Nothing is Normal

By the time the left-wing government of Syriza was elected in January 2015, Greece had been in crisis for half a decade. Industrial production had collapsed, the country was mired in debt, and creditors were demanding crippling austerity as a condition for further loans. Yet there was hope among Greek workers that the new government would stand up for them. The country's diverse far left was split on how to orient to the situation, which was both dire and an opportunity. These articles, written in Athens by Colleen Bolger, capture the spirit and the political debates of the time. They are complemented by a retrospective interview with Panos Petrou, a longstanding member of Greece's revolutionary left.