“All truths – not only the various kinds of rational truth but also factual truth – are opposed to opinion in their mode of asserting validity. Truth carries within itself an element of coercion, and the frequently tyrannical truthtellers may be caused less by a failing of character than by the strain of habitually living under a kind of compulsion.” – Hannah Arendt (Between Past and Future. 1954, p. 243)

During the period immediately before someone leaves one city and moves to another, they seem to liberate themselves and experiment with abandon during that window of freedom, or fearfully adhere to the tired routines of a forgone order. Having witnessed the Eurocrisis unfold over the past two years from a window in Berlin, I recently thought I would have to move elsewhere due to conflict with the archaic hierarchy of a German university. I naturally rebelled and charged heedlessly into the freedom inherent in a contingent situation – refusing to comply with the hierarchy and arbitrary exercise of power so prevalent in the German university. With the comfortable order of my German life on the brink, I attempted to understand my position in German academia, as well as the European position under German hegemony. In so doing, I came to discover that the latter is not a debate between Keynesianism vs. neoliberal austerity, but a particularly virulent condition of wider academic and German culture: the need for truth.

If a traditional German university is a window into German culture as a whole, then the problem of truth becomes immediately apparent. Imagine riding horseback through the patchwork of political entities in medieval Germany, each with an independent lord holding absolute power over a small slice of territory, beholden only to the good grace of a distant and disinterested central authority. While riding through this landscape, the casual observer cannot help but notice that when moving from one lordship to another, the organization of labor and adherence to a unifying conception of community is entirely dictated by the lord. Some territories have jovial lords who interact with their subjects, interested in seeing smiling faces on their townsfolk and full bellies in the peasantry. Others sit aloof in marble palaces patronizing a small circle of followers and sycophants, while browbeating the remainder into perpetual worship and servitude. In each case, the truth is held by the lord, and the lords themselves are at almost constant war with each other, attempting to extend their vision of truth across the land. Because each professor in a German university effectively governs an entire department, with an army of student assistants, research assistants and post-docs, this medieval image illuminates the culture of a traditional German university. Unsurprisingly, the “market” for those lower but rather well-paid positions is brutal and precarious, and switching between lords becomes an exercise in switching between truths.

Extended to the German dominions themselves, certain truths are self-evident among the mainstream, functioning at the federal level. The law is sacred. The state is sacred. The economy is sacred. The currency is sacred. The four mainstream parties, the Conservatives, the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the Greens are surprisingly adept at working togetherafter accepting these truths – at least compared to the polarized American environment. Of course, the Left, emerging from the Communist East and persisting over the years, has been a pariah to the mainstream, while the recent success of the Pirates is just downright baffling. The response to these outsiders is a mixture of aggressive repudiation, particularly towards the Left (You dangerous lunatics want to bring the GDR back!), or sneering contempt (what do these pothead idiots dressed as Pirates want anyway?). In each case, the outsider is considered a threat not only in the traditional understanding of violence and theft, but also because their positions are invalid. Thus, they are simply wrong, false, in error – a threat not simply to order, but to the truth.

Brought to the European level, behind the intractable German position on austerity is not so much an essentialist identity, moralizing about hard work and responsibility, but a feeling of compulsion among the elites driven by “the truth” of the situation. After all, how can a Haushalt spend more than it takes in? What other solution is there but for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain (“the PIIGS”) to “get their houses in order”? What can open market operations by the European Central Bank (ECB) lead to but inflation? These are truths!

Of course, there is no “German Truth” to which all citizens adhere. The political culture is quite vibrant, diverse and filled with plenty of activists who have been at the forefront of anti-fascism as well as movements similar to Occupy. Nevertheless, there is a tendency, particularly among those in positions of power, to possess a form of aggressive self-assurance that they themselves hold the truth in isolation from all others. Because it is the truth, those in inferior positions must comply. Yet, it is precisely this combination, holding the truth in isolation and expecting others to comply, which generates the result any casual observer would expect: the social isolation of that person. This alienating self-assurance manifests itself not only in the lordships of German academia, but also in the acrimonious conflicts over the Eurocrisis. The two best examples of this are probably the two most important Germans in Europe at the moment: Angela Merkel and Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann – the most powerful council member on the board of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Merkel, a consistent advocate of austerity under the folksy belief that national budgets are just like household budgets – something John Maynard Keynes laboriously tried to discredit – finally got what she deserved this summer: isolation. With the replacement of French President Sarkozy by Socialist François Hollande, Italian Prime Minster Mario Monti quickly formed an alliance against Merkel’s dominance and effectively forced her into isolation. The result was a defeat for Merkel’s beliefs and the further extension of European-level credit to troubled countries.

