MICROPHONE RACE - TUESDAY 10/2 - 13:00 - OLD PHILOSOPHICAL A.U.T.
POLITICAL EVENT - WEDNESDAY 18/2 - 18:30 - NEW PHILOSOPHICAL A.U.T.Alignment and Obedience: The Army as a Machine for the Fascism of Society ---- Military service is not a neutral obligation, nor a natural continuation of a person's "coming of age." It is an institution of discipline, formation, and power. From the moment a young person puts on the uniform, he enters a system where obedience is law, violence is legitimized, and his personality is dissolved in the name of an abstract concept - the nation. The army is not the protection of society, but the culmination of its state management.
The new bill and the regularity of conscription
The recent bill on military service, presented as "modernization" and "necessary adaptation," is a step toward a deeper and more pervasive militarization of society. The restrictions on deferments, the tightening of sentences, the mandatory placement in the Army, and even the pilot inclusion of women, constitute a new form of discipline. Also, the state, trying to blackmail young people into joining the army, establishes "incentives" such as the above financial compensation for those who enlist, the prospect of being hired as paid assassins (EPOP) for those women who participate as "volunteers" in the war machine, or those young people who enlist at 18, upon completing their high school education. The goal is not defense, but the normalization of obligation - the idea that everyone belongs, ultimately, to a mechanism that transcends the individual.
The state knows that the youth are no longer moved by patriotic narratives. While in the past, young people were much more enthusiastic about patriotic narratives that promoted values such as national pride and military service, the modern generation no longer seems to respond so well to these stimuli. Thus, they seek new languages of persuasion: gender equality, "modernization," "social service." Mandatory military service is dressed in the cloak of democratization, while remaining what it always was - a mechanism for producing obedient bodies and obedient consciences. Despite any communicative disguises, military service is nothing more than that, consistently continuing to contribute to the stability of the regime and social discipline. Thus, the contradiction between the declared values of the state and its real purposes is revealed, as power remains focused on controlling and shaping citizens, regardless of how these means of communication are presented.
Geopolitical instability and new national realism
The return of military rhetoric is not a Greek peculiarity. It is the result of a global condition where wars, conflicts and energy crises are translated into social discipline. The war in Ukraine rearranged the geopolitical borders of Europe and transformed Greece into a strategic NATO bridgehead. From Souda to Alexandroupolis, military infrastructures are multiplying; the Greek state functions as an extension of Western strategy towards Russia and the Middle East.
At the same time, the confrontation with Turkey - whether escalating or "de-escalating" - remains the constant axis of the national imaginary. The sense of constant "external danger" legitimizes armaments, military alliances and the idea that the people must always be ready for war. Propaganda is no longer based on hatred, but on anxiety: on the feeling that "something can be done", and therefore we must be "disciplined, organized, united".
The massacre in Gaza fully revealed the face of the West: of the states that talk about peace but arm Israel, that condemn "terrorism" but accept genocides as the necessary price of security. Within this context, Greece is presented as an "island of stability" and a "bastion of democracy" - that is, as a loyal ally.
The Army as a Mechanism of Repression: Resources for Wars, Not for Life
Greece, like every state, maintains and strengthens its military apparatus with resources that, if directed elsewhere, could finance social welfare. A look at the budgets of the last decades shows a chilling reality: huge sums are spent every year on the purchase of weapons, research into military technologies, military bases and support for the armed forces, while society's needs in areas such as education and health remain underfunded. In essence, the state chooses to "invest" in military power and war capabilities, creating a society dependent on repression and discipline, instead of investing in education and social infrastructure that will provide a sustainable and dignified life for all people.
This military spending is not only an economic choice, but also a political strategy. Every euro spent on new weapons and military equipment is a euro lost on healthcare for the uninsured, on children's education, on workers' rights. At the same time, the state strengthens the military-industrial complex, an invisible but powerful pillar that reinforces power and oppression, rather than promoting social progress.
Greece, despite criticism and social needs, insists on increasing its military power. Greek society is constantly getting used to considering the existence of a strong army as a necessary condition for national security. However, this "security" never concerns the people. Instead of using resources to create social welfare infrastructure, the choice is made to maintain the army, which has a proven history of suppressing political and social movements, as well as strengthening state authoritarianism. The army, instead of protecting us, is used to consolidate the dominance of economic and political elites, creating mechanisms that ensure the perpetual subjugation of the people. The money spent on military research and armaments could be redistributed to ensure healthcare for all, to offer free education, to eliminate poverty and inequality. However, the state chooses to spend on weapons and wars, increasingly reinforcing oppression and social injustice.
