Soci­olo­gist Charles Tilly drew a com­pel­ling ana­logy between the state as the place of organ­ised means of viol­ence, and rack­et­eer­ing. He defined the rack­et­eer “as someone who cre­ates a threat and then charges for its reduc­tion”, in order to gain con­trol and con­sol­id­ate power. In this regard, a state and its gov­ern­ment dif­fer little from rack­et­eer­ing, to the extent that the threats against which they pro­tect their cit­izens are ima­gin­ary or are con­sequences of their own activities.

Con­sid­er­ing the pain, the humi­li­ation, and the social degrad­a­tion that the eco­nomic and polit­ical policies of the Greek gov­ern­ment have inflic­ted upon the coun­try the past four years, Tilly’s ana­logy may offer us a use­ful tool to both describe and eval­u­ate the cur­rent crisis and the régime of fear that the state has unleashed on the Greek public.

The Pan­hel­lenic Social­ist Move­ment (PASOK), which is now a demo­cratic social­ist party in name only, gov­erned Greece for almost 30 years, mov­ing stead­ily from Keyne­sian eco­nomic policies in the 1980s to rampant neo­lib­er­al­ism in the 1990s. New Demo­cracy (ND), which had dom­in­ated the polit­ical scene until PASOK’s first elect­oral vic­tory in 1981 and altern­ated in power with it ever since, pro­fessed its ideo­logy to be “rad­ical lib­er­al­ism”. Today, after three dec­ades of cronyism, unbridled cor­rup­tion and eco­nomic scan­dals, the ideo­lo­gical con­ver­gence of the two parties is complete.

Des­pite its ini­tial appre­hen­sion towards the European Union, mem­ber­ship in the organ­isa­tion enabled PASOK to imple­ment its policies and boost the Greek eco­nomy. With the help of sub­stan­tial fin­an­cial inflows from what was then known as the European Eco­nomic Com­munity (one of the “three pil­lars” of the EU), PASOK was able to redis­trib­ute wealth.

Des­pite the grow­ing gov­ern­ment defi­cits, the emphasis remained on sus­tain­ing employ­ment and mod­ern­ising the wel­fare sys­tem. In the mean­time, demo­cratic social­ism — envel­oped in pat­ron­age and nepot­ism — evolved into a pro­cess for demo­crat­ising cor­rup­tion. Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Theodoros Pangalos’s infam­ously vul­gar state­ment in 2010 — “We [gov­ern­ment and cit­izens] fooled away the money together” — alluded to government-​bred tac­tics which for years secured pos­i­tions for its elect­or­ate in an ever-​expanding bur­eau­cratic machine.

Under the weight of eco­nomic scan­dals, pres­sure from PASOK’s “mod­ern­ising wing”, and the Maastricht Treaty aim to bring about mon­et­ary con­ver­gence by 1998, the Greek gov­ern­ment launched an extens­ive pro­gramme lib­er­al­ising the fin­an­cial and bank­ing sec­tor, slash­ing gov­ern­ment sub­sidies and pen­sions, dereg­u­lat­ing the labour mar­ket and privat­ising more than 100 com­pan­ies between 1994 and 1999.

Some of the most prom­in­ent of these busi­nesses included AGET-​Hercules, the cement com­pany that lit­er­ally built Greece after World War II; the Hel­lenic shipyards; Piraiki-​Patraiki, a tex­tile industry that in the 1980s was the country’s second-​largest employer after the Greek pub­lic sec­tor; and ETVA, the Hel­lenic Indus­trial Devel­op­ment Bank. New Demo­cracy, which gov­erned briefly between 1990 and 1993, effect­ively cham­pioned the same policies.

The imple­ment­a­tion of neo­lib­eral policies, increas­ingly executed by an emer­ging new breed of tech­no­crat politi­cians, was often met with strong res­ist­ance by labour uni­ons and power­ful interest groups — which for years had enjoyed the state’s pro­tec­tion. Eco­nomic scan­dals under­scored the “restruc­tur­ing” pro­cess: when AGET-​Hercules was sold for a frac­tion of its value to a nearly bank­rupt Italian indus­trial group, extreme viol­ence erup­ted. The assas­sin­a­tion of Michael Vran­o­poulos, a former chief of State Bank who had handled the sale, by the armed group Novem­ber 17, high­lighted the public’s discontent.

The largely tol­er­ant atti­tudes of the Greek pub­lic towards Novem­ber 17, which oper­ated from 1975 until 2002 with an anti-​US, anti-​capitalist agenda reflec­ted Greeks’ increas­ing frus­tra­tion with the polit­ical estab­lish­ment. Novem­ber 17 was seen by many almost as a mod­ern Robin Hood. Most import­antly, this pre­dis­pos­i­tion reflec­ted people’s inab­il­ity to effect­ively react.

The Greek state has always had a tight grip on soci­ety, and Greek soci­ety has always had a love-​hate rela­tion­ship with the state. Strongly depend­ent on the state for employ­ment in an ever-​expanding pub­lic sec­tor, which was tied up with uni­ons that, over the years, had come under the con­trol of the gov­ern­ment, the Greek pub­lic often ven­ted its dis­sat­is­fac­tion with riots, protests and strikes, largely orches­trated by the parties of the left. But it was unable to fun­da­ment­ally chal­lenge a sys­tem that was exclud­ing them from decision-​making processes.

