Let’s start with Saturday, 6 December 2008, 11 o’clock in the night.
On Saturday 6 December 2008, 11 o’clock in the night, 20% of the greek population was leaving under the poverty line –wherever this line is drawn. This is ‘official’ data, meaning that in reality some 35% of the population was in real poverty. For at least 15 years leading to Saturday 6 December 2008 (for as far back as i can remember), the unemployment rate in greece is over 30%. In recent years, ‘sociologists’ have started some gibberish about the ‘700euro generation’ –this is what most people of my generation and younger are to expect as a monthly wage (£500). The lucky one-in-three, that is, who finds employment. In fact this is another euphemism: most people entering the workforce cannot expect more than 350euro. Partly because of this extreme miss-match between labour supply and demand; and partly due to the country’s traditional cuntnery, working conditions and relations are dreadful: from unskilled labourers managing specialised lethal equipment (there are thousands of workplace accidents in Greece each year –with hundreds of casualties; these cannot be classified as accidents any more, they are assassinations waiting to happen –or casualties in the class war, if you prefer), to working for however long the boss wants you to, to “psssst, babe. Fetch me a coffee! (yea, you know how i like it!)”. In all, extreme ageism, sexism, and bossism –for us, extreme, daily degradation. The country has officially been in –an ever hardening- ‘austerity’ mode since 1984 (the calendar, not the Orwellian one). And on top, you have the current depression, and ‘the mortgage mate!’, about which you know everything.
The government is not just overseeing this situation or actively designing and implementing the grand strategy for the radical impoverishment of the entire population to the massive benefit of 200 people. You don’t need to travel abroad to find this. What makes the greek government special is that it itself has been attacking the property of the middle and lower-middle classes, especially their little accumulated wealth assets. Furthermore, they are up to their ears in corruption, giving away public property to the church and several chosen of the 200 people that own the country. And, they have actively tolerated price-mongering from any conceivable source. On top of that they are fantastically cynical, spectacularly incompetent (remember last year’s wild fires?), and maintain a bullying stance as a matter of pride. They have a police.
As a matter of fact, that’s the only thing functioning well in Greece. Over decades before Saturday 6 December 2008 –in fact since the inauguration of the greek state- governments have bread a peculiar breed of sadistic paid-assassins to impose their will and harass the population. In the years before 6 December 2008, the extreme forces –the cream of the assassins- were strategically situated around the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, while their sleazy sadistic siblings –the secret police- held a quasi permanent presence inside the area. On a regular basis, they would join forces with fascist squads to molest the people frequenting the neighbourhood –molestations would include stabbings and smashing up of cafeterias, together with their clientele.
The reason that Exarcheia was the centre of such attentions is because it is a place where you can say “let’s devise methods to de-spectacularise our daily lives” and no-one would like at you as if you were speaking chineese (they might told you to chill a bit though). See, since the Golden Days of the military dictatorship, Exarcheia has been the home of the ‘radical’ youth: leftists and anti-authoritarians of all description congregate there, and so do all incarnations of ‘counter-culture’ –in order of appearance: hippies, rockers, psychedelics, punks, new-wavers, heavy metalists, goths, indies, ravers, hip-hoppers, emos, and other, smaller tribes: they’ve all been there in close encounters with Communism and Anarchy. One will have to get blue in the face to convince me that Exarcheia is not the centre of Europe during this brief moment of (making) history.
The key ingredient in Exarcheia –its reference point and hegemonic force- is Anarchy (used here as an umbrella term for anti-authoritarian, autonomous, and anarchist ideas, practices, and forces). For at least the 20 years before 6 December 2008, Anarchy has maintained a permanent, distinguishable presence in greek social life. Through very advanced analysis, and acute antagonistic interventions, it gained a capacity to set the socio-political agenda, and influence approaches therein, that were hugely disproportionate to the material means at its disposal, or its numbers. In the last decade, this disproportionality has been reduced, due to a phenomenal increase in Anarchy’s numbers. It is, and ‘always’ has been, a lose collection of an immense variety of different groups, with variant degrees of linkage and collaboration with each other, plus a big mass of people not active in any group but with relations to various, who would participate in actions if and when they see it fit. Antagonisms among groups were not unheard of either. Characteristically, no anarchist refers to Anarchy as a ‘movement’; they all refer to it as ‘the sphere’. (The question ‘how many anarchists are there in Greece?’ is both impossible to answer and pointless to ask; what matters is that (a) there much more than ever; and (b) they’re must be much more than anywhere else in the world).