On the other hand, if Merkel is stubborn in her timeless wisdom, Weidmann is as unyielding as a mathematical equation. Following his interview in Der Spiegel, one wonders if this trained economist would like to see Europe in ruins just to prove true whatever macroeconomic paradigm he functions under. Although quite young and only on the job for little over a year, scarcely a month after Merkel’s defeat, Weidmann was likewise isolated on the board of the ECB. The ECB subsequently plans to move forward with open market operations – exactly what Weidmann wanted to avoid.

In the end, it is clear Europe is moving towards a new order, or, more figuratively, moving from one city to another. If “the truth” of the old order is already forgone, we can only hope that the leaders of the transition liberate themselves from its routines. But, if my personal experience with the German university is any indication, or perhaps also that of Monti and his allies, directly challenging the truth tellers of the old city is the only way to move forward to a new one. We can only hope that such a challenge brings the truth out of isolation and into rational public debate.

Euro Cup 2012 started last week. On the day before, walking on a central street in Berlin with colleagues, I saw in a drugstore, and immediately purchased, the dishwashing liquid: “fit Spuehl Fuehrer.”

I checked out the maker’s website to find traces of  “corporate Germany” celebrating consumption and sports, as was the case in the World Cup six years ago, when tabloids and supermarket chains cooperated in selling the newspaper/beer/ flag. The website had nothing about this newly minted product. There was also no reflection on it in the press: unsurprising, perhaps, as there has been no interest in the overall presentation of the flag this time around.

The maker of the dishwashing liquid (TIP) advertises another product with the flag, a “fan hat” with a bear and a flag on it. Something you’d wear going to see the game outside. I also learned from the website that the liquid is slightly cheaper than their normal dish soap.

That afternoon I saw the same product in a different drugstore in my neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, again, in very visible outdoor stand, and got it to share with family and friends, and to test again, now in a different part of Berlin, whether there would be any comment made about my purchase. There was not.

Sometimes a flag is just a flag, I guess, and fans everywhere celebrate their national teams. But how should one read the association with the fuehrer?

I posted the photo on Facebook and some friends living in Germany assured me that it is benign. That Hitler is not a part of it; “they” did not think about it that way. Of course “they” did, and playfully, with reference to another term: “Spiel Fuehrer”— “the man of the match.”

The flag colors combination is everywhere in Germany, related to games. Restaurants and cafés fly flags, indicating that they are broadcasting matches. The flag colors are on ads all around town, including my son’s new sneakers, which he chose, and my daughter Brio toys’ packaging.

Not all toy makers in Germany use the colors, but it is very common these days. Anja Peleikis, in hers and Jackie Feldman’s study of the Jewish Museum in Berlin’s advertisements, pointed to the recurring use of the red, white, black combination (the Nazi Party colors). This is of course not an accident. These are intriguing, well known colors referring to a national past that cannot be escaped, in the new Jewish museum.

Do we see a similar playful take on the current combination of black, red, and gold? While I’d like to think that we are observing the playfulness of symbols, I think that there is also something beyond that, which touches Huyssen’s question about the monumental mania in Berlin and Germany in the 1990’s that exceeded the interest in commemorating the Holocaust and reflected the fascination with the eternal and the gigantic in the new capital. Here we see a fascination not with the possibility of being “normal among other nations” which is how I read the flying and discussions of the flag in the World Soccer Championship in 2006, because it is not discussed in the local media at all now, and because of the added text.

Still, we are observing a mundane mix of the flag colors and its very apparent use is a ritualized performance of the possibility of German national identity.  It is not always positive, but nevertheless now legitimately representative. A good example of this is Angela Merkel’s attire in the ritual commemorating the murder of German of Turkish origins by Neo Nazis in February 23 2012. She discreetly wore a necklace with the national colors.

I know, Obama and Netanyahu would just have the flag pin on their suits: there is nothing new or problematic beyond how literal and immediate the association between leaders and nations is expected to be. But it is both new and then also not new in the German context. For instance, while discussing my fascination with the phenomenon, my colleague, Till Weber, told me the way the story goes: “it is OK to fly the German flag because there is nothing wrong with it.” Meaning there is nothing wrong about Germany as an entity, though there used to be (both about it and in its celebration). But that is now gone.

Perhaps what this prevalence teaches us, then, is that it became a social fact, unquestioned, and so my interest is historical and narrative change could at best be deemed outdated, worst still coming from an age old suspicion of (German) nationalism.

Yet, I am left with questions. What about the content, or the combination of the flag, the fuehrer and the dish liquid (leading in cleansing, as ‘Spuel Fuehrer’ literally states) which is not the most immediate product one would associate with being out for the games (excluding what one brings to barbecue, another site of celebrating nationhood, in Germany as well as elsewhere)?

