Anarchoblogs

Moments ago a report by Foreign Correspondent ended and the particular subject of the report was Greece.  Over all, while I think it’s mentioning of the word ‘Anarchist’ presented a chance for exposure to Australian audiences, the report, ironically enough, lack any explanation of what Anarchists stand for.  Any discussion of the Anarchists was a discussion from a position of the old commenting on what amounts to a caricature of Anarchists as ‘rebellious youths’, which is the only impression you can get when you interview cops, a university professor, a teenage boy, a politician — practically anyone but someone who ascribes to the Anarchist ideology.

While I must give credit in the attempts of the reporter to give  a description of what has happened in Greece since the shooting of Alexandros, somehow the report itself fell short and left me feeling angry.  There was much discussion of the damage the Anarchists have caused in the riots since the end of last year, the street fights with police and much footage of the riots, giving the impression that this is what the Anarchists have to offer.  There was no discussion of the ultra-nationalist efforts calling for racial purity and the ousting of immigrants, or the collaboration between ultra-nationalist groups and the Greek police.  There was no mention of the defence Anarchists have given to immigrants that have sufferred attacks by these groups.

I think, however, the biggest critique I can offer of the coverage was in their explanation of the terrorist groups, Revolutionary Struggle, to which the foreign minister of Greece offerred this comment;

“I believe this is the worst fascist ideology. It has nothing to do with any values, it has nothing to do with any political thinking, it’s pure violence, so we are facing it again after November 17.”

The irony of it all is there is no distinction made in the report between Revolutionary Struggle, the group conducting all the bombings and murders, and the Anarchists on the street working in solidarity with immigrants.  Revolutionary Struggle, from my information, operate on a militant Marxist-Leninst ideology which it has inherited from November 17.  Unfortunately for the minister who seems to have her ideologies mixed up, this group ain’t fascist and unfortunately for the reporter, they ain’t Anarchist.  Golden Dawn are the fascists along with the nationalistics in the Greek government and Revolutionary Struggle are Leninists.  Yet the way in which the story was reported allowed Revolutionary Sturggle to bleed together with the mention of the Anarchists, never mind they each have a distinct set of ideas — chiefly that the Anarchists are not about to potentially blow up an entire block.

My last and final complaint is that the cover-up following the shooting of Alexandros was non-existent, instead merely confined to almost a footnote in the tale.

Although I suppose I may be mistaken as there is potential that future reports will elaborate more on the situation.  Not to mention I doubt we can expect much more from the media — at least the term ’self-described’ Anarchist didn’t appear.

PS:  I’ll post the report at a later date so everyone and anyone can judge whether I’ve over-reacted or not.  It’s not yet up on the Foreign Correspondent website.

After the execution of a young boy in Exarchia a few months ago, riots broke out in response to the actions of the two cops.  Anarchists initially took to the streets and skirmished with riot police, but soon many different people from different walks of life emerged to participate, on both sides.  As well as every-day citizens angered by the shooting of the boy demonstrating along with the Anarchists, far-right nationalist groups such as Golden Dawn took to helping police to attack the demonstrators.  Even the police themselves dressed as protesters and vandalised property in the hope of turning media opinion against them — and it worked.  Over Christmas, the demonstrations took a break, but it appears they’re back and while the mainstream media has dropped the subject, sites such as Libcom.org have managed to keep a careful eye on events.  As I’ve been posting all the following information in and around various forums, I thought I may as well include it here as people seem to have a keen interest regarding the events in Greece.  However, I have reworded much of it to make it more presentable.

Obviously, the topic of most importance is that the offices of the fascist group, Golden Dawn, have been torched.  To really understand the significance of this, it needs to be known that Golden Dawn are not strangers to violently attacking immigrants, Anarchists and anyone else they believe opposes them, and as mentioned before, there were numerous reports two months ago of Golden Dawn members carrying knives and sticks to be used against to violently break up demonstrations.

During the first march two days after the attack, anarchist protesters detached themselves from the main body of the demo to attack the HQs of Apogevmatini, an ultra-conservative daily making consistent attacks on social and labour movements, whose editor in chief, Momferatos, had been executed by N17 guerrillas in the mid 80s, for his cooperation with the CIA during and after the colonels’ junta.

The much larger protest march that took to the streets of Athens on Thursday 5/3 erupted in extended street battles between protesters and provocative riot police forces attacked the demo. During the clashes that spread throughout the city centre several banks and expensive shops were destroyed, while protesters broke into the offices of Golden Dawn [Xrysi Avgi] the neonazi parastate organisation responsible for numerous assassination attempts against immigrants, anarchists and the left, as well as a campaign of terror against radical infrastructures. The offices were torched to the ground.

