It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine The New York Times journalists as a stuffy band of blue bloods sitting around a men’s clubhouse some place, puffing cigars, sipping scotch, and fiddling with their monocles as they composed the day’s news—only the news fit to print. At least one participant snoozes softly in an armchair. Such is the level of excitement one gets reading the Times. By design, all traces of righteous anger, the furies of injustice, and the ire of the powerless have been erased from the (paper of) record. No emotional response is permitted, regardless of the crime.
The Times is nothing if not the oracle of the mild-mannered man, the nonpolitical consumer who challenges nothing, questions nothing, and accepts the pronouncements of the state on good faith. He is the quintessential 21st century American. The armchair observer, perfectly content to accommodate existing power structures, and even defend them. Hence The Times’ persistent projection of judicious journalistic reserve. A clever visage, but little more than fanaticism masked as moderation.
Unlike The Left, with its rage and its rapid-fire strafing of political poseurs, the calm demeanor of Times’ journalists, by contrast, suggest a disinterested impartiality. But this farcical premise is belied by any close look at the paper, its complicity in hiding atrocities (East Timor), publishing falsehoods (Iraq WMD), and exhibiting its own bias (pro-Israel, anti-Russian) and deliberate fear-mongering on behalf of the imperial state (Iran, Venezuela).
Getting it wrong on Greece
Just a couple of examples of how The Times consistently misunderstands—or deliberately misrepresents—issues. In keeping with its absurdly uninteresting prose style, The Times published a headline two weeks ago that said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras returned to Greece to convince a “skeptical” public to accept the agreement he made with the Troika. Is that really all the Greek nation has been—skeptical? Hardly the right adjective to describe a country whose parliament was full of defectors and fractured coalitions, and whose streets were teeming with protestors, placards, tear gas and fire.
No, Greece is angry. But to say as much might frighten the hearty midlanders sipping their coffee over breakfast. The Times, it should be said, does everything possible from an editorial perspective to tamp down political emotion, canalize it within the absurd confines of the two-party debate. Like most bought editorial boards, popular ire is underreported, faux foreign villainy over-reported. The goal is to promote the idea that the threat is always the “other” and that U.S. actions are always unarguably reasonable. The “other” is principally whatever group, domestic or foreign, that opposes what sociologist Barrington Moore called “the predatory solution of token reform at home and counterrevolutionary imperialism abroad.” This is imperialism rationalized by appeals to stability, and reformism sanctified by the theology of incrementalism. In fact, Moore mentions as one of his three forms of modernization the “revolution from above,” which is perhaps a good description of neoliberalism being inflicted on Greece.
If every revolution has its traitors, PM Tsipras is surely one. He was elected on a promise to reject austerity. He is now reinforcing it and banishing those in Syriza that disagree. Granted, he evidently underwent “mental waterboarding” at the hands of German Chancellor Angela Merkle, her minister of finance, Wolfgang Schauble, and French President Francois Hollande. But his tepid claim, exhaustively reiterated, that he had no mandate to take Greece out of the euro, rings particularly hollow. It is the interior rationale of a man who knew from the beginning that he would capitulate. His former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, was cut from another cloth, finally having himself ejected from the negotiations for his unwillingness to submit to the poisonous prescriptions of the Troika. He has since laid out his objections in interviews that confirm the public’s worst fears about the Troika.
Given all this, you’d think The Times might present a less than flattering portrait of the Greeks’ turncoat leader. Au contraire. Remember the maxim: accommodate existing power structures whenever possible. To that end, Tsipras has been hastily refashioned as a “popular, canny and pragmatic politician.” Sounds like the kind of man a gang of creditors can work with. To do what exactly? Perhaps, “create a new center of gravity in Greek politics, one focused not on ending austerity, but on carrying it out in a progressive way and restoring some sense of fairness and hope to a country that has been short on both.” Tsipras has also intimated—again like someone rapidly revising his beliefs to adapt to a new reality—that some unpleasant changes would have been necessary regardless of Troika demands. He has touted the possibility of debt relief mentioned by the European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and still talks a populist game. And there you have it, the assembled intelligentsia having a hearty chuckle as Tsipras tosses his careworn Che Guevara tee shirt to the trash bin.
To be sure, none of this rhapsodic neoliberal rhetoric requires conspiratorial meetings and clandestine censoring. It requires nothing more than that the staff internalize the values of the doctrinal system. Then the idea that Tsipras has come to his senses, rather than lost them, makes perfect sense.
Rebels with a cause
Consider the causes Greeks have to be a bit more than skeptical, and to see Tsipras as little more than a liar. This from a letter penned by dozens of international academics, summing up the impact of austerity:
Over the past five years, the EU and the IMF have imposed unprecedented austerity on Greece. It has failed badly. The economy has shrunk by 26%, unemployment has risen to 27%, youth unemployment to 60% and, the debt-to-GDP ratio jumped from 120% to 180%. The economic catastrophe has led to a humanitarian crisis, with more than 3 million people on or below the poverty line.
