{"id":24249,"date":"2015-02-03T16:56:52","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T15:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/?p=24249"},"modified":"2015-02-03T16:57:43","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T15:57:43","slug":"24249","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/24249\/","title":{"rendered":"So Goes Greece, Then Spain and Italy?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Patrick Smith writes:\u00a0 t took a mere six days for the election victory of the anti-austerity Syriza party in Greece to start ricocheting around Europe like a stray bullet in a concrete bunker. And already the fight between northern Europe\u2019s austerians and their populist opponents to the south takes on a political dimension that could transform Europe.<\/p>\n

This is an economic confrontation only in part. Debt terms, budget ceilings, privatizations, and the like now emerge as theaters in a larger war. At bottom Europeans are in a fight over (1) the fate of their democracies and (2) the kind of democracy they want\u2014popular or elite, Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian.<\/p>\n

it\u2019s a return to politics charged with class-conscious parties who think it\u2019s time to confront political and economic elites rather than \u201ctriangulate,\u201d as Bill Clinton famously put it and as every one of Europe\u2019s social-democratic parties have tried to do.<\/p>\n

The huge mass of Spaniards may look like a turning point in the months to come. Those interviewed may as well have spoken Greek when they explained to correspondents why they were there.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s weekend demonstration was the strongest manifestation yet for Podemos, the out-of-nowhere left party that is Syriza\u2019s Spanish equivalent. Podemos (\u201cWe Can\u201d) put its crowd count at 300,000; the police\u2019s number was a third of that, but either way this was a very big demo.<\/p>\n

The two parties share a common theme, and this is the key to their significance. Both dwell consistently on the question of dignity and humiliation, as in the remark of Angeles Buj, a 61-year-old who spoke to The Times<\/i> in Puerta del Sol, a politically symbolic square in central Madrid. \u201cIt\u2019s time to give some dignity back to the Spanish people,\u201d Buj said.<\/p>\n

The truth underlying this too-long-running crisis is this: Entrenched political cliques, often (if not usually) corrupt, and bureaucracies in Brussels and Frankfurt have drastically overplayed their hand in imposing counter-crisis strategies that effectively supersede political rights long beyond question in the industrialized nations. Nobody wins, not even creditors, unless this is corrected..<\/p>\n

The pols to watch in the months to come are Pedro S\u00e1nchez, <\/b>who leads Spain\u2019s Socialists, Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, France\u2019s president and a mainstream Socialist, and Matteo Renzi, Italy\u2019s premier, who, for many Italians\u2019 money, professes left and too often governs right.<\/p>\n

Podemos, you may recall, burst into the room with an utterly unexpected show of strength in elections to the European parliament last spring; it won 1.25 million votes and took five of Spain\u2019s seats. The momentum since has been astonishing.<\/p>\n

The same was said not long ago about Alexis Tsipras, Syriza\u2019s leader, and whatever one may think of his politics he is no dope, has enviable political nous, and has put some accomplished thinkers in key cabinet positions.<\/p>\n

From Syriza to Podemos to who knows where next\u2014the spirit of this Mediterranean movement for a political shift leftward in Europe is spreading at ground level. As in Athens, so in Madrid and Rome?<\/p>\n

\"Anti-Austerity<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick Smith writes:\u00a0 t took a mere six days for the election victory of the anti-austerity Syriza party in Greece to start ricocheting around Europe like a stray bullet in a concrete bunker. And already the fight between northern Europe\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-inequality"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t