EXARCHIA area under police attack by the new right government in Greece

From VOID Network

Exarchia area in Athens Greece under police occupation! Time to show your solidarity!

The famous rebel and solidarity district of Athens is completely surrounded by huge police forces: many riot police buses (MAT), anti-Terrorism Police (OPKE), motor bike policemen (Dias), members of the secret police as well as a helicopter and several drones.

Unique place in Europe for its high concentration of squats and other self-managed spaces, but also for its resistance against repression and solidarity with the precarious and migrants, Exarchia has been in major focus of the right government since its election on July 7th. The new right Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis had made it a personal matter, especially since he had been mocked in early August for not having achieved his goal of “cleaning Exarchia in a month” as he had announced in great pumps.

This morning, 4 squats have been evacuated: Spirou Trikoupi 17, Transito, Rosa de fuego and Gare. The offensive is for now the northwest part of the neighborhood, with the remarkable exception of the squat Nottara 26, known to be best kept and very important symbol for the neighborhood as the first historic squat of the “refugee crisis” in the center City of Athens.

We are currently counting about a hundred arrest, as well as brutal attacks against people trying to film.

In total, there are 23 squats in Exarchia plus 26 others around the neighborhood, which is a total of 49 focused on a small area. 49 squats to which you need to add other types of self-managed places, some of them for rent (Free Social Space Nosotros, free shop Skoros, etc) as well as dozens of private housing groups of activists, often near the terraces to allow access over the streets.

Of the squats that is officially inside Exarchia, 12 are accommodation squats for refugees and migrant and the other 11 are squats of political anarchist, autonomous groups anarchists. Most refugee squats are also of course very political as they are organized through horizontal assemblies where the refugees can take their lives to their own hands and organize their every day decisions equally and in solidarity of each other and every one of them. Nottara 26, 5th High School of Exarchia and Spirou Trikoupi 17 have a lot of links with the rest of the social movement and international solidarity support.

In the squats of Spirou Trikoupi 17 and Transito, that the jacks of power now attack and destroy, more than a dozen children have been ripped away from a peaceful and happy existence to be suddenly sent to camps. The sinister and overcrowded camps, where the migrants they are poorly fed and suffer from temperature variations. New Prime Minister of Greece Kiriakos Mitsotakis requires that all refugees will be well closed in concentration camps and completely cut off from the rest of the society.

The face of Europe keeps getting hard like what is also happening elsewhere. This ever more authoritarian evolution of capitalism leads to questions about what the current era announces: attacks against the pockets of utopia combined with the confinement of the emissaries reminds of the dark hours of history.

The whole world becomes fascist and Greece is, once again, one of the laboratories.

But nothing is over.

August ends. The social movement is gathering and organizing again. Places like the Nottara 26 and the K*VOX ARE UNDER HIGH surveillance. Responses are getting ready, as well as several major mobilizing events. Autumn will be hot in Athens.

Resistance!

text: Yannis Youlountas

edited by Void Network / athens

PS: PLEASE republish this article. We are counting on your own reports and photos as these news to go international. Please protest infront of the places representing the Greek state in your country in defense of Exarchia. Solidarity is our weapon.

The response of the movement was immediate with a demo organised spontaneously in the neighborhood. Talks and assemblies are taking place organizing the next steps of resistance. Also 3 days of self-organized concerts in defense of the neighborhood will take place in Exarchia square from 29/8 to 1/9- more info: https://www.facebook.com/events/728132344308674/

 

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There are 43 Comments

VOID Network, even if you threw some fine public parties elsewhere, you and your wide critical dead angles are still part of the problem. There's been several issues in that dark area the size of Western Europe. Taking bougies and yuppies from over there as your comrades, for starters.

Also much thanks but no thanks for giving away valuable stats on the squatting milieu to the popo, just to make sure they can all compare notes with your accepted undercovers... right, Laureen?

Who the fuck are you and how we can know that you are not one more secret agent spreading irrelevant bullshit to block solidarity and communication among comrades from very different countries and under very difficult circumstances? Who the fuck are the "yuppies and bugies" you mention? Where you found the money to come in Athens, why you came, what you did here anyway? We are so much fucking poor and unemployed that we don't even count for proletarians. You are full of shit and anyway the comments here are so much infiltrated that it makes us sick. The problem is that the last years in USA appears a mix of anarchotourists spending some weeks or some months in a loophole in Exarchia and then come back to USA spreading bullshit about Athens and playing the wise and experienced anarchohipster. All this is useful if you want to play the smart guy in a small anarchist milleau and nothing more. Add to that all these secret agents producing more confusion anyway. Probably the best solution is whoever wants to make sense of a very diverse, massive and complicated anarchist movement like anarchism in greece to stick at the meaning of the announcements and trying have a variety of personal communications with different groups searching for real solid information from different sides. Anyway in internet any anon can say whatever anytime. Whoever wants to offer his stupid "advises" for anarchists in greece is better to put them in practice at his own neighborhood. For us all this is just cynical luxury for privileged amerikan kids.

