”œWhere are Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan when you need them?” So lamented CNBC business commentator Larry Kudlow yesterday in response to riots in Greece over proposed financial cutbacks. Greek protesters, numbering over 10,000, shut down commerce, took over the Acropolis ”“ Athens’ ancient birthplace of democracy – and firebombed office buildings and police stations. Three employees died of smoke inhalation in a fire at a bank ”“ the first deaths in a Greek protest since 1991.
Kudlow asserted that these riots were the work of the unions, and what Greece needed was a tough guy in the mold of Thatcher or Reagan who would stand up to the unions. Public sector unions are certainly at the forefront in organizing these protests, but Greek authorities say that the violence is being perpetrated by ”œanarchists” ”“ youth in their 20s who show up at a protest scene dressed all in black, with black hoods or masks, and who then begin to throw stones at the police and Molotov cocktails at bank buildings.
No one seems to know who these anarchists represent or how they are organized, but their presence on the scene and the ensuing violence is said by reporters to have horrified the average Greek citizen. Greece is used to large-scale public protests, especially by the unions, and sometimes the government itself is forced out as the result of protests. But violence of this sort is rare and disturbing. Some observers in Athens think this violence could continue all summer, given the profound anger many Greeks have at the financial cutbacks that are now being imposed on them by their own government and by other EU governments, especially Germany. Others believe the public will turn sharply rightward in the face of such violence and demand or at least tolerate more authoritarian measures by the Papandreou government.
Which way Greece turns is a matter of importance for anyone who supports liberal democracy, and whether the Greek situation spreads to Spain or Portugal or elsewhere in Europe is equally of moment. Greece has been a functioning democracy in the liberal European manner since World War II. It fits in the mold of a Southern European country like Italy or Spain, where the unions have managed to coerce the state into granting their members job benefits that appall the thrifty Germans, and where government appeases these demands by taking on ever more debt and kicking the can down the road. The can now has nowhere to go and the Greeks are being forced by the outside world ”“ otherwise called ”œthe markets” ”“ to do something about their enormous debts and their outsized promises to public sector workers.
Kudlow has a point about union largesse and the burden it now imposes on Greek society, however wrong he may be about these protests. But it is important to remember that Greece is not like other Balkan countries such as Kosovo or Serbia, where centuries of ethnic and religious conflict break out periodically in war and genocide. Greece is far different ”“ an integral part of the European post-war experiment in solving problems through a unified rather than a fractured Europe. This experiment has traveled far enough to have created a European president, parliament, and single currency, of which Greece is a member. This experiment threatens to unravel to some significant degree depending on what happens in Greece and whether the risk of ”œcontagion” to other European countries becomes reality.
It is not only Europe that should worry about the outcome. Liberal democracies around the world have bought social peace and prosperity through piling on debt upon debt at all levels of society ”“ government, business, and the consumer are all grappling with a mountain of debt that has reached the tipping point. The debt is demanding to be repaid, rolled over with new debt, or defaulted upon; the first two choices are becoming impossible for countries like Greece, and the last choice is anathema to ruling elites.
What the Greek protesters are asking in a basic way is why their government does not choose option number three. For many Greeks, their role in the buildup of government debt was at best passive, but what the Greeks have discovered is that they were deliberately misled by their government and the international banks about the true size of the debt burden they have now inherited. Fraud took place, debts were incurred secretly through derivatives, and both the Greek public and the EU Commission, which approved Greece’s entry into the euro based on fraudulent debt records, were none the wiser. The anger that is taking place in Germany at this deception is no different from the anger felt on the streets of Athens.
The German government this week, oddly enough, sided with the protesters on selecting option number three. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government proposed that any future Greek situations in Europe be resolved through an orderly sovereign bankruptcy with rules agreed to in advance. This means the country involved will be allowed to default on its debt, dragging the banks and investors around the world into the circle of pain that so far has only been imposed on the general public.
