The new national division is not ideological
It is in the nature of referendums that they are divisive. The “yes” and “no” camps each have passionate supporters and some will win while others lose. Sunday’s vote on what the government presents as our creditors’ proposal for an extension of our bailout, however, threatens to be more divisive than usual. It will not concern some secondary issue – it will determine our country’s present and future, our identity as Europeans, the society in which we live and raise our children, in which we will grow old. A result that leads to national bankruptcy will not simply affect our lives, it will change everything.
From the moment that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called the referendum in the early hours of Saturday, it has threatened to sow great discord among citizens. The government presents “no” as a proud act of defiance against foreign intervention, while depicting the “yes” camp as being in favor of more austerity and subservience to foreigners. This position is based on the tried and true concept that anyone who disagrees with us serves shadowy interests.
This new division, however, is different. It is not based on the ideological and class rifts of the past, but on the chasm between those who believe that they can impose their wishes on the world and those who want to try bring Greece to the point where it can deal with the challenges of the present. It is between the self-pitying, “brotherless” Greeks who look inwards and the cosmopolitans who want to conquer the world.
The fact that the SYRIZA government’s proposal for a referendum was supported by its junior partner, the nationalistic right-wing Independent Greeks, and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn suggests that today the most profound rift in our politics and society stems from the different ways in which we see ourselves and our place in the world. Ideological differences between Left and Right are fading, while the division between populists and reformers remains deep.
Our history is a timeline of populists and reformers alternating in power. Populism was the norm but when this would lead to derailment, there would be a period of tolerance for long-delayed reform. In the last few years, our economy’s collapse – the result of populism gone wild – has not yet brought about the expected efforts to deal with the country’s problems: the bailout signed in 2010 (the Memorandum) was widely seen as foreign intervention and it provoked popular discontent and was not supported by the political system or society. SYRIZA benefited from the anger against austerity and reform and invested in easy promises of a return to the profligate past. Now, trapped between creditors’ demands and pressure from its own constituent parts and allies, SYRIZA relies almost solely on populism. Passing the ball to the people in the form of a referendum is one aspect of this.
When the so-called “reformist” Left presents Greece’s problem as a dispute between patriots and fifth-columnists, it adopts the vocabulary of the past (when it was the victim of right-wing persecution) and reveals its dependence on a bankrupt way of thinking. The great rift now is between those who – irrespective of party – think in this way and those who want to meet the challenges of the time and win. Division is not ideological. It concerns differences that may determine our survival.
