Slavoj Žižek: The Urgent Necessity of a Syriza Victory in Greece

[marmar]

from In These Times:


Slavoj Žižek: The Urgent Necessity of a Syriza Victory in Greece
Only a split from the European Union by Greece can save what is worth saving in the European legacy: democracy, trust in people and egalitarian solidarity.

BY Slavoj Žižek


Critics of our institutional democracy often complain that, as a rule, elections do not offer a true choice. What we mostly get is the choice between a center-Right and a center-Left party whose program is almost indistinguishable. Next Sunday, January 25, this will not be the case—as on June 17, 2012, the Greek voters are facing a real choice: the establishment on the one side; Syriza, the radical leftist coalition, on the other.

And, as is mostly the case, such moments of real choice throw the establishment into panic. They paint the image of social chaos, poverty and violence if the wrong choice wins. The mere possibility of a Syriza victory has sent ripples of fear through markets all around the world, and, as is usual in such cases, ideological prosopopoeia has its heyday: markets have begun to “talk,” as if they are living people, expressing their “worry” at what will happen if the elections fail to produce a government with a mandate to continue with the program of fiscal austerity.

An ideal is gradually emerging from this European establishment’s reaction to the threat of Syriza victory in Greece, the ideal best rendered by the title of Gideon Rachman’s comment in the Financial Times: “Eurozone’s weakest link is the voters.” In the establishment’s ideal world, Europe gets rid of this “weakest link” and experts gain the power to directly impose necessary economic measures; if elections take place at all, their function is just to confirm the consensus of experts.

From this perspective, the Greek elections cannot but appear as a nightmare. So how can this catastrophe be avoided? The obvious way would be to return the fright—to scare the Greek voters to death with the message, “You think you are suffering now? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet—wait for the Syriza victory and you will long for the bliss of the last years!” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17561/zizek_greece_syriza

[malaise]

1. I'm looking for the death knell of

neo-liberalism in Greece tonight.

[marmar]

2. Yep. You know they're terrified this will spread to Spain, then Italy, then Ireland, then .......

[malaise]

3. Nothing like that domino effect

They are terrified - half of the whipping up of fear of Muslims in Europe is to obfuscate from economic realities.

[sendero]

4. I have my fingers crossed...

.... it's time for the banksters to feel some of the pain of the situation THEY caused.

[malaise]

5. +1,000

[2naSalit]

6. K&R!!

And RIP, EU.

This could turn out to be the best thing to happen at this time in European history of this century. If Greece pulls out of the EU it will make the IMF and their ilk squeal like castrated hogs! (Cue the Senator breadbags jokes!) Should such a shift come to pass, it could well turn out to be the beginning of the end of the current austerity foisted upon the world by the 1%. As I have been advocating for a while now, unless the 99% of the world take away the power of the current currency, we will never be able to regain the power we should have over our own lives.

Greece saying NO! to the EU and the WB/IMF and their cabal is the best thing that could happen right now.

[roamer65]

7. C'mon Greece! Tell the Eurocrats to shove it tonite.

Berlin needs a message sent to it that it is not the master of Europe.

The British should leave the EU as well. Just negotiate a fair trade agreement and get out.