Anarchy in Europe: it could only take a spark

All it could take is another spark, like the death of Alexandros, to mobilise people once more onto the streets. But who are these groups and just how well organised is the upheaval and unrest? More importantly, as 2008 comes to a close, how likely are repeat performances in 2009?

Georges Prevelakis is a Greek-born professor of Geopolitics at the Sorbonne University in Paris, the starting point for the infamous Paris riots of 1968. Speaking from Athens, he described the present situation:  “There is still a little trouble, it is not as intense as last weekend; it is sporadic; there are demonstrations but from young kids, from schools rather than universities. We have just got confirmation that the killing of Alexandros was an accident - he was killed by a ricochet bullet as opposed to a direct shot so that may be a factor.”

However, there is more to the unrest than the killing of the teenager. Prevelakis explains the background to the explosive reaction:  “There are major problems in Greece at present; there is a lot of corruption and very little confidence in public services. The Greek society and state are sick and it has been difficult to reform. The main factor that caused the problem here was that the children of middle to upper class families are under extreme psychological stress. I call them the sacrificed generation – they realise they will not be able to compete, employment-wise, with Europe. They cannot even compete with the rate of consumption of their parents. They themselves have been consumed by the consumption society.”

This image of riotous schoolchildren, upset that they will not have the same opportunity as their wealthy parents, does not fit the ideal of the 'average anarchist' but obviously there is no photo-fit to begin with.

Prevelakis attempts to explain the meaning of an anarchist in Greece:  “What we call anarchists is difficult to define; it's difficult to understand whether there is a structure or coherent group behind it. It's quiet opaque. They are mainly marginal and can be infiltrated and used by other people. Who? Some people say the police, some say those with private interests, others claim a criminal element, but it's impossible to know. There seems to have been an obvious effort to overthrow the government that has not succeeded. Had the government fallen into the trap of repressing the riots further that could have been different.”

It's clear that the riots in Greece, although sparked by the fatal shooting, also have their roots in Greek-specific issues. However, that does not explain the speed and contagiousness of the unrest elsewhere in Europe.

Could this situation happen just as easily in Paris for example? Could the riots of 1968 be echoed in 2008 and beyond? “The French media have asked me many times will this happen here, it's a big worry”, Prevelakis says. “The French government is afraid that there will be a replication of the violence; however, the situations are very different. In France it is the children of immigrants who are marginalised socially and spatially - in Greece the epicentre of violence was the centre of the city, the middle class.”

The situations could indeed be described as different. But despite the fact that the causes are not the same, the effects have the potential to be, Prevelakis warns:  “On the other hand, we live in an era where image is extremely important and the images of the riots in Athens are spreading elsewhere. Despite the fact that it is not the same social context, the behaviour can still be duplicated and imitated.”

That idea of replication and duplication is what Dr. Jeff Ferrell calls 'Xerocracy' - the idea of "rule through photocopying ". It is a form of anarchic organization, of DIY revolt, that enables a riot in Greece to be duplicated all across Europe in a matter of hours.

Professor of Sociology at Texas Christian University, visiting Professor of Criminology at Kent University and author of 'Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy,' explains further:  “It is like a disorganised revolt mixed with technology that youths are so au fait with. There is no puppet master but these are kids that clearly do have an anarchist philosophy. Many of them do have a well developed political sense of what they are doing but it's not so much an attempt to seize power as it is to destroy power. It's clearly a revolt against all sorts of inequalities and justice is just one of them,” Ferrell said.

While it's clear the Greeks have been mobilised by the lack of justice for Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the fear remains that other inequalities will cause further violence elsewhere. Dr Ferrell agrees:  “We are almost revisiting the old punk era, the idea that there is no future, we are seeing that this generation of kids are forced to bear the brunt of the fall of the house of cards that was the international economy. I think we will definitely see more protest on the streets when economies begin to contract and these equalities become more apparent. This is what we are facing.”

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A Bedouin anytime! A citizen never.

29 Dec, 2008

The following text was one of the final to come out of an initiative from the occupied Athens University of Economics and Business. The occupation is no more, yet two new public buildings have been occupied in Athens in the last few days only: Another university property is now temporarily liberated (more about this tomorrow) while the headquarters of ISAP (the Athens-Piraeus Electric Railway) are also occupied as a response to the murderous attack against Konstantina Kuneva. Konstantina, a migrant cleaner at one of ISAP's subcontracting companies and a militant union organiser, was attacked on 23/12/2008: sulphuric acid was thrown at her face as she was returning home from work. She is now in intensive care ward of Evangelismos hospital suffering serious sight and respiratory system problems. I want to write much more about her case and the solidarity wave it has sparked – so, more to follow…

(Translator's note: the text goes out to the good people of Gaza. We have them in our hearts and minds and they remind us, in the most horrific of ways, that we have a million reasons to revolt and not a single one to sit back, to be complacent, to return to their murderous normality.)

