ABOUT SOCIAL WAR IN GREECE

The interpretations have been given… Time for our desires to speak.
During the trial of the 17th November armed group we witnessed a spectacular performance, which amongst others, attempted with the application of the upgraded law concerning criminal acts- “anti”-terror law- to earn also social legitimization. The law’s elaborately vague and extended framework (with the possibility for DNA testing, with the article on criminal conspiracy… with the depoliticisation of the history, the theory and the actions of the group) appeared to secure in the legal arsenal that necessary method which is able to strike every existent or attempted project of subversion of bourgeois democracy, without having to accept the political status of its enemy.
[Article 48, par.1…”in the case of war, military mobilization due to external dangers or of immediate threat to national security, as well as in the case of manifestation of an armed movement with the aim of overthrowing democracy, the Parliament, by its decision, which is taken following the proposal by the government, sets in motion across the whole territory or a part of it the law concerning state of siege, introduces exceptional courts and suspends the power of the whole or parts of the provisions of the articles…concerning amnesty, political crime…” ]
So the stake was as much historical oblivion as the ramming of consciousnesses with the message that democracy has not had and will not have enemies. In addition, the acceptable boundaries of political expression had to become clear to every direction. To conclude, we saw and experienced that the law not only acts arbitrarily but that arbitrariness is the law. As a position, we did not pursue to waste our energy denouncing their legal ploys from within institutions, we did not go about attempting to manage the level of repression accepted. We projected with integrity our anti-systemic action and word against the only terrorism that of the state, the mass media and the bosses. Our ideological differences with the group were not an obstacle to our solidarity. Now from their position, the summer of 2002 seems to have consolidated a new era, to have been the springboard from were the “anti”-terrorist unit wants to star in new episodes by pointing the finger at modern “terrorism” within the anarchist milieu. The continuous re-definition of the enemy within, gave the possibility to put into practice an informal state of emergency. A state of emergency which, through its continuous presence, warned of its application depending on the circumstances. Their legacy was also the catalytic, as they themselves admitted, cooperation of the ministry of public order with the mass media, the by now well known terror-spectacle with suitable injections of terror-hysteria, pursuit of snitches etc. From then on this tested recipe became the norm, overall police presence was intensified, criminalization was specified to the “bad” anarchists that commit unlawful acts. We witnessed the persistence in their strategy with the attempt on the case of the three with the riot shields, the case of Yiannis Dimitrakis, the case of Botzatzis and the three in Thessaloniki, in the scenarios concerning “criminal-political” interconnections with the kidnap of Milonas…up to the badly set out show with the “safe-house” in Halandri and the series of spectacular arrests.
With the return of the CIA illuminated Chrisohoidis, the strategy was accelerated in order to yield results in a now official state of emergency. Assisted by the economic crisis and the necessity of even a violent extraction of social consent, in the last six months Athens has become a police city and Exarchia an occupied territory with patrols of riot police squads parading, motor- gangs of Delta accelerating, charging into protesters, going on rampages while setting up road blocks everywhere, comrades are “wanted”, the mask-law is applied and of course proclamations are made concerning neighborhood cops, cop dogs, anti-riot tanks and whatever else is necessary to counter the non-acceptable. In regards to the vexed subject, the war on “neo-terrorism” could not only concern the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire. The CCF is as equally indifferent and interesting as any grouping that puts its negation into practice. What we deem is every action detached from its creator, the word that accompanies it, its contribution and not only. A part of their war is however the exploitation of its actions, based on a similar formula to the false construction of the Italian ORAI. Hinting at future surprises, the presentation of indications at their disposal report of 50 individuals- members of the organization, of 100 fingerprints and of how many others thus creating a hostage situation. So after every attack carried out by the conspiracy the anti-terrorist division seems to be producing results by rummaging through its bag of goodies, putting on a show with arrests that do not lead to any substantiated charges, leaking “profiles” in newspaper articles that attempt to incriminate persons and spaces, with rumors of arrest warrants suited to push people “underground”.
