After five long years of torment in the Hades of neoliberalism, the long-suffering people of Greece have gone Kratos on the Greek oligarchy. On Sunday, Syriza won a smashing election victory, forever transforming the field of political possibility.
Plutocracy, austerity and the Minotaurism of the billionaires lost. Democracy, solidarity and the 510 million people of Europe won.
I've never mentioned this in public before, because I didn't want to jinx anything, but now I can tell y'all that since February 2014 I've been deeply worried about the fallout of Minotaurism (the EU's neoliberal austerity policies) on the countries of northern Africa and Eurasia. Both regions are in a massive economic crisis, due to their dependence on an obsolete energy-rent model of accumulation, and another year of EU austerity might well have sparked a regional regression into outright fascism. The canary in the mine was the speed with which Putinism degenerated from the ideology of petro-neoliberalism into a lunatic regional imperialism which is killing thousands of people. Now just imagine the carnage if ten other countries across Eurasia all went mini-Huylo, all at once. It's a prospect too horrible to contemplate.
To make a long story short, Syriza's victory gives the antineoliberal social movements of northern African and Eurasia the crucial economic and political breathing-space they need to combat their own indigenous revanchisms and neo-imperialisms. If there's one thing to be learned from history, it's that the biggest of social outcomes can flow from the tiniest of political margins. The people of Greece have given the social movements of the EU, Eurasia and Africa that additional margin.