"playing the wise and experienced anarcohipster" <---- so much of this!

Like, does this crap still actually work on anyone? It's just so easy to roll up, park your ass on the side lines and sound snarky clever with the everyone-else-is-dumb cool kid bullshit, then go back to doing nothing at all. So. Easy.

It's so easy even I can do it! ; )

but seriously, fuck these infiltrators

Its getting hard telling the difference between someone throwing an adolescent tantrum or someone overdosed on Viagrismo.

are you serious, don't you just mean people who know how to use a browser?

LovelyBuffoon and VikingTroll = Leway

no one else uses viagrismo

hell, even senileoldtroll is leway most of the time.

still not sure if leway=sireningiy but might as well be, i don't see the use in distinguishing

and worst part is, these aren't even the "infiltrators"

I'm accused of many impersonations and I'm impersonated enough myself, I may have invented the term viagrismo, but its out there now. Remember " whips out dick". That was another of my new language for the 21st Century inventions.

supposed to make me feel loved and important, well it worked for a second! I clicked on the comment subject cuz it used my name, but only to find out I'm accused of using viagra as some sort of underhanded accusation that I'm a toxic-masculinicist. Woah! I thought that was just an insult leveled at senileoldtroll as a reference to his "old age"

Well yes I reciprocated senileoldtroll's insuĺts to me, I am a great advocate for reciprocity in repartee, and aimed at where I thought the most cutting humor would be found.

Is that how you honestly remember it? cute.

My version, it goes the other way: you saying all sorts of heinous bullshit and jackass rambling for years until I basically couldn't NOT punt you in the kneecaps every time.

Belligerent dickheads often convince themselves they're the victim, it's not even very interesting.

Now you've stimulated my curiosity. What other names did you hide behind over the years, Wheels comes to mind? Its hilarious that you take me sooo seriously, here I am now chuckling to myself and nibbling on some salted peanuts :)

Let's talk a bit more about that "luxury" thing, Void Network. You are in a very good position for it.

I ain't Amerikan, tho very close. I have been working hard for a while to push the squatting movement around Exarkhia in times where it was as its lowest. I helped getting rid of a crypto-fascist parasite who've had an history of hanging out with US Right-Wingers and perhaps even Golden Dawn. I supported the best I could the first true feminist squat in Exarkhia. I did some stupid things when I was in Greece that still make me depressed, yet I did more on my own than several of you blindfolded yuppie ideologues who get cozy with highly problematic Left authoritarian activists like these gangs of privileged liberal activists from France and the UK, if you know WHO I mean... And I know YOU know who I mean.

It's easier to scapegoat online critics of YOUR GROUP (not Exarkhia anarchists in general, that you are fronting for) than look at your history of supporting a plethora of undercovers, yuppie tourists, academic fucktards and others of that privileged ilk.

You ask me who I am? Well this goes both ways. Void Network is not a person, it's an imperson. An activist corporate entity, and at best a group. I identify as a person to persons who identify as such.

The absolute vast majority of foreigners who fit your description in Exarcheia are not Americans and never have been. Almost all from Western Europe. Id know, considering I stay away from other Americans like the plague.

Most American anarchists who travel here do so because they support Greek anarchism specifically and not some liberal form of leftism.

Yawn

I just hope that this will make anarchy spread back outside of Exarkhia, in Athens and elsewhere. My more recent experience of Greece was of an anarchism having become nearly absent outside of this false enclave and the migrant struggle. At least nowhere near the joy of the years around 2008.

lol, neat gnarly shit, so ur a connoisseur I see...

The sad part is that "false metal" just kept getting bigger and bigger after this tape was released. Especially when the Black Album nuke fell all over the Western world. One could say that about the same shit happened to anarchism around 2012 days.

Lolllllll @ the haters/cops/bitter person above. Those "false stats" are being repeated in the news daily.

Obviously the commenter who is clearly the same person in both isn't living here or they would have known that. I'm guessing...San Francisco and annoys half the planet?