We say that anarchy is the bulwark of repression. If this is true it’s because it has fought to be in the position of constituting the strongest element of resistance, without taking on the role of a vanguard. A sticker showing a sketch of armed- to- the- teeth cops invading a house and arresting someone said “if today they came for me, tomorrow they will come for you”. Each situation concerns everyone, whether it weighs on one particular person and the collective doesn’t feel it or whether it weighs on the collective and it has a slight effect on each one apart. To what extent however can the previous descriptions concern those who eulogize theory separating it from action, those who understand but do not share the feeling. To what extent can it concern a fixation which deems as defensible only violence that originates from the “movement”. To what extent can it concern parts of society who cash in their contracts and would passively accept their fate. Every situation can always concern someone else when it is far from us ourselves. The infinite universe of stupidity has countless arguments in order to direct our gaze somewhere else. The attention that this text seeks concerns those who feel without needing a number of arguments to be convinced. Those who even if they have not burned their hands, who even though are not waiting for someone to break down their door or who are not connected through relationships of friendship with the imprisoned comrades, are convinced that it absolutely relates to themselves. They take the absence of each comrade as an absent part of their own body. They say it and they mean it that “when even one is imprisoned none are free”, that the distinctions guilty-innocent, good-bad are distinctions and concepts of dominion, completely alien towards our ethic.
Solidarity is not an antiauthoritarian idiom; it must go beyond political identities and connections, beyond compassion. Nonetheless, it is a word that has been used a thousand times. It has been worn down by the thousands mouths of subjects with contradictory morality, by their selfish offerings. Individualization in the metropolis scattered every element of commonality, also washing away its ethical code. The meaning of solidarity is lost when one employee is fired and the rest continue with their business as usual. When we don’t have domino effects, like what happened in cases after the fall of the dictatorship and the changeover to democracy, when the strike in one company was followed by others. When in order for us to evoke it, our own interests must be at stake. Solidarity is a word on which we must persist in order to maintain its meaning in our own vocabulary. It comprises one of our primary projects, basically as an integral element of the future social organization. One of the weapons that hold together and strengthen the class of the oppressed, the proletarians and the rebels. The names of our comrades have a meaning only for us, mainly due to our interpersonal relationships. Yiannis, Yiorgos, Polis and Vaggelis, Ilias, Alfredo and Christos, Haris, Manos, Takis signify a war and its continuation. A series of names that are interchanged and fill the prisons mapping the political prisoners of democracy, lending an extra weight that becomes imperative for structures in regards to a revolutionary solidarity movement.
Ideological fixation, correct logic, has proved capable of placating passions and desires. Even though they are defenders of solidarity, the anarchists express their own ideological fixations. Of course as critical beings we must make a critique if an attack was out of time or place, if it contributed to what is already happening or whether it has manifested new realities, perspectives of struggle…a series of issues, objections that however do not function in an inhibitory way. Violence is not immune to critique. But a certain kind of stiffness derives from other areas. Bitterness and spite arising from personal relationships become the cause for non activity but also for proposed shrugging off of cases. Something more persistent through time is internal “antagonism”. The majority of the anarchist milieu does not emit its own light. They deem violence to be fertile when it is drawn from the collective, when it is the product of procedures and surfaces from within a quantitative- social participation. It defends this kind of violence carving out the boundaries of the acceptable. Insurrectional informal struggle does not lie with quantitative criteria, does not entrench itself but has its subjective responsibilities for an equal antagonism with that expressed by “collective” ideological fixation. It is possible as an outcome of all these but particularly the notion concerning the defensible violence of “movement” origin someone arrested for a “non-movement” case (whatever is not consists in the centrality of the movement and is non part of the movement, peripheral, hostile?) to be of no interest, to not be a cause for the movement. If to go beyond our ideological fixations, on a number of issues apart from solidarity, is seen as impossible it is certain that slowly, even if we deny it, we will speak the language of the unthinkable, we will speak the language of innocent-guilty, good-bad.
