Wojtek wrote:
> On the second thought, burning national flags in such circumstances
does not seem like a good idea.
It's not my thing either, I don't go in for that kind of histrionic symbolism.
Still, given the absolutely vicious racist campaign directed at Greek people for the last year-and-a-half or so, I don't really condemn it either.
> It redefines the conflict as a
nationalistic shouting match, a replica of football hooliganism if you
will, and diverts attention from the economic system that is the root
cause of the problem.
Well, capitalism as analyzed by Marx is an abstract set of social relationships, but there's no question that in real life those social relationships are always situated in time and space.
And in Europe in 2012, Berlin is the concrete agent of neo-liberalism in a European context. As Claudio Katz pointed out in the article I forwarded, the ultimate goal on the part of European capital is the destruction of the welfare state.
Besides, for a guy who gets so riled up about the alleged barbarism of North American culture and what you regard as its particular egregiousness, it's kind of weird that you suddenly reject thinking in national categories within the European context.