The overall disillusionment of Greek youth reminded me of the “No Future” movements in the 1970s and 1980s in NATO European lands, whereby alienated youth were tuning out all over the continent. This was especially true in the mid-1980s as the political hope of the 1960s had died out and a new Cold War rhetoric had re-enveloped the continent, especially after the year when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and the sudden increased spending on armaments across Europe dovetailed with the bad economic effects resulting from the higher fuel prices and high rates of unemployment in Western Europe in those same years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7781516.stm
After 1982-1983, when millions of Europeans had protested the newest NATO armaments expansion in Holland and Germany, most European youth turned inwards and cynical as a “greed is only good” became the political-economic-and social mantra for the next decade.
By the time I arrived to live in Germany in 1986, unemployment and underemployment for youth had been from 10 to 15 percent for many years and sometimes reached over 20 percent. In northern UK and Ireland unemployment for young people sometimes reached double that level unemployment and underemployment in that decade.
FROM GREECE TO PARIS
As noted above, last week there were sympathy protests from youth from Istanbul and Romania to Paris and Madrid.
Meanwhile, back in Greece, one BBC journalist wrote, “What needs to emerge from this tragedy is a new incorruptible force [in Greece] that is brave enough to challenge Greece's vested interests, implement essential reforms, ignore the political cost, and to inspire selflessness and civic responsibility.”
So far, it looks like youth are losing out and pure anarchists are torching the movement even as unions participate on and off.
Meanwhile, Greece developed an economic-political-social landscape resemblance to economies in Asia and in Africa. This is because a preference for young people to defer to their elders, tradition, and status quo has been stronger in lands of western Asia and Africa than elsewhere. This has partially been reinforced by anti-colonialist forces in the development of these modern states.
Overall, in many countries throughout this planet--especially in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa--there are certainly oligarchies of all varieties that have been in place for decades (if not centuries).
Till now, there has rarely ever been any young groups with enough influence to topple them.
The only exceptions, in the late 1980s, were those states involved in forcing the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the fall of Apartheid in South Africa. These had started with the ousting of President Ferdinand Marcos in Philippines. However, within a few short years youthful hopefulness has often turned to cynicism in recent decades.
NO MORE “LOST GENERATIONS”?
The traditional deference of youth to their elders in Asia has certainly been one typical emphasis that world travelers and businessmen or investors have come to expect and anticipate when visiting or doing business there.
Respect of one’s elders and waiting one’s turn to move up the hierarchy of whatever oligarchy or despotism are especially to be expected in Confucian capitalist and communist countries. However, this Confucian tendency can naturally be experienced in South Africa or South America, as well.
Naturally, the youth-powered movements of Chairman Mao in China are exceptions to this rule.
