March 2023 – negation formations

riot diary: the greek train collision, part two

Posted on 2023/03/17 - 2023/04/24 by julesb

SECOND DAY AFTER THE DERAILMENT: FRIDAY 3 MARCH

Rather than just one funeral, Greeks hold multiple services for their dead: a week, forty days and then a year after the passing. This ancient tradition means that the 40-day remembrance ceremony for the victims of the train collision, effectively a second funeral, would have coincided with planned national elections.

Greece's ruling party, New Democracy, has for many years skewed further and further right in an attempt to keep Greece's sizable racist, nationalist & fascist voter constituencies under its tent, but its original gimmick and the face it still tries to show the outside world is a party of center-right "technocrats." They present themselves as modern, unsentimental, business-minded experts who can handle the technical complexities of 21st century governance. While the horrific train collision would be bad for any officeholder, the train disaster, caused specifically by safety infrastructure negligence– negligence that the transport unions have complained about for years– is uniquely damaging to the projected image of these anti-union, pro-privatization junta hacks who claim they're the only ones smart and competent enough to get things done.

On Friday we heard the first rumors, since confirmed, that the country's elections will be delayed for an unspecified period. The government is trying to spin this delay as a gesture of respect, but of course it's a cynical tactic to try and hold power, since they know the 40-day remembrance will rekindle outrage.

After the massive nationwide turnout for demos Thursday, the government summoned (or perhaps was assigned, by their puppeteers) a U.S. "crisis management" team. These P.R. experts induced a whiplash-inducing reversal of official attitude. The Prime Minister, who'd in previous days dismissed the collision as merely a matter of an individual stationmaster's "human error," went on prime-time TV to apologize somberly for the government's failure to ensure proper train safety, even stating "we will not hide behind 'human error.'" The transportation minister, who two weeks ago had made a finger-wagging speech scolding transport unions for bringing up safety concerns, resigned.

A wide range of groups, from trade unions to anarchists, called for a demo in Athens Friday at 6:30 p.m. The striking workers of Greece's national and regional transport networks agreed to operate for a window of a few hours that evening to assist protesters. After the experience Wednesday, when we showed up just in time to get teargassed, we tried to be a little more timely. Most of the demos I go to only begin moving an hour-plus after the stated start time, but these post-train-crash demos across Greece had been drawing a lot of people who wouldn't normally come to demos, people who don't run on anarchist time.

Three of us set off for parliament, but a half-mile before we got there, we encountered nearly a thousand people jamming the road around the Panepistimiou metro. They were chanting and carrying big banners that called the government murderers and blamed capitalism & privatization for the derailment.

Along with the on-air apology by the prime minister, Greece's suddenly contrite government and their shills had planned and been heavily promoting candle-lit silent vigil events around the country for Friday evening, as well as some kind of lockdown-esque "clap for the carers" thing where people were supposed to turn off their lights at a certain time.

The people gathered at Panipestimiou were not silent; the crowd was roiling. People were having emphatic conversations with each other about how angry they were. I mentioned the anti-privatization signs; the crowd was heavily communist. While I'm what the Greeks call "black anarchist," meaning a nihilist, negation-focused hater of every economy and every form of state, I do have a baseline of respect for Greek communists that I don't have for communists in the so-called first world.

Greek communists waged guerrilla (and civil) war against fascism and colonial powers throughout the 20th century. They have been hunted, imprisoned, starved and most often outright murdered by multiple Greek dictators, by Bulgarian and Italian fascists, by real-deal third-reich nazis, by NATO and the colonial British, then (until 1974) by a far-right military junta, and on and on. They have fought and died in Greece's streets, fields and islands; their legacy is one of tremendous valor. I am no friend to authoritarians, and of course they're dangerously wrong about the state's potential as a liberatory force, but no matter how much the commies here piss me off I'm always conscious that the red of Greek communism is a red of proud working-class blood spilled in furious, dedicated multi-generational rebellion against tyranny.

The biggest communist party here is KKE; they hate anarchists. They avoid us at demos, and on rare occasions when their youth wing catches an anarchist without backup, they beat us up. They have, unforgivably, defended government buildings against anarchists during insurrections, and they constantly spread obnoxious Facebook-boomer lies about how all anarchists are secretly undercover cops. I'm under no illusion that they are potential allies, but they are human beings, and Greek, and in this moment it was clear that anger at the government was very strong among Greek people regardless of ideological affiliation. While KKE wasn't at Panepistimiou as a formal bloc Friday night, the dozen other commie cadres present with their welter of organizational acronyms and angels-on-a-pin doctrinal differences included KKE-type stalinists and leninists as well as (this being Greece) maoists, gonzalists and more esoteric fractal offshoots.

