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constitution. 2 Anarchy in Athens The Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement has been reinvigorated in recent years. Its public protests and battles against the Greek state, police and other capitalist institutions are prolific and highly visible, replete with rioting, barricades and Molotov cocktails. Away from the intensity of the street-protests and the glare of mainstream media, however, its militants implement an anarchist and anti-authoritarian praxis of which the outcomes are less visible. These militants are feeding the hungry and poor, protecting
Conclusion: imagining and fighting for alternative realities I began this book by locating Athenian anarchists and anti-authoritarians within Greece’s contemporary economic, social and political crisis. I noted that neo-liberal economic policies have led to mass unemployment and declines in health and educational services, which in turn produced a climate of deep political volatility. As a result of imposed austerity and unemployment, more than a fifth of the Greek population live below the poverty line. The nation’s small birth rate has fallen by 15 per cent
The Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement has been reinvigorated in recent years. Its public protests and battles against the Greek state, police and other capitalist institutions are prolific and highly visible, replete with rioting, barricades and Molotov cocktails. This book is concerned not so much with anarchist theory, as with examining the forces that give the Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement its specific shape. The author draws on Alberto Melucci's (1995a) work on collective identity, while offering a first-hand, ethnographic account of Athenian anarchists and anti-authoritarians in action, based on his time there in 2011 and 2013, living, squatting and protesting within this milieu. In the course of the chapters of the book, the author argues that varying shades of anarchic tendencies, and ensuing ideological and practical disagreements, are overcome for the most part in (often violent) street-protests. Athenian anarchists and antiauthoritarians are a pertinent area of research because of both their politics and their geographical location. There is the whole 'rise of anarchism throughout the activist world' phenomenon, visible from Seattle to Genoa, Quebec City to São Paulo. Anarchist and anti-authoritarian social movements are prominent actors in resistance to the current phase of capitalism in multiple, global locations. Throughout Europe, North and Latin America, Asia and the Antipodes, radical resistance to neo-liberalism often has an anarchist and/ or anti-authoritarian cast.
by my expressions, Penelope discerned my uneasiness: ‘It is important we don’t panic’, she instructed, ‘[t]his is our space and we are defending it, there is nothing to fear, we are together, united and we are strong!’ Although myriad tensions exist in the Athenian anarchist and anti- authoritarian space, temporary solidarity reigns during street-protests. As Penelope implied in her instructions, when it is time for action the tensions within the movement are largely suppressed, as activists come together for occupations, protests and riots. Similarly for Emma
subjugation. Despite this, sexist and homophobic behaviour is definitely an issue within the Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian space, and is manifested in some obvious ways. The following discussion reflects my own observations and the insights of some of my participants. I proceed by first conveying the initial ‘ethically sophisticated’ squat conversations. I have merged conversations into a narrative that conveys the colloquial tone in which these thoughts were expressed to me in the field. If, as activists argue, the anarchist project is to challenge all forms
knowledge of modern Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian histories, and expressed a willingness to learn from these events. Violent historical episodes were particularly emphasised throughout conversations and appear to be regularly reproduced in the streets. Second, and much like Helena’s call to ‘Fuck May 68’, contemporary activists feel no obligation to emulate historical repertoires. As a result, this chapter is bursting with examples of anarchists and anti-authoritarians frequently producing novel forms of direct action. In this light, Chapter 5 presents two
sketching the origins of this crisis as they specifically relate to Greece. This construct forms a backdrop to my discussion of the Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement. In 2001, Greece entered the eurozone, but on the basis of economic modelling and data that were deliberately misleading (BBC News, 2004). Entry into one of the world’s richest clubs opened up tremendous new economic possibilities for Greece, though ones that would in the longer term come at a high cost. In particular, membership of the European Union along with the new currency enabled the
. Since the early 1970s, anti-authoritarian and insurrectionist anarchist currents have prevailed, which I leave as a discussion for the following chapter. The anarchist currents introduced above all share an antipathy to the state, capital and oppression, while embracing class warfare to fight political hierarchy and domination in all forms. Despite this, most of the Athenian anarchists and anti-authoritarians I spoke to had severed nearly all emotional, theoretical and practical links with the region’s early anarchist history.2 The pre-1970s anarchist history is
capture a cross-section of Athenian anarchists and anti-authoritarians. Reading the informative text on Greek anarchists and anti-authoritarians, We Are an Image, it struck me that the selection process for articles and interviews coming from within complex movements invariably relies on Militant ethnography 49 networks (Schwarz et al., 2010; see also Vradis and Dalakoglou, 2011). In We Are an Image, an insider’s selection process is privileged, whereby those known to the authors and their comrades are given space to contribute in the book. I do not think that
revealing as agreement. Without that information, it is difficult to have meaningful discussions about what is occurring within social movements and collectives (Melucci, 1985: 800). In addition, it strips social movement actors of their individual agency, consuming all within this unified notion of a collective. Such a presumption is particularly problematic when applied to openly heterogeneous collectives, like Athenian anarchists and anti-authoritarians. To paraphrase Emile Armand, the margins or the minority views also need to be embraced, lest they be contained