In the interests of Leftist trainspotting, I thought I may as well survey the Trotskyist press to see what it has to say about those crazy Greeks. In Australia, the only weekly Trot paper is the Green Left Weekly: unfortunately, it has yet to publish (but will in the next day or two); the remainder are monthlies. So, to the UK (and the wsws.org).
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Greece in widespread revolt, Andros Payiatsos (of Xekinima, the CWI in Greece), The Socialist, December 10, 2008.
The CWI make passing reference to anarchists — many of whom are agent provocateurs, apparently — and argues that the ‘anarchists’ have been given free rein by the police the better to discredit the “mighty movement of workers” (and yoof!) which will be appearing on the stage of history shortly. Unfortunately, the former group is simply mindless, and aims at nothing more than “destroying everything they can lay their hands on”. The yoof must be taught respect for the proper authorities — these being the leaders of this “mighty movement”, a leadership whose authenticity may well depend upon the extent to which it accommodates the CWI into its structure…
The current government can be brought down through a mighty movement of workers and youth, but not through the rioting and massive destruction that we have seen in every city, caused by anarchist groups (in the ranks of which there are many agent provocateurs) in the last few days.
Over the last two days, these groups have had a free hand in destroying everything they can lay their hands on. But if this continues, it will play into the hands of the government and the state. Initially, workers could accept a few excesses by these groups, but after the riots in all of Greece’s cities, the mood will change. The arguments for “law and order” will begin to gain ground.
Thus, these groups, which show no respect for the mass movement and particularly the workers’ movement, will provide the best rescue for a paralysed government and state apparatus to try to regain control.
Only the mass movement and particularly the working class can bring down this government, through mass action. Only the working class can provide an alternative to the government and capitalist system…
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The Intertubes revolutionaries of the ICFI, on the other hand, appear to be hedging their bets: the “anarchists” exist, but are likely only ‘self-styled’ anarchists; armed with sticks, stones, and a worrying ignorance of the truthiness of scientific socialism.
Protests and riots in Greece precipitate political crisis, Stefan Steinberg, December 10, 2008 (International Committee of the Fourth International, ICFI):
Confronted with a growing political crisis, the Greek government is currently preparing to take harsh measures to put down the protests. Sections of the Greek media and leading politicians are conducting a deliberate campaign to brand the protesters as “anarchists,” “extremists” and “terrorists” and create a climate in which the police and state forces can violently suppress the growing opposition movement…
The Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea pointed out that the often violent protests of the past days represented much more than the revolt of a handful of anarchists and drew attention to the social sources of the crisis: “The death of the student was only the catalyst. It was the fuse for the great explosion. The explosion conceals a compressed desperation. … Many young people live with the unbearable knowledge that there is no future, that the future is a bricked-up window. Somewhere out there a blind fury is lurking … Not violence, but desperation appears to be the origin of our story” (8 December 2008).
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Finally, the SWP. Greek mass movement rises up against the state: ‘Panos Garganas (editor of Workers Solidarity, Socialist Worker‘s sister paper in Greece) spoke to Socialist Worker about the demonstrations shaking Greece’, December 9, 2008. The article contains no direct reference to anarchists. Instead, “While much of the international media has focussed on the riots, they have virtually ignored the mass movement sweeping Greece’s streets and workplaces. This has successfully targeted anger against the government…
[On Monday morning and following mass walkouts and protests outside police stations by high school students] the atmosphere was very similar to that of March 2003 when tens of thousands of young people spontaneously walked out of schools to demonstrate against war in Iraq.” Further: “The government has a clear strategy – to use the police to break up demonstrations, leaving people to riot. It is shutting down colleges and schools in an attempt to stop people coming together to organise. The police attacked Monday night’s demonstration with teargas, and smoke and percussion grenades, forcing people to disperse. Large groups of young people then engaged in a running battle with the authorities. There were other protests across the country on Monday that followed this formula. The government is hoping that public opinion will harden against the rioters and the situation will calm down. But workers and students have taken the lead in turning up the heat on the government…”
By acting like it’s March 2003? Hmmm…
In the meantime…
Athens Polytechnic occupation publishes communique
via libcom
December 9, 2008
A message from the group which has been occupying Athens Polytechnic in response to the death of a 15-year-old at the hands of police has been published on Athens Indymedia.
