I’ve already shared my thoughts on the rioting and protests in Greece. If you want to know what the participants think, you should read CrimethInc’s interview with an anonymous Greek anarchist, which focuses on how the actions were organized and who was involved in them. Here are just a few points from the interview:

  • Actions have been undertaken mostly by affinity groups, While these groups are often affiliated with larger  federations (which makes it easier for different groups to communicate and coordinate), they’ve been acting under their own initiative rather than taking orders — making them flexible, responsive to the situation “on the ground,” and difficult to suppress.
  • There have also been daily General Assemblies in occupied spaces. These assemblies build on a 30-year history of collective discussion and decision-making, not to mention a lot of recent work around creating neighborhood assemblies.
  • The majority of the participants in the rioting have been anarchists (the interview subject claims there are 20,000 of them in Greece). But there are also plenty of high school and university students, who have been radicalized — and influenced by anarchist ideas — through years of struggle against the privatization of education, and who are following a tradition of successful student revolt in Greece. They’re taking action because they’re angry with the police, fed up with a failed political system and the exhaustion of mainstream political ideas, disenchanted with a culture that talks down to them and excludes them, and excited by the empowerment of taking to the streets and taking control of their own lives.
  • Greek anarchists have worked hard to reach out to the broader community — for example, by organizing neighborhood assemblies and participating in struggles that already mean something to non-anarchists, rather than symbolic, ineffectual protests. They’ve also learned to cooperate with one other despite their differences, and to overcome the “subcultural identity politics” that too often dominates North American anarchism.

In its response to the CrimethInc interview, the Center for Strategic Anarchy (which has done a great job covering the news from Greece day-by-day) is talking about what the Greek riots can teach anarchists in the US. It’s aimed at anarchists, of course, but still worth reading for anyone interested in creating anti-authoritarian social change in North America.