A Bedouin anytime! A citizen never.

   "...Having by our late labours and hazards made it appear to the world at how high a rate we value our just freedom (…) we do now hold our selves bound in mutual duty to each other, to take the best care we can for the future, to avoid the danger of returning into a slavish condition..."

- Levellers, An Agreement of the People, 1647

Let's look beyond the tear gas, the baton sticks and the riot police vans: The operation being conducted by the bosses since December 6th doesn't comprise a mere combination of repression and propaganda; rather, it is the application of a series of methods aiming to re-negotiate social peace and consensus.

From the communist party, which views the revolted people as puppets of syriza (the euro-left parliamentary party – transl.) and of cia, all the way to socialist party politicians moaning that Athens resembles a city of the Eastern Block, what with its streets empty from consumers. From the archbishop of Thessaloniki, who begs his flock to go shopping and the city's international exposition offering free parking to christmas shoppers, they all hold a common target: The return to the normality of democracy and consumption. Thus the day after the revolt, which happens to coincide with a dead consumer feast such as christmas, is accompanied by the demand that this must celebrated at all cost: not only in order for some tills to fill up but in order for us all to return to our graves. The day after holds the demand of the living dead that nothing disturbs their eternal sleep no more. It holds a moratorium legitimising the emptiness of their spectacle-driven world, a world of quiet and peaceful life. And the generals of this war hold no weapon that is more lethal than the appeal to that absolute, timeless idea: democracy.

The word-for-democracy, developing as it does ever more densely from the side of the demagogues of calmness, aims at the social imaginary – the collective field of structuring of desires and fears. It aims, in other words, at the field where procedures invisibly take place that can secure or threaten order and its truth. Everyone knew, well before the assassination of Alexis, that the oligarchy of capital had given up on trying even to seem democratic, even by bourgeois terms: economic scandals, blatant incidents of police violence, monstrous laws. Yet this fact is not, neither here nor anywhere else, what might worry the bosses. This is precisely because the constant reproduction of the establishment under such terms (“is it democratic enough? Is it really democratic?”) reproduces the capitalist oligarchy that builds around it a wall of scandals, remorses, resignations, demands and reforms – preventing, in this way, the questioning of (not the democratic qualities of the regime but) democracy as a system of social organising. Hence bosses can still appeal to this higher value today, this axiomatic mechanism of the political, in order to bring us back to normality, consensus, compromise. In order to assimilate the general spontaneous rage in the sphere of mediation before this rage can organise itself into a revolutionary potential which would swoop all and any intermediaries and peaceful democrats – bringing along a new form of organising: the commune.

Amidst this ludicrous climate of shallow analyses the salaried officials of the psychological warfare point at the revolted, howling: “That's not democratic, that ignores the rules under which our democracy functions”. We cannot help but momentarily stand speechless in the face of what we would until recently have considered impossible. Even if having the intention to deceive, the bosses of this country have said something true: We despise democracy more than anything else in this decadent world. For what is democracy other than a system of discriminations and coercions in the service of property and privacy? And what are its rules, other than rules of negotiation of the right to own – the invisible rules of alienation? Freedom, rights equality, egalitarianism: all these dead ideological masks together cannot cover their mission: the generalisation and preservation of the social as an economic sphere, as a sphere where not only what you have produced but also what you are and what you can do are already alienated. The bourgeois, with a voice trembling from piety, promise: rights, justice, equality. And the revolted hear: repression, exploitation, looting. Democracy is the political system where everyone is equal in front of the guillotine of the spectacle-product. The only problem that concerned democrats, from Cromwell to Montesquieu, is what form of property is sufficient in order for someone to be recognised as a citizen, what kind of rights and obligations guarantee that they will never understand themselves as something beyond a private citizen. Everything else is no more than adjusting details of a regime in the service of capital.

