Link: Syriza Dumps Marx For Blair
The Blairite revolution is an increasingly common phenomenon in politics today. It involves secretly dumping the old affiliations of left and right whilst pretending to be an inclusive movement 'for the people'. Ideology is dead, and what is important now is to be seen to be young, fresh and populist. Politics is replaced by PR. Liberal pieties and collectivist slogans are waved as crowd pleasing flags, while behind the stage curtain, neo-liberalism is pursued with ever greater vengeance in order to desperately grab as much money as possible from the shrinking western economies. Obama represents the same trend in the US: a handsome, charismatic speaker who appeals to young student activists still in thrall to radical left-wing 60's ideals who then, once elected, does the opposite of what the idealists wanted. Syriza is another such party - a party that is actually just a small clique of PR men with no real political conviction. They have just returned from negotiations with the EU bankers with little to show for their apparent effort. They were filmed looking defiant and rebellious prior to this, yet they were also commited to staying in the Euro, and commited to the same European integration dream. As a result, their bargaining position was weak. They could have threatened to turn towards Russia and China for the money they needed, but instead they accepted US demands to maintain sanctions against Russia, and they begged the EU for more money. Everyone thought they would herald a revolution in European politics, changing the western capitalist landscape for ever, but the truth is they never wanted to leave that landscape at all. All they wanted was a bit more spare change. In Spain, the new political party of Podemos (We Can), which is also seen as fresh and revolutionary, will likely turn out to be the same - pretty boys with winning smiles, consultant-designed slogans and faded Karl Marx T-shirts underneath their smooth new suits. Politics is dead, and ideology is just a cloak to hide the fact that we have had no new ideas since the 19th Century. PRolitics is now the name of the game, funded by the same wealthy backers that these people pretend to despise.
