New Democracy Against Democracy

Details: Published on Wednesday, 16 January 2019 06:10; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1741 ... January 16, 2019
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New Democracy Against Democracy

Aris-George-Baldur Spourdalakis, Dionysia Pitsili-Chatzi, Hilary Wainwright, Jodi Dean and Leo Panitch

There's only one country in the world where the decade long crisis of neoliberal global capitalism swept a radical left party into government: Greece. But in 2019, the capacity of its left to successfully confront the far right's continuing political ascent will be severely tested.

There was a very rapid passage from euphoria to disappointment on the international left when the SYRIZA government, elected in January 2015, was forced by the EU and IMF to succumb less than six months later to a further austerity bailout package, despite a referendum rejecting a similar creditor proposal by over 60 per cent. Despite this, the SYRIZA-led government was re-elected later in... 2015 and now approaches the end of its term. Having just this year finally secured the ending of the long sequence of neoliberal austerity memoranda imposed continuously on Greece since 2010, it now faces, in the run-up to the forthcoming election, a main opposition party which has fully embraced the hard turn to the right elsewhere.

Emitting the all too familiar ugly dogwhistle of a nation "losing its ethnic identity due to migration," the New Democracy party now amplifies social tensions amidst a toxic mixture of neoliberal and reactionary policies and outlandish conspiracy claims. Most recently, they have claimed that SYRIZA's moves to secularize the Constitution would lead to a ban on Christmas.