A tiny economy’s crisis was weaponized as a metaphor for austerity

Evidence

It is worth noting the timing of events. Opposition to Keynesian policies intensified in spring 2010 just as the Greek crisis became newsworthy despite Greece’s accounting for only 2.5 percent of total Eurozone GDP. In the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, politicians in favor of austerity zeroed in on the Greek crisis as a metaphor for the perils of Keynesianism. “Becoming Greece” became a scare story to justify cutting back at home. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 202

Categorization

• DEFINE: flagged by the selector, no supporting note recorded
• CANDY: flagged by the selector, no supporting note recorded
• BMF: flagged by the selector, no supporting note recorded
• XREF: connects to: The crisis-as-government-fault narrative was engineered to justify austerity — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950; Austerity was installed by deliberately confusing cause and correlation — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 204; Austerity framed economic crisis as caused by governments and workers, not capital — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 783 (+18 more)

Broader Connections

• The crisis-as-government-fault narrative was engineered to justify austerity #expands (1.00) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950
• Austerity was installed by deliberately confusing cause and correlation #expands (0.90) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 204
• Austerity framed economic crisis as caused by governments and workers, not capital #expands (0.88) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 783
• Austerity frames national crisis as requiring patriotic individual sacrifice in frugality and labor #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 803
• Austerity was capitalism’s manufactured response to worker challenges #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 585
• Austerity is economically irrational yet politically rational for preserving capitalism #expands (0.85)
• Monetary austerity deliberately induced recession to discipline workers. #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 154
• Crisis metaphors dominating public discourse had no basis in economic theory #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 465
• Austerity operates as speculation that converts fiction into fact #expands (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 400
• Austerity masquerades as apolitical science while bending workers to capital’s will #expands (0.82)
• Austerity arose in response to mass political challenge to capitalism itself #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 798
• Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 654
• Ideology shapes economic crisis rather than merely reflecting it #expands (0.80)
• Austerity is state intervention transferring resources from the many to the few #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 195
• Austerity persists as an ideology that resists empirical refutation #expands (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 613