As long as there are those who are lost in battle, we will exist to continue the war
And when we die, we die like stars scattering light. Like that light that shone a year before the explosives explosion in the Ampelokipi apartment on 10/31, when the anarchist armed fighter Kyriakos Xymitiris was walking the last part of his journey, where everything is condensed into a moment, where his revolutionary consciousness aligns with the desire to put an end to this aging world that feeds on his flesh.
Filled with immense comradeship, determination and with no inclination to retreat, he committed himself to the struggle with a vision of freedom. With clear eyes, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris made no concessions to emotion, he loved life, honouring it with every breath he took. Both in Berlin and in Athens, he participated in all the fields of struggle indiscriminately. In rallies and marches against gentrification, in anti-fascist and anti-patriarchal patrols, in mass poster pastings, in militant defences of occupations, in struggles against colonialism and prisons.
He stood firm in the convictions of anarchy. In this suffocating world built on powers that strangle the wild beauty of unbridled freedom, on predatory policies, on death politics and wars that Western centres set up in the countries of the “third world” by stepping on corpses, on cynical confessions of “whoever does not adapt, dies”, comrade Kyriakos Xymetiris did not turn his gaze away. In this world of manufactured emotions, standardized behaviours, social contracts, mass apathy, comrade Kyriakos Xymetiris lived uncompromisingly in the here and now. In a context of intensifying authoritarianism and militarisation, growing insecurity and widespread impoverishment, comrade Kyriakos Xymetiris achieved his own transcendence, denied his social privileges and assumed responsibility.
At a time when friendly relations are criminalised by filling pages of lengthy indictments, where systematic imprisonments try to send a resounding message of criminal terrorism, where the judicial mechanism shows its teeth to poor devils and turns its gaze away from state-capitalist crimes, comrade Kyriakos proved that the strategy of repression does not intimidate revolutionary consciences. At a time when the movement is experiencing a setback, from the internalization of repression, adaptability and integration, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris decided not to compromise and to contribute to the historical shaping of subversive events. In defiance of the times, he looked at the path of political and revolutionary responsibilities. Armed with courage and determination, he chose to respond to the violence of domination.
His priority was the preservation of the revolutionary tradition of specific means of struggle, which over time had become inactive. Continue reading “Greece: October is a month of remembrance and action for the anarchist revolutionary Kyriakos Xymitiris by Dimitra Zarafeta, Marianna Manoura”