When people think of the flag do they think of the fuehrer? Perhaps they think of the unthinkable fuehrer? And what about the other way round: when we think of the fuehrer do we think of the flag? Clearly, putting such emphasis on such a marginal text can also tell us about how safe it is to air those issues in this minor, unimportant form. But as we saw, at least the flag is very central in connection to games and play. In this context we can also play with the fuehrer safely. He is of course referred to in the work of comedians, in an exhibition in the German Historical Museum I wrote about last year, in movies and in laws surrounding Nazi memorabilia presented in the open. We see that the flag is central in connection to both games and history, for which the fuehrer now stands. I wonder: if the games would take place in Germany would we see more reflection about this phenomenon and not only about the Polish Hooligans in the German press, because of the fear of association of German hooligans, drunkenness and the right wing?

The European Left seems on the rise. With left-of-center parties doing very well in elections in France, Greece, and Germany, it is tempting to read these elections as part of a broader repudiation of the conservative EU project of fiscal stability and indifference to unemployment. And surely, no election in Europe these days is removed from the question of where the EU is going.

Yet, the German elections, in the provinces/states of Schleswig-Holstein and North-Rhine Westphalia, were primarily provincial elections about provincial problems. At the same time, the recent election in North Rhine-Westphalia reveals interesting dimensions of how people negotiate the financial crisis at the provincial level.

The elections in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) had become necessary because the liberal party inadvertently brought down the minority government of the Social Democrats and the Green Party. The occasion was a fight over the budget in which the liberals wanted to appeal to their anti-tax constituency and at the same time support their minority government. Germany is not used to minority governments. Hence, those who deal with minority governments do not necessarily understand the arcane legal and political rules involved in keeping minority governments alive.

The results:

The elections worked well for the two parties that had formed the minority government: the Social Democrats received 39.1% of the vote (up by 4.6%) and the Greens 11.3% (down by 0.8%). The Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Merkel, received a disappointing 26.3% (down 8.3%). The Liberals, whose grandstanding had caused the election, came out with a surprisingly high 8.6%. The Pirate Party, barely visible in the last election, scored a strong 7.8%. What do these results mean? Who and what has won?

First, women won. Hannelore Kraft and Sylvia Löhrmann, the leading candidates for the Social Democrats and the Greens, respectively, converted their minority government into a solid majority. This is not just about gender, but about gender in an interesting way.

Kraft and Löhrmann won not in spite of their gender. They used it, by mobilizing a non-confrontational and caring form of femininity that resonated with the voters. They did not campaign against one another. From the beginning, they were committed to form a coalition. Hence, Kraft did not engage in the macho politics of first trying to get as many votes as possible and then trying to woo an attractive coalition partner. Both women were also aided by the fact that Norbert Röttgen, the candidate for the Christian Democratic Union, had only committed to moving to NRW if he won the election. In the case of a loss, a possibility that has turned into reality, he would stay in Berlin as the Federal Minister of the Environment. Kraft, in contrast, seemed committed to the province instead of maximizing career opportunities.

The elections not only vindicated a non-confrontational and caring style of politics. The minority government’s impressive record on social issues, centering on school reform and support for youth and families, impressed the voters. For example, the minority government managed to solve a conflict on schooling that seemed intractable. The classic German school system segregates students by perceived ability starting in grade five. This system exacerbates existing social inequalities. Conservative parents stridently oppose the closer integration of the different forms of schools in the name of meritocracy. Kraft managed to diffuse the conflict by allowing municipalities to decide between different models of secondary schools. This compromise is likely to improve the conditions of schooling for many children from working class and immigrant families.

The election signals support of German voters for the welfare state, but it is the local, provincial welfare state at home. It is far from clear that these same voters would support the conditions of possibility for a welfare state that need to be present at the EU level or a general commitment to the welfare state in the EU. The voters would like a caring, anticipatory welfare state in NRW, but probably not similar provisions in a Greek state that is financially dependent on the EU.

Crises often breed new parties, or they buoy extremist parties that have existed on the fringes. What is to report on this front? The Pirate Party is on the rise. It is now represented in four German provincial parliaments. The Pirates bundle the energy, skills, and values of young voters and combine it with the enthusiasm of older citizens who feel that no party properly represents them. The results are promising. The party’s core issues are copyright, civil liberties, internet regulation, and general transparency in politics. They field candidates that have only recently begun to be active in politics. They are, in a political way, cute. And they are important. They compete with the old liberal parties that have focused on lowering taxes rather than defending civil liberties, as well as with the leftist parties that have become too entrenched, used to compromise, and unimaginative. One Pirate demand, for example, is to provide free local public transportation in order to reduce traffic and make the right to mobility real for low-income people. The Pirates are a product of the crisis; their membership is made up of people who did not feel at home in the other parties. Given their outlook and their radical democratic practices, I can only hope that they are here to stay, to remind us that democracy can be more meaningful if we can participate more meaningfully and take up the opportunities we have.

