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Joseph Catron wrote: > "At a nocturnal meeting of 300 black-clad anarchists here several days ago, > radicals were plotting a demonstration against government austerity > measures. But the air was thick with something other than the usual > cigarette smoke and revolution: self-doubt." > > http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559004575256390346656722.html > The article is limited to subscribers. Here's the whole thing. Keep in mind that the reporters at the WSJ do not necessarily share the ultraright viewpoint of management: ATHENS--At a nocturnal meeting of 300 black-clad anarchists here several days ago, radicals were plotting a demonstration against government austerity measures. But the air was thick with something other than the usual cigarette smoke and revolution: self-doubt. An anti-government demonstration involving radicals earlier this month had turned ugly. Unknown assailants firebombed a bank building on May 5, leading to the deaths of three bank employees, including a pregnant young woman. Authorities haven't named any suspects but are investigating whether the culprits were among the anarchist youths who rampaged that day. The killings shocked Greece, and are, at least for now, prompting soul-searching among the country's militant fringe and the many ordinary Greeks who long have quietly sympathized with it. "We should think about canceling" participation in the next demonstration, a young woman told the shadowy conclave. "In marches of this kind there could be violent incidents," she told the gathering, held in a graffiti-covered university auditorium the anarchists had occupied. The continued agonizing over the May 5 killings was apparent during Greece's latest general strike on Thursday. Roughly 20,000 union members marched through Athens, a fraction of the more than 100,000 who took to the streets the day of the murders. In the end, the anarchists also took part in Thursday's protests, but turnout was modest, and those who did participate were peaceful. "It's a shock. We always thought of ourselves as people who are victims, not people who create victims," says Panagiotis, an edgy 30-year-old who helps organize cultural events within the anarchist scene and condemns the killings. Like most members of the movement, he would only gave his first name. The specter of chaos in the streets is stalking Europe as the continent pushes sharp cutbacks to social spending to repair battered state finances. But in Greece, epicenter of the European debt crisis, some anarchists fear they have given the hated austerity measures a helping hand. The arsonists' "stupidity," says Panagiotis, has helped the government and the media discredit the street protests and push through pay and pension cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund for bailing out the Greek government. Images of mayhem in Athens have spurred fears of social unrest spreading to Spain, Portugal and other crisis-hit euro countries. That may yet happen. But the complex reality is that even in Greece--a country with a tradition of resistance to its rulers--many people are turning against violent street protests they view as excessive. Opinion polls since May 5 show 54% of Greeks believe the tough austerity measures are necessary to avert national bankruptcy, while 74% think strikes and protests should be kept to a "rational" level. Even many opponents of "ta metra" or "the measures," as the cuts are known here, say they don't expect to overturn them. "This is not a city ready to revolt," says Leonidas Bentrouvakis, a historian who helped lead a student uprising at the Polytechnic university in 1973, when the enemy was Greece's military junta rather than an elected government. "There is a deflation of protests now," he says. If that trend holds, Greece's government has a much better chance of sticking to its austerity course. The political crisis is far from having passed. Many in Greece say street anger could yet reach a boiling point as recession deepens later this year amid the cutbacks. Greece's anarchists are the modern incarnation of a rebel tradition, dating back to mountain brigands who fought the Ottoman Empire and World War II, when Greece had one of the biggest guerrilla movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. Anarchists believe a free society requires abolishing the state, and they rebel against all authority and ruling power. In Greece, the leaderless network includes classical anarchists who read Russian radical thinkers such as Bakunin and Kropotkin, libertarians influenced by American counterculture, anti-authoritarians, squatters, autonomists, situationists, insurrectionists, and more. Few are pacifists. But in the past, violence was "not blind," says Panagiotis, with actions targeted at state and corporate buildings rather than innocent workers. For more than 30 years, Greece's anarchists have carried on a tradition of resistance to the state by the youth of Athens. In the 1960s, a flood of youth into universities and the example of student-protest movements in the U.S., France and elsewhere turned the elite Polytechnic university, housed in neoclassical buildings in Athens' Exarchia neighborhood, into a center of radical ferment. Greek politics was entering a turbulent phase. A military junta backed by the U.S. seized power in 1967, partly to stop the political rise of Andreas Papandreou, a left-wing firebrand whose slogan "Greece is for the Greeks" fed U.S. concern that Athens would no longer be a reliable Cold War ally. Most Greeks disliked the junta but few risked taking action--except for young radicals. In November 1973, students, workers, anarchists and other youths joined a sit-in at the Polytechnic, singing Cretan rebel songs and broadcasting calls to topple the junta across Athens on improvised radio equipment. Army tanks crushed the uprising on Nov. 17, killing 24 and injuring hundreds. But the junta found itself isolated and fell