Greek anarchy as a state tool to pass unpopular laws

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Greek anarchists briefly became the center of the world's attention on December 08. There were solidarity protests and some newspapers hastily described it as 'the first revolt signaling the fall of capitalism'. I am Greek but I lived in the UK for a few years, so i consider myself able to think about Greek politics from both a local and an international perspective. I was also part of that revolt - at least in the first few days, before the propaganda and paramilitary (provocateurs) started serious work.

The popular explosion last December was spontaneous, signaled by the murder of a 15 year old boy by a cop in Exarheia (the hub neighborhood in Athens that hosts the greatest part of the anti capitalist, anarchist and leftist action). This catalytic event sparked a revolt that was so spontaneous that instead of having demands, consisted a question. The mass of angry people in the streets of Athens was seen as an opportunity by many groups from every part of the political spectrum: The anarchists saw it as a means of bringing down the state, the communist and leftists parties saw it as a means of promoting their agendas, the far right (in collaboration with the center right government) saw it as a propaganda tool to excite the most conservative parts of the society (extracting many votes in the October elections), the opposition saw it as a mean of taking the power, which they did.

This took the form of an undeclared ideological battle that but the way it was fought had nothing to do with politics or ideology. The anger of the Greek anarchists was focused primarily on rioting but also on forming councils in neighborhoods that discussed, came to conclusions and performed actions against the system. But the system was not unprepared. The main focus of the media was turned towards rioting and away from social action and this made the anarchists feel that they had to riot in order to be heard. But this proved to be a trap. It was a state policy of provocation that showed the revolting youth (not only the anarchists) as hooligans that had no political demands, no concern for the rest of the society and where portrayed like Sarkozy tried to portray the revolting youth of Paris. With the sum of the mass media singing along the line of the government and the opposition (the next government), they managed to gain the support of the majority of the (conservative) society in order to pass oppressive laws like banning citizens to hide their faces in demonstrations, identification of pay as you go to specific users etc. This way they also avoided major public criticism for actions that were obviously unconstitutional like the temporary arrests of protesters before protests, the arrests without charges (in most cases they left the detained go after the protest was over), the arrests with fake charges that never stand in court and the brutal beating of protesters - that were even rammed by police motorcyclists resulting to serious injuries.

The Greek anarchist movement has great responsibility for what happened because they preferred the cheap effortless rioting to the informing of the public in order to gain public acceptance. And that goes even further,in the Athenian branch of indymedia and other sites and forums, any voice towards different actions or against rioting was seen as hostile or even fascist!

The result is that Greek anarchy is now viewed by the average Greek citizen as inherently violent and systematically fascist. Since many anarchist meetings and actions happen in Greek universities, there is now talk of repealing the academic asylum which protects the free exchange of ideas in academic institutions. There is talk of letting only students to have access to universities and in parallel, the student movements are now branded as 'antisocial', 'violent', 'anarchist' and even 'nihilist'. Unfortunately the Greeks are too conservative and - in fact - panicked by the endless dead-ends they have found themselves into because of the long term corruption of the Greek political system and their politicians.

To sum things up, in Greece the anarchist and anti-state movements are used by the state in order to promote oppressive policies by exciting the conservative reflexes of the public. This way the anarchists are a state tool similar to Bush's 'war on terror'.

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PS. The aim of the above post was not to discredit the Greek anarchist movement but to indicate how it was used by the state in order to avoid similar situations in the future.