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streets. In short, political polarisation in Greece has accompanied economic polarisation and dislocation. Away from the parliamentary battles over votes and seats, graffiti heralding the resurgence of another actor in the drama of Greek politics similarly express political polarisation: ‘Fuck May 68’, the walls scream, ‘Fight Now!’ Discussed in detail in later chapters, this is a call to arms from the world’s most militant anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement. This book is centrally concerned with this movement and its contemporary form, dynamics and internal
austerity measures is a continual concern for the Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian space. Such manifestations of human misery, combined with Greece’s long history of radical politics and regime change, has inspired both resistance and a belief in the real possibility of alternative political realities. The Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement has been at the forefront in imagining and fighting for these alternative realities. This Conclusion revisits and summarises what I have learned about the movement, its internal constitution, dynamics and
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.
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
processes of collective identity within the space are partly generated through negotiations and interactions around these issues, which are explored more fully in the following chapter. Gender and sexuality A constant tension within the movement relates to the politics of gender and sexuality. In her article on sexism in the Greek anarchist and anti- authoritarian movement, Sissy Doutsiou argues that we should not assume the space is going to be immune from sexist behaviour just because it is an anarchist and anti-authoritarian milieu. The actors within the space
, 2012). In my case and for three main reasons, I found pursuing these suggestions fraught with complexities to the point at which I had to develop my own strategies to participate politically. First, because of time restraints I was unable to establish the credentials and degrees of trust necessary for taking on particularly overt roles, such as those suggested by Juris. The Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement is a complex network of loosely connected affinity groups, bound by friendship and trust forged in countless collective actions. It requires
militant unionist in the 1930s (Ταμτάκος, 2003; Vradis and Dalakoglou, 2009: 126). Attracted to anarchism in the 1940s this, as Tina drily observed, ‘put him in a rather precarious position during the war [World War II], despised by the communists, the collaborators and the Germans’. This predicament led to his fleeing Greece and eventually ending up in Australia for 15 years. He returned to Greece in the mid-1960s and became active within Thessaloniki’s anarchist and anti- authoritarian movement. Only The early years of Greek anarchism 77 Vasili, Yianni, Andreas
interaction that inflicts physical damage on persons and/or objects’, as defined by the perpetrator and the aggrieved party. This more aptly conveys Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian sentiments on street-protest violence. As I have already pointed out, there is nothing pacifist about the Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement’s attitudes to street- protests. No one I interviewed supports an exclusive ethos of non-violent street-protests. Even those who advocate non-violent action (on occasion) felt it necessary to justify violence as a legitimate
European Parliament. Titley called the bombings an unjustified “attack on democracy … [likely] from an Italian anarchist group” (BBC 2004). In response to the six mailed IEDs, the Italian city of Bologna halted the delivery of parcels from the region to European institutions such as European Union administrative bodies (BBC 2003d). The FAI (2003) explained their motivation in a communiqué entitled “Open Letter to the Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian Movement.” This document serves to announce the FAI to the world, to begin to develop its methodology for attack, and to
and negotiated processes of identity construction relating to the ‘field of opportunities and constraints offered to collective action’ (Melucci, 1985: 793). Still, this is a set of tools whose usefulness for understanding social movements is only made manifest through fieldwork and engaging with the activists themselves. To this end, later chapters put these conceptual tools to work, providing a lens through which to gain a better understanding of the Athenian anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement. Before discussing those more concrete findings, however, it is