Re: <nettime> The Greek elections?

[Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com>]

On Feb 5, 2015, at 15:06 , t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com> wrote:

   I worry about Syriza. If they succeed on their own terms, it will
   completely reframe how the entire world thinks about debt. It's very
   hard to imagine how they'll be allowed to succeed, and it's very easy
   to imagine how they could be pushed to fail. But none of us have much
   experience with people like this -- who aren't so far away from us --
   assuming power on a national scale, do we? So that much has changed.
   It's worth considering whether your reaction -- which doesn't seem to
   have much that's fresh about it -- might change as well.

I think you mistake my thoughts about the Syriza moment for some kind
of endorsement of the status quo.  Obviously there's a lot more detail
than I'm addressing (and thanks for the detail about the monument) but
I'm worried about the various ways in which they could fuck it up (or
get fucked up), and I'm hoping they don't.

They have a small window in which to succeed.  They are starting out in
a corner, both in terms of the promises they've come in on and the
challenge ahead of them.  They plan to duke it out directly with a
monster, and there seems to be no plan B.

I'm in favour of realpolitik.  No point leading Pyrrhic victories.
They've moved quickly and deciseively in a few directions, publicly
thumbing their noses at the troika and reversing public service cuts
etc. But it all depends on the monster being more afraid of them than
they are of it.

I agree that the situation is new, so it's hard to see how any reaction
can be stale... but I agree with you also in that I worry for them.  On
the one hand there is the corrupting influence of power itself (selling
out, or concentrating power), there's the troika and capital against
them, and all they have is a fresh and tenuous grip on the levers of
the greek state, such as they are.

We do have the example of the Venezuelan state under Chavez, with the
reactionary forces using media control and military intervention to
divide the street (snipers at rallies, repeated on television ad
nauseum, or should I say ad psychosis) in order to undermine the
progressive project.  They failed there, and maybe they'll fail here
too.  Chavez's military background did help him directly, though, and
he had oil, didn't walk into an economic catastrophe.  Etc.

- Flick


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org