Class War Furor
Published on Dissident Voice, by Robert Hunziker, February 2, 2015.
Class war furor amplifies throughout Europe. “The trenches are the streets” of major cities that have suffered the most from neoliberal policies as promulgated by the world’s monetary authorities, like the EU-IMF.
Suddenly, the “Syriza Virus” is circulating throughout Europe. The “people” have had enough austerity crammed down their throats. They’re in the streets.
Headlines depict bitterness: “Austerity Anger Sweeps from Greece to Spain as Hundreds of Thousands March Through Madrid in Support of Fledgling Radical Leftist Party,” Daily Mail, January 31, 2015. The “March for Change” converged around Madrid’s Cibeles fountain. People are fed up, tossing their support to a pony-tailed jean-wearing charismatic leader named Pablo Iglesias, the Podemos Party candidate, a 36-year-old political science professor.
The anti-establishment party Podemos (“We Can”) in Spain, formed only one year ago, is already in the lead to win Spain’s general election later this year … //
… … Today, the “corporate state” is King Louis XVI. The aristocracy resides in, and travels along the free market’s Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard along side Rich Uncle Pennybags of Monopoly fame, and “monopoly is their game.”
He/she who controls the most property wins. As it happens, free market neoliberalism is all about control, controlling the people, exporting wages to the lowest overseas bidders, moving facilities offshore to avoid governmental regulations, diminishing unions, privatizing state assets, cutting social programs, austerity, austerity, and more austerity whilst privatizing everything in sight. The upshot is lame economic performance as sector after sector of workers are cut back, reduced to rubble. What’s to spend?
For example, in Dublin, new water fees serve as a lightning rod for all of the accumulated anger and discontent of six years of austerity as tens of thousands hit the streets, December 2014, protesting the new water fees, one more example of the raw sensitivity by citizens to neoliberal austerity measures that punish workers, like tinder to fire, large groups of people protest at the slightest signal of new austerity measures.
As well, in Ukraine, November 2014 news photos show long lines of heavily armed police holding up heavy metal medieval-like shields, surrounding and protecting the parliament building as thousands press against the phalanx. The protestors demand the premier stop cutting social benefits, subsidies and price controls on utility rates. Ten percent of public workers will lose jobs and educational spending is to be cut by twenty percent as tuition fees increase, cut the spending but charge the students more.
This class war furor is like a virus that knows no antidote because cuts, cuts, and more cuts, death by a thousand cuts, irritate, exasperate, and enrage workers from Dublin to Athens, all across the continent. In turn, medieval style police forces wearing armor, carrying thick metal shields, wearing bulletproof face masks and overly armed to the hilt confront their “own.” Yes, they confront their “own.” This tragedy speaks for itself, similar to a Shakespearean tragedy, guaranteed to end, fatally.
Neoliberal socio-politico-economics devastates so many, enriches so few, like a reversion to feudalism, accompanied by armed forces in hand-to-hand combat in the fields, in the streets, nose-to-nose, the most primitive of warfare, and indeed, it is warfare when people in the streets face off against their “own.” Whether bullets are fired or not, it is the simple act of angry masses of people confronting medieval armored police that invokes images of class war furor, even if silent, even if static, like the images captured by news photos for the eons, contorted faces, everyday dress, outstretched arms, individuals pressing against individuals versus phalanxes of identical suits of armor, bereft of the differentiating individualism of their “own.” It’s nightmarish and bone chilling.
These battles in the streets are symptomatic of a maddening desperation to retain that which a few cherish. But, throughout history, bad things happen when the “few” stomp on the necks of their “own.”
World history is replete with the horrendous brutality of battle scenarios whenever the “few” extort, badger, and coerce their “own,” like the American Revolution of 1765-83, the French Revolution of 1789-99, the Revolutions of 1830 aka: the Romantic Nationalist Revolutions, the Revolutions of 1848 aka: the Spring of Nations, and the Arab Spring of 2010, and on it goes, but wherever and whenever, barbarous armed conflict is the final arbiter of gross oppression, partiality, and nepotism, as, and when, politics fail.
Revolutions start in the streets.
(Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide, like Z Magazine, European Project on Ocean Acidification, Ecosocialism Canada, Climate Himalaya, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Comite Valmy, and UK Progressive. He has been interviewed about climate change on Pacifica Radio, KPFK, FM90.7, Indymedia On Air, and the World View Show/UK, as well as Thom Hartmann’s Big Picture, and Norman B’s Life Elsewhere, 88.5 WMNF. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert).
Links:
Revolution, Reaction, and Intervention in Syria, on International Viewpoint, by Joseph Daher, Feb 4, 2015;
short news: Russia won’t insist Ukrainians use passports for entry, on Russia Today RT, Feb 4, 2015/08:30: The Russian Foreign Ministry regrets Ukrainian decision to close the border to Russian citizens with domestic IDs, or passports, TASS reported. However, Moscow will not introduce similar measures for Ukrainians, due to humanitarian reasons, the ministry said. It added that Russia has not yet received official notification from Kiev that starting on March 1, Russian citizens will be able to enter Ukraine only with an international travel passport;
Distorting the Story of Syria’s Heritage Destruction, on Dissident Voice, by Eva Bartlett, February 3, 2015: The takfiris’ destruction of Syria’s heritage—indeed of all humanity’s—is extremely serious. The world’s, including the UN’s, turning a blind eye to this horrendous crime against humanity is shocking …;
Ukrainian Government: No Russian Troops Are Fighting Against Us, Sanctions against Russia based on Falsehoods, on Global Research.ca, by Eric Zuesse, Jan 31, 2015: Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Also of IRAQ WAR, the truth and of WHY THE HOLOCAUST HAPPENED;
Vaccine McCarthyism: What if the Vaccine Paradigm itself is Deliberately Flawed? on Global Research.ca, by Dr. Gary Null and Richard Gale, Jan 28, 2015: Did 2014 Mark the Collapse of the Vaccine Establishment? Within the mainstream medical and scientific community there is an unassailable pseudo-truth that vaccines are safe and effective, whether administered individually or in combination. Within the vaccine injured children and autism movements there is also an unchallenged belief that vaccines are effective but not always safe. In this case, vaccine-injured children or adult family members were simply one of the rare cases where they received a hot lot vaccine or possessed biomolecular abnormalities, such as mitochondria dysfunction, and suffered the consequences. Even many parents with two children developing neurological complications after vaccination, will continue to follow the recommended vaccine schedule. Any medical physician, scientist, nurse, public health advocate, politician, or journalist who questions the myth of vaccine safety and efficacy are often immediately attacked, ridiculed, and designated a conspirator. In fact, the pro-vaccine propaganda machine sends forth articulate doctors and university scientists to engage in ad hominin personal attacks against vaccine dissenters …; (full long text and notes).