On the 6th of December 2008, 15-year old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead by police in Athens after an 'altercation'. What followed, was the largest and most wide-spread civil unrest in Europe since 1968. Initial news reports gave little or no suggestion as to the underlying reasons for these riots, merely citing it as an extreme reaction to the actions of the police in killing a young boy. An article by Ed Vulliamy and Helena Smith in yesterday's (22/02/2009) Observer magazine offers solutions to the unanswered questions surrounding the bizarre and clearly significant circumstances in Greece late last year. Protests spread all over Athens, to other parts of Greece, to other major European nations including Russia, Latvia, Bulgaria and Iceland as well as Brazil to give an impression to the scale of this unrest. This, then can not be about the un-lawful shooting of a 15-year old boy on the streets of Athens, riots of the scale we have seen last December indicate dissidence with deep roots in Greek, and indeed Global, society.
Inside what is properly known as the Faculty of Philosophy, Psychology, Pedagogy, Music and Mathematics, students discuss the origins of the uprising, and its causes. Rising unemployment is a driving force of unrest, students at the University talk about short-term contracts, "outsourcing", work without security or representation, of the impossibility of finding a good job unless connected in a client system of patronage and who-you-know. But what of society, more generally speaking? "Society has the face of freedom and choice," says Angeliki. "But that is all it is, a facade. This bad job or that bad job, this rubbish on television or that rubbish on television, this product or that product. We are rebelling against that false choice".
It is starting to become more clear where the sources for this unrest lies, it is not a protest against anything that is 'uniquely Greek' but instead an an expression against a postmodern society perforated with mass consumerism and globalised capitalism. There is indeed little coincidence that these riots took place at the time when it was becoming increasingly obvious that we were entering a global economic crisis, the 'culture of greed' of what we have heard so much recently was a cornerstone of what drove citizens to the streets of Athens. Greece, is not the only country however to be affected by this situation, this is indeed a global recession. Why then, where the Greek people have been motivated to the realms of revolutionary proportions, have the rest of us done nothing (?). Where were the people of Iceland, Bulgaria and Latvia before their inevitable economic crashes (?), meanwhile here in Britain, although we sit and grumble about it all and arrange civil debates to wind the subject round in a knot, little to nothing has been actually done in order to achieve a solution to these issues.
For the answers, we may look to Greece's past; historically Greece has been a hot-spot for political debate, discourse and protest; riots are not unknown in Athens, one may recall the restoration of Democracy in 1974; not to mention the fact that Greece is the birthplace of philosophy, a practice which has its roots in debating the origins of existence, knowledge and truth.
One of the leaders of the demonstrations is interviewed in the Observer article: "We are at one extreme edge of Europe, but not really part of Europe, and you are at the opposite edge, but also not part of Europe. Here, an uprising, there... nothing. Though the violence is the same in your country, in fact it's much worse. But you commit it against each other; knife crime, drunken fights and gangs. Here, we challenge the state and the banks, not each other. This is to do with consumption," she continues. "In 1975, Greece was promised the benefits of capitalism, but never really got to sample them like you did. We never had the delusion of wealth for the masses, of mass consumerism, which is now causing your crisis, but which neutralises you in a way. Your violence is about consumption: alcohol, drugs, television and clubbing. But we're not drunk or stoned, and we have just been tear-gassed on a demonstration, not in a nightclub. This is not a gang fight, it is a fight against the state".
Previous rebellions have been against a military junta (1967-1974), "There are similarities between then and now. The means of control have changed, and people enjoy a perception of freedom, but we would argue that the colonels were less powerful than a shopping mall, and in this way, Greece has turned another page in its history with this insurrection. Greece is a society in which individual rights were never established. This uprising has given people who were never part of our movement a new understanding of what it means to be who they are."
"There was a complete lack of political culture in the place," says Giorgos Sotiropoulos, who worked as part of the technical support team. "A call centre is as alienated as you can get. It's insidious. You're pitched against your co-worker by the fact that the supervisor is counting how many sales you make in how many calls and minutes. So it really mattered that it was a call centre we occupied, because the kind of enemy this insurrection in Greece is fighting is typified by this work. The enemy is amorphous, it is virtual, and that makes fighting it far more challenging than fighting a junta of colonels. Our enemy is a society which offers procedural freedom, and perceived freedom, but no physical, substantive freedom. But this situation is not irreversible, and we demonstrate this by finding a way of being free through uprising.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/22/civil-unrest-athens
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