#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #GREECE #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Greece, #APO, land & freedom: The December uprising was the result of long-term social and political processes [machine translation]

 Republished from the  special edition of the anarchist bulletin "Black Flag" ,

January 2011 ---- "First of all, I want to say that I am not a historian. I have
been an activist, a fighter in the front lines of the anarchist struggle since
the late 1970s. I do not know how accurate my knowledge of anarchist history is,
as it is a product of my memory and of what I heard and learned from other
comrades during the years of my participation in the struggle. ---- As far as I
know, in terms of the post-war period the first anarchists appeared in the early
1970s and the last years of the dictatorship, as a result of the influence of the
May 1968 uprising, which mainly affected Greeks living abroad. , but also those
who lived here. When I talk about the impact that May '68 had, I also mean what
preceded it, the status quo and other radical positions. In this sense, the birth
of anarchy in Greece as a movement does not refer so much to traditional
anarchism - the culmination of which is the Spanish Revolution and the main
expressions of the anarchist federations and anarcho-syndicalist organizations -
but mainly in the anti-authoritarian, radical political currents. of the '60s.

As I said before, the anarchists appeared in Greece in the early 1970s and then
made their first publications and analyzes of the Greek reality from an
anti-authoritarian point of view.

The presence and participation of anarchist comrades in the events of the
uprising of November '73 was very important, not in numerical terms but in terms
of a special, separate political contribution, as they did not limit themselves
to slogans against the dictatorship. Instead, they adopted broader political
characteristics, anti-capitalist and anti-state. He was also among those few who
started the uprising along with fighters from the far left. And they became so
visible that the representatives of the official left condemned their
participation in the events, claiming that they were provocateurs paid by the
junta, while they also condemned their slogans, characterizing them as foreign
and irrelevant to the popular demands. In fact, the official left was hostile to
the uprising itself as it advocated so-called democratization, that is, a
peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy. And since they could not stop
the spontaneous uprising of young people and workers in '73, they tried to
manipulate it and then, after the fall of the dictatorship, to exploit it
politically.

During the uprising of '73 there were two tendencies. There was one who wanted
the uprising to be controlled and manipulated, in an anti-dictatorial context, in
favor of democracy and against American influence. And there was the other
tendency, in which the anarchists were an important part, which saw the revolt
more broadly against Power and capitalism. These two tendencies continued to
clash even after the fall of the dictatorship, in the period we call the coup -
that is, after the colonels handed over power to politicians. It was a conflict
between those who supported bourgeois democracy and those who opposed it. The
first trend was that the events at the Polytechnic were an uprising for
democracy, while those who were against the regime of bourgeois democracy saw the
events of the Polytechnic as an uprising for social liberation. The aftermath of
this conflict continues to this day in some way.

So the anarchists appeared in Greece and that was their contribution.

After the transfer of power from the military to the politicians, two main forces
appeared in the Greek reality. On the one hand, the radical political and social
forces that challenged the existing political, social and economic order, which
was expressed by sections of the youth but also by workers. On the other side
were the political forces of domination, from the ruling conservative right to
its allies on the official left, which after the fall of the dictatorship was
integrated into the political system. The right-wing government was trying to
suppress and terrorize the radical political and social forces we mentioned
above. The same goes for the regime left, with its own means, when it could not
control and manipulate them.

An important moment of the social struggle in the first years of the
post-colonial period, in the late 1970s, was the struggle around the universities
that erupted after the right-wing government's efforts to impose an educational
reform. Anarchists also had a significant presence in this struggle, as did other
groups and individuals with anti-authoritarian and libertarian views. To a large
extent, this struggle transcended the boundaries of the university, as well as
the students as a subject, acquired broader, radical characteristics and
attracted the presence and participation of many more people, not only students,
but young people, such as students and workers. There was an important moment
where the influence of the anarchists spread to wider sections of the society
that were struggling.

Around the same time, shortly after the struggle against educational reform, the
anarchists, almost alone, waged another struggle, that of solidarity with the
struggles of the prisoners. There, another feature of their radicalism emerged,
as they did not hesitate to engage in issues that were considered taboo in
society, such as the issue of prisoners and detainees, expressing their
solidarity with prisoners, fighting with them for their demands - for abolition.
disciplinary prisons, the denunciation of torture and the second instance trial
of lifers - but with a vision and perspective of a prison-free society.