Protests continue on the third day of the train massacre in Greece due to state negligence. People gather once again this evening in Athens Propilia. #Τεμπη #Τεμπη_Τραγωδια #Λαρισα #τρενα #τραυματιες #Antireport #Greece pic.twitter.com/imA5TQLU2j

— Partizan Yunanistan (@partizanGreece1) March 3, 2023

A scruffy crowd of anarchists was loitering around the garden by the University of Athens rectory, the former parliament building also known as Propylaea. We joined them. Shortly after, the demo got rolling, maybe a thousand people including a few hundred anarchists in the rear. We followed a predictable route, marching away from parliament at first, then cutting down to Stadiou and looping back towards it. The energy was tremendous, and there were no visible police anywhere around us.

My comrade speculated, I think correctly, that the state was trying a "hands-off" approach to defuse anger. It's not a terrible strategy, since it has felt to me occasionally like demos here are hampered by the absence of cops, as if the drama can't fully blossom without them or reach climax without the state's active antagonism. Plenty of graffiti went up, but in general the march was only noisy. While banks and most upscale businesses were sealed behind metal shutters, there were various other potential targets left unscathed.

I tried not to complain to my companions, since I have learned that even the Greek anarchists I'm closest to are not overeager for tactical critique from clueless yankee transplants. A militant march with loud chanting is, I think, more affirming and inspiriting to a Greek anarchist than it is to a simplistic Peter-Pan manchild like myself. The anarchist chants are great– full of violence and imprecation, poetically satisfying while still hair-raisingly conflictual– but my eternally adolescent heart always longs for smashy-smashy.

Our piece of the march got stalled out just past the alley Voukourestiou, where Stadiou does a little twist-and-turn before opening out into Syntagma. I have developed a clear theory as to why this spot is so often a bottleneck, but I would need diagrams to explain it, and I suspect most readers wouldn't find the specifics interesting. Speaking of details most won't find interesting: at Syntagma Square, Stadiou technically changes name to Plateia Syntagma for the length of the square, then changes again to Fillenon. Panepistimiou, parallel on the Square's east side, changes at the square to Leoforos Vasilis Amalias. At the cost of accuracy, but as a feeble effort at clarity, I'm going to incorrectly call these streets Stadiou and Panepistimiou throughout.

With the march treading water, my partner and I slipped out onto the sidewalk and walked ahead to take a look at Syntagma– the wide public square and boulevard in front of the parliament building. The square was nearly empty by Friday-night standards, but there were a few hundred people up in front of parliament itself: it was the silent candlelight vigil, plus a sizable protest group autonomous from the march we'd arrived with. The large, mostly communist groups comprising our own march's front two thirds were gradually filtering through this standing crowd. I took a piss in a dark corner of the park, but had to wait to use the corner because two guys were doing something sketchy there with a backpack. Cool sketchy, not drug-deal sketchy. My optimism bolstered, I bought a beer from the square's kiosk– bless the kiosks, every rioter's friend– and found my companion again.

Still, nothing much seemed to be happening. The march was at least moving again, making a long, slow circumambulation of the square. We were discussing when or if we should jump back into it when the tectonic plates of the crowd now lining four sides of the square began a rapid shift. Liberal-looking middle-class people with candles started to flow away from parliament down Vasileos Georgiou in a slightly herd-panicked manner, and a larger group of people in black were moving aggressively towards parliament up Othonos, the Square's other side.

The anarchists walked faster; some began to jog; then everyone was jogging; then some began sprinting– then the whole bloc was charging up the hill full tilt. I cut diagonally towards the front line of the charge and emerged onto the boulevard in front of parliament where I beheld a sight which, if it was the only thing that had happened that night, would have still been more than enough: 50 or more people attacking parliament and its guards with explosives. Molotovs, yes, but also gas bombs and fireworks. For Beavis types like me it's cool just to see shit go boom, but my hope for every real rebel reading this is that you're lucky or ambitious enough to someday witness the literal, non-symbolic physical seat of your nation's government firebombed by anarchists. The feelings this evokes are indescribable.

