On Wednesday, June 8th, an event/presentation of Adonis Georgiadis’ new book, entitled “Simple rhetoric lessons” will take place at Hellenic Cosmos. Also participating in the event are Makis Voridis, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Grigoris Psarianos, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos and Aris Portosalte.
We decided to intervene and disrupt the smooth conduct of this presentation both in the light of solidarity and support for our comrade and hunger striker since 23/5 Giannis Michailidis, who remains imprisoned indefinitely, despite meeting the formal conditions of his release for all his sentences after 8. 5 years of detention, but also to show that this mob is only specialised in one kind of rhetoric and that is hate speech.
These people, for various reasons, are for us despicable subjects of the political scene. Two ministers in key ministries such as Development and Investment (A. Georgiades) and Interior (M. Voridis) who are important cogs in the far-right wing of the ruling party with roots in neo-Nazism. Especially Voridis who was an active “activist” of the far right in the 1980s, either at the Athens College from which he was expelled for anti-Semitic attacks, or as the chosen one of the dictator Papadopoulos in the ΕΠΕΝ (Junta cops) during the years he studied at the Law School. A wing that has been upgraded over the last 10 years, effectively giving line to key issues in the public sphere. These particular ones, with their rhetoric and practice, are pushing for the implementation of increasingly conservative and obscurantist legislation. They are pushing for a more dynamic application of the ‘law and order’ doctrine. For more sweeping operations in the centre of Athens. For more freedom for uniformed killers to turn the bodies of the oppressed into shooting targets. It is no coincidence, moreover, that the New Democracy, through the mouth of Adonis Georgiades, took political responsibility for the execution of Nikos Sampanis in Perama. Along with the conservative positions they express on issues of repression, on economic issues they are supporters of the harsh neoliberal model as imagined by the technocrats of the Chicago Group. They are pushing for more privatisations, for fully flexible labour relations, for a cut in the rights of the economically weakest, for the dismantling of public health and education, in order to enrich big business with which they have friendly and behind-the-scenes relations.
Another minister (Mr. Pierrakakis) who has taken over one of the most nerve-wracking sectors of the current era, that of Digital Governance, its development and implementation, which we have seen in the management of covid-19, where huge funds were spent on volunteer platforms and the development of the operation of 13033, funds that the rulers never chose to allocate to the public health system, instead their only concern was containment, surveillance, falsification and obviously fines and repression.
A big lawyer (M. Dimitrakopoulos) who has expressed views in the past against radical, revolutionary currents in Greece. At the same time, the cases in which he is involved are not at all random and have a clear political connotation. We will only mention that he is a lawyer for Mareva Mitsotakis and one of the pioneers in the government’s attempt to downgrade the Novartis scandal to an alleged frame-up.
And finally two journalists who have been recorded in the social consciousness as two of the most despicable subjects who prey on public life. One is Aris Portosalte, who works at the propaganda office of New Democracy (SKAI). This particular journalist is known for his argumentative style, as well as his social insensitivity. From time to time he has expressed extreme views, the most recent being on the “industrial accidents” of distributors, house fires and the price of petrol. All in a way that shows what his true view is of the lives of the poor and oppressed. To say the least, the ways he goes about his “job” elevate him to the status of an informal government spokesman. The other is the well-known and unexceptional Grigoris Psarianos. His journey in public life confirms what many believe about him, that he is an amoralist, an amoralist who will do anything to survive. His political path from the occupations of the Law School and the Polytechnic, to the 1989 KKE internal. Founding member of the Coalition. In 2010 he switched to DIMAR, 4 years later he joined the neoliberal formation Potami. After opposing the Prespes agreement and the dissolution of the party, he switched to ND in 2019, but failed to get elected. We believe that with this political path we are even wasting our ink to write something more. The only thing is that such political windbags have neither the morals nor the stature to lift a finger to women and men militants who are taking risks and fighting to overthrow their exploitative system.