This is radical talk and represents the first crack in what has been to date a solid front by democracies around the world in support of the international banking system and the monied interests against the interests of the public. Where such talk will lead is anybody’s guess, but the road being taken will answer the vital question ”œwhom does the state represent?” Is it the banks, the hedge funds, the private equity moguls, the bond market traders, the rating agencies? Or is it the office worker, the retired person, the teacher, the fireman, the homemaker?
In a country like the US, so far the state clearly speaks for money. The federal government has had difficulty finding $18 billion to continue funding extended unemployment benefits for those out of work, but it had absolutely no difficulty finding $700 billion when it came time to bail out the banks. The Federal Reserve took upon itself the right to buy over $1 trillion in fraud-riddled mortgage securities from the banks, and now it is looking for a way to pass these assets secretly on to the federal government ”“ possibly to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ”“ so that hundreds of billions of dollars of losses can be borne by the taxpayer rather than the banks, which are enjoying record earnings and bonuses. The Fed refuses to reveal the price it paid for these assets, and along with the White House it is vigorously working to kill a provision in the House and Senate financial reform package that would require an outside audit of the Fed.
Like the Greeks, Americans do not know what their government has been up to, and what the true debt situation is. American suspicion of their own government is at an all-time high, and it comes from the right as well as the left. Tea Partiers and liberal Democrats are united at least in the fear that their government is working against the interests of the average person. There is also a growing recognition that the American debt situation is as severe as that of Greece, and that draconian cutbacks in social welfare and personal living standards could easily be imposed in the United States.
Should protests erupt in the US, and should they become violent, which is not out of the question considering how heavily armed the populace is, the government is not without resources if it decides to maintain solidarity with the elite and powerful. Since 9/11 the surveillance state has grown enormously. The NSA is, by some public accounts, listening in routinely on almost all voice and internet traffic of hundreds of millions of Americans. Surveillance cameras are now everywhere. SWAT teams have sprung up not only in a multitude of federal and state and local government agencies, but among private mercenary companies like Blackwater. Torture through the use of devices like the Taser is not only publicly acceptable, but the public has been encouraged to cheer on the authorities no matter how egregious their use is of these weapons. The military is being trained to intervene on American soil in the event of domestic violence. Civil liberties such as the right of habeas corpus or the right to an attorney have been legally restricted through the Patriot Act. The press has been turned over to the pockets of powerful media conglomerates, and corporations have been granted personhood and the right to intervene in elections.
The state has become more powerful than ever, and not only in the US. ”œWhom does the state represent?” is the most vital question of our times. Other than the possible exception of Germany, which is beginning to hold money accountable for its actions, the state does not work for the people, and has shown no inclination to force banks and other powerful financial interests to suffer alongside of the people when it comes to liquidating the debt mountain. This is why the Greek protests matter. Along with Icelanders, the Greek population is rising in protest against the banks and the powerful who are willing to impose economic pain on everyone but themselves. The Greek protests, however, have turned violent. If this sort of violence spreads, as it easily could, governments are in a strong position to turn repressive and reactionary, using public concern over the violence as their excuse to institute a police state that stamps out violence but also conveniently maintains the status quo for the wealthy.
As deflation and economic depression spread across the globe, inflicting misery and want on billions of people, nothing will become more important than answering the question, ”œWhom does the state represent?”
The wealthy and the powerful as it always has…
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. John Stuart Mill
And that’s the point.
In Gilead the “Commanders of the Faithful” labeled political prisoners rapists and let the women, who were the victims of a kind of institutionalized rape by these commanders, tear the political prisoners apart. Americans, are already in a situation like this where dissent against the government and banks can be labeled terrorism and we all participate in the punishment through our naiveté feeling safer because another terrorist is caught and punished.
After the revolution, what happens next? Anarchy? Totalitarian state? Who runs the result of the revolution?
“All I know is just what I read in the newspapers.” – Will Rogers
It’s gonna be really sad when archaeologists and historians a millennium hence look upon Atwood as having been a real-time chronicler of her period rather than as a fiction writer. After the Collapse it’s even more likely to happen, just as we have lost details about Western Europe once the Roman Empire began to disintegrate there. I wonder what the new Arthurian legend will look like.
