Today marks one week from the tragic events of May 5th. Since that day, the vast majority of collectives and groups within the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement in Greece have spoken out. We have tried a paint a picture of their various statements on the events, translating some of the most diverse. For all their diversity, a yet unspoken consensus seems to be emerging within the movement: we need to talk through this – silence is no longer an option.
… and yet at the same time, developments in Greece are even more frantic than usual. And so, we will have to pause on our reflection on May 5th, with the promise that we shall return to it soon.
For our complete coverage on the events of that day you can follow our May 5th deaths tag.
Translated statements on Occupied London:
- “Anarchy is struggle for life, freedom and dignity” (Circle of Fire anarchist collective and anarchist Bulletin Black Flag)
- “Concerning the events of May 5th“ (Terra Incognita)
- “The Morbid Explosion of Ideology” (Flesh Machine)
- “Without emergency exit” (Rioters Agency)
- “In critical and suffocating times” (TPTG)
- The “Anarchist Crouch” on Wednesday’s events
- The Anti-authoritarian Movement of Athens (AK) on Wednesday’s events
- “Anarchy is struggle for life, not death” (various radical publications)
- “The murderers “mourn” their victims” (Skaramanga squat)
- “What do we honestly have to say about Wednesday’s events?” (Occupied London)
For Greek speakers this feature on Athens IMC links to most collective statements issued so far.
19 Comments
Δελτίο Τύπου – 24ωρη Γενική Απεργία ΓΣΕΕ – ΑΔΕΔΥ – ΠΕΜΠΤΗ 20 ΜΑΗ
Η ΓΣΕΕ και ΑΔΕΔΥ είναι ριζικά αντίθετοι στο κυβερνητικό σχέδιο νόμου για το ασφαλιστικό. Ένα νομοσχέδιο που αποδιαρθρώνει το χρηματοδοτικό μηχανισμό της κοινωνικής ασφάλισης, υπονομεύει, ανατρέπει, απαξιώνει τον αναδιανεμητικό του χαρακτήρα, συρρικνώνει δραματικά τους διαθέσιμους πόρους και αποσύρεται το κράτος από την ευθύνη και οικονομική υποστήριξή του με βαρύτατο τίμημα για τις νέες γενιές.
Το πάρτυ επί των αποθεματικών επί σειρά ετών, η εισφοροδιαφυγή, η μαύρη και ανασφάλιστη εργασία είναι οι κυριότερες πληγές αιμορραγίας του συστήματος οι οποίες μένουν χωρίς αποστολή λογαριασμού ενώ υπάρχει διεύθυνση και στέλνεται ο λογαριασμός στα μόνιμα θύματα: μισθωτούς, συνταξιούχους, νέους.
A new general strike has been scheduled for May 20th.
There is a very worrying tone of moral panic to many of these pieces, seeking to single out particular parts of the anarchist milieu and label them as not properly anarchist so as to be able to blame them for the deaths. If the bosses set this incident up on purpose, this is doubtless what they hoped would happen. There is a huge danger that the lack of trust this creates among anarchists and dissidents will hamstring future activism.
Whatever the problems with with “nihilism” or “cults of violence”, this is NOT the time to be raising them – the movement is under an onslaught from hostile forces and is offering up certain tendencies within it as sacrificial offerings to the mainstream.
Especially since:
1) there is still no evidence the deaths were anything but a tragic accident – akin to a car accident on the way to a protest, and
2) the iconic status of these three deaths amidst so many deaths is a construct of the Spectacle.
N.B. All original comments are still there under ‘May 5th Deaths’ tag.