This is more or less an expressionist view of life in greece up until Saturday 6 December 2008. It is expressionist in the sense that it quickly bulldozes the broad developments that took years in coming and bitterly affected the life of everyone, to focus on a silly little neighbourhood, and a deranged political ‘sphere’. In doing so, it establishes a bit flatly the socio-political background, in order to call attention to the catalyst of the events that followed: the life and population of the Exarcheia neighbourhood. Because it was there that, at 11 in the night, two ‘special police guards’ assassinated in cold blood a 16 year old boy.
In the list of the sins committed by the state, murdering a young person is the capital one. It hits a raw nerve on the collective mind –a nerve that has been exercised in recent memory by the anarchists on the event of the assassination of a 15 year old protestor (1985) and then the ‘innocent’ verdict on the policeman’s trial (1990). On both occasions Athens burnt, but nowhere near as thoroughly as now.
So, at 11o’clock, Saturday 6 December, only the cretin who pulled the trigger did not realise what he was triggering. Everyone else knew: this is it. This is the moment when ALL the grief, agony, poverty, frustration, and humiliation suffered –to varying but formidable degrees- by virtually everyone on greek soil, now finds its focal point of wrath on the dead body of the young man –and explodes. And to trigger the explosion, there is a massive, suddenly seamlessly unified Anarchy, on duty as society’s Master Pyrotechnist.
Every element fits. From now on it is HELL TO PAY!
At 11 o’clock, much of the Anarchy and the Left were sitting down having beer within ear-range from the killing. Before the geniuses in the media got wind of some ‘event’ occurring, anarchists and a particular ‘civil rights’ anti-authoritarian group were holding assemblies in three university faculties in the centre, in order to decide what to do there and then. (University grounds in Greece are off-limits areas for the armed forces of the state: the police and the army).
Two hours after the assassination, the first march AGAINST EVERYTHING took place. And it was a martial one. In confronted the riot police, and proceeded to a first round of burning; and other groups forming in the perimeter of the city centre hit left right and centre, and caused the first heavy injuries to state and capital infrastructure. It had started –in just two hours!
On Sunday, 7 December it was a case of ‘more, better’. More organised, and in greater numbers, Anarchy roamed the city. It established four safe havens in different universities in the metropolitan area, and destroyed all state and capital infrastructure that lied in between. In brief this means that an urban area the size of Manchester –and with triple amount of population and interaction density- had almost all its banks, ministerial buildings, department stores, shopping moles, (posh) car dealerships, burning. The expanded centre of the city (and the country) is in barricades, police cars and riot vans burn aplenty, and 24 riot cops are sent to hospital (and it takes some doing to injure a riot cop). Outside the (expanded) centre, spontaneously formed groups attack police stations, and do a bit of burning too. As the uprising in Athens expands and intensifies, the other cities begin. Thessaloniki (aka Salonica), the second largest city situated in the North, home to a formidable anarchist population, students, and a left-leaning city in a sea of hard-core right-wing peasantry, sees expanded clashes with the police, and part of its commercial centre destroyed. Heraclio, in Crete, also sees its first day of rioting.
In the morning of 8 December, while the centre of Athens is as quite as it can be under the circumstances, clashes with police, road barricades and attacks on police stations occur in almost every neighbourhood of the city. A similar situation occurs to virtually every town in the country, including some that we know for a fact they have not a left-leaning person in them and/or are peasant-centrals without a hint of urbanity. What the fuck?? Ah, yes. It is Monday. The schools were supposed to open. The perpetrators of this mini civil war were 12 to 18 years olds –the mates of the assassinated boy. Some instances of awesome tenderness here, reported from Athens: A crowd of 12-13 year olds stormed the big square opposite the Parliament, and had a go at the riot police with sticks, stones and water bottles (bless!). When the polizei moved to attack them, everyone seated in the coffeehouses at the periphery of the square immediately rose up, and attacked the cops: “hands off the kids, you pigs!” -glasses, chairs, tables. A few blocks further, at a pedestrian street, secondary school girls and boys clashed with the polizei. Again, when the cops attacked, those sitting at Starbacks (of all places!) rose up and shouted the worst obscenities anyone has ever heard this side of the Piraeus port (and in front of the kids too!). The police threw tear gas inside Starbacks, with the only known result being the clientele seeing red and giving the cops a biting. In Exarcheia, has been reported that grannies throw from their balconies flowerpots to police squads in the street. Apart from the beauty of such gestures, they go a long way to abolish the tired, rehashed cliché of the government (variations thereof in the British media) that the city is in the hands of a few extremists, and the citizens live in fear. Apparently the citizens are loving it, and there is strong suspicion that it is the citizens who are doing it! In Corfu, the police station was attacked by a congregation of ‘extremists’ wearing shorts and flip flops! The only one living in fear is the government and the cops –and I don’t see a problem with that.