One of the few good aspects of all of the foreign adventures we’ve gotten ourselves involved in is that the legions are almost all overseas and can’t be used at home. Once the revolution starts, transport of those forces back home will also become almost impossible because of the cost and difficulty in procuring fuel. Niven and Pournelle had some ideas in “Footfall” and “Lucifer’s Hammer” (despite their obvious biases) which might be useful for trying to preserve some of the knowledge we’ve accumulated to pass it on to succeeding generations when the crap hits the fan.
The anarchists are a particular problem because they give the state the tactical advantage when acting against the people. The state can use the examples of anarchist violence to justify walling off protesters into tightly controlled zones, or restricting protesters access to government officials and important public meetings.
Anarchists also assist the state propaganda machine by saying they stand for the same goals as the non-violent protesters. This allows the propaganda outlets (in the west these are the major news corporations – all of them, public broadcasting included) to conflate the citizen protest movement with the anarchists, which gives them a powerful edge to persuade the public to reject the protest movement.
Anarchists are thus part of the problem because they end up giving the state powerful leverage against the ordinary citizens. Of course the anarchists are so stupid they don’t see this. They want to glorify themselves as heroes of the people, when in fact they are actually helping to defeat the people by playing into the government’s hands.
Any reformed anarchist will tell you this is true. For reformed anarchists, every one of them will tell you the turning moment was when they realized that their actions were defeating their own purpose. This is similar to realizations of reformed racists and criminals – it’s the same epiphany in all cases.
Also this makes life doubly hard for popular organizers. We saw this in Seattle, where I live. After the WTO protests turned violent, the protest leaders and the police found themselves working together to try to wind down the intensity on the streets in order to protect the safety of both the non-violent citizen protesters and the police officers. They had to find a safe exit for the protesting crowds, who had become boxed in by police lines.
Organizing effective protests hinges on communicating your political message effectively to the general public (through looking positive in the media – best done with non-violent protest) and to government officials (who have to understand that they will get broad public support if they take the risk of advocating reform).
Anarchist violence directly defeats these efforts, by looking bad in the media, thus turning public support against the protests, and providing justification for the state’s use of harsh tactics to break up the protest movement.
So the state is all too happy to let anarchists look like idiots in public and commit a few acts of violence. They could not possibly do more to assist the state in defeating the very revolution they say they want to inspire.
http://mauberly.blogspot.com/
Who do they represent now? Money and corporations.
The bigger question is how to get them to represent the common man?
1. Campaign financing with public money only.
2. End gerrymandering.
3. Term limits.
4. No revolving door between Congress and lobbying.
5. Condemn, ridicule, and expose ignorance and the ignorant.
I have to disagree with you to a certain point. It is true that violence can be counter-productive, but it is not always true that violence is counter-productive. The people of Greece will decide whether they side with the Anarchists or not. If the protests of the Greek people are ignored, then the Anarchists will gain supports among the people. Violence as a tactic must be weighed very carefully. While it can often backfire, that does not mean that it has no place in direct social movements. Additionally, not all Anarchists advocate violence. We should be careful of painting with too broad strokes.
‘Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice…socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality’ – Mikhail Bakunin
“Greece has been a functioning democracy in the liberal European manner since World War II.”
You seem to have forgotten the Colonels.
Overall, you tone is a tad overheated, but you hit on an important point, in my view: how do you wake up the political establishment to true finance reform/tax reform/income policy?
They go together.
Like frogs in slowly heated pots, we have seen a dramatic transfer of wealth, largely through tax policy, in the last 30 years, and now have unsustainable, unbalanced patterns of consumption and investment.
The public did not understand it as it happened, and was convinced that something else was happening.
Very, very hard to mobilize the public to fix something, if no one recognizes what has happened.
Violence will be counterproductive, because it will cause an authoritarian backlash in the general public.
