In Greece, with one in four unemployed, the people have voted (once again) for an end to self-defeating austerity imposed from abroad. In Brussels and in Berlin, officials and ministers declare their loyalty to a ‘European’ vision of monetary and fiscal rectitude that might have borrowed its name from Foucault (‘discipline and punish’) or Dostoyevsky (‘crime and punishment’). Across the whole southern half of the continent — from the Pillars of Hercules to the outer approaches to the Hellespont — unemployment has robbed a generation of a future.
Only a decade ago, Europe was mostly remarkable as a place where history …read more