No, you are NOT. You would be a nationalist, not a racist.

The Greeks would be better off right now if they'd defaulted in 2009 as they should have. They will default, they cannot pay the money back, ever, it is inevitable- and if they'd done it six years ago their economy would be 25% bigger than their austerity ravaged current one.

The ultimate reason why austerity has destroyed the Greek economy is simple, neo liberal policies target poor people, while poor people actually spend money while rich people don't in a recession. The thing about pensioners, those on a benefit or those making low wages is that they spend their money, they have to. They spend it on food, electricity, clothes, rent; they don't save it because they don't make enough to save; they don't buy a house in London to take advantage of the housing bubble, because they cannot. So, any money they get is spent in shops, and circulates in the Greek economy. If you cut pensioners funding by the 200E as desired presently that money is taken straight out of the Greek economy, it's 200E less to be spent in shops and the like by every pensioner, so shops lay off staff or go out of business and you get a vicious circle where the economy cannot grow because of austerity, and the solution to that is... more austerity which just reinforces the circle more by removing more money from those who actually spend it. Crucially to this whole thing, and the real kicker as to why it is such a ideological stupidity: if you're a millionaire or wealthy you can simply take your money out of Greece and stick it in London or wherever, no problem for you, no need to spend much in Greece, your taxes aren't increased, there's no need to invest in Greece- indeed, why would you when you can invest in far more stable places that aren't mired in a depression.

Taking money off poor people is simple ideological moronism in a recession, you take money out of the economy and rich people are further encouraged to remove their money due to the recession. It is, however, great if you're Frankfurt and rich Greeks are sticking their money there instead...

So, fundamentally, austerity is not aimed at helping Greece or its people, it's ideological. Its aim, such as it is, is to protect the banks and others who lent to Greece, and to recoup as much cash as possible before the inevitable implosion. It's Tony Soprano loaning his 'friend' money, then running his business into the ground deliberately to extract more money, ending in his friend eating a shotgun anyway. If he'd eaten the shotgun two minutes into the episode his family would at least have a lot more than at hour's end.

It also has to be put in historical context. The Euro is stupid, stupid, stupid, a political mess designed to appeal to everyone and fundamentally unworkable as it stands. Currency union without fiscal union, and with countries regularly ignoring such stipulations as there are is asking for trouble. People often talk about Greece lying to get into the Euro in the first place. Well yes. Number of countries who didn't ignore the criteria? Seriously: one, Luxembourg, the smallest of the lot. Germany itself ignored the stipulations. Germany also benefits from the Euro because their currency is relatively devalued by it relative to the old deutchmark which helps exports and exports to poorer Euro nations; for a poorer Euro nation it's the exact reverse, their currency is suddenly massively overvalued and they're instantly uncompetitive plus cannot use the normal means to reduce and control debt because Germany is doing well and has a far larger economy so Eurozone policy is based on that. Again, it's a vicious circle where poorness is reinforced by the system itself, it's inherently skewed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Well, at least to the point it becomes impossible for the poor to bear any more.

So that's the new little rhetorical shield of racists, nowadays ? Cute. Nicely capitalizing on the semi-neutral and context-dependant value of "nationalism". "Hey, swedes are assholes, but I'm not a racist, just a nationalist", I guess this sounds more cool in some circles, and comfortably re-legitimising for some sort of racist statements... "Racist" would make them sound so consensually bad.

Nice to watch the new tools being put in place. Gotta remove the univocal stigma from some sort of discourses.

1. Mabye England and France certainly became the best of friends after a LONG and BLOODY rivalry.

2. The only racial thing about Greeks is that they are Mediterranian which includes MANY cultures mostly in Southern Europe.

Sorry but not even. There is nothing "racial" about anyone, anywhere. The notion simply doesn't apply to humans. And virtually no one (apart from some fringe whackos) still believes in gobineau-like racialist theories.

Hence the common general usage of "racism" for various sorts of collective essentialisations and stigmatisations, functionally equivalent to old racialism. "Culturalism", "antisemitism" as a specific form or racism, etc...

It's still used in the narrowest technical sense in some contexts, but this hop between acceptations is mostly used to get rid of a "bad word" when uttering the same old sort of statements that used to be backed by biological beliefs.

2. Which means nothing other than they are primarily a white race country. We had bullshit about an Aryan race during the World War 2. Do we really want to go back and start identifying countries as races?

No thank you. A World War 3 is the last thing humanity needs. I wish my descendents live to see outer space than have humanity destroy our only home (earth)

Exactly. But Swedes are NOT nationalists at all. I think you may have some weird view of Sweden that is completely different compared to what real life currently is like.

And besides, please, don't speak to me about racism. I am from Macedonia, where the majority of the people are racists, in the true sense of the world, where they hate non-whites, and complete nationalists, where they hate their neighbours (except for Serbia), and many other things. I am pretty knowledgeable about what racism, nationalism, and every other crap is.

It's a not shield for racists. It's just the truth because it's not like each race on this Earth just divided themselves up by countries. If someone hates Americans, is he or she racist? Is there an American race? The only way someone can be racist for hating Greeks is if they also hate all other white people on this planet. And if you hate Greeks because you think Greeks are hurting your NATION then you are a NATIONALIST. Some nationalists are racist too but not all. Maybe this is why you are confused?

