The whole of the district of Exarchia is covered in circle A’s. But who the hell are the anarchists?!
In England I feel kinda weird to call myself an anarchist, as if speaking the label out loud will somehow break the spell! It also feels kinda weird because the anarchists are a group out on their own, in poltical terms. So to identify yourself an anarchist is a sign of some separation. There are no similar groups (but if anarchism is not a political ideology, but a way of understanding and responding to the world in practical ways, then the political / theoretical is only one side of it).
But in Greece, there seem to be more political stripes than people. There’s so many variations on the theme that people seem describe their own politics in much more nuanced ways. People who might be happy to lob a Molotov at a bank might not call themselves anarchists (apologies for the clichéd anarchist analogy, but in this case it seems to fit). Perhaps extreme tactics have simply dispersed further.
Anyways, the idea of anarchism seemed to create in my head a political centre from which I wanted to begin to find out about migrant solidarity activism in Athens and became a focus for the kind of questions I asked. And with the 300 hunger strike ending the week before this was often where conversations went. So this is a summary of some conversations in my first days in Athens, about the hunger strike, and about my attempt to find out who the hell the anarchists are...
With the flat hunting ongoing, me and Phil went to look at some furniture that a girl was giving away. She seemed very relaxed and we seemed to get on. Before we left, we got talking about the 300. At this her tone completely changed. "Don’t mention that strike to me!” she replied. She went on to say how the people who had supported the strike had deliberately withheld the strikers from eating in order to reach their political aims. How she understood that migrants were "human beings", but that the situation was much more complicated in Athens than a struggle for the rights of migrants, where the conflicts between migrants and locals were becoming more common and more violent. "You should try living here" she said.
Her response left me baffled. On the one hand the idea of accepting that migrants were human beings was explicitly and mind-blowingly racist! Time to dismiss her views and walk away. But the anarchist posters pinned up in her kitchen made me question if this was the case. I wondered, was it purely racist or was her message - about the complexity of the political situation in Greece and the growing animosity towards migrants in the city (on top of the existing socially acceptable racism) - confused by the wrong use of semantics to explain her views? I left her apartment feeling the sense of a ticking time bomb around me. Aware of the hugeness the social affects migration was having on the city.
The following day I met a girl who had been involved with the supporters of the 300. Supporters had been there every day (and planning for weeks before) on shifts of up to 18 hours. She had been on the night shift and had barely seen daylight for 6 weeks. Now everyone was exhausted. I told her about the reaction to the strike from the previous day. She gave a sigh and an emphatic reply. She said that supporters had shown solidarity with the strikers, who had refused food that doctors were forcing upon them. She thought that it was likely that the girl was an anarchist, and that people who considered themselves as ‘real’ anarchists had contributed little to the strike. They had also been critical of the ‘success’ of the strike, and vocal against the supporters, who they view as reformists. I suggested the anarchists may have been unsupportive because the strike a) appealed to the state for a response and b) used human rights as the basis for their argument. Perhaps the anarchists – referring to theory rather than the self-sacrificial actions of the individuals in front of them - saw the action as a failure? Now there was a divide between the supporters of the strike and the anarchists.
Later in the week I went to the migrants social centre in Exarchia (autonomous social centres are all over the place and are called Stekis) a focal point for many of the supporters of the 300. They were also involved in actions and ways of organising that could be considered anarchist (the way the Steki was organised - horizontally, through cooperation and mutual aid – as well as the other activities of the Steki, such as their deep involvement in previous NoBorder camps, or organising an autonomous anti-racist festival every year), but they didn’t consider themselves anarchists.
So, I could find people who talked about their involvement in migrant solidarity in ways that I would call anarchist. But so far, no anarchists!
Do these little thoughts say more about my lack of understanding of Greek politics (or lack of understanding of the differences with UK politics) than it does about the lack of activity of anarchists and others? Does it simply show that I haven’t met that many people yet?!
Why does it have to be the anarchists? What do the labels matter?
Perhaps I can’t find them because they’re all hidden away in dark rooms, holding six hour consensus meetings. Joke.
More info on the hunger strike:
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