Speaking of fear, on Monday evening (Athens, centre) there was a march called by Anarchy. Everyone understood that, in the context of the events, a night-march called by Anarchy, could only mean one thing: war. Everyone participating knew that there was a good chance their home will miss them for months or years (prison) or, in the off-chance, for ever. Lots of fear! Some 15,000 people showed up, all armed to their teeth (helmets, sticks, rocks, molotovs), and ready for everything. A couple of hours into the march, I received a call from a friend in Athens. Not connected to Anarchy in any shape or form (he plays the guitar and does yoga!), he was among the die-hards. His discourse was very brief: “I’M CALLING FROM THE FRONT! EVERYTHING IS BEING SMASHED!” he raised the phone and I could hear a lot of shuttering glass (but not the gun-like sound of teargas being shot – the police was somewhere else eating shit), and a woman shouting (not screaming). The last time I had a similar phonecall was in August when Joe called to say: I’M AT V FESTIVAL, AND GIRLS ALOUD ARE COMING UP!”. So much for the Great Fear –it’s finished. The march blazed for many hours, occupying itself with a new part of the expanded centre, and getting dangerously close to the police HQ. Mordor was under siege. Satellite groups brought the light to multiple neighbourhoods, until morning.
On the next day nothing was burnt. Tuesday 9 December was the day of the boy’s funeral. Tens of thousands came. Everyone showed tremendous respect and there were no confrontations at all –except the police motorcyclists who, at the side of the funeral march, took out their guns and started shooting in the air. Just in case anyone needed reminder of what a swine looks like.
On Wednesday 9 December –morning- a rally was held, organised by the two major unions. Now, these are bureaucratic pimps but, when they make a call during major events, everyone understands that this is the big ‘pan-popular’. It is not like marches called by parties, where everyone is ashamed to go; or those called by Anarchy, where everyone is scared of going (or those called by the Left, where no one gives a shit). It is the proper, big, family march. Well, it happened, and it was ‘grandiose’. By night, when everyone was safe at home, Anarchy took over. With the Polytechnic as established base, there was more clash and fire –but not fear.
This is more or less the pattern that seems to be set. A big, dynamic, but relatively ‘peaceful’ gig in the morning, followed by more edgy things in the evening in the centre, and countless motions of varied nature in the neighbourhoods. Thus, everyone according to their tastes, urges and capacities, can participate. (As you read this –Friday 12 December- the ‘pan-educational’ march is unfolding, called by schools and universities. These have the tendency to be both HUGE and WILD).
An interesting twist is that the upheaval is somehow metastasising all over Europe. Since Monday there have been marches to and occupations of greek embassies and consuls in London, Berlin, Hamburg, Paris –etc. And today (Thursday 11 December) there were clashes against the cops in Madrid, Barcelona, Stockholm and Copenhagen. While in the case of London and Paris (and maybe Berlin) it is obvious that the greek student diaspora must have played a role, there is no significant element thereof neither in Spain, Scandinavia, or exotic Hamburg. This must be the work of the german Autonoma, the spanish and scandinavian Anarchy. Whatever it is that is happening in Athens, it is spreading.