in 1974. Today's anarchists draw much of their legitimacy from those three days in 1973, says Mr. Bentrouvakis, the historian. Many Greeks felt guilty about not doing enough to resist the junta, adding to the mystique of youthful radicalism, he says. Assorted leftists ranging from trade unionists to anarchists, as well as many in the broader public, commemorate the uprising every Nov. 17 with a march ending at the U.S. embassy. The Polytechnic has become a no-go zone for police and a safe haven for anarchists, who like to meet in the university's steeply sloping auditorium that was occupied by young workers in November 1973. A new uprising broke out in December 2008, when police shot a 15-year-old student in Exarchia, setting off days of rioting that paralyzed Athens. Anarchists hoped the events were the start of the revolution. Instead, the unrest attracted hooligans who were simply keen to fight the police, say longtime anarchists. The May 5 killings occurred in a bank branch in the heart of Athens, during a massive workers' demonstration against austerity policies. That day, the shock of the IMF bailout package, which includes demands for deep cuts to public spending, energized a previously sputtering protest movement. Straight-laced public servants united with diehard Communists and unruly anarchists. Rocks and gasoline bombs flew through the hot afternoon air, police batons and teargas struggled to stop a furious crowd from invading parliament. Anarchists led the singing of a Cretan rebel song that was also an anthem of the '73 uprising: "When will the stars come out...so I can take my gun..." Vassilis Chatziakovou was guarding the bookstore he manages on Stadiou street, opposite the Marfin Egnatia Bank branch, as the march passed. Even "old, conservative people," intoxicated with anger, took up anarchist chants such as "Same bosses, left or right" and "Burn down the parliament," he says. Mr. Chatziakovou, 45, says he is ideologically an anarchist--he was an activist in the 1980s--and has taken part in street protests himself. But parts of this march had lost touch with reality, he says: "These people were experiencing a utopian vision." At 2 p.m., a masked man smashed the glass door of his bookshop. Two others threw Molotov cocktails inside. Mr. Chatziakovou and two of his friends were ready with fire extinguishers and prevented the store's mostly-paper content from catching fire. He says a third attacker in a gasmask, brandishing a new kind of plastic Molotov, confronted him and shouted: "Drop the extinguisher, I'm going to burn you anyway!" Mr. Chatziakovou and his friends bundled the man out of the shop. The bookseller saw the nearly simultaneous attack on the bank branch across the road, by individuals who, authorities suspect, belong to the anarchist movement. Two masked men with sledgehammers smashed the bank's windows, while others poured gasoline onto the floor and threw Molotov cocktails. Black smoke quickly engulfed the building. Mr. Chatziakovou knew the staff at the bank, who sometimes dropped by for books. One was Angeliki Papathanasopoulou, 32, who was four months pregnant. "I feared they would burn like mice," he says. Security-camera footage from inside the bank shows Nondas Tsakalis, a 36-year-old loan manager, hugging the floor as the first gasoline bomb explodes. Nine seconds later, the tape shows only smoke. Mr. Tsakalis was found later on a staircase, burned and asphyxiated. Other staff escaped the thick smoke by climbing across balconies to an adjacent building. Ms. Papathanasopoulos and her colleague Paraskevi Zoulia, 35, didn't make it and suffocated. News of the deaths filtered through part of the demonstration, which thinned out as some people went home in shock. The funerals became national events. Greek media filmed as Ms. Zoulia's distraught mother, propped up by relatives, wailed: "My child! My child!" The victims represented a generation of Greeks trying to build a career through their own effort, avoiding the route of using connections to get an easy life in the civil service, says Stephen Stavros, a friend of Mr. Tsakalis since their childhood on the island of Lefkas. All three came from islands or the provinces, and did graduate studies in the U.K. before joining the bank. Mr. Tsakalis, a quiet and courteous man, "was living his dream. He was happy, and he was doing exactly what he wanted," says Mr. Stavros. "Nondas was against the Greek system, where a lot of society is based on corruption. He got where he was by himself, through work. That's why it's even sadder that he fell victim," Mr. Stavros says. Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou, son of the former left-wing populist toppled in the early 1970s, appealed soon after the deaths for a calmer response to the economic crisis, saying: "A demonstration is one thing and murder is quite another." A day after the killings, amid national mourning, Greece's parliament passed IMF measures that include pay cuts of 20% or more for public-sector workers, with only muted protests in the street. Many anarchists are debating the deaths in the squats, cafes and other hangouts around town, particularly in Exarchia, the lively, scruffy neighborhood around the Polytechnic. Some activists now worry the violence is losing focus as the influence grows of youths who don't belong to any ideological faction, but just want to fight with police. "There are some parts of this movement that think we need the wild, angry young people in the streets," says Marina, a 38-year-old veteran of the squatters' movement, part of the anarchist network. "That's why we often tolerate them, but I don't agree with this." In recent days, passersby have stopped at the burned-out bank branch to read notices posted over a barricade of flowers for the dead, topped by teddy bears. "Fake anarchists, shame on you," say the hand-written messages: "Now run and hide." Alkman Granitsas contributed to this article ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
