Teach me to dance.
Did you say... dance?
Come on, my boy.
System Fail
Oh hello, welcome to system fail
the show where the past casts
its long shadow upon the present .
My Big fat Greek citizenship!
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are now citizens of Greece.
How do you feel being a citizen?
Well, as long as I don't have
to serve in the army.
Do I have to serve in the army?
in the army?
Ah! Something bit me!
Wilson!
My name is Dee DOS
and it's often said that Greece
is the birthplace of democracy.
Democracy was invented
by the ancient Greeks, so was the idea
of being a citizen with the right to vote
Overrated.
Malaka!
And to this day, the Mediterranean nation continues to serve as a laboratory
for new methods of social control.
Over the past decade, Greece has found itself on the frontline
of multiple crises converging on the European subcontinent.
And the liberal democracies of the so-called West.
The Greek crisis began in late 2009...
- 25% contraction in the economy...
- limits on bank transfers and daily cash withdrawals...
- suicide rates increased dramatically...
The biggest migrant crisis Europe has faced since the Second World War
hitting the country which is least equipped to deal with it.
The referendum to vote 'yes to Europe' or 'no to austerity.'
Many members of Tsipras' left-wing Syriza party see it as a betrayal.
These crises and their prescribed solutions
have taken a significant
toll on the Greek population.
In July of 2019,
Greek citizens expressed
their disillusionment with the broken promise of Syriza
selecting the far-right Néa Dimokratía or New Democracy into power
with a significant parliamentary majority.
The country's current Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Comes from a multigenerational political dynasty.
He's the son of the former Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis.
Mitsotakis ran his campaign on a law and order platform
promising to take Greece back from ts famously combative anarchist movement.
Once in power, he quickly sought to make good on that promise.
In Athens, Mitsotakis launched a direct attack on the anarchist stronghold of Exarchia.
Evicting a number of long term squats, beginning with those housing refugees.
He was aided in this campaign by his nephew, Kostas Bakoyannis, the newly-installed mayor of Athens.
And his so-called Minister of Citizens Protection Michalis Chrysohoidis
- a longtime foe of Greece's anarchist movement
who survived an assassination attempt in 2010.
In the year and a half that has followed.
More squats and anarchist spaces have been raided elsewhere in Athens
as well as in Thessaloniki
and Chania, on the island of Crete.
This repression has only increased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Democracy has cynically used the public health crisis
as an excuse to impose a wide-ranging state of exception upon greek society.
This has included an expansion of state powers under the guise of public safety.
Along with some of the most punishing lockdown conditions in all of Europe.
With schools closed, Mitzotakis has moved
forward with plans to develop a new university police force.
Building on earlier efforts to revoke the so-called University Asylum Law.
Which had long barred police and security forces from University campuses.
The asylum law was originally implemented in response to the 1973 massacre of dozens of students
at Athens Polytechnic
by the Greek military junta
and was widely understood as a symbol of the country's transition
from dictatorship to democracy.
Greece has now been under full lockdown since November,
with the exception of a month-long easing of conditions in December
in order to allow for Christmas shopping.
The current lockdown order includes a strict ban on public protests of any kind.
Anyone leaving their house for one of the six officially approved justifications
has to first text the state for permission
and then show their confirmation to police when stopped.
On top of this pass system, there's also a nationwide curfew in place.
Which has been rigorously enforced in working-class, Roma, and immigrant neighborhoods.
From November to March 22nd, the curfew was 7:00 PM.
It is since being extended to 9.
♫ Screamin’ Fuck Curfew!
Fuck a Curfew!
What the world comin to? What it comin to?
Screaming fuck curfew ♫
Fuck You.
Amidst this backdrop of simmering social tensions,
several events have combined to produce a wave of outrage that has swept across Greek society.
The first has been a series of high profile sexual assault scandals
that have been aptly described as the Greek Me Too, movement.
This long overdue reckoning began on January 20th, when former Olympic gold medalist Sofia Bekatorou
shared her experiences of being sexually assaulted by her former coach Aristidis Adamopoulos.
This scandal soon spread to Greece's political and cultural elite.
When a steady stream of actors began coming forward to announce that they'd been sexually assaulted
by the director of Greece's National Theatre, Dimitris Lignadis
- a man with direct ties to the Mitsotakis family
and other prominent members of the Greek ruling classes.
Several of these actors had been children when Lignadis raped them.
It took two weeks after the allegations were made public for Lignadis to be arrested.
Ample time for him to destroy any incriminating evidence in his possession.
