Anarchist Political Organization - Federation of collectives (Greece), member of the IFA ---- Interview conducted in English and then translated by Ouzo, Marseille Anarchist Federation - Oaï group ---- Demonstration for the first day of the Thessaloniki International Festival, September 2025 ---- Ouzo (FA): Yassas comrades, this interview follows the 13th IFA Congress that you organized here in Athens. Can you share with us the history of your organization, which is 10 years old this year? What political context did it emerge from? How are you organized as a federation? ---- APO: The Anarchist Political Organization - Federation of Collectives (APO) was founded as a federalist organization active in Greece since 2015 and is a member of the International of Anarchist Federations (IFA). Currently, three anarchist collectives participate in APO: two from Athens, the anarchist collective "Circle of Fire" and the anarchist collective "Omikron72," and one from Thessaloniki, the collective for social anarchism "Red and Black." The collectives and groups are also active through their squats and self-managed structures. More specifically, the collectives include "Cercle de Feu" (Circle of Fire) through the Lelas Karagianni 37 squat (founded in 1988), "Omikron72" through the anarchist-anti-authoritarian center Antipnoia (founded in 2007), and "Rouge et Noir" through the libertarian center No Pasaran (founded in 2023, after the eviction of the anarchist squat Mundo Nuevo, founded in 2015). The autonomous action of these collectives in cities, where each is active and participates in local actions, processes, and projects, contributes to advancing the objectives and strategies emerging within APO.
APO is organized as a federation of its collectives, which cooperate in a horizontal structure. It is based on coherent and appropriate political agreements between anarchist collectives that have formed their unified movement at the national level through collective procedures in which they coexist as equals. Since December 2015, APO has published the anarchist journal "?? ??? ?????????" ("Land and Freedom") and since 2020 has managed the libertarian counter-information website "Land and Freedom". Since 2017, members of APO's groups and collectives have formed a specific thematic group against patriarchy. It maintains a stable and consistent presence in the struggles against the authoritarian state-capitalist-patriarchal system.
APO is structured around shared political thoughts, principles, and positions. Our goal is to acquire increasingly coherent points of political agreement in order to formulate long-term strategies for struggle. APO seeks to disseminate these proposals of anarchist struggle within movements and society and to raise awareness. To this end, we aim to contribute to the creation of a coherent and radical movement. A movement that will put an end to any attempt to manipulate, divert, or moderate social and class struggles and integrate them into a reformist project. A movement that will clearly promote social revolution as the only realistic means of the ultimate liberation of peoples from domination. A liberation from below that will connect partisan struggles to the overall revolutionary goal of overthrowing the state and capital.
The creation of APO ten years ago represents a political and organizational convergence of our previous activities. This choice encompasses the conclusions and experiences of past struggles and is the product of critique and questioning, while also opening new perspectives for a transition from demonstrations and rebellions to the current struggle for social revolution. APO is the child of the social and class riots of December 2008 (taking into account the possibilities but also the limitations that emerged) and the large mobilizations of 2010-2012. We are inspired by the libertarian movement of the CNT-FAI, which, through tough struggles, riots, and primarily through class, political, and social organizing, succeeded in putting into practice the idea of the general subversion of the state and capitalism and the development of self-management.
Demonstration marking 15 years since the 2008 uprising, December 6, 2023, Athens
Ouzo (FA): Thank you for this. I know that you are involved in many struggles: students, squatting, Palestine, supporting trials... How do you manage to impose your anarchist agenda within these struggles which are too often co-opted by authoritarians, Marxists or leftists...?
APO: For us, APO is the vehicle for our constant and consistent intervention in social struggles and the class war, in the fight against the exploitation of our people, state repression, fascism and war, against the destruction of nature, against patriarchy and gender-based violence. But also the struggles for the defense of open spaces, the defense of the public nature of education and healthcare, and the struggles in solidarity with refugees, exiles, and political prisoners. We work for the most effective dissemination of the anarchist vision of a society of equality, justice, freedom, and solidarity, for social and class emancipation, for the organization of the struggle for social revolution, and for the creation of a bridge between everyday struggles and the vision of anarchism and libertarian communism.
