December 26: Updates From The Greek Uprising

"A Greek government official's car was firebombed in front of his house on Friday while assailants threw a Molotov cocktail at a bank and another group attacked a police car, authorities said.

Attacks on government and banking facilities are frequent in Greece, but they have been widespread since a 15-year-old boy was killed by police earlier this month, triggering a wave of violent youth protests against authorities.

The government car used by a junior environment minister, Stavros Kaloyannis, was hit by a petrol bomb early Friday while it was parked in front of his house in the northwestern city of Ioannina.

Late Thursday, a commuter train was hit by bullets in the Athens suburb of Tavros. Police opened an investigation into the attack, in which no one was hit.

[On Thursday], seven cars were damaged in arson attacks on three dealerships in Athens while an agriculture ministry building and a bank were also targetted." (source)

"The corporate press has trotted out various theories to explain the cause of the unrest - frustration with a corrupt government, the global financial crisis, and discontent among Greece's youth, who face meager prospects of secure employment or welfare rights - the riots being a blind reaction to objective conditions.

But all these explanations are in fact decoys intended to silence and ignore the rebels' own declared motivations.

A declaration by the students occupying the Athens School of Economics was quite clear about how they see the issue: "The democratic regime in its peaceful facade doesn't kill an Alex every day, precisely because it kills thousands of Ahmets, Fatimas, Jorjes, Jin Tiaos and Benajirs: because it assassinates systematically, structurally and without remorse the entirety of the third world ....

"The cardinals of normality weep for the law that was violated from the bullet of the pig Korkoneas [the policeman who shot Grigoropoulos]. But who doesn't know that the force of the law is merely the force of the powerful? That it is law itself that allows for the exercise of violence on violence? The law is void from end to bitter end; it contains no meaning, no target other than the coded power of imposition."

Or, in another declaration, this one anonymous: "What do we seek? Equality. Political, economic, social. Between all people. Our possibility of convincing the servile consumers to refuse being commodities and subjects is rather limited. What can we do? Ravage and plunder the market, distribute the goods to everybody, dissolve the myths that support inequality."

These are no single-issue protests or vague grievances. This is full-blooded revolutionary anarchism.

The mainstream media simply cannot stomach the notion that what is happening in Greece is by now a proactive social revolt against the capitalist system itself and the state institutions that reinforce it. It is time to acknowledge that the Greek anarchist movement has successfully seized the initiative after the killing of one of its own, framing the issues in a way that appeals to a larger - albeit mostly young - public.

Will the riots in Greece lead to an anti-capitalist revolution? Only if the opening they have torn in the social fabric widens and deepens, involving ever-growing sections of society and creating new grass-roots institutions alongside the destruction of the old. This seems unlikely in the short term, as bureaucratic labor unions and the Communist Party attempt to domesticate the revolt and cut their own political coupon with their demand to disarm the police.

But there is no doubt that a new benchmark has been set for what can be expected in Western countries during the coming era of economic depression and environmental decay. European governments will no doubt ratchet up their policies of surveillance and repression in anticipation of growing civil unrest. But that may not be enough to keep the population subdued, as crisis after crisis calls the existing arrangement of power and privilege into question." (source)

CrimethInc. has posted a fantastic interview with participants of the Greek uprising to their website, which you can read here: How to Organize an Insurrection.

AntiCiv.Net's Previous Greek Uprising Reports:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15