I have absolutely no view of Sweden at all. It was a random exemple (lke "italians are thieves", etc).

Also, "whites" and "non-whites" are not a "race" either, which, apparently, you should already know then.

Also, "nationalism" designates a fetishized adoration of one's own nation (and also, in some contexts, the political doctrine of establishment of a new nation), and not the stigmatisation of a specific different country's residents.

Also, there is no other global word than "racism" in a broad sense to cover globally these form of stigmatisations of whatever human group is being percieved as some sort of ethnicity. These collective identities are too random to always provide a narrowly focused technical term, and one global notion is required to cover a category as diverse in targetted categories and as similar in content as "europeans", "chinese". "jews", "muslims", "biharis", "amerindians", "south italians", etc...

And that is the point of the whole manoeuver. Because it allows to absolve of racism all discriminatory discourses that lead to a hierarchisation of people from different origins or ethnic identities. You can selectively show (active or passive-agressive) hostility to a certain group, or hammer propaganda to designate it as inferior/threatening, or you can discriminate job applications, or whatever. As long as you don't claim a straightforward belief in racialist theories, or haven't murdered anyone, you would be able to justify yourself with a hypocritical "hey i'm not racist at all".

Remove the word to salvage the behaviour.

The amusing thing is how those who struggle to find a cleaner, more neutral, less morally charged, words to qualify obvious racist (technically culturalist) statements such as "i fucking hate spaniards" don't even pretend anymore to grasp why such statements are assholeries (and a very specific brand of assholery) in the first place. Only one target in that crusade : making such statements sound cool again, without even wondering what was deemed questionnable about them.

I foresee a lovely century.

You mean as opposed to you, who is only concerned with purely humanist ideas and societal questions? Sure, sure... :D

In a way it's an improvement that you decided to move from openly aggressive slander to more cautiously expressed insinuation. Either way it probably won't get you anywhere and this is why: If GOG was the Wild West, you'd be the snake oil peddler. Meaning that you're operating entirely on the power of make-believe, trying to make everyone believe that there is racism everywhere and only you have the antidote for it, in fancy little glass bottles with pretty labels saying: Telika's Anti-Racist Oil™, cures all!

You even have your sales pitch down to a science, along with the flowery language of an experienced snake oil peddler:
The problem with make-believe is that when it comes into contact with a little bit of basic common sense it can quickly dissapear, poof gone.

My advice is that you give it a break, it's getting old somewhat fast and the townsfolk are bound to catch on to the scam sooner or later. How about switching to a more respectable career such as moonshiner?

Here's a short video that in only 5 minutes sums up what you're about and touches on a number of things I've tried to tell you in past discussions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNdrBVfVa-I
(in Swedish, English subtitles available)


A couple quotes from the video:

"The anti-racist movement is about a witch-hunt against political adversaries who don't actually hold racist beliefs.
It's not about opposing racism. It's about selling your politics with a nice word as a surface."

"It's the intellectual equivalent of McDonalds: Fast, shallow and without a healthy substance. That's the trend nowadays, to find people it's socially acceptable to hate."

Nationalism is based on a self applied positive intent in my book (and I am not saying it is a good thing).
Going all the way negative on a category of people defined by their country of origin (residence ?) is a form of xenophobia. Xenophobia and racism are both segregationist behaviours that operate through the same mechanics (us =/= them ; us > them). So it makes more sense to call it racism than nationalism. We could talk about nationalism on a wider scope by considering that all this is just the sum of internal struggles inside every EU country : nationalism vs 'europe-ism'.

@immi101 and Siannah: Thank you for your clarifications. I thought it strange that the greek government wouldn't make an attempt to change the country's course, but at least in the US I've seen plenty of examples where politicians will say and do anything to stay in power. It does seem quite the problem - if austerity didn't work and what they were doing before austerity didn't work, what next?

The more I hear, the more I think it would be better for everyone for Greece to leave the EU. It would no longer be a drain on the EU's resources, which could then be used to prevent defaults by other members. Greece would then have more control over its recovery attempt. I think it should concentrate on leveraging its tourism industry. It could easily portray itself as a relatively safe (from terrorism activity) and inexpensive vacation destination for Europeans and Asians. All of that ancient history plus fabulous beaches and resorts, what's not to love?

Sorry to inform and intrude in your knee-deep in ignorance opinion (DOOM Tie-in) and "facts" mate, but there were many reforms done successfully from 2010 that all this started.

Pensions and salaries were diminished heavily, taxes were introduced and the existing were mostly magnified and there were other deep reforms to change the bureaucratic state.
It is generally believed that the private domain was punished much more than the public domain (though both of those categories had a lot of taxes, the public domain was handled with more attention).

But apart from that, yes you're very ignorant.
Personally, i've never voted for ANY of the 3 political parties that have governed Greece for the last 40 years so theoretically, i didn't have any involvement in the debt. I also wanted more reforms and didn't buy into the promises of our current government.
The only thing i always agreed with our current government was that previous governments didn't do enough on negotiations.

But yeah... whatever you wanna say!