The Greek mainstream media, which is almost entirely
owned and operated by fawning supporters of Mitsotakis and a New Democracy,
tried their best to bury the story,
and when that failed, they turned to attacking the credibility of the accusers.
This sleazy and clumsy attempt at a cover up
provoked a massive backlash in popular opinion,
leading to a growing crisis of legitimacy for the media and the New Democracy regime.
As this was all unfolding, fury was also growing over
the government's handling of a hunger strike
launched by political prisoner, Dimitris Koufodinas on January 8th.
Following his transfer to the high-security Domokos Prison
in violation of Greek law and the terms of his sentence.
Koufodinas is considered the primary executioner of the 17th of November.
An armed Marxist group named after the date of the 1973 massacre at the Athens Polytechnic.
The group was active from 1975 to 2002.
During this time they carried out a series of assassinations, bombings, and attacks against Greek banks,
politicians and businessmen, former officials of the military dictatorship
and American, Turkish, and British interests.
It's well known that Mitsotakis and his entire family hate Koufodinas.
Back in 1989, he assassinated Mitsotakis’ brother-in-law,
and the father of the current mayor of Athens, Pavlos Bakoyannis.
Among the group’s other victims were Athens CIA station chief, Richard Welch.
The first time that any CIA station chief in the world had been assassinated.
And a number of prominent members of the Greek military junta including its primary torturer, Evangelos Mallios.
Unsurprisingly, the 17th of November was declared a terrorist organization by the US State Department
and a number of other governments.
The United States does not negotiate with terrorists. Its been our bedrock principle for 25 years.
Nevertheless, the group has long enjoyed a considerable level of popular support - particularly from the Greek left.
Soon after announcing his hunger strike, Koufontinas was joined by high profile
anarchist prisoners, Nikos Maziotis of Revolutionary Struggle.
Giannis Dimitrakis,
Polykarpos Georgiadis
and Vaggelis Stathopoylos
who all coordinated limited hunger strikes in solidarity.
As the days and weeks dragged on
and it became clear that Mitsotakis was happy to let Koufontinas starve to death.
Demonstrations, international solidarity actions, and clandestine attacks began to pick up steam.
Within this context, on March 7th police were filmed beating
a peaceful student in the neighborhood of Nea Smirni.
The incident wasn't reported on by Greek media,
but it went viral on social media
where more and more people were now turning for their news.
Anarchists called a demo for the evening of March 9th.
5000 people responded to this call.
Kicking off some of the most intense rioting that Greece has seen in years.
In the midst of the chaos,
a member of Greece is notoriously brutal Delta Squad was dragged from his motorcycle
and savagely beaten by an angry mob.
The next night, two anarchists were snatched off the street,
black bagged, and taken to the Attica General Police Directorate
- the Central Police Headquarters in Athens - where they were viciously tortured.
On March 14th, after 66 days and at death's door, Koufontinas called off his hunger strike.
Since then, the pace of demonstrations and attacks has slowed down.
But the situation in Greece is still quite dynamic,
and there's a palpable sense that things could kick back off at any moment.
So to get a better understanding about the situation, I recently sat down
with Athens based Anarchist and member of the Void Network, Tasos Sagris.
Hey Tasos How's it going?
Personally, I'm closed in the house for a long time now
and we are not allowed to work because I work as a theater director, so the theaters are closed.
So we are in the process of playing the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka... and we are not allowed to play it.
That all sounds pretty Kafkaesque.
Could you briefly explain the context for the hunger strike waged by Koufontinas and why their struggle
has resonated with many anarchists in Greece?
The 17th of November is a group of ultra-left that appeared after the dictatorship of '74.
They are not anarchists, so for us it's not a strictly political solidarity,
but it is mainly like a human solidarity towards a prisoner.
For a political prisoner, the last tool to attack the state is the hunger strike.
So in that way, he used the final tool to attack the state and to expose their state brutality.
And this attracted a solidarity movement that came from the anarchists,
but also from the leftists.
These small demonstrations, in the beginning, were attacked very brutally by the police.
And then, slowly slowly, more and more people were coming to the demonstrations.
And this situation attracted the focus of the people,
and made visible the situation in the prisons and the situation of the political prisoners.
So no matter if he's a comrade or not, for us the most important thing is that he started a struggle against the state,
and he succeeded somehow, to expose the state brutality.
New democracy has now been waging a concerted war on Greece's anarchist movement for the better part of two years now.
How has this affected the character of the social war in Greece, and what effect has this had on comrades there?
