Syrizia’s victory in the Greek parliament illustrates how today’s political winds in Europe are equally likely to track left or right, says Mabel Berezin, an expert on French politics, professor of Sociology at Cornell University, and author of “Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times: Cultures, Security, and Populism in a New Europe.” Berezin says:
“Syrizia swept the snap Greek parliamentary elections with its strong anti-austerity platform and EU leaders have already announced that they have no intention of offering debt relief to Greece. No party of any political stripe is going to relieve the social misery of four years of European debt crisis in a short period of time.
“There are three issues to bear in mind going forward. First, Syrizia, founded in 2004, is one of a number of European parties that existed on the political margins and have now jumped into the mainstream. Syrizia made its leap to second place in 2012—others such as the Sweden Democrats only made the leap to third place. In Greece, the avowedly Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party holds third place.
“Second, opposition to EU mandated austerity policies is not restricted to the European left. Until recently, the most vocal opposition has been from the right. Marine Le Pen head of the French National Front supported Syrizia, although granted Syrizia’s French counterpart Melanchon’s Coalition of the left did also. In some countries such as France, the right is better situated than the left to take advance of the anti-austerity feeling.
“Lastly, the political mood in Europe has been volatile for a long time and the recent Charlie Hebdo murders coupled with the continuing recession and high youth unemployment rates has done nothing to abate that volatility. “There are new winds blowing in Europe but those winds are as likely to blow nationalist right as nationalist left. For those with a historical bent, a YouTube video circulating the web betrays a painful irony. Recorded last evening at Syrizia party headquarters, ecstatic campaign workers are singing and dancing to the Italian Resistance song Bella Ciao. The song—a classic resistance ballad that has been transposed to many other settings—is a song of hope and triumph and valorizes the struggle. Italian partisans in the Po Valley who were mostly communists sang it regularly from 1942 to the Liberation in 1945. These Communist partisans believed that after fighting side by side with the Christian Democrats they would be invited into the post-war government. But not only were the communists not invited in, they were actively attacked by the new democratic regime.
“Syrizia is in now in Greece—but will they be in with the EU troika? Will the European Central Bank relent and renegotiate the Greek debt? In the meanwhile, ‘Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao!’”
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