Sorry to say this, but judging by the photos posted as a link on libcom, it looks as though (IF these are the perpetrators) the boys who set fire to the Marfin were just that, boys. To me, they look as if they’re barely in their late ‘teens, and without being ‘ageist’,it may well be that these lads lack a developed capacity for making reasoned calls of judgement. Never the less, should they have been inspired by ‘heroic/macho’ riot-centred propaganda, then the Greek movement still has a pressing need to reevaluate the use of violence in word and deed…
http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/2010/05/07/the-greeks-are-still-fucked/
fuck pigfuckers
NO.Even if it was ‘cock-up not conspiracy’, the lack of trust would still pertain, and there is every reason to address the issue. A show of indifference would evince disgust, and it is not a matter of offering up scapegoats. It is offensive to compare the three deaths with a ‘car accident’ or even to blather situationist platitudes about them being ‘iconic constructs’. These were real, living, breathing people NOT abstractions. Should we abandon our humanity, we become what we despise, surely anarchists are anarchists because we deplore the depersonalisation of life AND death. Hard-hearted shit is for COPS.
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/16525
Further to Epoliticus- From Ekathimerini
Centre Rightist Greek paper:-
Belgian anarchists
Brussels GNTO office attacked
A Greek National Tourism Organization office in Brussels was attacked by vandals yesterday. An employee, who was not hurt, said that three masked men and one woman threw paint at the office and shouted slogans in support of Greek anarchists. They also left behind leaflets claiming their group was called the «Belgian Anarchists.» Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Geroulanos happened to be in Brussels for a meeting of his European Union counterparts and visited the office after the attack. He said the damage would be repaired. Discussions are also taking place about the possibility of guarding the office.
Incubus, what is your point ?
Recent solidarity action report. That’s all.
Violence has become more of a ritual in protests for its own sake rather than a tactic, we don’t know who is responsible but we need to admit that it could have been anarchists.
The mainstream media has shamelessly exploited these tragic deaths to discredit the protesters and blame anarchists, while greek people might have previously ignored or tolerated the violence, from now on is only going to further alienate them, and lets not kid ourselves: smashing windows or burning building isn’t accomplishing anything: workers will restore everything as it was.
At this point, anarchists should focus on building a mass movement and not give the mainstream media excuses to isolate them as a dangerous fringe group.
The government still passed the austerity measures, this blatant attack on the working class must not be forgotten or buried by this incident.
Incubus, o.k.
Tonight-
A powerful bomb exploded outside Athens’ main prison, causing extensive damage, but no injuries, police said.
“It was a really strong explosion that was heard kilometres away,” said a police official, who requested anonymity.
The top security Athens prison is in the Korydallos suburb, west of Athens.
Greek media reported the bomb was placed inside a garbage container close to the prison wall.
The official said an unidentified person called a Greek TV station and warned that a bomb would blow up outside the prison.
Three posts didn’t show. WTF is with censoring stuff which criticises your self-flagellatory posturing? Your readers should know about this state-like censoriousness.
I’ve said before and I’ll say again.
THIS ISN’T ABOUT “VIOLENCE” AS A TACTIC (which here, mainly means property damage – people died as an accidental effect of property damage).
It is about ANY AND ALL actions.
Nonviolent protesters blockade a highway, maybe an ambulance gets stuck and someone dies.
People lock on to a doorway of a company, maybe there is a fire and people get trapped inside while the protesters unlock.
People go on strike, maybe services get disrupted, hospitals run out of fuel.
Hard hearted? Not at all. Do what one can to minimise the risk. Try to stop tragedies if they happen. Yet all of this was done in this case too: protesters tried to put out the fire.
Ultimately we need to realise two things.
Firstly, all forms of social action involve risk. (Not just protest actions, ANY actions). It is not possible to be one hundred percent sure that a tragedy cannot happen.
And secondly, a lot more people will die and be reduced to misery if we do nothing.
It is irrational and absurd to allow this tragic incident to have any effect on strategies, tactics and actions. Of course actions should minimise risk of tragic outcomes, but there is no reason that low-risk actions should change because of one improbable case where something bad happened. It is just as improbable that it will happen again as it was before.
Incubus:
“It is offensive to compare the three deaths with a ‘car accident’ or even to blather situationist platitudes about them being ‘iconic constructs’. These were real, living, breathing people NOT abstractions.”
So people who die in car accidents are just abstractions?