A very important event of that period that demonstrates both the political and
social dynamics of the subjects of the resistance and the savagery of the
political power, an event that determined the political developments of that
time, was the demonstration of November 17, 1980, the seventh anniversary of the
Polytechnic uprising. That year the government had banned the march to the US
embassy. The youth controlled by the KKE and PASOK, as well as the student groups
of the specific parties, obeyed the ban. But far-left political groups, which
were strong at the time, decided to try to continue the march on the US embassy,
defying a government and police ban.

Thus, on the night of November 17, 1980, next to the Parliament building, on the
road leading to the American embassy, thousands of protesters were confronted by
very strong police forces. The efforts of the first lines of the demonstration
where members of the left left to proceed to the Embassy followed a massive
attack of the police forces to dissolve the multitude of thousands of people.
Despite the police attacks, however, there was strong resistance that lasted for
hours from several thousand people, young people and workers, members of the far
left, anarchists and autonomists who set up roadblocks in the center of Athens.
These roadblocks were dismantled by armored police vehicles, the "auras". During
conflicts, two protesters were murdered by the police, Iakovos Koumis and
Stamatina Kanellopoulou ... Hundreds more were injured, some of them seriously.
Among them were two who were hit by bullets, one in the chest, by police shots
outside the Polytechnic.

In these conflicts, many capitalist targets, department stores, jewelry stores,
etc. were hit and looted. These attacks - which were one of the first expressions
of metropolitan violence that was not limited to police targets but struck
symbols of wealth - were also condemned by the far left, in a political culture
in which only the police were the target. But then a new phenomenon emerged that
aimed not only at the police but also at the destruction and looting of
capitalist targets, and this is exactly what was condemned by the left.

The events of November 1980 were, as we have mentioned, an expression of the
political and social dynamics of the first years of the post-colonial period and
at the same time were the culmination and the end of the hegemony of the far left
over this dynamic, as it could not explain with its own terms the extent and form
of these events more broadly socially but not even to its own followers. However,
these bloody events were the catalyst for the fall of the right-wing government a
year later.

In the early 1980s, as a result of a major effort by the political system to
control and manipulate social, political and class resistance and demands, a new
political change took place, the rise to power of the Socialist Party - PASOK
(October). '81). It was something that at the time seemed like a huge, historic
change. It created many illusions, incorporated old fighters into the
institutions by eliminating them, and marked the end of those early years of the
coup, the end of a multitude of spontaneous social and class struggles that had
emerged after the fall of the dictatorship. So, after this political change,

PASOK came to power with the aim of modernizing Greek society, withdrawing laws
that were a product of the civil war era - when the Right had crushed the Left
(1946-1949) - as well as the post-war period, and satisfying a series of demands
from the world of the left. Demands that in no way undermined the authoritarian
and class organization of society, but instead modernized and strengthened this
organization, bringing it closer to the model of Western European societies.

This change meant that much of the left was weakened and absorbed into the
system. Thus, in fact, the change that took place at that time also meant that
eventually the anarchists along with autonomous and anti-authoritarians in
general now tried to intervene socially on their own, referring mainly to the
youth, and then making the first building occupations in Greece, affected by
similar projects in Western Europe.

The first occupation that took place in Exarchia and was for a short time the
focus of anarchist and anti-authoritarian mobilizations led to other occupations
in Athens and Thessaloniki, but was hit by the repression and the building was
evacuated in early 1982. The same happened with the other squats. (At this point
it is useful to mention that since the late 1970s and especially in the early
1980s the state has launched a repressive operation aimed at eroding and
destroying the resistance movement through the spread of heroin on social media.
This repressive operation was then very new, unprecedented in the Greek reality,
and the anarchists came into direct confrontation with it,

The first years of PASOK's rule were full of artificially cultivated expectations
for change, which of course were neither substantial nor subversive. They were
years of broad social consensus in political power, in which the anarchists
largely stood alone against it. But very soon this political power showed its
truly disgusting face and its deep class character against the lower social
classes, as well as its repressive aspirations towards those who resisted -
anarchist, leftist and disobedient youth.

