“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.

The economic crisis in Greece is heading towards yet another showdown today. The Greek electorate threatens to strike a serious blow against neoliberalism and its European offshoot. At the same time, these elections promise to unravel the Greek state’s monopoly on the structures of violence and fear.

Sociologist Charles Tilly drew a compelling analogy between the state as the place of organized means of violence, and racketeering. He defined the racketeer “as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction,” in order to gain control and consolidate power. In this regard, a state and its government differ little from racketeering, to the extent that the threats against which they protect their citizens are imaginary or are consequences of their own activities.

Considering the pain, the humiliation, and the social degradation that the economic and political policies of the Greek government have inflicted upon the country the past four years, Tilly’s analogy may offer us a useful tool to both describe and evaluate the current crisis and the regime of fear that the state has unleashed on the Greek public.

The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), which is now a democratic socialist party in name only, governed Greece for almost 30 years, moving steadily from Keynesian economic policies in the 1980s to rampant neoliberalism in the 1990s. New Democracy (ND), which had dominated the political scene until PASOK’s first electoral victory in 1981 and alternated in power with it ever since, professed its ideology to be “radical liberalism.” Today, after three decades of cronyism, unbridled corruption and economic scandals, the ideological convergence of the two parties is complete.

Despite its initial apprehension towards the European Union, membership in the organzation enabled PASOK to implement its policies and boost the Greek economy. With the help of substantial financial inflows from the European Economic Community, PASOK was able to redistribute wealth.

Despite the growing government deficits, the emphasis remained on sustaining employment and modernizing the welfare system. In the meantime, democratic socialism – enveloped in patronage and nepotism – evolved into a process for democratizing corruption. Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos’s infamously vulgar statement in 2010 – “We [the government and citizens] fooled away the money together” – alluded to government-bred tactics which for years secured positions for its electorate in an ever-expanding bureaucratic machine.

Under the weight of economic scandals, pressure from PASOK’s “modernizing wing”, and the Maastricht Treaty’s aim to bring about monetary convergence by 1998, the Greek government launched an extensive program liberalizing the financial and banking sector, slashing government subsidies and pensions, deregulating the labor market and privatizing more than 100 companies from 1994 to 1999.

Some of the most prominent of these businesses included: AGET-Hercules, the cement company that literally built Greece after World War II, the Hellenic shipyards, Piraiki-Patraiki, a textile industry that in the 1980s was the second-largest employer after the Greek public sector, and ETVA, the Hellenic Industrial Development Bank. New Democracy, which governed briefly between 1990 and 1993, effectively championed the same policies.

The implementation of neoliberal policies, increasingly executed by an emerging new breed of technocrat politicians, was often met with strong resistance by labor unions and powerful interest groups which for years had enjoyed the state’s protection. Economic scandals underscored the “restructuring” process. When AGET-Hercules was sold for a fraction of its value to a nearly bankrupt Italian industrial group, extreme violence erupted. The assassination of Michael Vranopoulos, a former chief of State Bank who had handled the sale, by the terrorist group November 17, highlighted the public’s discontent.

The largely tolerant attitudes of the Greek public towards November 17, which operated from 1975 until 2002 with an anti-American, anti-capitalist agenda – it was viewed almost as a modern Robin Hood – reflected Greeks’ increasing frustration with the political establishment. Most importantly, this predisposition reflected people’s inability to effectively react.

The Greek state has always had a tight grip on society, and Greek society has always had a love-hate relationship with the state. Strongly dependent on the state for employment in an ever-expanding public sector, which was tied up with unions that over the years had come under the control of the government, the Greek public often vented its dissatisfaction with riots, protests and strikes, largely orchestrated by the parties of the Left. But it was unable to fundamentally challenge a system that was excluding them from decision-making processes.

But Greece’s booming economy at the time – fuelled by the adoption of the euro, easy credit conditions, and substantial transfers from the EU – painted the picture of a seemingly prosperous society. In reality, a small elite was reaping vast profits from the government’s neoliberal policies, while the lower and middle classes paid the hefty price, as the massive Greek stock exchange scandal of 1999-2000 highlights.

A central role of the state is that of offering protection to its citizens. “Protection,” however, as Tilly suggests, echoes two contrasting tones: a comforting and an ominous one. It calls forth images of shelter against danger provided by a powerful friend, an insurance policy or a sturdy roof. It also evokes, however, the racket in which a local strong man, for instance, forces merchants to pay tribute in order to avoid damage – damage he himself threatens to deliver – or a neighborhood mobster who claims to be a brothel’s best guarantee of operation free of police interference.

The death spiral that the Greek economy entered in 2008 called for all the government protection that the public could use. Instead, the government signed up for the financial bailout packages imposed by the so-called “troika,” the European Committee, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund. The packages included a series of unprecedented austerity measures which brought the lower and middle classes to their knees, while leaving intact the privileges of the financial elites and their political aides.

As a result of the tremendous economic pressure, the government had started losing its tight grip on Greek society as far back as 2008. Massive protests triggered by the police killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old student, expressed young people’s increasing frustration with the prospect of a bleak future.

By the spring of 2011, a whole new movement had been galvanised. The “Indignant Citizens Movement,” an offshoot of the Spanish Indignados, occupied central Athens’ Syntagma Square for four months. Organized collectively and independent from any party or trade union affiliation, the movement was another indication that the government was governing without the consent of the people. Civil disobedience and organizations dedicated to collective action sprung up to deal with the pauperization unleashed by austerity.

The backlash has been a campaign of fear, which on occasion escalates into outright terror. Instilling fear in its clientele is the primary mechanism employed by any racketeer. The violent suppression of mass protests, the detention of undocumented immigrants, and the arrest and public display on the Greek police’s website of 12 prostitutes infected with HIV have had a single goal: to terrorize the Greek public and ultimately offer “protection” against the dissidents, anarchists, protesters, and immigrants. The rise of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party, which won about seven per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections in May, was the direct result of these practices.

Fear is the sovereign’s predicament, as 17th-century political philosopher Hobbes has shown – not a natural emotion, but one cultivated through a system of moral education conducted by state institutions and their affiliates, most prominently, in our days, by the media. When these institutions lose legitimacy, their tactics may ultimately backfire, as the May elections showed. The rise of Syriza, a coalition of anti-austerity leftist parties ahead of today’s elections has triggered a new round of propaganda alluding to a communist takeover, loss of private property, alienation from the markets and the international community, and most importantly, to a financial Armageddon.

In defiance of this fear, an awakening of political consciousness is taking place in Greece’s squares, streets, and online social networks, not merely condemning the policies of austerity and social degradation but collectively working towards new types of political resistance. It is becoming clear that only the people of Greece can deliver and ultimately save themselves from the racketeering, criminal practices of their “protectors”.

This article was first published by Al Jazeera English network on June 15, 2012.