Can you explain why these particular people’s deaths are attracting such attention when someone dies in Greece every few minutes? Are those other people dying not ‘living, breathing people’ because their deaths aren’t on the TV?
Only caring about deaths if someone in power calls it a “crime” – allowing structural violence to continue unabated – is for cops.
PS: I don’t care if the truths I tell are offensive to you. You feel what the media tells you to feel, so if you weren’t offended, I’d be doing somethign wrong.
NOT FPF-
Yes, social action involves physical risk. Yes, really, people die all the time, and not just physically. I didn’t say the victims of car accidents were ‘abstractions’. You know full well why the three deaths are drawing so much attention, and that the attention is in the street not just on TV. Structural violence is always overlooked, we all know that.I feel how I feel, and not how the media tells me. You offended me cos you sounded like a inhuman cop -Full Stop (As Stalin said “One death is a Tragedy, one million, a statistic”-perhaps that should be ‘three’ in your case) I used to be a firebrand too once, all full of ideological piss and wind, believing that the Heroic Wetdream of hardcore radicality would win the day as force majeure…Setting fire to buildings with people in them is not a ‘low risk action’. Who says this won’t happen again, with attitudes like yours? And no, I am not calling for ‘doing nothing’, but I also believe that you can’t simply burn down a social relationship,(or or blow one up for that matter).
Totally agree with “Not NPF.” Industrial civilisation is killing the planet. Bringing it down means civil war. Civil war means innocents get hurt. But if we don’t act things will be much worse.
Therein lies the difference: Civil War or Social Revolution.
War implies verical organisation, Revolution horizonal organisation. We don’t want to reproduce this world through conflict do we? This is not just a semantic difference either.
“War implies verical organisation, Revolution horizonal organisation” – but as you know, the people who set fire to this bank were almost certainly organised horizontally.
In contrast, the demand that anarchist spaces be arranged in such a way that nobody who might engage in such actions might conceivably find a space there, is irreducibly vertical. So is the logic of a moral panic. It is verticalism in the head and heart.
‘War’ in conventional terms is certainly vertical, but this is not what is meant by ‘war’ in insurrectionism, or for instance in Clastres. The question is how to resist without falling back into verticalism. Burning a bank is not a vertical action. Rather, it restores to a slight degree the horizontal relation which has been broken by banks as vertical power. (Of course there is a danger of giving the wrong impression by using a word like ‘war’ – the same is the case for ‘revolution’, which for some people is trenchantly vertical – didn’t Engels say that a revolution was ‘the most authoritarian thing there is’?)
You would probably have us focus on community organising instead. But how, then, are we to avoid the vertical subordination of our own rage, our own autonomy, to the passivity of the majority? How are we not to find ourselves back in the trap of subordination to ‘the community’?
On the other point: indeed, *deliberately* setting fire to a building with (innocent) people in it is not a low-risk strategy, though it is reckless rather than murderous. I’d rather that people don’t do such reckless things, that they do less risky things, but I’d also rather they act recklessly than that they don’t act at all.
On the other hand, there is absolutely no evidence in this case that anyone *deliberately* set fire to a building they knew people were in. Setting fire to buildings which appear to be empty is a low-risk strategy which has rightly become a central part of autonomous resistance in Greece and I very much hope it continues. Had it not been for the tragic accidental deaths, it would have been an aspect of the empowerment of the revolt – and without it, Greece might end up in the same mess as the UK, where millions-strong anti-war protests just served to amplify disempowerment because there was no response to state intransigence.
@ Not FPF
My original comments about ‘war’ were in response to RAIN,but fundamentally I don’t disagree with you, but for this;- “You would probably have us focus on community organising instead.” This is not what I mean, I believe that what is needed is a synthesis of action and organisation, not focussing on it exclusively, no, but keeping as wide a perspective as possible. I certainly do not believe in blunting peoples anger, because anger is a powerful energy that needs to be directed with a cool head and with as much precision as possible, lest the filthy capitalist bastards take it, and turn it against us. The state avoids recklessness where it can, and so should we, but that too doesn’t mean timidity either…
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