What, then, can we make of the NRW election? It was not a vote on the EU, on Greece, on the Euro, or even on the future of the welfare state. It was a local election. Yet this election gives the hope for a style of politics that is cooperative, post-macho, open to compromise, and committed to social justice, with a good dose of new inventive Pirate politics. It is still too early to say how much of this spirit carries over into the 2013 German national elections.

In this post, Minas Samatas, Professor of Political Sociology, University of Crete, reports that while the Greeks said no to draconian austerity, no to the two ruling parties, and no to European threats of Greece’s exit from euro zone, “Grexit,” they suggested a new path for a democratically legitimate European Union. -Jeff

Μay 6^th elections in Greece have sent a loud and clear message: the Greek people said no to the draconian austerity measures that have devastated the country in exchange for dead-end bailouts from the troika of European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Designed by IMF and Eurocrats, the bailout “memorandum” does not guarantee a safe path to move Greece away from disaster, even if implemented in full. The austerity policy gives absolute priority for paying creditors at the expense of citizens’ incomes, without any future prospect of development and growth. It promotes sharp reductions in public spending, shattering the healthcare and educational system, and the “Balkanization” of Greece with salaries under 200 Euros comparable to Bulgaria. The Greek electorate rejected this in no uncertain terms.

They also, and very importantly, said no to the two ruling parties, punishing the socialist PASOK and conservative New Democracy (ND). They are responsible for the dramatic economic crisis and signed the disastrous austerity program (memorandum) to protect the foreign creditors and the banks at the expense of the most vulnerable. The outcome of the ballot expressed anger against the corrupted political elite and its policies. It expressed dismay at the lack of punishment of those responsible for the crisis. It was a call for social justice for those who suffer from the crisis. The election results express the fear and despair of the Greek people affected by the memorandum’s inhumane policy, lurching deeper into poverty and despair by sharp salary and pensions cuts, unfair tax increases, 22% unemployment (with 922 people losing their job per day over the past year), leaving no future for the young people but immigration, leading to over 3,000 persons to suicide.

The results:

The conservative New Democracy (ND) came in first place with only 18.9% of the vote, followed by the leftist SYRIZA (16.8%) and by the socialist PASOK (13.2%) in third, followed by the Independent Greeks (10.6%) a splinter party from ND in fourth, and in fifth the Greek Communist party KKE (8.5%), which refuses to cooperate with anyone in government, followed by Golden Dawn, the  extreme right-wing party, 7% (the big shock) in sixth, and the moderate “Democratic Left,” a party which gathered splinter deputies from SYRIZA and PASOK with 6.11 % of the vote in seventh. The Ecologist Greens with 2.93 % and Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) (2.9%) failed to enter the parlament, given the 3% minimum entry. Also a group of small, neo-liberal, pro-business parties “the Democratic Alliance” “Drasi,” and “Creativity Again” failed to enter parliament. A record 34.9% of voters abstained.

These results are a clear defeat of the pro-memorandum forces (PASOK and ND), which want to keep Greece in the euro zone (EZ) at any cost and signed the latest loan agreement. They gathered a combined record low of 32 %. This is a rejection of the governing parties since 1974. The political patron client system collapsed because the two parties can no longer accommodate their clients due to the state bankruptcy.

The elections were won by those who are against the memorandum, but want to stay in euro zone, though not on “Merkozy” and IMF austerity terms. Only the Greek Communist Party (KKE) unambiguously calls for Greece’s exit from both EU and EZ.

There are dangers revealed in the results. Austerity and national humiliation by the crude scapegoating of Greeks abroad has caused anger, racism, xenophobia and ultra nationalism. Hence the ballot brought the neo-Nazi “Golden Dawn” in parliament, with 21 out of 300 seats. The first neo-Nazi party to enter a European parliament since WWII won votes throughout the country, even in places devastated by the Nazis. Along with the “Golden Dawn,” the hard-right nationalists “Independent Greeks” entered the parliament, using rabid nationalism and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The results also suggest new promise. The surprise winner in May 6^th election was SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left, which easily beat PASOK, sweeping all of the greater Athens region and Thessaloniki. Led by 38 years old Alexis Tsipras, the party is in favor of remaining in the euro zone and the European Union, unlike the Communist Party, but has opposed the loan agreement. SYRIZA’ s charismatic leader succeeded in integrating a broad spectrum of anti-memorandum forces: disillusioned PASOK voters, the indignant protesters in the squares, the young occupiers of schools and government buildings, the organizers of solidarity networks and barter alternative exchange systems. Based on his party’s remarkable surge to 16.78 %, Tsipras has written to EU officials to declare the memorandum deal null and void because a total of 68 % of voters rejected the terms of the EU-IMF bailout.