But Greece’s boom­ing eco­nomy at the time — fuelled by the adop­tion of the euro, easy credit con­di­tions, and sub­stan­tial trans­fers from the EU — painted the pic­ture of a seem­ingly pros­per­ous soci­ety. In real­ity, a small elite was reap­ing vast profits from the government’s neo­lib­eral policies, while the lower and middle classes paid the hefty price, as the massive Greek stock exchange scan­dal of 1999 – 2000 highlights.

A cent­ral role of the state is that of offer­ing pro­tec­tion to its cit­izens. “Pro­tec­tion”, how­ever, as Tilly sug­gests, echoes two con­trast­ing tones: sim­ul­tan­eously com­fort­ing and omin­ous. It calls forth images of shel­ter against danger provided by a power­ful friend, an insur­ance policy or a sturdy roof. It also evokes, how­ever, the racket in which a local strong man, for instance, forces mer­chants to pay “trib­ute” in order to avoid dam­age — dam­age he him­self threatens to deliver — or a neigh­bour­hood mob­ster who claims to be a brothel’s best guar­an­tee of oper­a­tion free from police interference.

The death spiral that the Greek eco­nomy entered in 2008 called for all the gov­ern­ment pro­tec­tion that the pub­lic could use. Instead, the gov­ern­ment signed up for the fin­an­cial bail­out pack­ages imposed by the so-​called “troika”, the European Com­mis­sion, the European Cent­ral Bank, and Inter­na­tional Mon­et­ary Fund. The pack­ages included a series of unpre­ced­en­ted aus­ter­ity meas­ures which brought the lower and middle classes to their knees, while leav­ing intact the priv­ileges of the fin­an­cial elites and their polit­ical aides.

As a res­ult of the tre­mend­ous eco­nomic pres­sure, the gov­ern­ment had star­ted los­ing its tight grip on Greek soci­ety as far back as 2008. Massive protests triggered by the police killing of Alex­an­dros Grig­oro­poulos, a 15-​year-​old stu­dent, expressed young people’s increas­ing frus­tra­tion with the pro­spect of a bleak future.

By the spring of 2011, a whole new move­ment had been gal­van­ised. The “Indig­nant Cit­izens Move­ment”, an off­shoot of the Span­ish Indig­na­dos, occu­pied cent­ral Athens’ Syn­tagma Square for four months. Organ­ised col­lect­ively and inde­pend­ent from any party or trade union affil­i­ation, the move­ment was another indic­a­tion that the gov­ern­ment was gov­ern­ing without the con­sent of the people. Civil dis­obedi­ence and organ­isa­tions ded­ic­ated to col­lect­ive action sprung up to deal with the pau­per­isa­tion unleashed by austerity.

The back­lash has been a cam­paign of fear, which, on occa­sion, escal­ates into out­right ter­ror. Instilling fear in its cli­en­tele is the primary mech­an­ism employed by any rack­et­eer. The viol­ent sup­pres­sion of mass protests, the deten­tion of undoc­u­mented immig­rants, and the arrest and pub­lic dis­play on the Greek police’s web­site of 12 pros­ti­tutes infec­ted with HIV have had a single goal: to ter­ror­ise the Greek pub­lic and ulti­mately offer “pro­tec­tion” against the dis­sid­ents, anarch­ists, pro­test­ers, and immig­rants. The rise of Golden Dawn, the neo-​Nazi party, which won about seven per cent of the vote in par­lia­ment­ary elec­tions in May, was the dir­ect res­ult of these practices.

Fear is the sovereign’s pre­dic­a­ment, as 17^th-​century polit­ical philo­sopher Hobbes has shown; not a nat­ural emo­tion, but one cul­tiv­ated through a sys­tem of moral edu­ca­tion con­duc­ted by state insti­tu­tions and their affil­i­ates — most prom­in­ently, in our days, by the media. When these insti­tu­tions lose legit­im­acy, their tac­tics may ulti­mately back­fire, as the May elec­tions showed. The rise of Syr­iza, a coali­tion of anti-​austerity left­ist parties, ahead of the next elec­tions on June 17 has triggered a new round of pro­pa­ganda allud­ing to a com­mun­ist takeover, loss of private prop­erty, ali­en­a­tion from the mar­kets and the inter­na­tional com­munity, and most import­antly, a fin­an­cial armageddon.

In defi­ance of this fear, an awaken­ing of polit­ical con­scious­ness is tak­ing place in Greece’s squares, streets, and online social net­works, not merely con­demning the policies of aus­ter­ity and social degrad­a­tion but col­lect­ively work­ing towards new types of polit­ical res­ist­ance. It is becom­ing clear that only the people of Greece can deliver and ulti­mately save them­selves from the rack­et­eer­ing, crim­inal prac­tices of their “protectors”.

Despina Lalaki is a soci­ology doc­toral can­did­ate at The New School Uni­ver­sity and Lec­turer at the A.S. Onas­sis Pro­gram in Hel­lenic Stud­ies, New York University.