During the corresponding antifascist protest march of the same day in Salonica, street battles erupted between protesters and the riot police along the city’s central boulevard.

Now, I know that most people who read this blog will look at that paragraph, taken from here, cringe and then write off as violent, distasteful, counter productive and so on.  Indeed, in the past I have had to deal with people quoting how much damage has been done in these riots and so writing off its participants, completely.  They see this as outright, destruction and so, ‘not-Anarchist.’  While I equally don’t condone or advocate intense violence or destruction, I refuse to be so vulgar to write off these people as “not-Anarchist” based on the context of what is going on.  Call them what you like, the reactions of these people is quite understandable given the context of the events.  The same article goes on to describe the current events in Greece as, “low intensity civil war,” where the police have high cooperation levels with far-right nationalist organisations, such as the Golden Dawn.  In one of the following articles I will quote, a commenter explains that the Greek Military Junta, while it’s top-level leaders may have been ousted, left many of its lower level members still in key institutions.  From this it becomes understandable why demonstrations have been so violent and opposition been so angered.

Taxikapali writes,

As the high court had judged that the dictatorship had been an “instant crime” and not a continuous one, only the colonels taking part in the April 21 coup of 1967 were tried and convicted, leaving all other junta officers in their positions in the civil services and the army.

Although this was written in the context of explaining the actions of groups such as N17 (that I shall get to next), this serves to frame the events in Greece in a greater context for those that can’t understand it.

In the past I had mused over the influence state-Socialist groups, like the Communist party, may have on the demonstrations.  Then I started hearing reports about a terrorist group operating in Greece, and it’s actions were made to represent all the demonstrators in the mainstream media.  While the group’s exploits sounded far more along the lines of a radical Marxist group, whose okay with violence, information stopped coming to me for me to make an appropriate judgement.  Even an explanation by Deadeye on the Anarchism.net forums was still a little vague, until an article on Libcom.org provided an alternative take,

The tense situation across the country has been underlined by the continuation of armed violence by Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla groups: on Monday guerrillas opened fire against cars of producers of the Alter TV channel in the TV station’s HQs (no one was wounded), while early on Tuesday a car packed with 60Kg of ANFO was found outside Citybanks HQs in Kifisia, north Athens. The car-bomb which was deactivated by the police would have blown up the entire block.

Public opinion on the new circle of urban guerrilla that opened last December remains mixed, especially since a convicted member of the November 17 urban guerrilla group, Mr Tzorzatos, declared the attacks look like the work of the Greek Intelligence Service (EYP) which has likely infiltrated inexperienced armed Marxist-Leninist groups. Tzortzatos, a controversial figure, gave extended technical details to substantiate his argument.

Meanwhile, the park of Kyprou and Patision in downtown Athens, over which riots broke out at the end of January leading to the smashing of two police stations, is still under occupation by local protesters.

After highlighting the comment that the 60kg of explosives found would have blown up the entire block one commenter wrote, “Typical. Of pigs and Leninists.”  To those that don’t quite understand this statement, read back to wear in the article it mentions that the Greek Intelligence Service may have infiltrated the groups.  It’s a double threat, as both groups are generally okay with violence.  This subject of ‘agentology,’ the argument that these groups have been infiltrated by state agents and provocateurs is discussed throughout the comment sections of the article.  Some regard this discussion as ‘counter to the revolution’ and to act as a smear agents such groups, but their actions generally act as their own smear.  Others point out that there’s no reason why such groups couldn’t be infiltrated by elements of the Greek government, as they have shown in the past that they are more than capable of dressing as demonstrators and committing acts of vandalism to sway media opinion.  The fact that the man making this claim has a chequered past may throw into question the seriousness of the claim, though, as it was pointed out in the discussion, there’s no reason why someone who is either far right nationalist or far left Stalinist can’t tell the truth when it suits their agenda.  The claim was originally made here, though it is in Greek.  One of the most interesting comments was made by a Hieronymous,

I was living in Athens in June 2000 when N17 assassinated British military attache Stephen Saunders (I was on a bus on the same road about an hour later and sat in traffic for another hour because of the huge traffic jam the police investigation caused). When N17 issued a communique about the killing it had references to the writings of people like Eric Hobsbawm, causing all my Greek comrades to say that it sounded more like the writings of a grad student or professor than the work of so-called revolutionaries. Many of them were convinced that N17 had to have some connections to the state, possibly even to the Greek intelligence service. This is understandable when you see how long N17 was able to act and how quickly they were “caught” while the Greek state was under international pressure to crack down on them in the build up to the Olympics.