With seven parties in Parliament and none gaining more than 20%, the elections destroyed the post-dictatorial political system of the past 38 years and opened the way for new political forces, which however are not eager for cooperation, both before the elections and after. Yet, the ballot does not give enough parliamentary seats for a majority government. Therefore, it seems that the deadlock will be resolved by new elections in June 17, which are considered anathema for the established parties and creditors. It seems that democracy is not really welcome in the euro zone, which prefers appointed technocrats, like ex-bankers Monti in Italy and Papademos in pre-election Greece. But the new election suggests the possibility of a new beginning, despite the concerns of the European establishment.

Has Germany and its northern European partners got the loud message of the Greek elections into easing their fiscal demands on Greece or make them push Greece out of the euro zone? Can Greece negotiate the memorandum terms with its creditors without risking its place in EZ? The Troika and especially Chancellor Merkel have blatantly threatened a Greek euro zone exit, “Grexit,” if Greeks don’t accept and implement the painful memorandum.

Although they want the euro, the Greeks voted in defiance of IMF and EZ threats. And I think it is important to recognize that despite scaremongering by the pro–memorandum forces and media, Greece still has negotiating power, because the Greek crisis is a European one. In my judgment, sooner rather than later, foreign lenders will realize they have imposed an unsound policy, transforming Greece into a Weimar type of republic, providing a foretaste of what will happen to Portugal, Spain, Italy, or even France.

Grexit should not be the cost Greeks have to pay to get rid of a rotten political system and get back their dignity and autonomy. The potential new Greek, European and global catastrophe can be averted if the Greek defiance is backed by other “revolting Europeans.” The practical reasonableness of this approach has been underscored by Paul Krugman. Opposition to market dictatorship and the euro zone unilateral austerity in Southern Europe is the way to restore the “European project” with a policy of growth, promoting closer integration through democratic mandate. The Greek election has presented an important new beginning.

I write here about the election in France, but first must note that the most important European news this week very well may come from Greece. The legislative elections there clearly show the disastrous political consequences of hyper-austerity. They demonstrate that the European handling of the crisis has not only brought no remedy. It has aggravated the problem. The results of the Greek elections provide the context for understanding politics in Europe, including France.

In France, François Hollande’s victory did not come as a surprise, but the nature of the victory indicates fundamental changes in the political landscape. The unexpected element was the relatively low margin of victory. He received only 51.6% of the votes after having led constantly in the polls, approaching 60% at times. Sarkozy’s far-right accented campaign shocked the so-called “Republican right,” leading the center right leader François Bayrou to vote for Holland in the second round of the election. It did, though significantly, enable Sarkozy to win substantial  support from those who voted for the far-rightist Marine Le Pen in the first round. This needs deliberate consideration.

Sarkozy’s hyper-nationalist, openly anti-European and strongly anti-Islam stance during the last days of the campaign ominously has reunited the right on an ideological basis. Of course, Sarkozy’s neo-nationalist turn was partly tactical, but now there is a real possibility of a dialogue between the far-rightist National Front and the “Republican” right (the President’s party UMP). The so-called “droite populaire,” a part of the UMP that claims 70 députés in the Assemblée nationale, is not against talking to Le Pen. The new ideological horizon for the French right is undoubtedly one of the most important consequences of the presidential election. Sarkozy has played the nationalist and anti-Islam card with an unexpected dedication, particularly if one recalls his attitude during the first years of his presidency, when he practiced the “ouverture” to the left and to ethnic minorities, appointing the French-Senegalese Rama Yade and the French-North Africans, Rachida Dati and Fadela Amara, to ministerial  positions. His late commitment to the old Nation was also contradictory with his previous “Merkozy” attitude, that led him to agree with the Kanzlerin in all circumstances. The reconstruction of the French right is underway, as are important changes on the left.

The Socialist Hollande shifted his trajectory during the campaign also, with interesting implications. Having started with a clear support of a form of leftist austerity and a strong commitment to reduce the French debt, he has turned to a more critical position vis-à-vis the German conventional wisdom, and has come up with new fiscal measures, such as the 75% tax on over one million euros income. This was done partly under the pressure of the rise of a new radical left led by the former member of the Socialist Party Jean-Luc Mélenchon and leader of the Front de Gauche, but not only. The Socialists have changed because the austerity packages clearly have not worked, in Greece, Spain or Portugal. While Hollande remains aware of the dangers of economic leftism that led Mitterrand to turn to austerity in 1983 after two year of big spending policy, he is now convinced that he will not succeed with the center-right policy that was advocated from within the Parti Socialiste by Dominique Strauss-Kahn. In this election, the Socialists have regained, partly with the support of the Front de Gauche, but not only, the majority of the clerical workers (58%) and the working class (68%) voted socialist, proving that the popular classes’ turn toward the nationalist and xenophobe National Front is far from an accomplished fact, but is in part the illusion, largely spread by the moderate left think tanks, particularly Terra Nova, according to which the Socialists should focus on middle classes only.

