The Resurgence Of Greek Nationalism In The Context Of The European Debt Crisis

Since the beginning of the euro crisis in 2008, the support for the Greek neofascist party "Golden Dawn" has been increasingly on the rise. During the 2012 general elections, it received enough votes to obtain 18 seats in the legislative assembly of Greece. Moreover, in the last elections of January 2015, it obtained 17 seats, regardless of the fact that many of its members, including the party’s chief, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, were then in prison. As a result, a fair amount of researchers have been paying attention to a so-called "identity crisis" that would supposedly be prevailing in Greece. On one side, the Greek government, ceding to the pressure of the so-called Troika, enforced in the last years a series of austerity measures. On the other side, the European powers and the international financial establishment have been vilifying Greece’s national identity, claiming it to be the reason of the crisis. To raise only one infamous example, in April 2012, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, argued that if the Greek people are now suffering from the austerity measures, they have only themselves to blame, since the crisis is the consequence of them failing to pay their taxes. The core argument of the following thesis is that, in the context of the European crisis, this kind of discourse and prejudice encouraged the rise of extreme nationalism in Greece. Therefore, this thesis will specifically provide a postmodernist understanding of the resurgence of neofascism in the country since the beginning of the crisis. However, postmodernism is not interested in uncovering causal relationship, but rather in shedding light on the relationship between power and knowledge. A postmodernist approach is indeed helpful in deconstructing what constitutes the ’common sense’of IR, i.e. in exposing how natural phenomena are in fact constructed through discourse. As such, this thesis will explore how political discourses have constructed the issue of a Greek identity crisis, and to do so, it will seek to deconstruct some concepts pertaining to the main discourse of IR, as sovereignty, identity, and globalization. In fact, since any social organization’s authority is dependent on how it constructs and maintains a sense of identity that will reinforce cohesion between its members, identity is not an aim pursued merely by nation-states who seek to protect their sovereignty, but it is also essential to the construction of a strong European Union. Considering that regional integration and sovereignty are two processes that influence each other, the construction of a European identity will certainly have an impact, and be dependent, on how national identities are constructed. This is why this thesis first explores how the European elites contributed to the creation of a European narrative that set the premises of a so-called European identity. Second, it will analyze how Greece has been represented in the media and the discourses of self-proclaimed experts since the beginning of the euro crisis. Third, it will provide a survey of how Greece’s national identity has been constructed since the 19th century, and it will emphasize the relation between Greece’s identity and a more general European identity. By doing so, the author will then be able to explain more in details how the current discourses on Greece have been affecting its population. By discussing first the possible roots of the xenophobia existing among the Greek nation, the author will then turn to explain the feeling of inferiority that is increasingly present among the Greeks. This seemingly contradictory psychological state of the Greek nation will then be explored further in the last chapter, which will focus on the Golden Dawn’s strategy and discourse, and how it appeals to the anxious citizens who feel dispossessed by the European policies of austerity.