The turning point, the end of all illusions, was 1985, a year marked by the
police murder of 15-year-old Michalis Kaltezas. M. Kaltezas was shot in the back
of the head outside the Polytechnic, during clashes between anarchists and savage
youth on the one hand and the police on the other, after the end of the November
17 demonstration. His assassination sparked a series of insurgent resistance
events, culminating in the occupation of the Chemistry and the Polytechnic. It
also provoked a deeper outcry of conscience and hostility towards the police and
the Government. An uprising that gave birth to numerous acts and events of
resistance in the following years, as it was not something that was expressed and
exhausted momentarily, but, on the contrary, was a legacy of many violent and
militant moments of resistance in the years that followed. At the same time, it
formed a "tradition" of similar events, events that erupt either as a reaction to
state assassinations or as expressions of solidarity in the struggles of the
oppressed, such as the prisoners, for example. In these conditions, a new wave of
squatting appeared and took root, mainly by anarchist-anti-authoritarian and
youth groups, which expanded the fronts and the influence of the struggle.

Examples of such events are the clashes with the police and the occupation of the
Polytechnic for 17 days in 1990, after the acquittal of the cop who had killed
Kaltezas.

The extensive social conflicts that lasted for two days in the streets of Athens,
in 1991, after the murder of the professor and leftist fighter Nikos Temponera by
paramilitaries in an occupied school in Patras ...

... The uprising of anarchists and youth in November 1995, on the anniversary of
the uprising of '73, where they occupied the Polytechnic in solidarity with the
uprising that had broken out in those days in prisons. The detainees' uprising
came under fire from the state's propaganda machine, the media, and was
immediately confronted with the threat of police incursion into the prisons.
The state, to suppress the Polytechnic uprising of '95 and to attack the
anarchists and the youth - not only for the resistance that was manifesting at
that particular moment, but also for the events that had created in the previous
years and that their continuation threatened - launched a huge propaganda attack
through the media aimed at extracting social consensus on police intervention.
This was followed by the invasion of the Polytechnic by the police forces and the
arrest of more than 500 squatters. But the whole repression operation failed:
They wanted to present the image that the anarchists are few and far between,
that they are small gangs of troublemakers - the stereotype used by the state is
that of the "50 known-unknown" - but it turned out the opposite, and it was
revealed that they have a great impact on the youth. The state's attempt to
terrorize the anarchists with arrests and persecutions also failed, as the
majority of the persecuted remained disobedient, turning the ensuing trials into
another point of fierce conflict with the state.

In the following years, this phenomenon of denial and resistance by
anarchist-anti-authoritarians and disobedient youth spread in the society, giving
birth to a multitude of political initiatives, social interventions,
counter-information movements, resistance events, as well as self-organized
spaces. No strategy of domination went unanswered, from anti-immigration policies
and the 2004 Olympics to international summits and Greece's participation in
Western military plans and campaigns in Eastern countries.

Based on the political and at the same time organizational values of social
solidarity, direct action, equality, anti-hierarchy and self-organization, the
anarchists did not refuse and did not hesitate, at least to the best of their
ability, to respond to any attack by the state on society. even in its most
marginalized parts. They always stood by the oppressed, the people who
counterattacked, defying the dilemmas and blackmails used by the government to
gain consent. And they did it clearly and without calculating the cost. They
remained steadfast outside all institutions and against them, outside the
political system and against it. At a time when others, no matter how radical
they appeared, adopted the logics of the state, the anarchists stood alone in the
face of such choices. The result was that the left lost its influence in the most
radical sections of society, while for the anarchists, the same thing that they
thought would lead to their isolation, this was and is their strength: The fact
that they remained outside the political system and institutions. Because when
people revolt they go beyond the institutions and restrictions they impose, and
then they communicate very easily with the anarchists. ? The fact that they
remained outside the political system and institutions. Because when people
revolt they go beyond the institutions and restrictions they impose, and then
they communicate very easily with the anarchists. ? The fact that they remained
outside the political system and institutions. Because when people revolt they go
beyond the institutions and restrictions they impose, and then they communicate
very easily with the anarchists. ?

