REVOLT AND CRISIS IN GREECE
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and an end to whatever tiny crumbs of tolerance to migration that ever existed. So many “ends,” all pointing at the end of capitalist order aswe-knew-it; the shattering of all those tiny bits that held together the mosaic of normality. In a sense the future is already here. The welfare state, mild capitalism, post-WWII consensus, the American dream and all its regional variations are well and truly gone. Yet the past still haunts us. The state of emergency as a mode of rule; that old things-are-bad-askno-questions trick hasn’t come out of the rulers hat for the first time. The state of emergency is pumped out to an extreme—brute force is more brute and longer-lasting than ever, and as wall poster in Athens reads: “As carrots run out sticks become plenty.” What times! The certainties of capitalist rule crumble and fall, one after the other. Why won’t the rulers even bother to prevent the unveiling of the humanist façade of their rule—is this some obnoxiousness on their part? Hardly so. A systemic crisis is, after all, exactly that: systemic. It would take more than a few obnoxious leaders (or clumsy, inexperienced, totalitarian, or simply too “progressive” and “lenient” ones for that matter) to destabilise the existing system of order. Change simply runs much deeper than any single one of them. Why is capitalist rule nakedly exposing its ruthlessness then—could it be out of fear? After all, the wounded animal will sometimes grind its teeth; a show of force can be a sign of desperation. The 2008 uprising in Greece, the troubled fall of 2010 in France, the string of revolutions in Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt in the same year show that there is good reason for fear to nest in the minds of the rulers, fear that people might, and in fact can rise up. In 2008 Greece, in Exarcheia, a cop’s bullet and a dead boy was the spark that caused the boiling rage of many to spill out onto the streets. In 2010 France the rage was against the nude new capitalist realm as a whole. A single pretext was no longer necessary. Have we reached that point, that moment in time when sparks are not even needed, when people will rise up against order, period? How easy and convenient it would be to think so. But the Greek experience in the time of the IMF so far has taught us a few bitter lessons. Lesson number one—a revolt does not happen by default. Just because “things are too difficult,” people won’t automatically become active. And if they do, it might be for the wrong reasons altogether. Lesson number two—when a revolt does happen, as in 2008, its legacy is precious. It gets inscribed in our spaces of the everyday, it