A few words about the neoliberal corrupt government of the ND
After almost three years of New Democracy taking the reins of power, it is now evident that this is a government steeped in scandals, money laundering, and with an exceptional track record of ripping apart every aspect of our lives, with prices of basic commodities reaching historic highs, with the country’s involvement in imperialist wars upgraded, with the public health system broken, with an education system that is sliding into a far-right regression, with the mass media monopolized by the dominant state narrative.
After almost three years we have seen that this government has a single answer for every issue: More police more control, more bans and restrictions for the oppressed and the downtrodden. Cops for universities, cops for pandemic management, cops for strikes, cops for marches – a relentless drive to completely secure every aspect of our lives. We fully understand that this omnipresent state violence in every aspect of social life is related to the strategy of the New Democracy to crush and annihilate all resistance, all movement, all struggle, all demands, all possibility of overthrowing the state and capital. The real historical role of this political formation is to impose the notorious “end of history” and the absolute domination of neoliberalism. It is the full consolidation that there is no point in demanding, fighting for another world, and ultimately that we have lost any possibility of rebelling and rejecting the hegemony of capital.
The way to achieve this is the complete militarisation of every corner of the metropolises, panoptical control and asyncratic democracy. It is the creation of an ever-tightening ring, which contains more and more people. From the unskilled and precariously employed, from the poor, from immigrant women, from the students and schoolgirls, from the prisoners and captives in the dungeons of bourgeois democracy, to every ordinary person who happens to live next to a squat, every struggling and struggling person who goes down to the street to fight for the obvious.
The exemption regime is now tending to become the unquestioned norm. A situation in which every person who resists, every person who has not internalised capitalism and the nationalist and neo-Nazi narratives that legitimise it, finds themselves. It is a condition where radicalisation, collectivisation and resistance become the ultimate threat to ‘social peace’. We see how prisoners’ rights are being trampled on, we see the levels of repression that domestic movements are subjected to. We have seen dozens of squats being forcibly evacuated. We saw hundreds of people in the streets or even in their homes with their heads blown open by the batons and tear gas of the urban war machine. We saw history being written differently by the pens of well-paid media mouthpieces. New Democracy expresses conservative voices across the social spectrum, from prisons and immigration detention centers, to universities and Fertility Conferences against the abortion option.
We need to understand that this whole web of repression and police democracy is here for us, otherwise we will be unable to look with clarity at ourselves and the monster we face. A monster that has completely eliminated us from its normality, a monster that builds us up as potential “dangerous citizens” and “terrorists”.
For the hunger strike of anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis
The state of exception experienced by a decent, uncompromising and unrepentant militant
Giannis Michailidis is one of the people who, with his militant, uncompromising, dignified and unrepentant attitude, has shown in practice that another world is possible, as well as that another human being is possible. A person who enables himself to live with his head held high, looking the sun in the face, not bowed down and subservient, as capitalism wants and nurtures us to be. The anarchist comrade Yannis Michailidis made revolutionary life choices, and for almost eleven years he has been either incarcerated in the bourgeois hellhole or wanted by the agents of state terrorism.
Experiencing a state of exception par excellence, he is currently facing yet another state arbitrariness, as a legal loophole is being used against him to prevent him from being released from prison, as he has been entitled to do for some months now. The comrade meets the formal requirements for his release, as he has completed 3/5 of his suspended sentence and also has no active criminal cases or disciplinary cases in prison. However, the judicial mafia chose to use the legal tool of “substantive conditions” for his conditional release, arbitrarily and subjectively judging that Giannis Michailidis “is dangerous” and may “re-offend”.
The first rejection of his application for conditional release was in February. The second prosecutorial denial was in May. Without having received any information on when he is to be released, and as we said he is already entitled to it, the comrade is currently essentially an “indefinite” prisoner. They are punishing Giannis because they see in him what they fear, they see in him what frightens them: The prospect of the radical overthrow of class society. They see dignity, solidarity, militant perseverance, everything beautiful that a person who is hostile to exploitation, injustice, inequality and domination of all kinds could feel and do. Therefore, demanding the obvious, namely his immediate release from prison, the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis has started a hunger strike from Monday 23 May. This is a militant choice that seeks to break the regime of exclusion that he himself is experiencing, as well as to leave a legacy of defending the rights and acquisitions that prisoners have won through bloody struggles and heavy sacrifices over the years. It is a struggle against the invisibilization of prisoners, against the tightening of laws, against judicial arbitrariness, against state vindictiveness – a struggle that concerns all our lives as more and more people cross the threshold of exclusion, seen as subversives and revolutionaries, as those who will eradicate capital from history.
