition to Greek society. Any attempt by political parties to uphold the democratic representation of Greek interests is met with aggressive hostility. Moreover, the EU-IMF programme, or so-called Memorandum of Understanding, for Greece is utterly divorced from economic reality. As documented in the Daily Telegraph, the Eurozone’s policies are pushing Greece into a ‘death spiral’ that defies any economic logic.
