I found (via Istologion) this resent G. Papandreou interview and I couldn’t help having an underline feeling of anger and disappointment while I was reading it. It was not so much the “inaccuracies” and “omissions”, the guy is a politician after all. What disturbed me most was the terrifying lack on any real substance. Someone would argue again that it is in the nature of politicians to talk in general terms but here we have something very different. This reads more like some sort of a bad 1st year political science student essay about the “new emerging forms of democracy in the 21st century” or some similar crappy subject than the interview of the leader of Greece’s (ex)-Socialist Party.
“New dynamics”, “direct democracy”, “multiple identities”, “freedom”, and “empowerment” wrapped up all together to express feel good generalities about giving power to “the people”. Like some sort of cluetrain version of politics where everything seems revolutionary and cool but is devoid of any real social or political context. The whole thing seems to move in the same direction as Ito’s Emerging Democracy (without the internet or the blogs). It forms a worldview where people will be magically empowered and form some sort of freethinking community (meta-volk?) that will reshape the world. There won’t be any need for taking action, going to demonstrations and protests, fighting back. Notice how there is very little or even no mention of “struggle”, “fight”, “action”, “rights” or any other words with similar meaning in the interview, words so characteristic to true left politics. It is a new completely neutered version of the left, it sounds revolutionary and full of change but in reality it is completely harmless, promoting the avoidance of any conflict with the reactionary forces controlling our world. In fact it seems that neo-liberalism and libertarianism are now considered misunderstood economic and political theories from which the left must learn and adapt to. The people should sweetly blend and succumb to the current world situation without questioning or fighting its twisted nature but instead should magically “improve” it through “democratic” processes never explained. This interview contains the epitome of what G.P stands for, which is essentially the striping of politics of any kind of true mining. This is much more dangerous than the “wooden speech” of the old stile politicians. It is not clear how many people are “buying” it, but the true left must find a good way to fight back or this is going to be the future face of politics and it is not a pretty one.
|
8:17:15 PM
Permalink 
|
|
