Being Young and Belonging to the Left: Greek Political Culture and the "Return to Politics" Decade

M. Pantelidou Maloutas Professor Emerita, University of Athens Being young and belonging to the Left Aspects of the Greek political culture during the 2nd decade of 2000 A macro-sociological view promotes the idea that the Greek youth has a long tradition of contentious politics and fighting inspired by values and projects of the Left. At least since the inter-war period up to the late 1980’s, the young were highly involved in politics and social battles, while a positive discourse about the young, who contributed the fall of the dictatorship was an important ideological aspect of the post 1974 period. However, political disengagement, in a period climate of passivity and individuation, accompanied by identity politics and lifestyle attitudes, was an undeniable characteristic of the Greek political culture, during the last decades of the previous century, especially prevalent among the young. While distrust and not political apathy was the main root of political disengagement and apparent passivity, the crisis offered a new environment, new ways of participation and new venues to express anger and distrust, mainly through direct action. The young “returned” to politics, through the massive mobilizations of the anti-austerity movement during the crisis, (2010-2011) and then turned to institutional politics and elections. What are the ideological and cultural characteristics of the young that brought SYRIZA to power, voting, especially at the 2015 elections, massively in its favour? Do they claim an identity of the Left, and to what does this mean for them? Are the young of the Left like the former generation of citizens engaged to the Left? Using quantitative and qualitative data, this paper engages in questions concerning the Greek political culture and its projected evolution, based on the characteristics of today’s youth of the Left, which traditionally form its most dynamic agents. In dialogue with the current bibliography and the effort to overcome the dichotomy political participation-passivity, this paper engages with the hypothesis that the change in the political outlook of youth since the crisis is inscribed within the history and the “heroic myths” concerning the young Greeks as political actors, while at the same time, their “return to politics”, via the Left, is marked by who they were as a political generation.