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The Greek people's efforts to end the
economic depression, recover their sovereignty and reverse the
regressive socio-economic policies, which have drastically reduced
living standards, have been thrice denied.
The Greek people voted for Syriza believing its promises of 'a new course'.
Immediately following their victory, Syriza reneged on their promise to restore sovereignty - and end the subjugation of the Greek people to the economic dictates of overseas bankers, bureaucrats and political oligarchs. Instead Syriza kept Greece in the oligarchical imperialist bloc, portraying the European Union as an association of independent sovereign countries.
What began as a great victory of the
Greek people turned into a tragic strategic retreat. From their
first day in office, Syriza led the Greek people down the blind
alley of total submission to the German empire.
They were stunned, but mute, as Syriza
emptied the Greek treasury and offered even greater concessions,
including acceptance of the illegal and odious debts incurred by
private bankers, speculators and political kleptocrats in previous
regimes.
Syriza's demagogic leaders, Yanis
Varoufakis and Alexis Tsipras, shifting from fits of
hysteria to infantile egotism, denounced 'the Germans and their
blackmail' and then performed a coy belly-crawl at the feet of
the 'Troika',
peddling their capitulation to the bankers as 'negotiations' and
referring to their overlords as... 'partners'.
Over 60% of the Greek people voted a
resounding NO to further plunder and poverty.
Thus Greece became a vassal state:
Both political factions and the Greek economic elites, that is,
...viewed entry into the EU as an
opportunity for taking and faking loans, borrowing, defaulting and
passing their enormous debts on to the public treasury!
They engaged in fraudulent overseas
financial transactions while grossly manipulating and fabricating
financial data to cover-up Greece's unsustainable trade and budget
deficits.
Clearly entry into and continued membership in the EU has largely benefited two groups of elites:
The Greek elite and middle class believed 'they were Europeans' - that the EU was a beneficent arrangement and a source of prosperity and upward mobility.
In reality, Greek leaders were merely
accomplices to the German conquest of Greece. And the major part of
the middle class aped the views of the Greek elite.
Syriza brought in new faces and rhetoric but operated with the same blind commitment to the EU.
The Syriza leadership believed they were "partners".
This photo taken on July 29, 2015 shows a Greek flag floating in the sea at the Kalamitsa beach on Skyros island. Greece expects debt reduction from its international creditors after a first assessment of reforms under its new bailout obligations concludes in November, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on July 29. Photo AFP-LEHTIKUVA
The road to vassalage is rooted deep in the psyche of the political class.
Instead of recognizing their subordinate membership in the EU as the root cause of their crisis, they blamed,
The Greek rulers and middle class were
in fact both victims and accomplices.
German workers complained. The German media deflected criticism by blaming the 'lazy Greek cheats'. Meanwhile, the Greek oligarch-controlled media deflected criticism of the role of the parasitical political class back to the 'Germans'.
This all served to obscure the class dynamics of empire building - colonialism by invitation. The ideology of blaming peoples, instead of classes, is pitting German workers against Greek employees and pensioners.
The German masses support their bankers,
while the Greek masses have elected and followed Syriza - their
traitors.
Most have little knowledge or experience
of Greek politics, particularly its history and relations with the
EU over the past thirty five years.
At that time, I was party to an internal debate of whether to continue within the EU or leave.
Papandreou was elected on an anti EU, anti NATO platform, which, like Tsipras, he promptly reneged on - arguing that 'there were no alternatives'. Even then, there were international and Greek academic sycophants, as there are today, who argued that membership in the EU was the only realistic alternative- it was the 'only possibility'.
The 'possibilistas" at that time, operating either from ignorance or deceit, were full of bluster and presumption.
They denied the underlying power realities in the structure of the EU and dismissed the class capacity of the working and popular masses to forge an alternative. Then, as now, it was possible to develop independent alternative relations with Europe, Russia, China, the Middle East and North Africa.
The advantages of maintaining a
protected market, a robust tourist sector and an independent
monetary system were evident and did not require EU membership (or
vassalage).
By the time Syriza-Tsipras rose to power (January 2015), Germany's imperial power was undeniable. Tsipras' misunderstanding of this reality can be attributed to his and his 'comrades' rejection of class and imperial analyses. Even academic Marxists, who spouted Marxist theory, never applied their abstract critiques of capitalism and imperialism to the concrete realities of German empire building and Greece's quasi-colonial position within the EU.
They viewed their role as that of 'colonial reformers' - imagining that they were clever enough to 'negotiate' better terms in the German-centered EU.
They inevitably failed because Berlin had a built-in majority among its fervently neo-liberal ex-communist satellites plus the IMF, French and English imperial partners. Syriza was no match for this power configuration.
Then there was the bizarre delusion
among the Syriza intellectuals that European capitalism was more
benign than the US version.