The financial means we have are meager, we work selflessly in small, fluid
kinship groups, but that is our strength. And as the events of December 2008
showed, those who lost touch with the most radical and militant expressions of
society were not the anarchists, but rather those who flirted with the ideas and
structures of power claiming the role for themselves. the representative of
social subjects and the mediator of social contradictions.

Through a long course of struggle, which I have briefly described before,
anarchists and anti-authoritarians in general have gained a great deal of ground
in the minds of the people, something that was not visible to everyone before
December. Because beyond the perception that the state lost a lot of social
territory in the days of December, the deeper truth is that it had already lost a
lot of that territory long before the events of December. And this was expressed
in a very revealing way from the first moment that the uprising broke out, with
the participation of many people in actions that until then were considered
exclusively actions of small groups of anarchists.

In fact, December 2008 has a deep historical, political and social background,
linked to the entire history of 30 years of struggle, and to the presence and
participation of anarchists in these struggles. Participation characterized by
the act of social uprising without mediators and without illusions about the
possibility of change within the existing system, advocating self-organization
against any form of hierarchical organization, social anti-violence against state
violence, and solidarity against solidarity and solidarity. artificial divisions
made by power.

Here we could talk about dynamic fighting practices, such as clashes with the
police that became appropriated by a large number of people, as well as the
occupation of buildings (universities, schools, town halls and other places). Or
to talk about self-organization through open and anti-hierarchical assemblies
that were created in the days of December, but also after. Practices that the
left devalued and avoided, with the result that events and developments surpassed it.

However, although December is the result of long-term social and political
processes and indeed has similarities and analogies with previous events, at the
same time it transcends them and expresses new situations, needs and desires,
creating new perspectives. Looking at the differences that the current events
have in relation to previous ones, we see that this time they were not limited or
focused on a specific place, way and time. They spread to numerous cities across
the country and took many different forms, more or less violent but always
competitive with the state, based on the inspiration, imagination and ingenuity
of the people who participated.

At the same time, it is a process which, due to its diffusion and multifaceted
nature, does not seem to have a specific end point. It seems to continue and
renew itself taking new forms and conceiving the promise of new social
explosions, despite the current retreat of violent events. Also, in previous
moments, the events mainly concerned the Greek youth, but in December many people
of different nationalities, immigrants and refugees participated.

Dynamic methods of struggle and self-organizing procedures were adopted, without
representatives and without requests. December is not just the continuation of a
culture of political violence but also creates a new tradition of
self-organization, organization of people "from below" based on immediate and
tangible social needs. At the moment, the evolving processes of self-organization
that are a form of continuation of the uprising are not intended solely to
respond to murderous police violence, but to all aspects of power, from the way
we live, work, produce, consume to health, the environment, everything. Every
aspect of power is a front of struggle for the people who self-organize and fight
"from below", not always violently but almost always in competition with the state.

Another point worth mentioning is that the uprising confirmed some perceptions
within the anti-authoritarian movement and refuted others. For example, the
notions that everything is under control, that manipulation and control over
people are so powerful that they now make insurrection impossible, or that
society is dead, that it can produce nothing healthy, and that anarchists can
they are alone with the state. December proved that revolt is possible, and much
more, that social revolt is possible.

Another point has to do with the subjects of the uprising. There was a lot of
talk about who the rebels were. There has been a huge effort by the media and
members of the political system to define the subjects of the uprising so that
they can write history themselves, that is, to control, even afterwards, what
they can. They claim that this is an uprising of the youth, and more specifically
of the Greek youth, and especially of the students, pressing on the fact that
part of the uprising was really the mobilizations of students, who in many cases
even went to demonstrations to police stations and there to launch attacks. But
this is a very limited and distorted presentation of the uprising. The political
system and the media want to silence the wider social, multinational and class
character of the uprising. It was not just the students who took to the streets!
And in any case, most of the youth who were on the streets were not as students
but as rebels against the world of domination, state violence, power,
exploitation. So they want to hide what was obvious to everyone on the streets:
that the poor, the paid workers, the unemployed, the excluded took to the
streets. And a large part of them were the immigrants, who are the cheapest labor
force and the main victims not only of class exploitation but also of police
violence and state repression. most of the youth on the streets were not as
students but as rebels against the world of domination, state violence, power,
exploitation. So they want to hide what was obvious to everyone on the streets:
that the poor, the paid workers, the unemployed, the excluded took to the
streets. And a large part of them were the immigrants, those who are the cheapest
labor force and the main victims not only of class exploitation but also of
police violence and state repression. most of the youth on the streets were not
as students but as rebels against the world of domination, state violence, power,
exploitation. So they want to hide what was obvious to everyone on the streets:
that the poor, the paid workers, the unemployed, the excluded took to the
streets. And a large part of them were the immigrants, those who are the cheapest
labor force and the main victims not only of class exploitation but also of
police violence and state repression. the wage workers, the unemployed, the
excluded. And a large part of them were the immigrants, those who are the
cheapest labor force and the main victims not only of class exploitation but also
of police violence and state repression. the wage workers, the unemployed, the
excluded. And a large part of them were the immigrants, those who are the
cheapest labor force and the main victims not only of class exploitation but also
of police violence and state repression.

