Christmas retailing collapsed in Greece this holiday season. This is a superficial indicator of the plight of eleven million of our fellow European citizens. Other symptoms of the crisis are more serious:
Hospitals turning away expectant mothersA spike in childhood malnourishmentParents abandoning their children on account of povertyA huge jump in the suicide rateA sharp increase in HIV transmission amongst intravenous drug usersThis is not supposed to happen in developed countries. This is not supposed to happen in Europe. And yet, as Greece enters its fifth year of recession, the prescription remains the same: de l‘austérité, et encore de l‘austérité, et toujours de l‘austérité.
Gilles de Kerchove, the EU’s anti-terror chief has warned of the threat of left-wing extremist violence in Greece. Meanwhile, far-right extremists are already sitting in the Greek cabinet, blocking cabinet decisions. The imposition of “technocratic” governments has signals a distrust of liberal democracy on the part of Europe’s elites.
Last week also marked the 20th anniversary of the final dissolution of the Soviet Union, ushering in the supposed End of History. With an active Soviet threat, Greece would not have been abandoned. Either its debts would have been forgiven or its Colonels summoned out of the barracks.
Now, the crisis threatens to resurrect forms of government that were supposed to have gone extinct. The ghosts of the past should be warning enough for the Scrooges of the present.
As George Orwell wrote, “[i]n the long run our Christmas dinners would be safer if we could make sure that everyone else had a Christmas dinner as well.” Democracy requires a certain generosity in order to flourish.
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