Not SF... wtf would I do in that hipster hellhole anyways!? I agree being bitter against a certain crowd of yuppie anarcho-liberals who got severe issues looking at the part they're actively -even if half-consciously- playing in promoting the "anarchism" of the gentry; a purely White Euro leftie subculture that ain't too nice as seen/experienced as an outsider (i.e. as migrant, loner, motley, or just some other lumpen).

For sure I get that reactionaries might have only bile to spew at Exarkhia's anarchos, but to confuse me with one of these alienated lunatic regulars just because I'm criticizing an aspect of this milieu may be part of the dead angle I was talking about. Nosotros, in their approach, vision, inclusivity patterns has not been helping a truly anarchistic milieu to flourish, rather served as a tourist office/meetspace for Erasmus kids and other trustafarians from richer countries.

You seem to have a very narrow view based mainly on specific people mixed with recent articles you have read.

Yeah, outsiders have been having a tough time here. Mostly cause they have been fucking idiots.

If refusing to deal with liberal yuppie scum and undercovers to you is "idiocy", then there's no telling what your anarchy is about... other than the failure it appears to be experiencing over these past few years. Other than that, let's see your wits at work and how they're going to steer that neighborhood from its planned socio-economic cleansing.

Impress me, bitch.

that isolation and insularity is a double edged sword, it's very safe but it's also very limiting. You choke off the assholes who would want to fuck with your projects but then its harder to move forward with them as well since everything now a days has to do with people and gaining their support.

During Occupy DC, when it was clear the raid was coming, old tents containing sleeping bags filled with shit forced the cops to summon biohazard crews, and made clearing the tents a painfully slow process from them. After that it was enough to pitch a tent in the middle of the street when it needed to be closed. Piss and shit can be boobytrap and mine enough to make pigs desperately wish they were somewhere else.

How would these militarized cops react to hitting a tiny, barely visible piece of monofilament fishing line that sets off an M-80 inside a paper bag filled with shit, followed by piss showers and a photoflash bulb at the next door's pressure plate. At that point, they won't want to risk hitting tripwire or pressure plate #3, whether it even exists or not. Old rotten and weak floors can be fun too: one case of a raid team falling through the floor (even into a waiting circus net) will make them hesitant to enter any other building. Did squatters ever promise to find and fix every bad spot in every floor just before a raid? Think like the "gamemakers" in Hunger Games. They want to "compete" but WE control the arena. In the end, squatters get all the way out the other end after forcing the pigs to fight all day for an empty building and no prisoners.

Also look at countervalue targetting: for every attack on a squat, anarchists with flares and gas masks show up at night outside the home of an important corporate or government official, starting with the owners of businesses in the same city that contribute to the politicians who ordered the raid. Make war expensive and they will buy less of it. Drive it home to those responsive and look for a short-lived attempt by them to win, followed by them losing all interest in continuing to ffight. Hit them at home, at their brother's wedding, at church, wherever they can be found, same as the way SHAC hounded the investors in puppy-killing Huntingdon "Life" Sciences.

and if you shit yourself they will not want to arrest you. The smell alone might keep them away, but they dont want to have that in their squad cars.

We Vikings fight standing up with a sword in our hands, and strugglismos fight by standing up and shitting in their pants, amirite?

Mostly dead or in jail. You'd know that if you weren't just full of shit sweetheart ;)

Where have all the beserkers gone? Well, one of them got at least 50 people out of the kettle at J20 (Trump Inhoguration Jan 20 2017) with that famous charge, using only an umbrella as a shield. As pigs blasted pepper spray and the umbrella deflected it, at least 50 hard-pressed bloc members lined up behind the charging umbrella wielder and smashed through the police lines, breaking out of the kettle. It was a classic "1,2,3 charge!" move, executed right as the kettle started and before the pigs could thicken their lines.

Most of those who charged with the umbrella wielder stayed escaped, saving themselves a weekend in jail and a year and a half facing felony charges that could have theoretically netted 80 years in prison if lawyers hadn't caught the prosecution cheating with doctored Project Veritas videos. A few went down in the battle and were recaptured, but their charges were dropped with all the others-and who gives a SHIT about one extra charge for assaulting a pig when you are already looking at 80 years anyway.

The astounding thing was that with the whole bloc charging, the pigs ever managed to pinch off a charge that had already pierced their lines and blown past them. To stop a charge after your shield wall has already been broken by it is one of the most difficult of all evolutions in melee combat, and has always been rare. Maybe the pigs had a beserker of their own in there?

