Greece’s polarisation was on full display when an unusually intense storm hit Athens a few hours after Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as prime minister. Fans of the outgoing centre-right party suggested the gods were announcing their displeasure, while Syriza supporters saw the deluge as a divine cleansing in advance of the incoming, corruption-busting administration.
What was indisputable were Mr Tsipras’s many firsts: youngest Greek premier in 150 years, the first to snub the powerful Greek Orthodox Church by forgoing the presence of priests at his swearing-in and the first incoming prime minister to be ignored by the incumbent.
Kostas Samaras demonstrated how to be a sore loser by absenting himself when Mr Tsipras came calling. His head of office handed Mr Tsipras the keys to the office safe, noting: “As you see, it’s empty.” This was an eloquent demonstration of the country’s finances.
As Greece’s austerity-scarred masses celebrated in public squares or on social media, some hoped that Syriza’s win heralded the return of the Left to mainstream politics and provided an alternative to the far Right.
Greek politics still echoes the history of conflict between the Left and Right that resulted, after the restitution of democracy in 1974, in Pasok and New Democracy, the two centrist parties that espoused EU and Nato identities and largely shied away from the Eastern Bloc, taking turns in power.
Behind this duopoly lay a tangled web of interests in which public money, favours and appointments to the bloated civil service were tools used to command the allegiance of critical masses of voters.
George Papandreou, a scion of one of Greece’s three main political families and son of the founder of Pasok, shattered this system in 2010 when he came clean about the scale of Greece’s indebtedness, triggering the current crisis. Greece gradually surrendered its fiscal sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, leading to harsh austerity measures to claw back some of this debt. Five years on and with little sign the crisis will end soon, Greeks have increasingly shifted their votes to extreme parties that vowed to fight the programme of restructuring and privatisation.
But the hope that surged after Syriza’s election victory was tempered by Mr Tsipras forming a coalition with the head of Independent Greeks, a right-wing, pro-Russian, anti-immigrant, anti-austerity party. The Economist predicted this government would not last the year, leading right-wingers to believe it would open the way for a sharp swing back to the right.
But traditional political labels are of little use in our current reality, which is globalised, fluid and constantly shifting. A new model of networked fellow travellers has emerged who share values across abrogated national borders. Their coming into being is a reaction to political centres hollowed out by neoliberal policies. For the past few years, young voters especially have migrated to the extreme left and right, attracted by the illusion of escape from austerity they provide. But the Greek crisis, which is arguably European and global, can only partially be blamed on the country’s closed economy and its once-lax and still clientilist professional culture. Events in Greece are part of a global condition, albeit one exaggerated by local faults, and it is neither fair nor viable to penalise ordinary Greeks for financial crimes in which their culpability was only ancillary.
As Thomas Piketty, the economist and author of the bestselling Capital in the 21st Century, said: “It’s an act of historical amnesia to tell southern European countries that they have to pay all their debt, down to the last cent, with zero inflation.” He noted that at the end of the Second World War France and Germany’s debt was twice their GDPs.
In the Athens metro last week, I offered my seat to a woman in her mid-30s who was clearly exhausted. She said her husband was in hospital recuperating from an accident, leaving her to juggle a job and look after their children. Her case is by no means unusual and at every stop, mostly Greek beggars, tissue-sellers and accordion-players would hop on board. Numbed by five years of constantly being approached by fellow Greeks less fortunate than themselves, most passengers retreated behind their earphones.
When the going was good, many highly-educated and multilingual 30-something Greek professionals would return from expensive studies abroad, get a job through personal connections and enjoy life in one of the world’s most beautiful countries without doing much with the skills their parents had paid for.
The crisis changed all this and has prompted a brain drain and a new diaspora across the world, including the GCC. These Greeks are unlikely to ever return, one of the many consequences of misapplied austerity measures.
European leftists who swarmed into Athens last week to witness the first democratic victory for the Left in decades seemed blind to the fact that the critical mass of votes for Syriza came from people who had supported the conventional parties while the money fuelled patronage networks. Syriza’s win showed that Greeks have been pushed to a point of desperation where they support the hard left rather than a deep theoretical shift. For those who are not committed leftists, voting for Syriza in the age of self-interest is less identity politics and more a desperate attempt to salvage something out of nothing.
“There are two types of Greeks at the moment,” a friend told me. “Those who vote for Syriza because they have nothing to lose, and those who still choose New Democracy because they are still scared of losing the little they managed to hang onto.”
Syriza’s win may have shattered the bland swaps in power between New Democracy and Pasok, but it has also sharpened the confrontation between left and right in Greece, raising the possibility of renewed strife at a time when long years of austerity have resulted in the partial collapse of society.
The last century saw several rounds of confrontation, most notably the civil war that followed the end of Nazi occupation and the 1967-74 Colonels’ dictatorship. On each occasion, the West supported the Right in a tactical move to thwart the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer exists, but Vladimir Putin rewarded Greece by lifting sanctions on its agricultural products, while Syriza broke ranks with the EU to offer Moscow diplomatic support over Ukraine. There are hints about Russian weapon purchases and leaked emails suggesting ideological affinity with Alexandr Drugin’s neo-Eurasianism.
All this suggests that Greece – along with the East Mediterranean and the rest of Europe – is in for one hell of a ride.
Iason Athanasiadis is a journalist reporting on Greece and Turkey