MAT (riot police) ran out from the wings of parliament to skirmish. Our team's explosions were answered by flash grenades; screeching canisters billowed teargas. The number of cops emerging from parliament wasn't nearly what I'd have expected, however, and an immediate hail of stones and homemade incendiaries greeted them. Not only were the anarchists extremely aggressive, but the larger crowd didn't scatter as they sometimes do when the flashbangs-and-molotovs phase of the evening begins. They were steadfast, maintaining a thunderous chant of MURDERERS, MURDERERS. Many had linked arms. As anarchists darted in and out, lobbing fire, the larger crowd shifted back and forth amoeba-like to avoid tendrils of teargas, but continued to hold the street in front of parliament. We were contesting the space in a way I hadn't often seen: every time the cops rushed the crowd, it flowed back from them without fleeing. After a couple rounds of this, fighters emerged from the crowd to directly counterattack the police. These frontliners were not only anarchists; this was a nonsectarian moment. I will remember it until I die; while molotovs blazed overhead and sizzling scarlet flares dyed the whole scene a spooky purple, Greeks engaged in hand-to-hand combat against riot cops.

♥️ pic.twitter.com/50UykvkkcQ

— Παρασιτεί Μετέωρος (@parameteoros) March 4, 2023

My partner's shout got my attention: there was a strange living sculpture squirming down the hill beneath a streetlight at Othonos and Stadiou. It was like those cartoon depictions of a brawl, but inverted, because everyone was in black. Fists and sticks were flying in and out of the clustered, writhing shadow, and in the amalgamation's violent center, surfacing only for a split second at a time, I saw the gleaming white helmet of a DELTA motorcycle cop. He was being gang-beaten by what looked like either 3, 6 or 12 black-clad heroes. In the chaos it was impossible to count, and more were dashing toward the fray– people were literally bellowing with joy as they ran towards it. Unfortunately I was still many yards away when the police motorcycle cavalry arrived, and I peeled off to the right. All night I'd been wondering: where were all the cops? Well, here they all were, a great deluge of them spilling from the alleys on motorcycles and on foot.

A comrade yelled "Ermou" and I made for it as fast as I could. My partner came racing back from the other direction; there were cops swarming along the other side of the square now too in a pincer. I could see ahead of us a crowd of a hundred or so hooligans charging down Ermou into the heavily touristic shopping district of Monastiraki. We followed– all around us as we ran, the pale, terrified faces of tourists blazed like round lamps. Shopkeepers were scrambling, somersaulting to slam shut their shutters, and Ermou was transformed from a sedate, upscale retail destination into a coursing river of tumultuous movement, smoke and shouts.

We knew the police were behind us, but when their grenades started to land in front of us we understood we were being overtaken, and we half-jumped/half-fell into side alley, clambering among the tables and chairs of a spanish-themed cafe for safety from the cudgels of the cops.

People screamed insults at the platoon as it thundered past: fascists! rapists! murderers! A lifetime in the U.S. had conditioned me to expect the general public to be cop-loving cowards, but this was Athens in the early stages of a popular uprising, and everyone from grandmothers to middle-class dog walkers was hurling invective at the police.

Once the police had passed by our position, we re-emerged onto Ermou and continued towards Plateia Monastiraki, the main square, which we could see down the hill was full of fire and flashing lights. By the time we arrived, the main body of the anarchists that had preceded us had scattered, but police were fire-extinguishing a parked police cruiser that had, before being set on fire, been thoroughly looted and had its windows smashed with cafe chairs.

A fat middle-aged cop who'd apparently been in the car was shaking as he explained to the other police what had happened. "They hit us, they hit us… so fast, out of nowhere, all the windows at once."

More and more police were arriving, and they were pissed. My companion wanted to linger; I wanted to leave. The cops grabbed a passerby for taking photos of the burned-out car but released him when the crowd began jeering.

We made our way through Plateia Monistiraki slowly, slow enough to still be leaving when a further reinforcement of motorcycle cops arrived and started seizing immigrants. I am not here to present myself as other than I am: while I am in solidarity with immigrants and the economically downtrodden, I pulled my companion away from this latest confrontation. We'd both already had very direct and memorable face-to-face time with cops that night, encounters not specified in this accounting, and I was concerned what would happen if we were recognized.

Conveniently for our departure, some civic-minded individuals had smashed the nearby metro station's turnstile gates to flinders, rendering public transport free for all. There was already another big Syntagma demo called for Saturday. For Sunday, March 8th, there was talk of a nationwide general strike.

riot diary: the greek train collision, part one

Posted on 2023/03/14 - 2023/03/14 by julesb

As a frequent rioter in Athens I try to resist writing these sorts of english-language "reportbacks" — what's the point? Seems like an existential ego trip, a dog pissing on a fire hydrant: 'I was HERE! I EXIST!'

In this case, I feel there hasn't been much english-language anarchist coverage of the popular response to the Feb 28 2023 train collision in Greece. Now, almost two weeks in, the ongoing general uprising has been extraordinary. Some who lived through (and took part in) the insurrections here a decade or so ago have said the scope and feeling of this uprising is similar… and those insurrections back then nearly toppled the state.