Many simply do not believe such things are possible. Consider that cameraman saying "They're charging! They're charging the police line!" in total disbelief after nervously saying "get out your press passes."

might need to chill out a bit … "after your shield wall has already been broken"? lol

that person was relatively quite brave, the rest of them too and unarresting people is awesome but no, it was not a "broken shield wall", or "melee combat". protest skirmishes aren't medieval infantry battles, mostly because people aren't being hacked to pieces with edged weapons. suffice to say, I'm not "astounded" that the toe-to-toe often doesn't go well for the black bloc.

was just reading about GMAC making these observations many years ago now; the various transformations that would be required to turn a randomly assembled motley crew of strangers with barely any equipment, in to an actual fighting force with comparable capabilities to the state.

long story short, you can't. you're lucky to partially break out of a kettle once and awhile because the pigs got caught flatfooted.

all that said, was still pretty awesome and I salute all those beautiful souls in the J20 bloc

imagine if instead of holding an umbrella, he were holding a thread of yarn measuring a few centimeters

Modern riot cops tactics are based to some extent on Roman Army tactics of 2,000 years ago, with clubs replacing swords. They are not exactly the same but similar enough that one UK Roman Army re-enactor who is also a riot cop said his LARP gear was the same equipment he used in his day job except twice as heavy. The classic shield wall is relevent whenever shields are used in a group formation. Weakness in holding one together may be the real reason you see so many reinforced banners used instead of individual shields.

What impressed me the most about the umbrella charge was that it was more than a few isolated folks escaping. Usually when the trap is closed a few fast and alert folks escape, I've done it several times and so have others.

At the Fall 2001 black bloc at what was to be IMF protests until it was retasked as an antiwar protest after Sep 11, cops kettled a hollow and mostly unequipped bloc of about 800 people in front of the World Bank. Twenty-nine people in football helmets, baseball bats, and trash can lid shields immediately charged through and escaped, taking only one arrest, but nobody else joined the charge. In the end, the cops force-marched the rest of that kettle to the 27,000 person ANSWER march and released them there.

At the 2004 GOP Convention, I was in the Sun 29 Bike Bloc that was kettled. Dumbass cops set up at the bottom of the hill. I stood in the saddle and sprinted at them, letting my posture and face warn of the ramming attack to come. I aimed at the corner where the last cop was-and he stayed out of the way as I zoomed past at maybe 40MPH(I used to train for sprint). I rode straight to the main march and re-engaged from there. NOBODY followed me and most riders were arrested. Had everyone rode with me in that charge, the outcome might have been much better, but we had not organized for that, nor trained as a group in cavalry tactics as adapted to bikes or motorcycles. Probably I would have wanted to use a single-sided echelon formation (instead of a symmetrical wedge aimed at the center) as the front line, with my own charge at the corner as the point. The echelon would need to be wide enough to open a hole that could not be shut in a few seconds, with everyone else filling in from behind. Anyway, any arrests is a life-threatening experience for me, so the stakes were those of war and I meant very serious business.

In 2007 I saw a heavy bloc of about 800 mixed SDS and anarchist marchers with tower shields on the front line catch the US Capitol police on motorcycles out of riot gear. The formation held together and pushed the cops from 3ed st all the way up the steps of the US Capitol before halting there. The motorcycle cops disappeared when they ran out of space, no doubt having had to withdraw. Months later, a similar bloc broke through two lines of riot cops at the Pentagon before stopping at the 3ed as the offensive had been pushed too far ahead of the support offered by the main rally. That bloc too stayed in formation.

All three of these reports concern events over a decade ago, the statutes of limitations long passed.

Interestingly, the fash with all those shields at Charlottesville let their shield wall fall apart almost as soon as their charge reached the counterprotesters. Had this been a medieval battle with edged weapons and fully trained units, the fash would then have been slaughtered on the spot and the fight would have been over. You can see it in one of the first videos that came out of that fight, with the fash trying to get their line with the round "Confederate X" shields back in some semblence of a row after first contact got rougher than they expected.

we in 2019, gain air superiority or hack their base lol

jk, stay in school kids

the cringe is real but are you? society for creative anachronism troll?

The water cannon is one of the most benevolent weapons ever made, we are so lucky in the Western capitalist nations to have suçh well mannered police, and riots are mostly a fun day out to break the rut of welfare state unemployment with some cheap booze under the belt.

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