What is required, therefore, is a radical revision of the priorities of our society. The army, as a mechanism of repression and control, must be stripped of the support provided by the budget, and these resources must be directed towards the needs of the people: health, education, social justice. Overturning this logic is not only desirable, but absolutely necessary to move towards a society that will ensure us real freedom and prosperity, without being based on fear and violence.
This redistribution of resources and social reorganization can only be carried out outside the state framework. Only through the anarchist organization of society, which does not depend on the violence and power of institutions, can a truly free and just system of organization be created, which will reflect the needs and desires of all people, without the repression and exploitation of the state.
From school to camp: the education of obedience
Before the young man is called up to the army, he has already passed through another, invisible barracks: the school. There he learns to stand at attention in front of the flag, to march in rhythm, to be proud of a history written in blood but presented as a heroic narrative. The school functions as a laboratory of national identity: it reproduces the myth of unity, sacrifice and faith, shaping the imaginary of discipline.
The raising of the flag, national holidays and student parades are not innocent customs. They are rituals of obedience. There the child learns to move in sync, to obey orders, to see his body as part of a collective machine. These rituals familiarize the youth with the military ethos long before he experiences it in practice, as the body that marches in formation is already prepared to submit to the uniform.
And when, in such parades, organized groups with fascist aesthetics and nationalist slogans appear, this cannot be interpreted as an accident; it is the natural result of a pedagogy that idealizes alignment and discipline. When society applauds the line, the flag and synchronization, it has already accepted violence as order and submission as virtue.
The army as a production machine for the security forces
The army is not only an institution of discipline, it is also a reproduction machine of the state mechanism of violence itself. Through military service, young people learn not only to obey, but also to exercise power - to discipline themselves but also to discipline others. This experience, this network of hierarchy, fear and duty, is transferred intact to the security forces.
The army offers the model: the structure, the language, the mentality. The police, for its part, is the internal continuation of the army - the mechanism that maintains "order" in peacetime, with the same means, the same psychology and the same legitimacy.
The army trains the citizen to obey, the police punishes him if he does not. One institution produces the mentality of submission, the other ensures it. Together they form the core of a society that operates on the basis of fear, surveillance and discipline. The logic of the camp is diffused into everyday life: in universities, in squares, in homes. Control becomes the rule, surveillance routine, violence "duty". And when the moment comes when the police can no longer control a possible social unrest, the army will be called upon to fulfill the real purpose of its existence, the suppression of the internal enemy, the struggling society.
Against the future of camps and obedience
Fascism does not only appear in uniforms and weapons, but also passes through school parades, national holidays, the media and every form of ritual obedience. Society is tested daily so that it can come to obey fear and consider discipline as the highest axiom. In this context, resistance to the military system is not only about refusing to serve, but any form of obedience to the logic of discipline and violence.
No one should submit to this logic, since participation in the military system means accepting violence as a tool, being integrated into hierarchies that shape and control bodies, legitimizing state and social repression, and systematically normalizing fear in everyday life. Refusing to participate in wars that obviously do not defend life is a refusal of the discipline that crushes critical thinking, and of a world that institutionalizes domination and submission as a natural law.
Refusing the military system-in all its forms-is an act of freedom, individual and collective. It is the "no" that refuses to let the body become a machine, that defends life against power and violence, and that insists that society can be organized without fear, submission, and sacrifice of human dignity.
In the face of the state's attempt to put us in the war machine, we must take up positions of battle for our own interests. While the state tries to convince the youth of the social base that the place of youth is in the army and its future is poverty and war, poor youth must not obey the exhortations of the political and economic bosses who promote war. The way out for every young person who experiences daily the effects of the state-capitalist system that produces war and impoverishment is the organized struggle. The struggle against the emerging militarism that targets the dystopia of modern totalitarianism, with the aim of building a life worth living in a society of equality, solidarity and freedom, that of Anarchy and Libertarian Communism.
Neither Greece, nor Turkey - neither West nor East.
No participation in their wars.
NOT ONE HOUR IN THE
ARMY NO WAR BETWEEN THE PEOPLE - NO PEACE BETWEEN THE CLASSES
AGAINST WAR AND NATIONALISM FOR ANARCHY AND COMMUNISM
Collective for Social Anarchism - Black & Red, member of the Anarchist Political Organization - Federation of Collectives
https://apo.squathost.com/thes-niki-oute-mia-ora-ston-strato-sigkentrosi-ke-politiki-ekdilosi/
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Link: (en) Greece, APO, Black & Red:[Thessaloniki]Not even an hour in the army | Rally and political event (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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