Oh, and the greek government. When I saw ‘our’ PM on telly, i first thought that “jee, he’s very fat now”. When he opened his mouth I realised that he had shitted himself, big time. Being booed by euro-MPs in Brussels today must not have helped his self-esteem. Neither being accused by the Commission of having brought the greek economy to collapse, and the ‘promise’ of special economic regime for Greece cannot have helped either. Poor shit, thinking he only went to Brussels to get away from it all and hear some sympathetic words in civilised company…The government has two major operational problems (its political problem is only one: they’re finished). First, they cannot understand what is hitting them (the ‘why does everyone hate us?’ syndrome); and, second, they have no clue what to do about it (they still think that the can do something, the knobheads). There are three ‘solutions’ in the cards. 1. “Let’s form a government of ‘national unity’ (a coalition government of all major parties), and then go to elections”. The trouble with this is that the other parties are not totally stupid to participate in a front against the entire population that, for the first time in history, is united against the government. 2. A lot of government members (especially the neo-liberals!) insist: “Let’s declare this a state of emergency and bring in the army”. There is trouble with this too. First, bring the army in where? There is a hundred towns burning. Second, there is nothing the army can do, that the riot police cannot. They are more agile and more heavily armed than the army. And they have been fucked (So, bring on the navy!). Third, bring the army in to defend what? It’s all burnt down already, there’s nothing left to defend, except the government’s own arse. Fourth, you don’t really want to declare an open dictatorship under these circumstances, do you? You’ll be eaten alive. 3. The ‘Sarcosy way’: toughen up and finish off with the protests and “the state of Exarcheia”. I think this will be the preferred ‘solution’. It too has its problems. First, Sarcosy was facing a revolt by social outsiders, people whom the mainstream french society –to its shame and disgrace- conceptualised as something alien, something apart. Here, it is the entire greek society, mainstream and fringes, from the granny in a one-room apartment in the second floor to the 12 year old in a posh suburb, who absolutely want police + government to FUCK OFF AND DIE. Secondly, the ghetto youth of France only managed to upset the little shitholes it lives in: some schools, youth centres, buses. Here it is the commercial heart of almost all greek towns that lay in taters. Really, if you are in the centre of Athens and you need some cash, you need to drive for miles to find a functioning cash-point somewhere in the suburbs. And even the 10-15 greeks who have some money left to indulge in Christmas shopping, now they cannot, because there are no big stores left. The infrastructure of economic flaw is destroyed. Third, how on earth can the polizei ‘toughen up’? They have used plastic (and real) bullets; tear, asphyxiating and paralysing gas, brutal beatings -the lot. And they still end up in hospital. The ‘Sarcosy solution’ only confirms that the government consists of upper-class fascistic retards. The only part of the repressive state apparatus that functions with some degree of efficiency is the ‘Communist’ (euphemism for Stalinist) Party –the left arm of the police. As of today, it has moved its troops in to various universities in Athens, with orders to lock them up, so that the students cannot hold assemblies and decide to occupy them. It thus seeks to stop the students from moving in as an organised force, and to deny Anarchy from safe haven –in short, to deprive the blaze from oxygen. The next step will be nazi gangs delivering some low blows –they are already trying it in the cities where they have some presence. The real danger as I see it, is not that the state can mount some serious counter attack by such gimmicks. It is that our forces get distracted, and a pan-social uprising ends up as gang-warfare between parts of the Left and Anarchy on the one side, and the fascists (stalinist or nazi) on the other. This petite entanglement is the worst trap Anarchy can fall in –and one that is hard to avoid.
So far, Anarchy has reacted magnificently. Its organisational and operational capacities (an organised, fully armed march within two hours from the killing! Three days of occupation of the city centre!) have made it triumphant in the battle field. Its sensitivity to the feelings and appetites of society, and its dedication to provide a way forward, constitute it in this moment as the leadership of the entire society. Maintaining the momentum given by this moment is extremely hard, and I doubt if Anarchy is up to it. It will demand not only avoiding the gang-warfare trap, but also a lot of work to build up relations throughout a terribly fragmented workforce, and proceed to a horizontal organisation connecting the struggles of students, workers, unemployed, immigrants and pensioners, into open-end warfare that, through shop-floor organisation and horizontal solidarity, will at least (and at last!) reverse the balance of forces to our side. Inspirational work with firm grounding in society: Anarchy always seem to stumble on this last bit. We’ll see.
A friend, here in Britain, commented yesterday: “it is good that this is happening. See, so far the people have been going through all this with their heads hung down”. True. People in the ‘west’ have been going through a lot of shit for years, with their mouths shut and their heads held down. Athens calls to raise them up and look at the horizon. It is all blurry from smoke and fire, but our uprising is possible. Athens showed this a million times in just five days.
