The social chaos and extremist rightwing backlash in Greece is getting worse

[phantom power]

The police are now mostly in league with the fascist Golden Dawn party, and conspire to terrorize and intimidate anyone who doesn't look "Greek."

While we can tut tut and shake our heads, it's crucial to note that this isn't happening in a vacuum. These are the wages of austerity little different from the fate of immiserated Germany after World War I. When a proud and previously prosperous people are suddenly thrown into extreme poverty and their safety net destroyed, nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-"other" sentiment is the inevitable result. One would think the Germans of all people would recognize this pattern.

The austerity crowd isn't just temporarily destroying economies. They're toying with entire cultures, failing to learn lessons that should have been permanently etched into the world's memory over 70 years ago.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-wages-of-austerity-by-davidoatkins.html

[Follow The Money]

1. this is the saddest part

They're toying with entire cultures, failing to learn lessons that should have been permanently etched into the world's memory over 70 years ago.

ours too, it is so sad to watch our culture go downhill so far so fast. I wonder if there is any way we can turn it around.

[JustAnotherGen]

2. We aren't anywhere near that

We actually moved away from that after the Civil Rights movement. It's still there - we still have racial profiling . . . but we aren't in danger of genocide/concentration camps.

[Speck Tater]

6. "It can't happen here."

Keep believing that.

Then read this book about how things went down in German. They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer (1955)

Full text (PDF/Kindle/plain text) available FREE at this link.

[eomer]

7. Re: "we aren't in danger of genocide/concentration camps"

We're not only in danger of them, we've already got them. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other dark sites around the world. We have held people in concentration camps, tortured them and tortured some to death.

Regarding genocide, we can quibble over definitions and body counts and may end up saying that the Iraq War doesn't constitute genocide, but a large number of people are still dead and a larger number injured and displaced.

[Myrina]

8. ... don't forget the prison-industrial complex & arming the inner city youth ...

... if those don't constitute a form of concentration camp and genocide, I don't know what does.

We give impoverished inner city minorities no alternatives but crime, so they either kill each other, end up dead or in prison, or in the military - killing whoever the gov't tells them to kill.

[eomer]

9. Yes, thank you. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. I beleive those "lessons" are NOT a failure.

They are a blueprint for those who are destabilizing these countries, under the guise of austerity.
tis all part of the plan and has been used over and over and over again as a method of keeping the subjected population from
organizing.

[HiPointDem]

11. +1

[JustAnotherGen]

3. And yet . . .

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_1764.html

Nothing on the State Department Travel Warning List. Oh - and it's still going on towards black Americans in Spain. A very good friend of mine has a son (African American) who plays a professional sport in Italy. His American passport didn't help him with the Barcelona police.

If it happens twice in one country - it's something our State Department ought to be giving us a heads up on.

[jwirr]

5. Exactly. After WWI the allies forced Germany into austerity in the treaty and this had everything

to do with starting WWII.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. That's what the definition of "National Socialism" was....

The Germans liked Socialism but the Nazis said it should only be for "True Germans".

They claimed "immigrants" were sponging off the system.