On 6th April this year Katerina Kitidi and Aris Hatzistefanou released their documentary Debtocracy into the gathering popular protest in Greece. Public viewings were organised in the central square of most Greek cities, and the film has played its part in educating Greeks to the nature of the neoliberal project and its system of credit, debt, and endless payment. It contains some damning commentary. But it is shot through with the hypocrisies of the socialist left. It does not visit the destruction of personal freedom and the end of self-improvement which debt-slavery implies, these not being issues of interest to radical left intellectuals. In the same vein it does not venture an opinion upon neoliberalism’s sister project of the Third Worldization of European peoplehood. Even with a partial political analysis, though, it is plainly the left which will gain when the demos withdraws political legitimacy from the current political class. Nationalism is not competing at this heavyweight level.

The film is 1 hour 14 mins, but it bowls along at a good pace and will repay your time. Its message, in the end, is simple: don’t pay.