Giannis Michaidis is one of us. Flesh of the revolutionary perspective. They are terrified of people like Giannis because they know that if his example is followed by more people who turn grief into anger and despair into revolutionary organization, then the infamous end of history will indeed come, but it will be from the opposite side. The side of people who envision themselves living equally and harmoniously, without being defined by money and surplus value, without exploitation of man by man, without gender and racial oppression, without plunder and overexploitation of the natural world. The state of exclusion experienced by the comrade is just one manifestation of the exclusion that we all experience and will experience if we choose to live with our heads held high and our fists clenched.
The long arm of repression in universities
Law 4777 as the epithet of the state of exception in which the youth are forced to live
The shift towards conservatism and repressive doctrine within universities is no accident. The cops encamped and patrolling inside and outside the university premises, the ripping up of the asylum, and the so much bloodshed by the police forces against student marches and protests, clearly show that the repression concerns all struggling youth. Because they are afraid of the vitality, the innate questioning it carries. They are afraid because they have seen in the past in Greece, and more recently in the rest of the world, that it is always at the forefront of struggles and demands, it is always present in every uprising, in every radical historical moment.
According to the government, the struggling youth must be treated as potentially “dangerous”, and the universities as potential “hideouts” and “strongholds”. They open the heads of students, but forget that the more blood is spilled in the streets and on the cobblestones, the more seeds of anger and subversion are spread. Law 4777 and its governmental exponents are currently at the forefront of the counter-insurgency doctrine, which New Democracy has been faithfully implementing since the first day of its election. They want to crush the student struggles. They want there to be no demands. They want young people to be future careerists, snitches, atomists, opportunists and socially indifferent. To be the perfect productive subject who bows their heads and does what they are told. They envision a youth with shattered dreams, resigned, drowning in futility and stagnation, immersed in the acceptance of precariousness, underpaid work, fluid labour relations and the total devaluation of their lives.
Universities have always been spaces of politicisation, collectivisation and radical expression. They are meeting points for struggling sections of society. Places of co-organisation and co-formation. Places and times for the dissemination of radical ideas and practices that highlight the rottenness of the system and promote the precepts of solidarity and equality. Universities are places where socialisation and politicisation intertwine, places where the antagonistic movement is massed and counter-attacked. It is precisely this condition that the state is trying to place in the dustbin of history through Bill 4777. It is precisely this continuity that it wants to break, by depriving the youth of any radical perspective, making them only a future labour/productive potential. And we can already see it clearly that cops on campuses means open heads, bullying, daily bullying against them. It means dilution of student unionism. It means limiting the politicization within universities. It means entrenching control and discipline. It means capitalist restructuring and the degradation of the public character of universities. And the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki saw this perhaps more clearly than ever before. Just as he saw the media propaganda unleashed by the government’s paid mouthpieces, who daily wash away the violence and blood, spreading the view in society that the students are “obstructing the construction of a library”. So again, reading behind the lines of government propaganda, we are faced with the elite of the “unqualified” who see in the struggling sections of society their gravediggers. Connecting our struggles is more necessary than ever. Just as it is also more necessary than ever to understand the thread that connects revolutionary movements, armed fighters, with every oppressed subject who struggles and claims a better future.
Concluding as we began
Our action will continue until the release of the comrade
STATE AND CAPITAL ARE THE ONLY TERRORISTS – SOLIDARITY WITH THE ARMED GUERRILLAS
NO FASCISM, NO DEMOCRACY – DOWN WITH STATISM, UP WITH ANARCHY
Assembly of solidarity with the anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis
Comrades
Source: athens.indymedia