Athens: We are the image of the future

Greek politicians - from military colonels to business leaders - since the 1970s have denounced Greek rebels as "anarchists," "nihilists" and, in classic Greek disparagement, "barbarians" with no aim whatsoever. The same mantra again this week. But Greece, often considered the birthplace of democracy, is also the site of an ongoing struggle against fascism. The fascists who lost power in the 1970s did not disappear - they simply work behind the scenes. Today's political structure in Greece - "Athenian democracy" for whatever it is worth - owes itself to an anarchist and student movement which organized in the 1970s against a US-backed military regime.


History:

In the early 1970s students barricaded the National Technical University in Athens, law students used radio transmitters to broadcast anti-state communiques, and workers throughout Greece joined the General Strike. The city was in revolt and people gathered around radios to hear students broadcast from the occupied university, "This is the Polytechnic! People of Greece, the Polytechnic bears the standard of our struggle and your struggle, our common struggle against dictatorship and for democracy!"

The military, furious, crashed through the University's barricades with tanks, then beat and killed students and workers near Exarcheia and the campus premises. The military regime was eventually overthrown, in large part due to the student-worker organizing from the campus. Since then Greek campuses were deemed off-limits to government police and military. It is illegal for police to be on campuses.

The Greek anarchists who shouted "This is our life!" just before Army tanks and paratroopers stormed their campuses in 1973, as shown in these pictures, is burned into the memories of many survivors.

What did it take to topple this regime? It was the anarchists, students, and workers who toppled this regime.


Yesterday and Today

But much of what was reported then sounds like what is happening today, and the media is constantly dismissing the youth as hackneyed, easily-angered, aimless etc. Even the BBC wants things to return to normal:

"In Athens, too, shopkeepers are fed-up... there must be something in their head."

But what is in their head - who dares to ask?

While some Greeks may be confused about how this situation exploded out of thin air, the media is telling them which side of the barricades they should be on. They complain that students are "exploiting a legal loophole" to occupy university campuses where police cannot go. What does that mean: People are "exploiting"? the fact some places where the state cannot go exist. Aren't the police exploiting a legal loophole which allows them to be everywhere else?

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