Our despise for democracy does not derive from some sort of idealism but rather, from our very material animosity for a social entity where value and organising are centered around the product and the spectacle. The revolt was by definition also a revolt against property and alienation. Anyone that didn't hide behind the curtains of their privacy, anyone who was out on the streets, knows it only too well: Shops were looted not for computers, clothes or furniture to be resold but for the joy of destructing what alienates us: the spectacle of the product. Anyone who doesn't understand why someone delights in the sight of a destructed product is a merchant or a cop. The fires that warmed the bodies of the revolted in these long December nights were full of the liberated products of our toil, from the disarmed symbols of what used to be an almighty fantasy. We simply took what belonged to us and we threw it to the fire together with all its co-expressions. The grand potlatch of the past few days was also a revolt of desire against the imposed rule of scarcity. A revolt of the gift against the sovereignty of money. A revolt of the anarchy of use value against the democracy of exchange value. A revolt of spontaneous collective freedom against rationalised individual coercion.

~ On The Greek Riots ~

A year of revolt and recession

By Chris Bambery
28 Dec, 2008

The New Year will begin with a sense of fear gripping both the top and bottom of society. Working people across the globe fear for their jobs, pensions and services. At the top there is fear that the economic crisis is entering freefall and will lead to widespread resistance.

The last year has seen turmoil grip the capitalist system and the governments that run it.

The credit crunch has developed into a recession, spreading from the financial sector to envelop the rest of the economy.

This threatens to become a slump on a global scale – pulling in the new “wonder economies” of China and India.

The significance of events in Greece, described by The Times newspaper as a “popular uprising”, is leading some commentators to draw parallels with the May 1968 events in France.

For the ruling class this is a serious worry – the French uprising heralded almost a decade of working class insurgency, which seriously raised the prospect of revolution.

The Greek events are not yet on the scale of 1968 – which involved student protests, riots and an all-out general strike. But they represent the most serious uprising in Europe since the mid-1970s.

Any economic crisis impacts at three levels – the ideological, political and economic.

Gordon Brown's and George Bush's governments have torn up the free market template that has been gospel in ruling circles for three decades. And ordinary people are looking for alternatives to the system.

The anti-capitalist and anti-war movements of the last decade means that there is a receptive audience for radical ideas.

Ratings

Establishment politics have become volatile. Before the crisis Brown's ratings sank as David Cameron was declared unstoppable – only for everything to be reversed as the Tory leader floundered in the economic turmoil.

And there are other dangers in a world still dominated by the US's “war on terror”. A regime in crisis can lash out and launch a military adventure, just as the Georgians did against Russia in the summer.

The war in Afghanistan has spread over the border into Pakistan. Pakistan's government is now being threatened by Condoleezza Rice, Brown and the Indian government unless it effectively launches a civil war on its own people.

The huge protests in Greece, Italy and Ireland show that economic crisis can breed mass rebellion. The discontent is a response to governments that are implementing austerity measures rather than the neo-Keynesian policies seen in Britain and elsewhere.

And even though governments in the US and Britain have undertaken bailouts and nationalisations, unease remains close to the surface.

The idea that working people – not just the banks and major firms – should qualify for bailouts is becoming common sense for all those fearing job losses and home repossessions.

These ideas question the fundamentals on which capitalism operates – that the market should be free from any democratic control. This can feed popular resistance.

Many of us will see the popular uprising in Greece and mourn the contrast with the lacklustre behaviour of most of our union leaders.

Yet one lesson from Greece is how quickly things can explode in such a combustible situation.

Brown's actions to save the economy may appear relatively painless now, but he has admitted the costs of such bailouts will be huge. It will mean increased taxes and lower public spending.

Meanwhile New Labour's nasty social agenda continues – attacking benefit claimants, single parents and migrants – against a background of mounting job losses and a crisis affecting pensions and housing.

Many people will enter 2009 with a sense of foreboding. But we should look forward to what those at the top fear – revolts similar to Greece could spread across Europe, and the English Channel is only 22 miles wide.

~ Socialist Worker ~

Electronic civil disobedience in solidarity with Greek anarchists

"...Hackers Against Oppression have called for Electronic Civil Disobedience in Solidarity with Greek Anarchists on Wednesday Dec 31, the final day of December. December is the month in which Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old Anarchist, was murdered in cold blood by Greek Police. It is also the month that will forever be remembered by all those who struggle. Minutes after his murder, thousands of Greek residents took to the streets as did thousands around the world. Even liberal groups have called for the resignation of the Greek government. The streets were taken back for the people, police buildings were firebombed, and banks were turned into empty charred-out boxes. This entire time, the Greek government has been fighting and oppressing people with guns, tear gas, and the media. It's time that we take them down..."

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Blind Spot

Trailer for the documentary by Adolfo Doring