Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear

(the 2007 cover of the legendary “Vavel” magazine's “christmas special”, which became one of the main slogans of the 2008 revolt)

“Normality” (read: their normality; the capitalist norm of exploitation, misery, repression and death) is what we are standing up against. This is what we do now, what we have always done, yet in these past days it is something that has become clearer than ever (like writen elsewhere: “sometimes, tear gas can make you see better”). There were so many of us now that normality faced a new fear: a fear that it might soon be a normality no more. This is when the normal panicked and called the exceptional to its defense. The assassination was called “an exception” or even, as the assassin's lawyer claimed, “a misunderstanding”. But the people only got more enraged by their lies. So they brought in “exceptional measures”: Thousands of the occupation army of murderers and torturers (aka, the greek police) flood the streets while the threat of an army intervention, a state of exception or the lifting of the academic asylum was hanging over our heads. And yet it wouldn't be that easy for them, not this time round. What we had was an army of the frantic, of the desparate, of all those who wanted to shatter and smash the frame in which normality wouldn't let them fit. “The first stone is for Alexandros, the rest are for us”. Things were getting way too serious, way out of control. Another exception is now called in: They tell us these days are special, they are “holy”, they call for social peace, consumerism and truce. This year there is, indeed, something to celebrate: not the remains of some obscure pagan feast, but a fabulous uprising that is worrying them, and rightly so. Let normality sink in its crisis and we'll be sure to bring it some more fear.

~ On The Greek Riots ~