Huge Popular Uprisings in Greece: The Revolt of the Aganaktismeni

By YORGOS MITRALIAS

http://www.counterpunch.org/yorgos06132011.html

Two weeks after it started the Greek movement of 'outraged' people has
the main squares in all cities overflowing with crowds that shout their
anger, and makes the Papandreou government and its local and
international supporters tremble. It is now more than just a protest
movement or even a massive mobilization against austerity measures. It
has turned into a genuine popular uprising that is sweeping over the
country. An uprising that trumpets the refusal of the people to pay for
'their crisis' or 'their debt' while throwing the two big neoliberal
parties, if not the whole political world, into complete disarray.

How many were there on Syntagma square (Constitution square) in the
centre of Athens, just in front of the Parliament building on Sunday,
June 5, 2011? Difficult to say since one of the characteristic features
of such popular gatherings is that there is no key event (speech or
concert) and that people come and go. But according to people in charge
of the Athens underground, who know how to assess the numbers of
passengers, there were at least 250,000 people converging on Syntagma on
that memorable night. Actually several hundreds of thousands of people
if we add the 'historic' gatherings that took place on the main squares
of other Greek cities.

At this juncture we should however raise the question: how can such a
mass movement that is shaking the Greek government (in which the EU has
a particular interest) not be mentioned at all in Western media? For
these first twelve days there was virtually not a word, not an image of
those unprecedented crowds shouting their anger against the IMF, the
European Commission, the 'Troika' (IMF, European Commission, and
European Central Bank), and against Frau Merkel and the international
neoliberal leaders. Nothing. Except occasionally a few lines about
'hundreds of demonstrators' in the streets of Athens, after a call by
the Greek trade unions. This testifies to a strange predilection for
scrawny demos of TU bureaucrats while a few hundred yards further huge
crowds were demonstrating late into the night for days and weeks on end.

Going back to the Greek 'Outraged', or 'Indignés' or Aganaktismeni, we
have to note that the movement is getting more and more rooted among
lower classes against a Greek society that has been shaped by 25 years
of total domination of a cynic, nationalist, racist and individualist
neoliberal ideology that turned everything into commodities. This is why
the resulting image is often contradictory, mixing as it does the best
and the worst among ideas and actions. As for example when the same
person displays a Greek nationalism verging on racism while waving a
Tunisian (or Spanish, Egyptian, Portuguese, Irish, Argentinian) flag to
show internationalist solidarity with those peoples.

Should we therefore conclude that those demonstrators are schizophrenic?
Of course not. As there are no miracles, or politically 'pure' social
uprisings, the movement is becoming gradually more radical while still
branded by those 25 years of moral and social disaster. But mind: all
its 'shortcomings' are subsume into its main feature, namely its radical
rejection of the Memorandum, of the Troika, the public debt, the
government, austerity, corruption, a fictional parliamentary democracy,
the European Commission, in short of the whole system!

It is surely not by chance if for the past two weeks demonstrators shout
such phrases as 'We owe nothing, we sell nothing, we pay nothing', 'We
do not sell or sell ourselves', 'Let them all go, Memorandum, Troika,
government and debt' or 'We'll stay until they go'. Such catchwords do
unite all demonstrators in their refusal to pay for the public debt.
This is why the campaign for an audit Commission of the public debt is a
great success throughout the country. Its stall in the middle of
Syntagma square is constantly besieged by a crowd of people eager to
sign the call or to offer their services as voluntary helpers.

While they were first completely disorganized the Syntagma Aganaktismeni
have gradually developed an organization that culminates in the popular
Assembly held every night at 9 and drawing several hundreds speakers in
front of an attentive audience of thousands. Debates are often of really
great quality (for instance on the public debt), actually much better
than anything that can be seen on the major television channels. This in
spite of the surrounding noise (we stand in the middle of a city with 4
million inhabitants), dozens of thousands of people constantly moving,
and particularly the very diverse composition of those huge audiences in
the midst of a permanent encampment that looks at times like some Tower
of Babel.

All the qualities of direct democracy as experimented day after day on
Syntagma should not blind us to its weaknesses, its ambiguities or
indeed its defects as its initial allergy to anything that might be
reminiscent of a political party or a trade union or an established
collectivity. While it has to be acknowledged that such rejection is a
dominant feature among the Aganaktismeni, who tend to reject the
political world as a whole, we should note the dramatic development of
the Popular Assembly, both in Athens and in Thessaloniki, that shifted
from a rejection of trade unions to the invitation that they should come
and demonstrate with them on Syntagma.

Obviously, as days went by, the political landscape on Syntagma square
clarified, with the popular right and far right located in the higher
section, in front of Parliament, and the anarchist and radical left on
the square itself, with control on the popular assembly and the
permanent encampment. Of course, though the radical left is dominant and
tinges with deep red all events and demonstrations on Syntagma, this
does not mean that the various components of the right, from populist,
to nationalist, to racist and even neonazi, do not further attempt to
highjack this massive popular movement.

They will endure and it will very much depend on the ability of the
movement's avant-garde to root it properly in neighbourhoods, workplaces
and schools while defining clear goals that throw bridges between huge
immediate needs and a vindictive outrage against the system.

While fairly different from the similar movement in Spain through its
dimensions, its social composition, its radical nature and its political
heterogeneity, the movement on Syntagma shares with Tahrir square in
Cairo and Puerta del Sol in Madrid the same hatred against the economic
and political elite that has grabbed and emptied of any significance
bourgeois parliamentary democracy in times of arrogant and inhuman
neoliberalism. The movement is stirred by the same non violent
democratic and participative urge that is to be found in all popular
uprisings in the early 21st century.

Translated by Christine Pagnoulle.

Yorgos Mitralias is a founding member of the Greek Committee Against
the Debt, which is affiliated to the international network of CADTM. See
the web site of the Greek Committee : http://www.contra-xreos.gr/