Add to that a persistent drop in GDP—as anticipated—in which consumption naturally drops as citizens have less to spend. Then there’s the typical degradation of labor, including deregulating labor agreements and a rise in uninsured work. Add to that the migration of educated Greeks abroad, the dreaded “brain drain.” Spikes in homelessness, the suicide rate, and declines in public health have further compounded the situation.
Once Tsipras agreed to Troika demands, the legislative pieces enforcing the even more draconian austerity measures began to fall like dominos. The European Commission approved a €7.5B bridge loan to keep Greek “finances afloat” until a larger loan can be negotiated, around €86B. The European Central Bank (ECB) released €900M (and surprisingly called for debt write offs for Athens). Despite a revolt of principled Syriza MPs, the first legislative package was overwhelming approved last week (229 to 64, with 38 Syriza MPs voting against).
That larger loan will apparently be cobbled together from a combination of eurozone money, cash from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and, damningly, sales of Greek national assets, €50B of which are being placed in a fund under the administration of a German bank run by Finance Minister Schauble. Islands are up for sale. But this has been going on for some time. Last November, for instance, airport management company Fraport—a German firm—“partnered” with Greece’s Copelouzos Group to win a 40-year operating concession on 14 regional Greek airports, including those in Crete, Corfu, Samos, Santorini, Thessaloniki and others. This deal was completed under the purview of the Hellenic Assets Development Fund, established in 2011 to essentially privatize Greek assets, and to permit private use of state property that isn’t sold, as part of its austerity plan.
Ignoring the consequences
The Times has been scrupulously following the fund’s activities, reporting on the painstakingly slow process, then its rapid fast-tracking subsequent to the new bailout. Yet, as the fund ramps up its efforts to privatize—temporarily derailed by Syriza’s unexpected rise to power—other state assets, that is to say, public property, that may be put on the market include Athens’ airport, Greece’s water utility, the Hellenic Petroleum company, the Public Power Corporation—the nation’s electrical utility, and offshore energy fields in the Aegean Sea.
The Times covers this process with its characteristic reserve, suggesting these are efforts to “stoke the economy” and quoting the fund’s director as saying, “This could put the economy back in motion.” But will it? It is never noted that profits move out of the country when foreign concerns acquire Greek assets—cutting off critical federal revenue streams—even if jobs are subsequently created by private development. But what of privatized assets already generating revenues and sustaining jobs? Will private concerns not cut jobs as unrelenting pressure from shareholders begins to bear on the businesses? Will not utility prices begin to rise under private control? Will not new regulatory regimes be required to police those utilities?
Fundamentally, this is where Times’ investigative journalism ends. Claims and consequences aren’t examined to provide the reader with critical context of the program itself. These issues, naturally, can all be resolved once that lovely Ionian coastline is in foreign hands. All of this occurs in the foreground behind which ring the dissenting voices of the Greek people. In the end, The Times gives the last word to the proponents of privatization, the Hellenic fund’s director. “The state is not the best businessman . . . so privatization will be transformational in many respects.”
In the end, the end of Greek democracy?
It is hard to interpret the whole of the Greek debt crisis and its resolution as anything other than a German-led looting of Greek patrimony. One Syriza MP even claimed that it was the third time in a century that Germany had tried to destroy Europe. Harsh words, but the precedent being set by the Troika is very likely going to wreck the European periphery when applied there, which is to say it will likely extend debt regimes into the future while acquiring large pieces of those debtor economies.
The Troika formula also undermines the European welfare state. Yet, that’s the fundamental goal of neoliberal imperial capitalism—removing barriers to profit. Nothing restricts higher profits more than the regulations imposed by labor on business. Regulations designed to protect workers and the environment from greater exploitation by capital. That is precisely what austerity aims to repeal.
Likewise, nothing inhibits growing corporate asset ledgers more than needless state holdings. Just consider, for perspective, America’s state holdings in energy wealth alone were recently estimated to be in the ballpark of $128 trillion. That’s leaving aside mineral wealth, property, and federal debt holdings. Every nation has its wealth. That is precisely what austerity aims to target.
So it was no wonder that the Molotov cocktails flew last week in the streets of Athens, and in weeks prior, along with petrol bombs and the shouts and screams of the desperate and destitute. Even The Times conceded that the Greek people see the negotiations as a “disaster,” but the paper, rehabilitating a backsliding rabble rouser into a bankable foot soldier of the “revolution from above,” surely sees it otherwise. For his part, Tsipras has said he’d see to it that the “burden is distributed with social justice.” Good luck with that. One can only wonder how this refashioned PM will rationalize this next step—a program designed to be socially unjust, justly implemented.
Jason Hirthler is political commentator, communications consultant, and author of The Sins of Empire: Unmasking American Imperialism. He lives in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.