So armed urban guerrillas, especially at a time that isn’t a revolutionary situation, have all the trappings of being the work of some state agency. And given his experience, perhaps Tzorzatos should know.

The last article I’ll quote, is an earlier one, but just as important as far as news goes.

A hand-grenade was thrown from outside. Luckily the building’s window was shut and double-glazed - the first layer of the window broke but the hand-grenade bounced off and exploded outside.

What follows is a statement issued by the Network for Social and Political Rights, also housed in the same building.

The significance of this event is explained, yet again, by a commenter “taxikapali,” who contributed the following explanations;

a) The ‘Haunt of Migrants; refers to the Steki Metanaston, i.e. the Immigrants’ Social Center which has been functioning for almost two decades in Exarcheia, and is a venue for free language lessons and support to immigrants, antiracist struggle, as well as queer groups and the above mentioned association of conscientious objectors. The building also houses the offices of Rosa, a contingent of the Radical Left Coalition [Syriza] as well as the offices of the Network for Social and Political Rights [Diktyo] a leftist group whose members have consistently offered legal support and solidarity to immigrants, as well as political prisoners.

b) The term parastate or parastatist [parakratos/ parakratikos] refer to mechanisms officially outside state power, but in fact controlled if not by the government then by the army, the police or the secret services. The term was extensively used for the first time during the 1960s, when ‘patriotic groups’ were used by the police to break up radical meetings and gatherings. The apex of parastate action in the 1960s was the assassination of Grigorios Lambrakis, a left wing MP, in Thessaloniki (Gavras film Z is about this murder). The activity of such groups became redundant during the 7 years junta, when the state had a free hand to exercise all the violence it wanted. After the collapse of the colonels in 1974, it is believed that large parts of the junta mechanism remained in a behind-lines mode, with some of them operating as hit-squads in times the interests of the so called junta-droplets were jeopardized either by parliamentary democracy or by the labour movement and other revolutionary forces. During the 1970s there was a long list of bomb attacks by such groups, leading to several trials of their perpetrators, amongst whom figured prominently a certain Mihaloliakos, now leader of the neonazi group Xrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn). Analysts at the time argued these parastate groups received direct orders by the imprisoned leader of the junta, Papadopoulos, who after the victory of PASOK (Socdem) in 1981 ordered the formation of a united nationalist party (EPEN). Today mainstream analysts attack the idea that fascist and neonazi groups are in fact parastate mechanisms, although the left and anarchists more or less unanimously beleive them them t be so. Elefterotypia, the daily newspaper, has published official papers figuring salaries payed by the EYP (secret services) to Mihaloliakos and other fascists

c) The attack against the Social Center last Tuesday took place at the day of the appeal trial of Periandros, the debuty leader of Golden Dawn who has been convicted for accomplish attempted murder of a left wing student in the late 1990s.

While I disagree with Taxikapali’s support for N17, he is a wealth of information in regards to explaining the history and context which has lead to what is happening now.  I also owe Libcom.org a big thank you for keeping track of these events as everyone else seems to have dropped the topic of the rebellious Greeks in favour of other trivial stories.  It’s also remarkable that a hand grenade attack that could have killed many people was not reported in international news, but the damage bill from protests gets more air time.  I guess the attack isn’t newsworthy enough when it only ‘could’ have killed people, as opposed to actually ripping a bunch of people to shreds.

EDIT: I’ve just been informed that the name ‘Golden Dawn’ is also used by a hermetic order.  When I write “Golden Dawn”, I am not referring to these people.

By luck, I discovered the following blog post, entitled, As If By Magic… that concerns the Greek Anarchists.  Currently I am receiving little news out of Greece and the state of things while the world has turned and become complacent at the pro-state propaganda coming out of that country.  However, the article cited above stands in contrast to the horrible things being said about the Greek Anarchists in the mainstream press.

As much as I hate to do this, another has compiled a fairly comprehensive account of the events in Greece, going back on the history of Exarchia, the student movement that helped establish the current Greek Democracy and following through the events of the last week or so.  There is a great comparison with the events in Athens now, and those in the past, accompanied by photographs while the author is eloquent and fair.  It is well worth a read as well as the article quoted at length in the comments list.