Hollande started his campaign with the claim for a “normal presidency.” Against Sarkozy’s bling-bling presidency, but also against Strauss-Kahn jet setter left. He was mocked for that: how could an average guy do an extraordinary job? But the “président normal” attitude proved to be his best asset in a time of political disenchantment. The French people don’t expect that much from him. It was clear with the celebration of his victory last Sunday night in the Place de la Bastille, which I observed on the scene. Although it might have looked as a replay of Mitterrand’s fête on May 10th 1981, there was no utopian mood displayed and no claim to “changer la vie.” Rather, there was a minimal modest claim: if life can’t be changed radically, it can be kept secure to some extent. Hollande will be a normal president for abnormal times.

Hollande, the unpretentious and “provincial” politician, could reveal himself to be a European Roosevelt, reinstalling the notion of public interest in the political landscape and offering a new deal to the European Union. But to do this, he must find strong allies against the “there is no alternative” mode of thinking. No one would have bet a single euro on Hollande one year ago, maybe it is not totally crazy to gamble now.

Just before the Sofitel Affair brutally ended his political career, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the director of the IMF, was considered as the great favorite of the French presidential election, and François Hollande, who had started earlier his bid for the primary polls organized for the first time on the left by the Socialist Party, was not taken seriously, particularly in his own camp. Nicknamed Flanby, Little Gouda, or even “couilles molles” (soft testicles) by his socialist contender Martine Aubry, Hollande very well may be the unexpected winner of the competition, on May 6^th, the final round of the French election. Although it has been a boring campaign, it also has been very interesting sociologically.

Strauss-Kahn embodied a center-left version of the “there is no alternative” line, smoothed by a reputation, acquired in happier times, of a rare economic competency that would alleviate the inescapable rigor ahead. Roughly, President Sarkozy and Strauss-Kahn shared the same views. The President had backed the very moderate socialist for the job at the IMF, and they navigated in very close social and economic circles.

But now, one can see almost every day a sea of red flags and an amazing number of raised fists during the Front de Gauche candidate’s electoral meetings, from the Place de la Bastille in Paris to the Prado beaches in Marseilles. Enthusiastic crowds appreciate the leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon‘s tough rhetoric: his speeches are loaded with the most traditional items of the radical camp with a very strong French flavor (a daily celebration of the Bastille Day, but also of 1793 and Robespierre). Mélenchon’s fondness for Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro and the Chinese communist leaders does not seem to bother any of his increasingly young and socially mixed supporters. Mélenchon’s rise has totally reshuffled the campaign, that had started with Sarkozy taking up extreme right-wing issues (mainly immigration and security) and Hollande not saying much as he was so far ahead in the polls that he seemed to be afraid of taking any side that would shrink the support he received, mainly based on Sarkozy’s strong rejection, particularly among the working and lower middle classes.

Sarkozy’s strategy was partially a replay of his winning 2007 campaign: using populist rhetoric to siphon off the Front National, the populist and nationalist party that emerged in the Mitterrand years and has not left the stage since.  But, the strategy does not seem to be working this time for two reasons. First, the far rightist candidate, Marine Le Pen, “la fille du chef” (Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter) has softened her rhetoric and looks more palatable to moderate voters. Second, the “work more, earn more motto” that was so appealing in 2007, particularly among workers, has become impossible with almost one million more unemployed people and a stalled economy.  Sarkozy’s arguments are a mixed bag of traditional rightist elements (being tougher at the borders and in the rough areas of cities, fighting Islam night and day) and of self praise (I saved the country from the crisis; the Socialists will turn France into Greece after two weeks; all the European leaders, Angela Merkel leading the group, support me). Coached by a far rightist spin doctor, Patrick Buisson, Sarkozy has constantly gone to the right, with a few unexpected and short lived moves towards criticism of financial capitalism. In the last days, he has not seemed to believe himself that he would be reelected.

Spurred by Mélenchon’s radical campaign, the left, on the contrary, looks in good shape. The polls regularly show that the left vote is about as strong as it was in 1981, on the eve of François Mitterrand’s election. Of course, the old division of the left into two parts, dating back to at least as old as the opposition between Jean Jaurès and Jules Guesde at the turn of the 20th century, one oriented toward social-democracy, and another more radical, at least with respect to rhetoric, is very much alive and well .

