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Mass Movements and Popular Radicalization in Greece

The malaise spreading in Greece since the 2004 Olympics found spectacular expression in the revolt of December 2008, that radicalized the youth. More recently, the public debt crisis hit living standards in ways unimaginable a few years ago, as the government turns the country into a neoliberal hell. It lacks any mandate to do so, but enjoys full support from the media and the right-wing opposition parties. Since the beginning of 2010 wages shrink, unemployment grows by leaps and bounds, taxes go sky-high for everybody but the church and the rich, price rises turn visits to the supermarket into nightmares, utility bills soar, and state property is put for sale at ridiculous prices. Such an attack cannot succeed while politics is done in a democratic frame. Mr. Papandreou has shunned constitutional procedures since May 2010, when the infamous Memorandum authorized austerity to save the bankers. It was imposed by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but its ratification by the Greek Parliament was constitutionally unsound. Since then the Pasok government, whose legitimacy has plummeted, penalized protest and turned more and more openly towards repression. Popular opposition to my measures is not my problem, declared recently our Prime Minister. This aggressive repudiation of government by consent enrages a people with vivid memories of the 1967-74 military junta. The parliamentary Left however failed to tune in with mounting popular disaffection, and remains divided. Synaspismos never dared to question eurozone austerity, while the Communist Party refuses cooperation with groups beyond its control. Disappointing a new generation of activists, both parties shun the struggle against the euro and the repayment of the public debt. So, while the popularity of the neoliberals implodes, the parliamentary Left attracts few and inspires even fewer. For example, its deputies have yet to respond to the rank-and-file calls to participate in the growing tax revolt. Instead of leading the resistance, they dampen it.

Thus, a political space opened up for the appearance of new forms of popular mobilisation, from the bottom up and free from the oversight of political parties. The nonchalance of the official Left and the example of the December 2008 revolt showed to activists that the way forward was popular mobilisation. Combative new trade unions sprung up, and also rank-and-file committees and movements, usually on single issues. In 2009 overcharged utilities bill were the main target; from the beginning of 2010 the focus fell also on highway tolls, and a vibrant movement from north to south of Greece was created. The utility bills issue has by now become explosive. Informal groups, aided by parties of the Left, organise clandestine campaigns to reconnect electricity and water to families whose bills have been left unpaid. Electricity is a social right, notes such a group in Veria, a northern town. The state behaves like a criminal. It has led citizens to penury, and now it condemns them to Third-World style misery. We have rights too, not only the duty to pay and pay again for crooks and bandits. And, most important, we have dignity too. Since last year the spontaneous chase of the fewer and fewer politicos who dare to appear publicly has turned into a popular sport, condemned by government and the media, but applauded by almost everybody else. I was the egg-thrower, declared Marina Dimitriadou, a fragile 33-year old unemployed historian. She threw two eggs at the Minister in charge of the police, when he appeared before his Cretan costituency, in the picturesque town of Rethymno. I spent eight hours in prison because of this! While the Minister, who regularly orders the use of globs and forbidden cancerogenic chemicals against protesters, walks free! Many Greeks share her sentiments, and are keen to imitate her action. But resistance can be much more organised. In Keratea, outside Athens, a real popular revolt of the whole community managed to stop the construction of an illegal landfill, after pitched battles with the police that lasted all winter. Locals, anticapitalists and anarchists, with only marginal help from the official Left, beat the collective might of the oligarchs, the police, and the media. Their victory offered a template of struggle, and slowed

