By Dimitri Konstantakopoulos, uwidata.com/
In my previous article I explained how the “bail-out” program imposed on Greece was actually a program to introduce a totalitarian, anti-democratic and anti-human order in Europe. The Greek program was a rehearsal for the all-out offensive of “Market Totalitarianism” against democracy and social welfare state in all Europe, just as the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 39) was a rehearsal for WWII– the only difference being the previous wars were military ones, while the new wars are fought in the fields of debt, finance and politics.
A clearly sadistic personality, German Finance Minister Mr. Schäuble was very successful in promoting and legitimizing the principle “the Debt must be paid, even if that means destroying whole countries.” This principle is valid for all kinds of physical and legal entities, even for states, with one and only one exception: banks. Banks were not forced to go bankrupt back in 2008, their debt was transformed into sovereign debt and their managers were never tried for the criminal offenses that led to the 2008 crisis.
The very nature of the “job” to be done (i.e., destroying a country for the sake of the banks) requires people with the ideology of Mr. Schäuble and his colleagues in the Eurogroup.
The trick Mr. Schoeble is using in order to push his policies (the same one which made him so popular in Germany) is giving to his compatriots the impression that he is serving their interests and not those of the Bankers. He leads them to believe he is restoring the place Germans deserve in Europe and in the world. He is legitimizing the reemergence of the authoritarian, domination instincts that repelled, but did not cure, the post-war occupation of Germany by the Americans and the Soviets, forcing of the Germans into constant repentance, a repentance which did not include any element of “psychoanalysis” or critical examination of the responsibilities of European Capitalism for the tragedies of the 20thCentury, including Nazism (by the way, we should remember that Verdun preceded both the Gulag and Dachau).
In fact, by transforming itself into a mere agent of the international Bankers (many of whom have serious reasons to hate Germany) and by attacking European periphery, Merkel and Schäuble’s Germany is destroying its position as a leader of European nations and a Benign hegemon. The German elites are repeating, by political and economic means, what they did in 1914 and 1939 with the military. All of European history teaches us that only destruction and the enslavement of Europe to non-European forces can come from such a policy.
The Eurogroup eliminates compassion, but also logic
The Eurogroup does not provide its members with the possibility to challenge its prefabricated decisions on the basis of arguments or logic.
Christine Lagarde disagrees with the program imposed on Greece, but she knows her disagreement is irrelevant. The Ministers are not participating in the Eurogroup to debate but to obey orders of the “superior authority.” This is what she meant when she told Varoufakis “We are adults in this room”, the sentence which gave Gavras’s film its title (Adults in the room). An adult, according to Lagarde’s definition, is a person understanding that he has no other choice than to agree with what Eurogroup is ordered to decide.
Mrs. Lagarde likely has not read Plato or Marx who wrote that the “Greeks are always children.” Like others who hold similar positions, she has has had to rid herself of all human personality traits in order to become the General Director of the IMF; otherwise, she would not be accepted into the upper echelons of executives of a ruling class whose morals, customs and psychology were immortalized by Stanley Kubrick in his magnificent film “Eyes Wide Shut.” Christine Lagarde revealed the fact she is an emotional desert when she admitted she does not feel sorry for the Greeks suffering because of the policies imposed on them, as long as they suffer less than the people of Niger.
Varoufakis asks Schoeble at some point if he would accept the program he proposes to accept for Greece. The German is frank: “As a patriot, I wouldn’t do it.” In other words, he admits that the program was bad for Greece. In the EU’s farm, as it was in Orwell’s, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Organizing the inequality of EU members and imposing neoliberalism is necessary to the rise of the new financial totalitarianism for two reasons. First, European people have to be trained in cruelty and selfishness, second, the Empire of Finance can only be imposed on Europeans by creating an internal hierarchy in Europe and preventing individual European nations from uniting against it if tempted to do so.
What Gavras and Varoufakis leave unsaid
Gavras’s film, like Varoufakis’ record of the negotiations, has one major shortcoming. They do not even mention the role of the major international banks or the role played by the United States.
We need to recall here that it was Goldman Sachs which organized the so-called “swaps” with the Simitis government to allow Greece to enter the Eurozone. In reality, Goldman Sachs, which was one of the main advisors of the Greek government on debt and privatization questions, was the Bank which created and then buried the Greek debt bubble, something which is part of the bank’s usual vampiric practice for a century. (http://www.defenddemocracy.press/goldman-sachs-center-world-power/). One finds Goldman Sachs’ people in all positions of economic and political power in both the US and Europe.
Gavras’ film also lacks any reference to the US, although Washington has a decisive influence on the IMF and a veto there, while Goldman Sachs and other giant financial institutions, which are at the center of global power, have decisive influence on US financial policy.
The Papandreou government, which put Greece on the program, was the most pro-American government Greece has had since the fall of dictatorship in 1974. The basic strategic choice of both Tsipras and Varoufakis was, moreover, to rely on the US against Germany, the outcome of which is obviously not irrelevant.
To be honest, these shortcomings of the film also facilitate a lingering confusion over the Greek problem. Many prefer to see this issue only as a ‘constructive’ problem for the EU and to describe Greece’s exit from the Eurozone or even the EU as a miraculous panacea. They do not understand (or do not want to understand) that Greece’s problems are a manifestation of global and not exclusively European trends.
Some criticized Gavras for failing to address the responsibilities of the Greek government SYRIZA – An.Ell. Their responsibility is obvious and enormous, but not the subject of the film, nor is the deplorable tendency of the Greek resistance to justify the crime committed against their country, its people and the values of humanism and democracy.