On Saturday December 6, 2008, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year old comrade, was murdered in cold blood, with a bullet in the chest by a cop in the area of Exarchia.
Contrary to the statements of politicians and journalists who are accomplices to the murder, this was not an “isolated incident”, but an explosion of the state repression which systematically and in an organised manner targets those who resist, those who revolt, the anarchists and anti-authoritarians.
It is the peak of state terrorism which is expressed with the upgrading of the role of repressive mechanisms, their continuous armament, the increasing levels of violence they use, with the doctrine of “zero tolerance”, with the slandering media propaganda that criminalises those who are fighting against authority.
It is these conditions that prepare the ground for the intensification of repression, attempting to extract social consent beforehand, and arming the weapons of state murderers in uniform!
Lethal violence against the people in the social and class struggle is aiming at everybody’s submission, serving as exemplary punishment, meant to spread fear.
It is part of the wider attack of the state and the bosses against the entire society, in order to impose more rigid conditions of exploitation and oppression, to consolidate control and repression. From school and universities to the dungeons of waged slavery with the hundreds of dead workers in the so-called “working accidents” and the poverty embracing large numbers of the population… From the minefields in the borders, the pogroms and the murders of immigrants and refugees to the numerous “suicides” in prisons and police stations… from the “accindental shootings” in police blockades to violent repression of local resistances, Democracy is showing its teeth!
From the first moment after the murder of Alexandros, spontaneous demonstrations and riots burst in the center of Athens, the Polytechnic, the Economic and the Law Schools are being occupied and attacks against state and capitalist targets take place in many different neighborhoods and in the city centre. Demonstrations, attacks and clashes erupt in Thessaloniki, Patras, Volos, Chania and Heraklion in Crete, in Giannena, Komotini and many more cities. In Athens, in Patission street –outside the Polytechnic and the Economic School- clashes last all night. Outside the Polytechnic the riot police make use of plastic bullets.
On Sunday the 7th December, thousands of people demonstrate towards the police headquarters in Athens, attacking the riot police. Clashes of unprecedented tension spread in the streets of the city centre, lasting until late at night. Many demonstrators are injured and a number of them are arrested.
We continue the occupation of the Polytechnic School which started on Saturday night, creating a space for all people who are fighting to gather, and one more permanent focus of resistance in the city.
In the barricades, the university occupations, the demonstrations and the assemblies we keep alive the memory of Alexandros, but also the memory of Michalis Kaltezas and of all the comrades who were murdered by the state, strengthening the struggle for a world without masters and slaves, without police, armies, prisons and borders.
The bullets of the murderers in uniform, the arrests and beatings of demonstrators, the chemical gas war launched by the police forces, not only cannot manage to impose fear and silence, but they become for the people the reason to raise against state terrorism the cries of the struggle for freedom, to abandon fear and to meet –more and more every day- in the streets of revolt. To let the rage overflow and drown them!
State terrorism shall not pass!
We demand the immediate release of all those arrested in the events of 7th-8th December.
We are sending our solidarity to everyone occupying universities, demonstrating and clashing with the state murderers all over the country.
– The Occupation of the Polytechnic University in Athens
On a humourous note, the analysis of Establishment boor John Carr in The Times. Apparently, the anarchy and chaos in Greece is all to do with their pining for the fjords Greek Empire. John even cites Nietzsche to support his case.
Psst, write something about AWSM 😉 I was happy to cut you some slack coz of Greece, but I reckon it’s time now 😛
great website indeed. thanks for that.
also, looking for someone able to translate greek/english (i can do the french bit)
cheers
the Trots here (GLW) coming out in support of rioting anarchists, I wouldn’t be holding my breath for that one bro.
Another: this is being sent around as a translation from a Greek International Socialist Tendency site.
I think it’s remarkably good.
Ana:
Maybe… the further away the rebellion is, the more likely the support. At the same time, I have heard rumours — at this stage unconfirmed — that the troubles in Greece began the moment 40 Kiwi anarchists stepped off the plane and joined a large mob of English, German and Swedish football hooligans. These people travel the world looking for violence, using the enormous funds they pluck from out of their arses!
hahahahahahahaha , best laugh I have had all day @ndy
Andy
It seems it’s not just the trots saying that agent provocateurs are infiltrating the protests. Libcom reports:
At what point do you think the rioting should stop? What is the anarchist plan to bring down the government? How will we move from rioting to changing the system?