Athens: We are the Image of the Future

The anarchist movement in Greece is world-renowned, especially now. Anarchist neighborhoods throughout Europe - such as Copenhagen’s Christiania neighborhood or Athen’s Exarcheia district - have battled with governments to maintain autonomy. Each time agents of government suppression target the neighborhoods, the anarchists strike back. But this time, all over the world.

The bullets that killed Athenian boy Alexis Grigoropoulos this week “may have hit one person, but it was meant for us all,” a German anarchist banner read early in the week. The “birthplace of democracy,” some people are saying, “has descended into anarchy.”

…

Read the complete account at hyperborea

It’s amazing.  The events in Greece take an increasingly Syndicalist turn and new clashes arise between the police and the Anarchists.  But as these events unfold in the land that birthed both Democracy and Anarchism, the “self-styled” and “self-described” Anarchists, as the media has been describing them, are being increasingly becomming the victims of propaganda.

World wide, media outlets are painted the Anarchists (as per usual) as hooded bandits indiscriminately destroying whatever is in their path out of a lust for chaos and violence.  The following extracts are taking from this article, care of ManBear2Pig on the Forums of the Libertarian Left, demonstrates this.

Firebombs and breaking glass, tear gas and burning cars. The images from Greece this month were enough to put the fear of youth into the hearts of European leaders.

…

Experts speak of another worry, which is the seemingly anachronistic resurgence of vague radical movements, loosely called anarchist, which hark back to the destructive ideology of Mikhail Bakunin, the 19th-century Russian revolutionary, and to the rebellious rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s.

Some of it isn’t that threatening, like recurring play of the 1979 song, “Another Brick in the Wall,” by Pink Floyd, on Alpha radio during the week-long protests in Athens. “We don’t need no education / We don’t need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom,” goes the angry refrain.

But the violence wasn’t far behind the slogans. By the third day of rioting, the estimated damage in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece’s two biggest cities, was more than €1 billion, or $1.4 billion.

From these passages alone the reader is lead to believe that the Anarchists, in particular the Anarcho-Syndicalists are a random mob of violent thugs. The specific reference to Russian revolutionary and the 1960’s and 1970’s immediately takes the readers mind to the Soviet Union and the hippy’s.  So what is the image we are given from this piece of journalistic writing?  The Anarchists are “a bunch of violent hippy communists that model themselves after Che Guevarra.”  Think I’m exaggerating?  Read this paragraph:

The role of these so-called anarchists in the weeklong protests is still not clear. But their message - loaded with anti-capitalist, anti-government and anti-globalization themes - is unmistakable. Also clear is their bent for violence.

Can’t make it much clearer than that.  What’s better is that there is absolutely no understanding of the position of the “self-described” Anarchists.  No attempt is even made to research the background and provide a general idea of what they stand for and why they are anti-government, anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation.  Neither is any decent information provided explaining the long running feud between the Anarchists and the Greek police or the economic circumstances that have lead to this saga.

The most important phrase, found frolicking through-out its unnatural habitat in the lines of text in this article, is the phrase, ’so-called Anarchists’.  It’s a lovely little piece of political spin that does nothing but cause the reader to connect definition of anarchy as ‘chaos’ to this political group that incorporates it into their name.  You’ll also see it appear in other forms such as, “self-titled,” and, “self-described.”  Even other Anarchists have taken the mainstream media line and so applied the same or similar terms to the Greek Anarchists based on the place that violence has taken in the uprising, regardless of cause, context and circumstance.

There is much propaganda being spread to marginalise the Greek Anarchists and polarise them from “common decency.”  Mainstream media outlets originally decried the violent protests as they took the police line — the same police line that involved 30 hooded teenagers attacking them with molotovs, bricks and all sorts.  Then they turned tail, reported that the kid was shot unjustly and now have returned to the side of the government by condemning the “anachronistic” and “violent” Anarchists. The coverage of the protests has been non-specific and one-sided, which translates every report into something along the lines of, “this is more stupid street fighting by stupid people who can’t understand that the boy was in the wrong and you should all get back to work.”  Thank Christ for internet forums, the blogosphere and alternative media outlets, is all I have to say.

But hey let’s end this on a different.  Seems the workers have taken over the union and town halls.

The action forms part of a strategy to counteract the designs of the union bureaucracy to distance its membership from the current revolt, and protest its management and mediation of workers’ struggles in Greece. The occupants aim to create a space in which to facilitate a grassroots and self organised workers response to the crisis, and bring the wider working class into the events unfolding on the streets of Greece. Town halls in Athens and Thessaloniki have also been occupied in order to hold general assemblies.