But violence seems to be about the only radical thing that the newspapers report.
The starting point has to be to try to identify, precisely, exactly how things have gone wrong. And then to make very specific suggestions regarding what to change.
Not enough. But until we get that far, we are lost in the fog.
legitimacy of the government.
You took the “hard case,” Greece, and made a well reasoned, imho highly accurate, argument about the importance to the question.
No $18 million for extended unemployment benefits, they argue, as they approve, again and again, $100′s of millions for … banks? The more in need a state population is, the more likely you’ll find solid support for corporate welfare at the expense of the people. Just look at the opponents of this moderate financial reform bill in the Senate. No surrender by concentrated capital, none, never. Wall Street is now the equivalent of the segregationists of the 1960′s.
Once the question of legitimacy is raised, it’s arguable that the legitimacy to govern has collapsed. After the various insults to our welfare and our intelligence endured since the bailouts started, the people are responding with huge skepticism. While the exquisite means of control, particularly the media myth makers, are still potent, the public questions the legitimacy of the entire government structure. In an imperfect poll, Rasmussen found:
Rasmussen is a right leaning pollster, without any doubt, but this is beyond any margin of error in it’s significance. It benefits no one but informs any who want to pay attention — time for a radical shift by those in power or for a truly sincere faction to emerge that will take the dangerous decline of legitimacy seriously and do something.
I’m not sure if I should be heartened by the idea that the majority of the political class a disconnected from reality instead of being actual criminals. I am wondering, though, about the other 27% that know better.
I have not looked at Rasmussen’s report lately (victim of my last “crash”) but it didn’t seem that bad. On that political class, the author columnist had a funny response: “The remainder, presumably, are comfortable being tyrants.” I’ll track down the poll and post the link here.
would be more pernicious than the ones we already have?
simply believe that the consent of the governed is unimportant.
for Michael Collins:
The anti-segregationists or the anti-integrationists? I don’t get it (not unusual for me).
Yeah, right. Many people, esp. the Independents, thought that a truuuly sincere faction had emerged in 2008. Excuse the sarcasm.
“All I know is just what I read in the newspapers.” – Will Rogers
to see if anyone read my comment;) Thanks for the correction. There should be no “anti”. I’ll fix it.
As for the second item cited, it’s easier to see this from the outside, but if there was ever a time for those in power to get very serious and advance real reform, it would be now. Barring some broad based awakening by PTB, it would be nice if there were some serious ass kickers who fought for the fairly obvious needs of the people. There are some people doing this or who seem to but it’s very hard to overcome the inert mass of self interest represented by those in power.
The only candidate who was serious about his platform was Kucinich. The rest didn’t offer any surprises, including the president (although I’m surprised at what a cad Edwards was).
Interesting facts here. Agree w. jwp and add Greece’s post-WWII political scene involved fascist generals propped up by proto-Gladio style repression of the left (strategically near the eastern bloc of course).
Anarchist movements are opposed by left wing authoritarians like the socialist party that has recently gained control in Greece, cracking down even harder on Exarchia and other places in antiauthoritarian Greek society. Anarchists and other leftist groups, aside from the sparring with the cops & such, also try to support others who perform civil disobedience in an effort to force policymakers to abandon their criminal & otherwise awful operations. This is what the ‘third force’ provocateurs frequently try to derail for their own reasons. (For example a black bloc may have some kind of action vs the police to draw them off of crushing another CivDis action by another group.)
A major aspect of the modern COINTELPRO system in the United States involves getting informant/mole/provocateurs into the leadership of politically ‘marginizable’ groups like Christian militas, bored Islamic young men and and anarchists. Then the FBI or other operative (soon to be privatized?) provides weapons, encourages younger activists to prove they are tough etc. Usually the JTTFs stage this in the US today.
For updates from inside this milieu please check out http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/ which notes that the bank ownership forced their employees to work on a strike day when it was known the bank would likely get attacked, and also was on the route of the huge demonstration march. According to an employee this bank had never done firedrills or evacuation drills for its employees (only executives) and also everyone was locked in, reminiscent of the locked-in NYC Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.