This time, however, there is an irony in the story: the reformist and the radical candidates both come from the Socialist Party. Mélenchon spent 31 years on the left side of the PS, served as Minister and Senator before he left it in 2008 to launch the Parti de Gauche, the French version of the German Linkspartei. Mélenchon has been endorsed by the Communist Party that did very poorly in the former presidential elections, but has been rejuvenated by its new spokesman’s unexpected performance. Mélenchon benefits from the strong organizational capacities of the main workers’ union, the CGT, historically linked to the Communist Party. Their campaign is an outlet for the protesters who could not succeed in developing movements like the Indignados or Occupy.

There is a strong nostalgic flavor in this, and one of the leading French historians, Christophe Prochasson, views Mélenchon’s success as oriented towards the past (“passéiste”). It shows the French taste for reenacting great political ceremonies more than adding new items to the repertoire, as in the Occupy movement.

The absence of the rest of the world is a striking feature of the campaign, and it concerns all the candidates. Its beginnings were overloaded with petty issues taken from the National Front (banning halal meat in school cafeterias, or special hours for women in swimming pools) or even surprising issues, like democratizing access to the training for a driving license.

France focuses on itself as if the economic questions could be dealt with at the national level. Euro-scepticism is growing, even among Sarkozy’s supporters. The President has devoted himself to zealously following Frau Merkel in all her recent decisions, but now he seems to be about to change his mind about European integration. To be honest, not only Mélenchon could be labeled “passéiste” in this campaign. The present will brutally come back on May 7th, a day after the second round of the election.

The crisis here in Greece is not just financial, but also social and moral. People suffer, while the political elite and the establishment survive, untouched, although they are responsible for the current state bankruptcy. Given the history of the recent past, after the bloody civil war (1947-1949), during the police state (1949-1967) and the military dictatorship (1967-1974), and especially after the dictatorship up to the present, the crisis is not surprising. Greek tragedy has returned.

After the end of the dictatorship, democracy was restored and Greece joined the European Union (EU) and eventually the Euro-zone for political reasons, not based on economic fiscal criteria. As a consequence, the Greek people enjoyed thirty five years of stable democratic life and relative prosperity, albeit a false one. The state apparatus, dominated by the two political parties, the conservative “New Democracy” and the socialist “PASOK,” was thoroughly corrupt and mismanaged with a highly elaborate system of patronage. There was little real economic development. The economy was based on tourism, EU agricultural subsidies and other EU funds. Many Greek citizens, based on their political connections, were employed in the inflated public sector, and avoided their tax obligations, violated building regulations, and received permits and easy loans from the state controlled banks.

Through loans or from EU funding, these were good years for Greeks and their European partners, especially the Germans who took advantage of the great Greek party, i.e., Athens 2004 Olympics. Their outrageous cost and the ensuing corruption seriously contributed to the present debt crisis and the actual bankruptcy of the whole post dictatorial state and society. Beyond the Olympics, European and other multinational corporations have fully exploited Greece’s corrupt and disorganized system so as to multiply their profits in relation to other countries. The real party was in arms deals in the billions, which involved huge kickbacks. The Greek Parliament covered up the Siemens’ kickback scandal and several others. No one has been sentenced to jail. No one has been punished.

With the international fiscal crisis and aggressive international markets, the good times are now over for Greece and its European partners. Greek citizens, especially the lower middle class, who were unable to have money exported to Switzerland and other off shore safe havens, are getting poorer and poorer with drastic salary and pensions cuts. We are very angry with politicians, with the Greek establishment, with German chancellor Angela Merkel, with the IMF, and the banks. We do not accept the international shame and the unjust generalization, the slander of Greeks as lazy and cheats, and the German demand for what amounts to a permanent tutelage. I find the populist German front pages that present the Parthenon as being for sale particularly ridiculous.

The highly educated who speak foreign languages, having no future in a bankrupted country, are choosing emigration. The challenge to rebuild the Greek state from the ground up and reinforce Greek democracy and the Greek economy is both urgent and next to impossible. Social cohesion may be destroyed. There is a real danger of spreading violence. While in the ancient Greek tragedies people suffered due to the gods’ will, in the end there was catharsis, i.e., a just end by a Deus ex machina who gave justice and cleansed away all blame. In the current Greek drama, people indeed do suffer, but there is no apparent prospect for catharsis.

Tim Rosenkranz reports on the significance of a recent article by the German philosopher and social critic Jürgen Habermas. –Jeff

On April 7, 2011 Germany’s political news magazine “Süeddeutsche Zeitung” published a piece by Habermas in which he openly attacks Chancellor Angela Merkel for her “opinion-poll dominated opportunism.” While the article focused on the problem of European integration and the continuing democracy deficit of the institutional frame of the European Union, Jürgen Habermas points his finger at significant systemic problems of today’s democratic political process – between civil society, the public sphere, political elites and the media-sphere – the problem being the loss of larger political projects in a process driven by the short-term politics of public opinion polls.

