The new dark age: Across Europe, free speech and democracy face their biggest threat since the Thirties

After a week dominated by the terrible effects of Superstorm Sandy, the increasingly bitter struggle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and the continuing fallout from the Jimmy Savile scandal, it was easy to overlook a little story about an obscure Greek journalist called Kostas Vaxevanis.



In its way, though, the ordeal of Mr Vaxevanis, the editor of an Athens magazine, who narrowly escaped prison for publishing the names of suspected tax evaders, is the biggest story of all.



Its themes — the freedom of the Press, the corruption of the establishment, the arrogance of the elite and the terrifying storm engulfing the economies of Europe — go to the heart of a crisis that threatens to tear the Continent apart.



Assault on free speech: Greek editor Kostas Vaxevanis was arrested for naming individuals evading tax

But the Vaxevanis scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg.



From the Leveson Inquiry in London to the attempted comeback of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and from the salons of Paris to the committee rooms of Brussels, there are disturbing signs of a backlash against democracy, free speech and the will of the people — a counter-revolution that could sweep away many of the liberties we take for granted.



For more than half a century after World War II, most of us assumed that life in Europe would always get better. And when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it seemed that the tide of freedom was irresistible.



Democratic? Greece has had more in common with a dictatorship since a new government was 'imposed' by Brussels

But now, with Europe poised on the brink of a new dark age of austerity, corruption and censorship, I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong all along.



When, many years from now, historians come to explain how it happened, they may well start with the story of Kostas Vaxevanis.



Until this week, few people outside Greece had ever heard of him. His magazine, Hot Doc, is hardly one of the Continent’s most prestigious publications.



Wider implications: The list of over 2,000 names had been circling Europe for years, but no action was taken

Last weekend, however, he found himself catapulted into the headlines after publishing a leaked list of some 2,059 rich Greeks who have hidden more than €1 billion in secret Swiss bank accounts.



Given that one of Greece’s greatest problems over the last few years has been a corrosive culture of tax evasion — some estimates suggest that the Greek government loses a staggering €15 billion a year in unpaid taxes — it is not surprising that the list aroused an enormous storm.



After all, millions of Greeks are suffering under the most painful austerity regime seen in Europe for generations, with the economy shrinking by almost 5 per cent a year, living standards in freefall and unemployment at a staggering 25 per cent.



Revealingly, the tax evasion list had been doing the rounds of Europe’s finance ministries for years.



The French, who got hold of it first, had already passed it to the Greek government — who, living up to their reputation for incompetence and corruption on a world-class scale, did absolutely nothing about it.



But when Mr Vaxevanis leaked the list in his magazine, the Greek people were given a glimpse of their masters’ real priorities. Instead of promising to follow up the leads on the list, the governing coalition immediately had him arrested and charged with invading the privacy of the rich plutocrats.



Gathering strength: A demonstration by members of the Greek extreme-right party Golden Dawn

He was, thank goodness, acquitted. Still, his ordeal was reminiscent of something from George Orwell’s 1984, or perhaps Franz Kafka’s book The Trial, in which an innocent man is arrested and prosecuted by the repressive authorities, without ever being told what he has done wrong. But what makes this even more dangerous is that it comes with the far-Right marching ever more brazenly through the streets of Athens — a frightening reminder that as the political establishment loses its grip, ordinary people turn to the extremes.



In scenes not seen in Europe since the long night of the Thirties, almost every day is bringing new evidence that, in the shattered ruins of the Greek dream, the forces of xenophobia are gathering strength.



In June’s general election, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party won 18 seats. And earlier this month, uniformed party thugs attacked a theatre in Athens which was staging a show which depicted Jesus and the Apostles as gay men in Texas.



Shattered democracy: The political establishment has lost its grip in Greece and society is in crisis

It sounds like something from Hitler’s Germany — but it is happening in the heart of Europe in 2012.



A year ago, I warned in these pages that the death agonies of the Eurozone could tip the Continent into its darkest hour since the Thirties. It gives me no satisfaction to see my predictions coming true.



Yet as the case of the magazine editor suggests, the threat to democracy may be subtler, and, therefore, more insidious, than I imagined.



Dark age: The violent civil unrest, and heavy-handed rule, across Europe echoes the Thirties

Just look at the situation in Italy. Last November, as its economy imploded, the crooked and inept Silvio Berlusconi was forced out of office and replaced with an unelected, technocratic government answerable to Brussels and Berlin.



From any democratic standpoint, that was pretty bad. What is worse, though, is that despite the appalling revelations about Mr Berlusconi’s grotesque sexual depravity, and despite the fact that he has only just been found guilty of fraud and tax evasion, he is now threatening to bring down the government and launch a new bid for office.



Nobody seriously thinks he has Italy’s interests at heart. For Mr Berlusconi, the point of returning to the prime ministerial palace would be to castrate his country’s corruption laws.



As an ordinary citizen, he might go to jail; as prime minister, he could fix things to ensure he never answers for his crimes. It is easy to dismiss the posturing Mr Berlusconi, with his transplanted hair and populist patter, as merely a buffoon, a comic caricature of everything wrong with Italy’s sclerotic, venal, back-scratching civic culture. But the stakes are too high for us to be laughing.



As Europe’s fourth biggest economy, Italy is a vital cog in the wheels of continental commerce. Yet in Rome as elsewhere, a vast chasm seems to be opening between a tiny, gilded metropolitan elite, and everybody else.



