We said before that 2015 is the Year of the Witcher -- the moment that three decades of pent-up anti-neoliberal resistance erupt, with tectonic force, into collective innovation.
In a referendum this Sunday, the people of Greece voted by a landslide 61% to 39% to reject neoliberal austerity.
Europe's neoliberal elites have preached the virtues of austerity for six long years. Their policies have failed. The 335 million citizens of the eurozone are now 3% poorer, on average, than they were in 2007. Rates of investment in the eurozone are crashing to all-time lows, while economic growth is nonexistent. Nowhere is the crisis worse than Greece, which has fallen into a catastrophic economic depression.
If this is success, one shudders to think of what failure is supposed to look like.
On Sunday, the ordinary people of Greece -- humble clerks and cashiers, drivers and cooks, students and teachers, farmers and civil servants -- proved wiser than Europe's elites. They voted against neoliberal austerity, but for European solidarity. To paraphrase the inimitable Yanis Varoufakis, their resounding NO to the financial despotism of the eurobanksters is a YES to the democratic union of all Europeans. Greece can and will pay back its loans, but first it needs debt restructuring and a return to growth.
After the vote, Varoufakis gracefully resigned his post as Finance Minister, a political gesture of goodwill towards the other finance ministers of the Eurogroup -- the folks who, after all is said and done, must sit down and work out an agreement with Greece. Varoufakis' stint very much a real-life version of one of CD Projekt Red's witcher contracts -- the hunting and taking down of the Euro-Minotaur, that grievously wounded but still-dangerous beast which has devastated economy after economy. One must say, Yanis took down the beast with epic precision.
Now comes the time of Ciri-style mass insurrection, as the people of Europe battle against the White Frost of Neoliberalism.
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