While Habermas is still a vocal figure in the academic landscape, at least in the last decade, he limits his editorial participation in larger public debates in the media. If he does speak up, it is mostly concerning the problems of European integration and its democratic process. The recent article “Merkels von Demoskopie geleiteter Opportunismus” (“Merkel’s opinion-poll dominated opportunism”) is not an exception. What caught my attention, however, is that Habermas rarely criticizes German politicians directly in person. It is also unusual in that the article is a theoretical expansion within his larger intellectual frame of “deliberative democracy.”

Very atypical for him, Habermas condenses the larger theoretical problem in one paragraph, which I would translate accordingly:

In general, today’s politics seemingly is transforming into an aggregate condition defined by the abdication of perspective and the will to create (Gestaltungswille). The expanding complexity of issues demanding regulation compels [the political actors] to short term reactions within shrinking scopes of action. As if politicians have adopted the unmasking view of system theory, they follow without shame the opportunistic script of opinion poll dominated (demoskopiegeleitet) power pragmatism.

Habermas uses two recent examples of Merkel’s politics to illustrate. The first being her flip-flopping after the nuclear disaster in Japan to suddenly abandoning nuclear power plants in Germany, a process she actually put on hold before. The second, Merkels’s prolonged attempt this past March to keep her Minister of Defense, Theo von Guttenberg, in office even after evidence of the severe plagiarism of his PhD thesis. Shortly after the nuclear meltdown of Fukushima, the public opinion polls showed an overwhelming demand for change within German energy politics towards an exit from nuclear power.  In the second example, Guttenberg received positive approval ratings, despite the plagiarism scandal that shook the ethical standards of German academia and the ethics of politics to the core.

In the larger framework of Habermas’ criticism, these specific issues are not that significant, but what is important are two interrelated processes that are challenging for the mediation of the public sphere and the normative importance of political parties. These two issues are hidden in Habermas’ terminology “opinion poll dominated (demoskopiegeleitet) power pragmatism.” First, opinion polls reduce rational, public debate to mere statistical measures. Second, they have the potential to mimic electoral political participation.

Opinion polls reduce rational public debate to mere statistical measures: This issue actually goes beyond the fundamentals of Habermas’ analysis of the decay of the media sphere: beyond his criticism that the independent sphere of public opinion has been turned into a medium of advertisement, in his words “colonized by the market” and “re-feudalized” through the state/political sphere. Even if opinion polls are statistically “representative,” the expression of “yes or no” on a specific issue is not for public debate. Instead, it is a snap-shot of quantified individual opinion of a certain group of people at a certain time. There is a significant danger if public opinion polls become a substitute for editorial debate of rational, critical public opinion. The media refrains from presenting opinions and information, but instead frames the debate in terms of numbers. It basically hands over the power of the public sphere to bureaucrats and opinion poll professionals.

Opinion polls have the potential to mimic electoral political participation: Following the first issue one might ask: What’s the problem? Is it not good that the people of civil society can express their voice in statistical form and be heard? In his article, Habermas provides an answer:

To the extent that politics defines its action to correspond to mere public feelings, which it chases from election to election, the democratic process loses its purpose. A democratic election should not merely express a naturalistic spectrum of opinion; it should be the result of a public process of debate.

I actually would go further than Habermas: Democratic elections also lose their function if they are not conceived as the one significant political act of legitimation and representation, but as one among many. Polls are no elections, but they do appear through their new centrality in the media sphere as pseudo-political participation of the individual in the democratic process. This undermines the importance of election for the voter, but further it puts the political process in a spiral of, what I would call, hyper-campaigning. As Habermas points out in the article: Political parties in the mere attempt to please and reflect short term spectrums of opinion, refrain from programmatic work that goes beyond short-term reaction to events. They do so because opinion polls take on the function of election results.

Interestingly, all these issues do not foster electoral participation. While the media debate in the U.S. seems extremely opinion poll oriented, electoral turnout was up in the last elections and in general is on a steady, but low, level throughout the last 40 years. In contrast, Germany sees a steady decline in voter turnout over the same time, even though it is still significantly higher than in the U.S. The points Habermas raises and I elaborated are part of transformational process and open up important questions.

–          If politics means ad-hoc policies dominated by a situationally expressed public opinion spectrum based on mediated polls, how can the political sphere address long-term challenges of global warming, economic transformation, systematic problems of the financial markets, etc?

–          If opinion polls replace information based reasoning of public debate in the media sphere, who controls and owns the polls?