Comic caricature: Despite allegations of sexual depravity and a conviction for fraud, Silvio Berlusconi has hinted he may stand for re-election in Italy

It speaks volumes, for example, that while Mr Berlusconi has effectively got away with it, several of the country’s respected scientists have been jailed for six years for failing to predict an earthquake which killed 309 people in 2009.



How bitterly ironic it was the same Berlusconi who callously remarked that the quake’s survivors should treat the experience as a ‘camping holiday’. But the most frightening irony is that Italy now has a political establishment that jails honest scientists and elevates a convicted fraudster to its highest elected office. What better illustration could there be of a fundamentally rotten system?



The truth is that Berlusconi is a democrat in name only. He only went into politics to protect his corrupt business empire from the long arm of the law.



The other side: A packed courtroom listens as the guilty verdicts are delivered in the trial of six Italian scientists and a government official charged with manslaughter for underestimating the risks of the 2009 earthquake

Worse, he has often spoken openly of his admiration for the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini — who, according to Berlusconi three years ago, was merely ‘a benign dictator who did not murder opponents but sent them on holiday’.



Once, it would have been unthinkable for one of Europe’s most powerful men to trumpet his admiration for Hitler’s chief partner in crime, who colluded in some of the most bloodstained hours in human history. But with supposed statesmen like Mr Berlusconi, who needs the far-Right?



Even in the less anarchic corners of Europe, you can detect signs of the same frightening backlash against the freedom of the Press, the will of the people and the rule of law.

Murky past: French President Francois Hollande's girlfriend Valerie Trierweiler has stifled allegations

Take, for example, the saga of Valérie Trierweiler, the girlfriend of France’s hapless new Socialist president François Hollande. For more than a year, Mme Trierweiler has been trying to stifle press and police investigations into her murky past — so murky, it appears, that nobody outside Paris can be entirely sure what they are investigating.



You might have thought that, in a country that so loudly trumpets its enthusiasm for liberty, the Press would be free to discuss the mysterious affairs of the president’s lover. Not a bit of it. Only last June, one of France’s best-known commentators, the veteran Philippe Sollers, who has written for the Journal du Dimanche for the last 13 years, was abruptly sacked for criticising the president’s mistress.



The cause, explained a rival publication, was ‘insolence on his part’. In fact, France has some of the most punishing privacy laws in Europe — which explains why it also has some of the most corrupt politicians.



Shameless: Former French president Jacques Chirac attempted to escape justice for corruption

During the Eighties, president François Mitterrand was able to conduct a string of affairs, confident that the Press would never expose him. Indeed, the fact one mistress bore him a secret daughter was not revealed until after his death.



His successor, the shamelessly venal Jacques Chirac, conducted a successful campaign to escape justice for his corruption when he was mayor of Paris.



All of this merely reflects a political culture in France in which power is reserved for a tiny, privileged, self-interested elite, most of whom even attended the same graduate college, the famous Ecole Nationale d’Administration. Mr Hollande’s previous lover, for example, was the former Socialist presidential candidate Segolène Royal, who is now conducting an epic feud with Mme Trierweiler. Meanwhile, it has recently emerged that Mme Trierweiler was initially two-timing the president with a minister working for his rival Nicolas Sarkozy.



Incestuous politics: Valerie Trierweiler even claims to have been approached by ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy



She even claims to have been chatted up by president Sarkozy himself. So if you ever doubted that French politics was deeply incestuous, think again.



It sounds like the stuff of a cheap Parisian farce. But at a time when the Eurozone is sliding closer to oblivion and voters feel more frightened, alienated and enraged than ever, it is no laughing matter.



We in Britain, meanwhile, have no cause for complacency or self-congratulation.

The awful revelations of the Jimmy Savile affair are a reminder that abuse and corruption can fester within even the most apparently benign institutions, such as the NHS and the BBC.



What is really disturbing is that our political masters seem intent on silencing the free Press that alone can hold them to account.



Yes, some newspapers have behaved terribly badly in recent years. But it is worth remembering that without the courage of Fleet Street, our MPs would still be fiddling their expenses and fleecing the taxpayer.



Danger: Would the Jimmy Savile sex scandal have come to light if the British Press were regulated by statute?

Remember, too, the Mail’s brave campaign to bring Stephen Lawrence’s killers to justice. And remember that it was the media, not the government, who exposed Jimmy Savile’s appalling abuses.



If the Leveson Inquiry recommends the Government introduces statutory regulation of the Press, then our newspapers’ freedom to investigate wrongdoing would be fatally compromised.



Even publications like the satirical magazine Private Eye, which has been exposing the corruption of the rich and powerful for 50 years, would have to answer to state censors.

If this happens, my prediction is that the story of Greek magazine editor Kostas Vaxevanis would become disturbingly familiar.



What would be the result if crusading journalists here tried to expose parliamentary wrongdoing in a few years’ time? Might they, too, be threatened with a stretch in prison?



The stark truth is that, as the Eurozone continues to implode, the gulf between rich and poor yawns ever wider and Britain faces a historic decision about its future in Europe, we need a free Press more than ever. The watchwords should be courage and candour, not cowardice and compliance.



Across the board, we need more openness, honesty and principled self-government, not less. Yet with so many crucial decisions being taken in Berlin and Brussels, the principle of democracy itself now feels embattled.



More and more, the scenes on the streets of Athens remind me of the dreadful events of the early Thirties, when economic meltdown, political chaos and a festering sense of resentment paved the way for the greatest tyranny our Continent has ever known.