G’day Mandy,
I don’t dispute that Greek authorities can, do and will continue to employ agent provocateurs. As you note, libcom reports this, as do numerous other anarchist and anti-authoritarian sources. That the authorities should do so makes perfect sense.
What I dispute is the claim that, for example, ‘in the ranks of the anarchists are many agent provocateurs’. That is, as I understand it, Greek police and fascists are not actually present in the ‘anarchist ranks’ so much as they mimic the anarchists in appearance, and while doing so commit ‘mindless’ vandalism. Generally speaking, all kinds of acts are attributed to the ‘anarchists’, but very little, if any, attention is paid to their motives or communications. Anarchist targets are generally confined to police, banks, corporate retailers and other such targets. The reasons for this are generally made quite explicit. Naturally, there are exceptions, but this is the case with regards any large group of people…
With regards your second question: I don’t know. The answer to this question would seem, to me, to depend upon defining what riotous behaviour consists of, and its political function. To some extent, I think that such behaviour is aimed at establishing free public spaces: spaces free of police intervention and state control. In this sense, riots are a war for territory, a battle for the streets. If one assumes a fairly standard definition of ‘the state’ — that is, ‘the state’ is that social institution which claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a particular territory — then ‘rioting’ is subversive of the state. Within this public space, the hope and desire of anarchists (which hopes and desires, it should also be acknowledged, are multiple and sometimes contradictory), is to create new forms of social relations based on principles of voluntary co-operation, mutual aid, equality between participants, non-hierarchical decision-making, self-management and solidarity.
Or something like that: the contents of the struggles in Greece are naturally specific to the situation.
Assuming the broad participation of the masses in such a project as that outlined above, this constitutes a social revolution: in values, in practices, in behaviour, in cultural, economic, political and social forms.
I don’t know what the anarchist plan is to bring down the government, or even if there is one. As I see it, based on a partial understanding of the nuances of the struggles in Greece, the broader purpose of anarchist activity is to create free spaces and to advance forms of social struggle that deepen and extend that struggle to all sectors of Greek society. Thus while there is naturally a focus on the struggle of students (and workers), much activity is and has also been taking place within the prisons and among asylum seekers, refugees, undocumented workers, and so on.
To put it another way: as I see it, ‘rioting’ is part and parcel of ‘changing the system’, not only in terms of the aspects of this struggle as they exist ‘internally’, but in modifying the nature and terms of the relationship between ‘state’ and ‘society’. Other forms of struggle extend the occupations of the streets to the occupations of the Universities, the schools, the factories, offices, land and so on. What matters most, in this context, is the manner in which different sectors communicate and co-ordinate their actions. This is the arena into which the Trotskyists / Stalinists and so on seek to intervene and to establish themselves as controlling powers: the basis of a ‘new’ state power.
Regarding the current situation, I am of course relying on my knowledge of English and the translation and publications of documents which account for only small aspects of the general struggle. As I see it, one possible outcome is the institution of a new Government, possibly an emergency coalition, and the brokering of a deal between the state and other social institutions, especially within the labour movement, to bring about social pacification. At some point, whether now or in the near future, the state will seek its revenge, and unleash a wave of repression on the anarchists, probably in conjunction with the forces of the far right, and the active complicity of the media and other cultural institutions.
Then again, who knows?
Things seem to be happening at a pretty rapid rate at the moment…
Cha cha cha…
Ana: “the Trots here (GLW) coming out in support of rioting anarchists, I wouldn’t be holding my breath for that one bro.”
So cynical Ana.
@ndy, GLW are *officially* on hols now. They’ll be putting up one or three new articles every now and then, so I’d expect they’ll put something out in a bit. However you can rest assured that they’re firmly in solidarity with Alex’s family, and the protesters.
The DSP-sponsored journal LINKS is still being updated regularly, however, and is putting up statements of various Greek left groups: http://links.org.au/node/790
hey wombo, I will never forgive or forget what crap the glw and the dsp dished out after the g20, that’s not cynicism that’s being real