Anarchy's Physical Expresion

In Anne Applebaum's Venting in Greece she shows the simple slight of hand that conservatives perform to hide their anarchism. She decries the lack of political vocabulary of the demonstrators in Greece as the product of either the naivete of youth or the shallowness of Greek political culture. She describes the problem as a lack of political vocabulary to deal with "Greek corruption and youth unemployment." But the problem is not ignorance of modern political discourse, but the impotence and vacuousness of the conservative ideology that has held sway even Europe.

Ms. Applebaum has said that she was most comfortable as a member of of Thatchers Tory party. It was Thatcher who said "There is no society, only a collection of individuals." The central element of Thatchers and Reagan's philosophy was that the sole purpose of government was to provide the few needed boundaries for capitalism to flourish. It was at its heart that belief that the markets provided the best solution to all societies problems. Even in nominally socialist European governments this central belief was at the heart of political discourse. It certainly dug itself deep into the institutions of the European Union. Applebaum alludes to this in bringing up the fact that Greece fudged its economic data to join the EU. Whilst people may think many things about the European Union it is still at its heart an economic union whose primary definition is as a market, not a people.

Many people perceive that nationalism is main restraint to a sense of shared identity amongst members of the European Union. But, this is not the case. European nationalism has started to fail even in Eastern European nations whose citizens where initially eager to stress their European credentials and equality with their Western European compatriots. The reason that nationalism fails in European Union and indeed in many European member states is that there simply isn't any there there. Guided by the conservative ideology that was ascendant as Europe grew and grew closer Europe and its member states more and more defined governments primary and even only legitimate role as to facilitate a market economy.

But what does this kind of philosophy have to say to unemployed youth and citizens of corrupt governments. The answer is nothing. If the market has selected you as loser, as it has for western young people who must pay at least ten times as much for housing as their Asian competitors and therefore can not compete with them in a world labour market there is nothing to be done. The market has spoken, and the market is by definition the good and final word. If Applebaum would give a conservative voice to these protesters what could she have them say? A Molotov cocktail may not be the most eloquent political discourse, but all Ms. Applebaum has to offer in response is a silent scream.