Consequently, which subject each analyst presents as having a central role in the
uprising essentially states his or her own political goal and reflects his or her
own subjective perception of the uprising, as well as his or her future goals.
For example, when they talk about the Greek youth, and especially the students,
it is to distinguish them as "good" insurgents - considering it easier to
manipulate them - than the others, the "bad", uncontrollable insurgents. However,
the majority of people who took to the streets belong to the second category, the
uncontrollable, the oppressed.

Today we are faced with two things. One is the repressive moves of the state
through the judiciary and the police, such as arrests, imprisonments,
hostage-taking of persecuted people, decisions to place cameras everywhere, the
criminalization of the hood or verbal attack on the police, the targeting the
occupations, the self-governing areas and more broadly the self-organized
structures of the movement. On the other hand, we have the ideological attack of
the state that aims to separate the December insurgents into "good" students, so
that it can integrate them, and the "bad" ones who can not or do not want to
integrate into the system and why must be isolated and struck by repression.

Here we must say that if the repression is expressed mainly directly by the
mechanisms of the state, the ideological war is also expressed by them by
auxiliary mechanisms, such as the parties of the regime left. While judicial and
police repression become immediately visible and understandable as something
"external", on the contrary the ideological attack is more insidious and
reproduced within the movement, as it is expressed not only by people hostile to
the movement, but also by others who appear as friendly to it, selectively
projecting those characteristics of rebellion that they like, that is, those that
they think they can absorb and use. At the same time, they slander those
characteristics and subjects of the uprising that they do not like, calling them"

The ideological war aims to integrate, to terrorize those who do not integrate
and to isolate those who are still moving in the perspective of insurrection.
But the crisis of the system, which at its core is a crisis of its social
legitimacy, greatly limits the possibilities of integration for much of the
people who react and resist. To put it more clearly, this means that more and
more people are losing confidence in the institutions and supporters of the
regime. That is why, even if they manage to integrate some, they can not limit
and stop the repercussions of radical ideas.

Where we should be suspicious, because of their corrosive and destructive
attitude, is towards those who have one foot in the old world and the other with
us, talking about a new world. These two-faced enemies of the uprising are even
worse than the police and the judges.
Here we need to make it clear that we are talking specifically about those who
play a role, albeit insignificant, within the institutions, and not in general
about the people - workers, people from the neighborhoods, young people - with
whom we meet. With the latter, whom the system alienates and trains them to
believe in institutions, it was much easier to communicate in the early days of
the uprising, because the material conditions and the intensity of the events
were such that people moved from their old places.

Today, as time goes on, our political and personal capabilities to maintain this
contact are being tested. As our patience to act with people different from us is
tested, recognizing that we still have a lot to learn about how to stay in touch
with all those we met on the streets in December. And the most important way that
we meet today, that is, beyond the counter-information that is done through
publications and announcements, is in the self-organized assemblies. For our
part, we encourage the creation of such processes, participate in and intervene
in them. And in them we are also confronted with the ideological war that I
mentioned before. There are of course prejudices,

But we are on the right track. The relations that have developed between
anarchists-anti-authoritarians and other sections of society are a whirlwind and
the result is unpredictable. It is definitely a positive thing as we do not let
normalcy and alienation return. Because unlike the vortex of rebellion where
everything is possible and we can hope for the best, normality is a situation
where almost everything is predictable and the result is usually negative.

