Distilling the Proper Role of Anarchy

June 7, 2020

As a follow up to our recent dispatch about?‘Systemic Racism’ in the US, it seems worthwhile to provide some color commentary and make comparisons to Greece and to illustrate how riots work in both places.

Exarchia is part of downtown Athens, a region that connects the chi-chi area of Lycabettus, where rich Greeks with pedigrees reside, to the University area in Athens. It’s a mid-point where most of the violence occurs, pitting police and military officers against university students who have nothing to lose.?

The last statement requires some explanation.?For years, Greek universities, by law, have been ‘no-go zones,’ that is, police are forbidden to enter the grounds of universities to arrest students or monitor activity.?This history is complicated and it stems back to the Greek Junta, the military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1967 to 1974, and was supported by the US government.?

Near the end of that era, on one occasion, the junta gave orders to the military to enter the perimeter of the selected university campuses in Athens, to control the rioting and to make arrests. Instead of Churchill's 'jaw-jaw,' the Junta did it with tanks and heavy weaponry, and dozens of students and outsiders died in the clashes.?For the USA, it was a political disaster.?

As Wikipedia describes it, “The United States took a clandestine interest in suppressing Socialists and had a C.I.A. operative named John Maury who was in consultation supporting the Junta Leaders. American Vice President Spiro Agnew praised the Junta as "the best thing to happen to Greece since Pericles ruled in ancient Athens." (I kid you not; these were his words).

In short, the only saving grace for this situation was that Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was of Greek origin himself, and complicit in supporting the Junta, along with such notables as Henry Kissinger, the wind beneath American’s wings abroad. Of course, we know how this sorry story ended: Nixon left office in disgrace, Agnew was forced to resign for tax fraud, and the brilliant British journalist Christopher Hitchens continued to haunt Henry Kissinger until Hitchens’s death in 2011.

At the time, Hitchens was one of the cheerleaders for the student movement…and the overthrow of the Junta.

I met Hitchens in Chicago a few years before doctors discovered his cancer, and all I said to melt his heart was “I live in Thessaloniki, Greece.” He hated Henry Kissinger, as he hated many, including Mother Teresa.?But Hitchens was usually spot-on in his assessment of human nature, as well as the issues, and he loved Greece.?For me, Hitchens is the modern day parallel to Lord Byron, who some 200 years earlier helped liberate the Greeks from the wrath of the Ottomans.?Hitchens hated the Junta and loved the city where I live and, more recently, was one of the bright lights for his monitoring of events during the carnage in the former Yugoslavia.?He was a brilliant reporter, and he knew the situation intimately.?His passing back in 2011 was a tragedy for the world.?He alone had the ability and credibility to put passion, politics and history into words, and he would have delivered us from the nonsense we are experiencing today. He was to word what Philip Seymour was to acting, and the world is poorer for their absence.

As I mentioned in a previous article, I have an small apartment in a 6-story complex in Exarchia, at the epicenter of much of the rioting and Molotov cocktails foreigners see and read about in the news.?Fortunately, it’s on the top floor, so much of the noise and damage is out of reach of most protesters when they decide to cause havoc, usually at night.?I keep a gas mask hanging behind the bedroom door, because when police shoot off this sort of gas, it tends to rise, and it hangs in great concentrations on the top floors.

One funny sidebar that ties into the recent riots in Washington DC. This week, the national media in the US suggested that local police and the National Guard were firing tear gas into the crowds. In fact, it turns out the alleged 'gas' was smoke canisters. In Exarchia, when you approach a policeman, you see the aluminum gas canisters hanging from their vests, with Hebrew lettering, reinforcing to rioters the perils of forcing police to shoot tear gas. Israeli gas has a reputation for extreme potency, many times stronger than your typical US variant.

Over time, we get to know our local police, who stand vigil over the neighborhood.?For us, they’re an important connection to the next incident of rioting, and a time when we may have to put our cars into closed parking, underground, for safety. Any weekend evening could be open season for anarchy, so I ask my local police about the signals they're picking up from social media.?“Anything expected tonight?” I will ask as I pass them to buy a pint of milk at my local grocer. Usually they say no. But if they nod to the affirmative it means I need to get my car out of harm’s way, and quickly, and plan on shopping early.?After 8pm, all bets are off.?The image of Beirut Lebanon in 1970s is apt for what we often see on the streets the next morning when we exit our house to buy bread and eggs. It's carnage on a level that makes you wonder in which country you reside.

But amazingly, the local businesses have learned to be resilient.?When the police give the order, the electronic metal shutters come down over the storefronts, and patrons head home. As with a tornado, everyone feels the storm is coming, but they don’t know from where. The city comes around to collect the garbage bins, so nothing burns or melts, and we wait for the onslaught from above.

Amazingly, when the Molotovs have burned out, and the anarchists have left in masse for another part of Athens, security barriers on the stores will roll up, shop owners will open again, bars and bistros will put out their tables and chairs, and street cleaners may even wash down the collected debris and burned damage, so that everything looks normal again.?And city life resumes, unabated, as if nothing happened. All within an hour or two. This twisted liturgy reoccurs regularly, on weekends, in Exarchia.

Some similarities exist between self-styled anarchists in Athens and, say, Seattle or New York.?After one riotous spree in Exarchia, a woman who had closed her store, told me the tell-tale signs of anarchists.?The photo at the top—of a young college student in the US who was caught on camera last week and hauled into the police station--by his rich parents!—gives a tell-tale sign of typical anarchists in both Exarchia and in New York.?

The restaurateur in Exarchia explained it to me. “These kids have two distinctive characteristics you can see immediately,” she explained.?“They have great hair cuts—you can tell they've spent some money at high-end stylists.?And they have expensive shoes.”?She summarized her experience, “They come from expensive neighborhoods outside of Athens, and recruit local kids to do the dirty work.” It sounds like civil war/retribution theory, where the outsiders stir up trouble but force the locals to take up measures to fight the war.

What separates Exarchia from New York or Los Angeles or Seattle, is anarchists here don’t loot. Yes, there is destruction of private business, but anarchists usually focus on the pure form of burning everything down, usually on the exteriors, along with adding new layers of graffiti. They will also break a few windows. But unless anarchists perceive an enemy of the people among them--a business they single out for retribution because of non-payment of social security or wages or overtime--they won't loot.?The word gets around among workers, and those businesses that don’t meet up to the high standards of the anarchists can suffer dreadfully. In some cases the rioters cause so much destruction, the business has no choice but to close down for good.

This tango between anarchists, businesses and local residents is a dance like no other.?It defines local business, holds it accountable for any lack of principle, and makes a statement that sends a message to the neighborhood that it means business.?Clean up your act, defend the defenseless, or else!?

But most of all, looting as experienced in the US has come to represent a kind of ‘cheap grace,’ as defined by the German Priest Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who plotted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the last days of World War II, and was hung for his crime.?In Exarchia, nothing comes cheap, and looting for looting’s sake is an insult to the greater ‘cause.’?

Compare and contrast this mentality to what we see in some major cities in the US these days, where looting is indiscriminate and the cause is weaker than one might imagine.?It’s a low-class expression of what in Greece is a high brow sentiment.?