We seek to participate continuously and actively in struggles that are antagonistic to state-capitalist projects, with the aim of radicalizing their content, the processes that frame them, and the means of struggle. We act to interact with social and class projects in all areas of social life-in workplaces, schools, universities, and neighborhoods-to promote the development of struggles without mediators, anti-hierarchical and anti-institutional.
Within these struggles, we are constantly confronted by reformism, a perception antagonistic to the revolutionary perspective. Its actors-whether they come from left-wing parliamentary forces, bureaucratic union leaderships, or extra-parliamentary bodies and alternative organizations-systematically try to mediate social and class struggles and their participants by assigning initiatives to "experts," thereby limiting the scope and forms of the struggle, and ultimately leading to its weakening, distortion, and denigration.
So, it is our constant objective to fight against reformist logics and perceptions
within the struggles and to be constantly vigilant to avoid attempts to assimilate social and class resistance. Our distinct participation in the open processes of struggle, with full respect for their autonomy, allows us to defend self-organization and the unconstrained participation of everyone, and the choice of means of struggle in accordance with their capacities. Through this vital interaction and the continuous enrichment of our political experiences, we constantly evolve our political discourse in light of the situation and perspectives of social and class struggles. At the same time, we promote the formation of stable resistance structures in all areas of social and class struggle, seeking to disseminate our anarchist positions and proposals, not only to highlight the limitations of today's partial struggles but also to promote their permanent radicalization and their connection with the overall goal of Social Revolution.
Ouzo: How do you feel about the IFA after this congress that you organized? Meeting each other was a powerful moment of international anarchist cooperation. What are your perspectives as a federation within the IFA?
APO: To date, we want to say that we have not yet completed our assessment as APO for the Congress of the International of Anarchist Federations, which took place in early April 2026 in Athens. The process will be completed in the immediate future, as we have planned our congress for early June 2026. For our part, however, we can offer a preliminary conclusion to this process, which we believe has moved in a positive and productive direction toward the development of an international position on issues such as the intensification of state and capitalist brutality, the threat of the spread of war and fascism, and our internationalist solidarity with the oppressed. It also involved valuable exchanges of experiences regarding the intensification of patriarchal violence and the destruction of nature and indigenous peoples. We hope that this positive direction taken at the congress will continue, with common agreements on additional problems and initiatives that will have the horizon of strengthening anarchist positions, discourse and actions.
Particularly at a time when military operations are expanding abroad and state repression is intensifying at home, we believe it is essential for the anarchist movement to develop its political values and ideological framework. This task is urgent in order to influence the consciousness of the grassroots and to defend our positions against attempts to impose perceptions foreign to the anarchist struggle and internationalist solidarity.
The dynamics of change and upheaval sought by those in power demand a rapid reconstruction of the international anarchist movement, expanding our networks of contact and communication with the central objective of exchanging experiences, informing about how authoritarian policies are being implemented in each region, and documenting the social resistance manifesting itself across the globe. Furthermore, the international debate on war treaties and the threat of widespread war is crucial.
It is literally a matter of life and death for the movement, for societies, and for oppressed people to be able to form and adopt, as coherently as possible, a position within anarchism regarding militarism, the threat of war, and resistance to global domination. We believe this can be achieved if comrades in every region realize that, while there are historical, political, social, and even cultural differences between societies of individuals and movements (which are necessarily formed under the shadow of a nation-state, and differences that must be respected), it is also necessary to grasp the anarchist analysis of today, which confirms that there is a single capitalist and state condition that dominates and oppresses the entire planet. Deepening the debate and fostering the international anarchist cooperation that responds to it are the basic prerequisites for strengthening the anarchist struggle. Strengthening the anarchist struggle means strengthening the social and class resistance that can protect societies from the threat of war and the intensification of exploitation and oppression.
Ouzo: Efcharisto para poli sidrofoi. Do you have anything else to say? A slogan to share?
APO: Thank you very much for this interview, and we send our solidarity to comrades everywhere in the world who are fighting in every corner of the earth for a society of equals, without exploitation or oppression, without masters or slaves, for the new world we carry in our hearts!
In conclusion, we will borrow a phrase from the Mapuche people: MARICHIWEU! ("We will win a thousand times over")
Long live Anarchy!
https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=9061
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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