Dominion’s intentions are known, our estimations will not be far from the obvious. So, the state from now on will not drench us in chemicals, but will separate us and feed us new habits. Familiarity will breed contempt and vice versa. The diffusion of insecurity and many other unknowns that are intentionally left hovering in the air, shape the convenient psychology of the defendant, of the contested in order to render himself inactive. A reserved position with the feeling of ignorance about something that you always have to wait for in order to remain bound down. What appears to be or is implied about the future, is realized in this moment, in the present while we, looking into the distance in our attempt to guess what the future beholds, suffer from farsightedness. Dazzled, we could comment on the vulnerable points of the spectacle, interpret the economic stranglehold, analyze the utility of their propaganda for consensual self-flagellation, the spectacle-loving audience, the intensifying oppression of wage slavery. We could count as wounds on our bodies names of our comrades, calculate the “invulnerable” castles and dominion’s armies of occupation. We could speak the language driven by habit and then… with our gaze to the ground in front of their weapons we could ask them to loosen our cuffs. A reading of reality is necessary, but it is not the objective. The procedure is not fertile on its own accord if you interpret events and facts without apprizing, without eliciting their functional use. If we diagnose the signs of our times to the point and with theoretical clarity we should not obtain the verification of the prophecy…when you analyze the obvious you end up with the tragedy of an already familiar truth, you illustrate by sitting down the futility of moving. When everything remains still they march on with audacity.
Removing every foreclosure that might provide a political cost for them, taking into account that a witch-hunt is better paid for and counting on arbitrariness as something granted, that which we have to do, amongst other things, is to continue to produce destructive projects- results based on…. Cartesian coordinates! Determination is the magic elixir of life.
“There are two cardinal human sins from which all others derive: Impatience and Laziness. Impatience expelled them from Paradise, laziness kept them from making their way back.”
-F. Kafka-.
An action always has its causes, of course it involves us experientially with life, it gives us life, it raises our adrenalin and however much that is underestimated, it also has its importance, but is and should be perceived as secondary. Besides, the same adrenalin exists also in the cops. So we overcome dilemmas and hesitations, we honor practical theory, words are good we say, but what is meaningful is action. The meaning however of an action is not always given by its cause, we ourselves also give the meaning. Readily desires scream attack, easily they are deceived and channeled into spontaneities, into short reflections. Naturally programs and formulas do not exist, if they did we would have changed the whole history of humanity. We can however be more careful, shrewd, insightful. There is simultaneously a question of ethics and politics, which cannot build paths by its markings, cannot become specified, does not want to dictate but rather each has to become conscious of it on their own. There are elements that are not consistent with our culture, that reproduce a peculiar behavior that corresponds more to what in theory we are enemies of. Attack can come in contradistinction to inaction, can grant self-confidence, but conceit is the secret poison, capable in its intoxication to diminish the sense of reality, to excuse every thing we do in correlation to the permanent presence of a rival force. Arrogance, self-reference around our name, glorifications apart from reproducing identities and roles also underestimate the enemy lines. Creators should remain inconspicuous. Under the hoods there are no faces, there are no names, ideas are not the ones persecuted but their practical application is. The reason laid out in writing following an attack is the reason of the attack, its objective and only up to there. It is good if the reader is defined by the writer. Hypophora is a rhetorical schema during which the orator poses questions and then proceeds to answer them himself. If what we want is this, then let us speak to our mirrors and if what we want is to show ourselves off then let us go to some game-show.

“What we are speaking of is a new war, a new guerilla. Without lines or uniform, without an army or decisive battles. A guerilla which will evolve far from commodity flows, even though it will be connected on them. We are speaking of a latent war… a war of position…in the name of no one. In the name of our own existence, which has no name.”
-TIQQUN 2-
SAPERE AUDE: dare to know. We must become maximalists, greedy, we must insist on a plan to take back everything. In the insurrection we had the decision to attack and to fight and that’s what happened. Now the political leadership leaves the impression of kneeling only to regroup. They ask for consent but their dogs growl in the streets. Their war is now, it is realized every day, here. At this moment they are from their side the assaulters. In the arena of the economic crisis the field of class polarization is arising? There is no time for opinion polls, let’s provoke, forcing each one to take a position. We do not bow our heads, we do not hope for the resurrection of the dead, we advance. There is nothing symbolic. To attack means to get involved, to take risks. The world of power horizontally extends everywhere. Islands are poor of life, poor of fire. We must set fire to the sea. We must rip out stone by stone all its avenues. Knowing that however many glass windows are smashed, however many banks burn to the ground it is not enough. Let’s seek the practical applications of our negations, the overthrow of this world; the spectacles that will abolish the spectacle. Let’s destroy what destroys us…
Freedom for Haris, Manos, Takis
Solidarity to those prosecuted for the same case
(Pamphlet circulated amongst comrades in Athens, Spring of 2010)