Things are unpredictable not only in relation to the anarchist /
anti-authoritarian relationship with other people, but also within the movement.
And above all, they are unpredictable in terms of the relationship between
anarchists, society and the state. The anarchist / anti-authoritarian social
movement produces many initiatives and acts of resistance against the state, some
more and some less dynamic, some more and some less social. In other words, there
is not a central nucleus or organ, but a multitude of smaller or larger
initiatives of fighters from below, some of which are somehow coordinated with
each other and some are not. In any case, what I think we should avoid is social
isolation,

We realize that if some of the things that are happening here were happening in
the US or Italy for example, some of us would be dead and many of us would be in
prison for many years. The political correlation of power that exists at the
moment, to be able to proceed with such acts and to talk about these things, is
the result of thirty years of struggle. But our life and freedom are always
exposed and targeted by repressive mechanisms. After December the state wants to
change this balance of power, and could at some point overturn it. As in one
moment, that of the assassination of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, rebellious moods
were released in the society, in another moment, based on another event, an
explosion of state repression could break out,

The history of the movement in the US, in Europe and in the world teaches us what
we can do, but also what we can face. Having a deeper knowledge of who we are and
what we want, but also of what the state is and what it wants to do with us - to
make us disappear - what we need to take care of is not to be isolated from
society but also not to we are separated within ourselves, so that we are not
left alone with the state or each partner is left alone with the state. But it is
important not to limit our momentum, nor to compromise our deepest desires.
It is important that we act and make things happen, use our courage and even our
madness ...

But we did not talk about the role of the spontaneous in the events of December.
The spontaneous has always been, as this time, a feature of anarchist
initiatives. But there was also the spontaneity of the social groups that
participated in the uprising, the spontaneity of the masses. According to
Kastoriadis, the exaggeration of the "result" in terms of the "causes" is
spontaneous. In December, spontaneous forces were expressed, forces that were
hidden in the masses of people and that were previously unpredictable by anyone.
And these forces are still inherent in society, much more in a society on its
knees, in a society divided into classes, suffocated by systemic violence,
poverty, despair, fear. For people living in such a society, there are two
possibilities:

There is one more point: In the current conditions of the state and capitalism in
the West, outbreaks of uprisings are not uncommon: metropolitan riots, mainly by
groups of young people, usually erupting after incidents of police violence, such
as in the French suburbs or even Black Uprising in Los Angeles in '92. And as a
special case we could mention the uprising of '97 in Albania, although it has
very special characteristics. But what happened here in December, compared to
other major insurgent events, is that they met by interacting with political and
social subjects. Anarchists met with social subjects ready to revolt.
In this light, the uprising becomes much more dangerous for the government, when
it is not just an outburst of social anger of a particular oppressed social
group, but a fruitful meeting of the dynamics of different social groups that
together turn their violence against each other. at the source of exploitation
and oppression.

Uprisings break out and can not be avoided. The government knows this. So he
prefers to strike at each social group individually and not allow the uprisings
to take on clear political characteristics, that is, not to have a total critique
of the existing order of things. The presence and participation of the anarchists
in December gave such broad political characteristics and a highly subversive
critique of the system as a whole developed.

And that was right, and it is right for every comrade or group of comrades,
wherever they are, all over the world, to seek and succeed in meeting the social
groups that are suffering from the power of the state and capitalism and that are
in the mood to collide so that the inevitable uprisings spread and do not limit
themselves.

It is enough to imagine what can happen from the meeting of political subjects
who consciously seek to overthrow the existing with those social subjects who are
suffocated by the state and capitalism and have every reason to revolt. And only
to imagine it, we understand. And this is what happened to a large extent in
December 2008 in Greece ".

Alkis,
April 2009

* This text came from an oral interview given by a companion in April 2009 in
order to be included in an English-language version, along with other texts,
about the anarchist movement in Greece and the December 2008 uprising.

https://landandfreedom.gr/el/agones/620-i-eksegersi-tou-dekemvri-itan-apotelesma-makroxronon-koinonikon-kai-politikon-diergasion
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