Without firing a shot, German empire-building has revolved around making loans and financial transfers to the new subordinate member states in the EU.
These financial transactions were predicated upon the following conditions:
In other words, expansion of the
contemporary German empire required austerity measures, which
transformed the ex-communist countries into satellites, vassals and
sources of mercenaries - a pattern which is now playing out in
Greece.
Any successful demonstration by Greek workers, farmers and employees that resistance to empire was possible would expose the corrupt relationship between these client leaders and the German imperial order. In order to preserve the foundations of the new imperial order, Germany has had to take a hard-line on Greece.
Otherwise the recently incorporated colonial subjects in the Baltic, Balkan and Central Europe states might "re-think" the brutal terms of their own incorporation to the European Union.
This explains the openly punitive
approach to Greece - turning it into the 'Haiti of Europe'
analogous to the US' long standing brutalization of the rebellious
Haitians - as an object lesson to its own Caribbean and Latin
American clients.
German empire-building emphasizes economic conquests, which go hand-in-hand with US empire-building based on military conquests.
The same economic satellites of Germany
also serve as sites for US military bases and exercises encircling
Russia; these vassal states provide mercenary soldiers for US
imperial wars in South Asia, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
This alone should dispels the myth,
promoted especially by the French social democratic demagogue
Jacques Delores, that European capitalism is a benign form of
'social welfarism' and an 'alternative' to the savage Anglo-American
version capitalism.
Here is where social democrats, like
Alexis Tsipras, who excel in the art of talking left while
embracing the right, flatter and deceive the masses into
deepening austerity and pillage.
There is clear class collaboration within the Greek elite in the destruction of nation's sovereignty:
Such economic intermediaries, representing 25% of the electorate, have become the main political supporters of the Syriza-Tsipras betrayal.
They join with the EU elite applauding Tsipras' purge of left critics and his authoritarian seizure of legislative and executive power! This collaborator class will never suffer from pension cuts, layoffs and unemployment.
They will never have to line up at crippled banks for a humiliating dole of 65 Euros of pension money. These collaborators have hundreds of thousands and millions stashed in overseas bank accounts and invested in overseas real estate.
Unlike the Greek masses, they are
'European' first and foremost - willing accomplices of German empire
builders!
A leadership of educated mascots serving overseas European empire-builders. Syriza is supported by academic leftists who are remote from the struggles, sacrifices and suffering of the Greek masses.
Syriza's leadership emerged on the scene as ideological mentors and saviors with heady ideas and shaky hands. They joined forces with downwardly mobile middle class radicals who aspired to rise again via the traditional method: radical rhetoric, election to office, negotiations and transactions with the local and foreign elite and betrayal of their voters.
Theirs is a familiar political road to power, privilege and prestige.
In this regard, Tsipras personifies an entire generation of upwardly mobile opportunists, willing and able to sellout Greece and its people. He perpetuates the worst political traditions:
Tsipras' Syriza has absolute contempt for democracy.
He embraces the 'Caudillo Principle':
Syriza has utterly submitted to imperial institutions, the Troika and their dictates, NATO and above all the EU, the Eurozone.
Tsipras/Syriza reject outright
independence and freedom from imperial dictates. In his
'capitulation to the Germans' Tsipra engaged in histrionic
theatrics, but by his own personal dictate, the massive 'NO to EU'
vote was transformed into a YES.
...in order to force the mass of Greeks
to accept the savage dictates of his imperial overlords or face
utter destitution!
What had been a victorious referendum and expression of rejection by three-fifths of the Greek voters turned into a prelude to a farcical surrender by empire collaborators.
The people's victory in the referendum was twisted to represent popular support for a Caudillo.
While pretending to consult the Greek
electorate, Tsipras manipulated the popular will into a mandate for
his regime to push Greece beyond debt peonage and into colonial
vassalage.
Once he has completed his task of
dividing, demoralizing and impoverishing the Greek majority, the
local and overseas ruling elites will discard him like a used
condom, and he will pass into history as a virtuoso in deceiving and
betraying the Greek people.
So far, the best example of the Syriza
regime's reactionary policies is its signing of a military agreement
with Israel.
Syriza has even backed Israel's belligerent position against the Islamic Republic of Iran, endorsing Tel Aviv's ridiculous claim that Teheran represents a terrorist threat in the Middle East and Mediterranean.
Syriza and Israel have inked a mutual
military support pact that exceeds any other EU member agreement
with Israel and is only matched in belligerence by Washington's
special arrangements with the Zionist regime.
The agreement is a radical reversal of over a half-century of Greek support for the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people against the Israeli terrorist state.
This military pact, like the Syriza regime's economic capitulation to the German ruling class, is deeply rooted in the 'colonial ideology', which permeates Tsipras' policies.
He has taken Greece a significant step
'forward' from economic vassal to a mercenary client of the most
retrograde regime in the Mediterranean.
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