First we have to understand: What is New Democracy, as a political party, you know?
New Democracy was a political party created from the right wing after the dictatorship in '74.
The creator, Konstantinos Karamanlis, succeeded to unite in the same political party,
the main core of the party (he was a part of it also)
the populistic right, and also the liberals - the neoliberals of that time -
and also the patriotic right.
So you have to understand... in Greece we have a peculiar situation.
Like, for example, in France the bourgeoisie tells you to vote for Macron,
because otherwise Le Pen will come into the government.
Here, Macron and Le Pen are in the same political party.
So when this party is united, it's very difficult to fight back because all the elements of the right wing are united.
The difference is that it is the first time in Greece that the neoliberal side of this party is governing.
And they are affiliated with the far right - the patriotic side of the party.
This produces a very difficult situation for the anarchists,
because for the first time we have a very strong neoliberal and neo-fascist government
fighting the anarchists - without the existence of people in the streets.
Without being in a period of social uprising or social movements.
New Democracy attacks our social centres; attacks our squats; attacks the squares; attacks public space.
And at the same time, this New Democracy government
takes advantage of the lockdown to change the law about work,
change the law about syndicates [unions],
change the law about how you start a general strike,
change the law about how you organize demonstration in the streets.
There are some demonstrations together with the left - with the ultra left -
we had some big demonstrations. And I hope that they will be stronger and bigger.
But the general society is feeling scared because of COVID. So it's not like a normal situation, you know?
You have the worst-case scenario government, enforcing the worst case measures and laws.
In a period where the people feel afraid to be in the streets and to mobilize and to demonstrate.
What are your thoughts on Mitsotakis' repeal of the University Asylum Law and his plans to implement a new University police force?
The law that we had in Greece
was that there was an asylum against the police. That the police could not go inside the universities.
And first they destroyed this law.
The police now have the right to come into the university
if there is criminal activity or something like this.
But now they've gone further, and established a permanent presence of the police inside the universities.
It is the first European country that we will have police - official police - inside the universities.
This gives the right to the riot police to go fight against the students inside the universities.
So in the next weeks we will have an intensification of this struggle,
and we are expecting like the revolt of the students.
This measure also doesn’t have the support of the teachers and the presidents of the universities.
Because the presidents and the teachers understand that the the permanent existence of the police
inside the universities produces a chaotic situation every moment of every day.
You know, you can have riots or fights between the students and the police inside the universities every day.
So this destroys the educational process.
I don't know if we're going to succeed, you know, to defend the universities as public spaces.
But it is a main struggle that will take place over the next year in Greece.
It's also very important to us to defend anarchist groups,
and also the spaces of anarchist groups inside the universities.
These are areas of struggle, and of course they will be the first target of the presence of the police inside the university.
Anything else you'd like to add?
I Think that we've come to a point where the social crisis is so strong all around the world
that somehow we have to find an anarchist way to unite.
Because as long as we stay in our small circles with only people that we agree with,
it's not possible to produce anarchist revolution.
And if our planet is to produce global emancipation - and to produce conditions of social revolt and social revolution -
I think that we have to produce parallel movements.
This means that we have to end the dogmatism,
and we have to end the sectarianism and to find ways to coordinate. To produce situations of resonance of the movement, you know?
And also coordination. And to respect the difference of the methodologies.
To come to a point where we sincerely feel comradeship with anarchists who don't have the same methodologies.
I think that the big moment for anarchists is now. Because all around the world people face the same problems.
Neoliberalism is a global movement that fights against the people.
And so the people need to coordinate and organize to fight against the state and capital.
And the anarchists, they are crucial in this struggle.
Because we've mobilized for two hundred years now, okay? We've had analysis for two hundred years now.
After May of 68, the anarchist movement has become stronger, year after year.
And now it's come to the point to say what we're gonna do with our disagreements.
This I have to add. We have to find an anarchist way to solve our disagreements.
Thank you very much and I hope we will meet soon at the barricades. Here and wherever.
Thanks Tasos.
We've now reached the end of this episode of System Fail.
You can catch the full interview with Tasos on an upcoming episode of the Circle A podcast,
and check out some of his writings at the Void Network's website: VOIDNETWORK.GR
To support imprisoned comrades in Greece,
consider making a donation to the Solidarity Fund For Imprisoned Persecuted Revolutionaries at TAMEIO.ORG
or via Firefund, at firefund.net/solidarfund
for English language updates
on the social war in Greece, check out actforfree.noblogs.org, or EnoughIsEnough14.org.
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Godspeed humans.