This week I spent a couple days at Minnesota’s Ramsey County District Court for RNC 8 (http://rnc8.org ) pretrial cross examinations of the undercover informants sent in to the Anarchist-organized RNC Welcoming Committee. The fulltime Sheriffs Department operative who went to well over 100 meetings claimed they had no problem with property destruction, weapons and rioting, and yet failed to indicate a single instance where the defendants actually conspired to do any of this.
On the other hand we learned that this operative, another Sheriff operative, and the main FBI informant drove around **by themselves** casing parking ramps to drop banners from, when Obama came to town in June 2008.
With that many resources they couldn’t actually prove anyone advocated this kind of thing, yet if I could spy on government and corporate officials I bet I could find a hell of a lot more criminal activity & conspiracy.
I have seen plenty of instances of undercovers posing as anarchists, including right in front of me, and it has been done this way for decades but now with the advent of more videos and messaging it is a lot harder for the state to perform these false flag operations.
Finally: It’s not the anarchists’ fault that hierarchies are collapsing!
–
Hongpong.com
right on…, write on.
I posted this comment to my “Days of Future Past – III” piece last year. Appropriate and worth re-posting here I believe.
REX – 84
…, from Wikipedia:
Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, is a plan by the United States federal government to test their ability to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest or national emergency.
Description
According to scholar Diana Reynolds:
The Rex-84 Alpha Explan (Readiness Exercise 1984, Exercise Plan; otherwise known as a continuity of government plan), indicates that FEMA in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies, along with other NATO nations, conducted a civil readiness exercise during April 5-13, 1984. It was conducted in coordination and simultaneously with a Joint Chiefs exercise, Night Train 84, a worldwide military command post exercise (including Continental U.S. Forces or CONUS) based on multi-emergency scenarios operating both abroad and at home. In the combined exercise, Rex-84 Bravo, FEMA and DOD led the other federal agencies and departments, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, the Treasury, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Veterans Administration through a gaming exercise to test military assistance in civil defense.
The exercise anticipated civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization. To fight subversive activities, there was authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of martial law. [1]
Existence of a master military contingency plan, “Garden Plot” and a similar earlier exercise, “Lantern Spike” were originally revealed by journalist Ron Ridenhour, who summarized his findings in “Garden Plot and the New Action Army.”[2]
Rex 84 was mentioned during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987.[3] The Miami Herald wrote subsequently on July 5, 1987:
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and the Federal Emergency Management Agency … had drafted a contingency plan providing for the suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, and the appointment of military commanders to head state and local governments and to detain dissidents and Central American refugees in the event of a national crisis.[4]
The basic facts about Rex 84 and other contingency planning readiness exercises—and the potential threat they pose to civil liberties if fully implemented in a real operation—are taken seriously by scholars and civil libertarians.[5]
Exercises similar to Rex 84 happen regularly.[6] Plans for roundups of large numbers of persons in the United States in times of crisis are constructed during periods of increased political repression such as the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy Era.
For example, from 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of over 100,000 persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the “ADEX” list.[7] This list contained many labor leaders, scholars, and public figures of the time.
In 2008, for the first time an active military unit has been given a dedicated assignment stateside for civil unrest containment. It is assigned to Northcom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.[8]
and if the entire population rejects paying the debt, the Greeks will default. Politicians eventually hear what taxpayers are complaining about and are forced to do something in fear of not being re-elected.
Change in the banking industry will only come about when change occurs in the people that represent the taxpayers. Risk must be reduced in the banking industry — financial markets have become gambling casinos. Market reform starts with government officials–not trying to regulate banks.
Societal change is sometimes violent–the French revolution was not a pretty sight. Greek citizens are doing what North Americans will eventually resort to doing. Entire populations can’t be jailed or controlled. People are ‘really’ hurting and they’re getting violent–quite normal in my view. What’s alarming is that North Americans are far too willing to be sheep.