What is the future of Greece?

Gareth Jones asked me this at Nick Nicholas’ answer to Can fascism grow in Greece?, when I said that I don’t think so.

I’m not in a good position to judge, and I’m actually answering this to prod some Greeks closer to what’s been happening into an answer.

So, if they won’t vote in Golden Dawn, followed by some Reichstag fire or equivalent, what will happen instead?

Greeks already did their Trump/Corbyn/Brexit/Sanders, and voted in the ex-Eurocommunists, populists (though not authoritarians) on the left. And nothing got better.

Some will keep going even more radical, like Yiannis Papadopoulos’ cab driver in https://www.quora.com/Can-fascis…, and vote Communist or Golden Dawn. Some will go back to the clientilist centre. A bit more street violence than is already there. A lot more apathy about elections, and disenchantment with the political process.

But I’m not seeing a revolution, and I’m not seeing the hammer and sickle or the maeander waving over Syntagma Square. I think the time for that is past. I anticipate torpor, degradation of infrastructure and civic bonds, and ignoring national politics as a means to fixing anything. I anticipate a much more overt clientelism: it’s what got Greeks through when there was no rule of law and meritocracy, and it’s what they’ve known.

But I’m not in a good position to judge. And I’m A2A’ing those who I think are.