The book narrates a national tragedy. There is no doubt that it was indeed a tragedy. Greece experienced the crisis of the international financial system and the euro in the 2010s in an extremely traumatic way.
A period of acute political and emotional polarization, which sometimes reached the brink of an unarmed civil war. Opponents became enemies, like-minded individuals were divided, friendships were broken, families were separated, groups were divided, and every faction fortified itself within. In other words, the few common grounds that ensure basic political and emotional communication were lost.
No other country in peacetime has paid such a high price for such a long period for the crisis – not even that old and famous global crisis of 1929. Today we know that Greece of bankruptcy and memoranda experienced a crisis that was simultaneously global, national, and European.
The book is aimed at every citizen who wants to learn about this dramatic period, whether they are young and new to it, or if they are older and wish to delve deeper into what they experienced and put it into the larger context of the era. In the book, I examine the causes and moments that worsened the national ordeal.
In the current public discourse, these responsibilities are attributed almost exclusively to the "politicians" and the political system. Moreover, the "condemnation" extends to the entire management of the crisis. Indeed, this is a large part of the truth, but it is not the whole truth.
Therefore, I avoid contributing to the easy condemnation of the "political world" that became fashionable during the crisis and fueled the public's "anti-political" sentiment. It is always necessary to consider the broader national social structures and contradictions, the collective behaviors, and the ideological perceptions that contributed to worsening the situation.
Excerpt from the book