significantly the governments neoliberal attack. At the opposite side of Athens, a similar local movement successfully resists the enclosure of the old Elliniko airport, demanding to turn it into a public park instead. The most popular of all these movements has been the Aganaktismenoi, people from all walks of life gathering since last May in public squares all over Greece, in response to the call of the Spanish Indignados. Their daily meetings at Syntagma, in front of the Parliament, united tens of thousands Greeks and immigrants from all political milieus, most of them mobilizing for the first time in their lives. It has been calculated that perhaps one million participated. Repression, especially brutal in a June night when they almost toppled the government, sent many of them to hospitals, and more to their homes, but increased the determination of most, as well as their sophistication in resisting police attacks. After a summer break, the Aganaktismenoi seem now to regain their dynamism; their slogan, We Owe Nothing, We Sell Nothing, We Pay Nothing, resonates with most Greeks, but has yet to be endorsed by the parliamentary Left. Another mass movement, burgeoning since last September, might prove the detonator of a social explosion. Pupils and students have taken to the streets in their thousands, protesting against the death of public education in the hands of an arrogant Minister. Almost all university schools have been occupied to stop a catastrophic law, voted in unison by Pasok, New Democracy, and the extreme right Laos, that destroys universities subjecting them to neoliberal attrition. A huge pupils movement, protesting savage budget cuts that have left schools without books and heating, is right now in progress. Many hundreds of Gymnasia and Lycaea are in the hands of the pupils, and a general occupation of all schools has been announced for October. A whole generation might get radicalised in the coming months. The most critical protest however focuses on tax resistance, a historically overcharged issue in Greece. Arguably, the country has the most unfair tax system in Europe. According to official data, shipowners contribute to the state coffers much less than immigrants; tax evasion costs a fraction of the tax breaks to the powerful (the church first among them). The tax resistance movement was born in this summer, when a host of blatantly unfair and

confused tax measures caused general uproar. More and more radical every day, it already connects hundreds of rank-and-file committees from acedonia to Crete. The ceremonial burning of tax invoices in public squares, by members of trade unions and groups of protesters of every political hue, has taken by surprise the government, but also the official Left. These single-issue mobilisations, now tending to coalesce into a powerful mass revolt, are important for many reasons. They respond to real needs, that will be more and more pressing as the world financial crisis unfolds; so they will flourish, unless horrible mistakes are made. Uniting people beyond the confines of class, gender, or political affiliation, they create the preconditions for a wide movement that might topple the established order. They radicalize many, and provide spaces for anticapitalist discourse. They form new generations of militants, that might soon tear off the leadership of the Left from the hands of its incompetent current cadres. And last but not least, by creating a crisis of governability, they might soon liberate us all from the satraps of the Troika. It is probable that they, and not the organized Left, will bring down this government. Of course, the authorities are not too relaxed about mass mobilisation. Their reaction was to curtail freedom, often through anticonstitutional laws. For example, when the campaign for the free use of the highways took off, the government changed the law on toll payment, turning into a penal offense what is simply a financial difference between private parties. A complementary option was repression pure and simple. The Aganaktismenoi suffer regular unprovoked attacks by police, who try to reoccupy the squares, while peaceful demonstrators are being beaten blue or gassed. Policemen and judges, obviously under orders from the government, illegally persecute the protesters, be them schooloccupying pupils or inquisitive journalists. Last week Charis Mochlas, chief editor of a Veria newspaper and leading member of the Non Payment movement, was accused by a local Pasok leader for slander, and led straight to prison. But his persecution proved counter-productive, generating a robust solidarity movement. Such actions are, for the pro-government side, toying with fire.

Even more desperate is another move of the government. Knowing that the state cannot suppress a real mass movement, and with the systematic help of mainstream media, it promotes the growth of self-styled nazi groups. The paramilitary Chryssi Avgi has built a local fiefdom in an impoverished neighbourhood of central Athens; with the open support of the police it unleashes pogroms of immigrants and brutal attacks on demonstrators, but seems unable to gain mass following. Only an army coup or a confrontation with Turkey, both ultra high-risk choices, and practically impossible, might temporarily stem the tide of protest now. The Troika and the government started the battle without plan, and even without enough ammunition. The results might soon be felt all over Europe.

Spyros Marchetos teaches History of Ideas at the Political Sciences School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.