There have been many days and nights of demos, riots, occupations and strikes across Greece since the train collision; what follows is the first installment of my personal experience. I am not a journalist, not a reporter or pundit– merely a partisan who writes.

I do have mixed feelings about the large, prevailingly personally inert online audience that consumes decontextualized snippets of anti-state violence originating in Greece. I shit on and condemn all "specialists," "researchers" or "experts" striving to build online brands; those that aren't literally CIA might as well be. On the other hand, I love and extend solidarity to anarchist fighters elsewhere who just want to know what fighters here are up to. I also send special love and encouragement to the (often younger) isolated individuals in places without militant movements, those beautiful wild suffering souls to whom these glimpses show it is indeed possible to lead a happy, satisfying life centered on war against the status quo.

Such are the ribbons with which I adorn this little diary: solidarity to the fighters, wishes of fire and violence to the parastatal vultures & foreign 'adventure journalists,' and boundless compassion for those budding extremists who feel like lone maniacs stranded in a complacent cornfield. I believe in you, as I believe in myself.

THE DAY OF THE DERAILMENT — WEDNESDAY 1 MARCH

On Feb 28, just before midnight, a northbound passenger train largely full of students returning from Greek carnival collided head-on with a southbound cargo freight train traveling on the same track. This disaster occurred in a relatively remote location, by the Tempe valley, and it took time for the seriousness of the accident to filter out. The remains of 57 people have been identified, but there are as many still "missing." Missing! They were on the train and now they're missing? This means, to me, that the death toll is over 100. Even at 57 dead, it's easily the worst train disaster in Greece's history. The insides of the derailed passenger cars burned at 1300 degrees celsius (~2400 degrees fahrenheit), the temperature used to melt glass in a kiln. Since the government and train company don't know how exactly how many tickets were sold for the train, and anyway there are always dozens of unticketed passengers, including immigrants without regional familial networks, the loss of human life will never be subject to a full technocratic forensic accounting. That is to say, the statisticians and numeraries won't be able to corral this disaster into their actuarial tables; it is simply a horror, a conflagration so intense that it erased specificity.

Greece is not a big country. Its total population is about the same as the state of Georgia in the USA, so a disaster of this magnitude makes a proportionally enormous impact. On the day of the train collision several groups, including anarchists, called for a "snap" or immediate demo at the Athens offices of Hellenic Train. Hellenic Train is the Italian-owned private company that bought most of Greece's train services from the Greek government back in 2017. The sale of Greece's national rail system to a private company was something the E.U. had demanded, a condition of Europe's central banks forgiving the Greek state's debts.

The overall mood on Wednesday seemed more like stunned grief than rage, so my companion and I weren't sure how many people would show up at the offices. Several hundred did, and the two of us arrived just in time to get teargassed. I'm often a cowboy about teargas but this was an extreme dousing; we were retching and staggering. The platoons of riot police guarding the Hellenic Train building were very aggressive, as were the squads guarding the pumps at nearby gas stations.

The road Hellenic Train HQ faces, Andrea Siggrou, is a major road of Athens. At six lanes with a little neutral ground, I wouldn't have thought it a bad place to get teargassed, but the sheer volume of gas deployed and the stillness of the air between the tall office buildings made it a debilitating nightmare. The crowd was all sorts of people of all ages and political stripes; the majority responded to the initial police onslaught by departing the area immediately. This was smart, because it was hellish.

Amid the chaos, our comrades didn't succeed in breaking any of the building's reinforced windows, but they threw paint on the police and the Train HQ's lower floor, including graffiti of the "MURDERERS" and "THE STATE KILLS, KILL THE STATE" type.

Those who weren't satisfied after that first clash scattered and reformed into smaller marches; a decent-sized group that seemed to be mostly communist eventually coalesced down Siggrou and marched again past the Hellenic Train building, flowing around the burning dumpsters. They chanted "Revenge," a nice sentiment, as well as the usual bromides about the incipient rise of the proletariat.

The largest and rowdiest of the smaller marches didn't hang around but proceeded — one might also say ran — up Siggrou towards the parliament building 3/4 of a mile away. A significant number of police pursued that splinter, continuing to bombard it with gas and flash grenades. At Syntagma (the greek parliament building, but also the large public square, the metro station and the street nearest it) there was even more teargas.

By that point I'd retreated into the genteel parklands around the Acropolis. Staggering with searing eyes, burning skin and wheezing post-covid lungs among the sedately strolling tourist families, I could still hear from Syntagma the BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! of the teargas grenades — a pounding, seemingly bottomless barrage. I felt immense anger.

THE DAY AFTER THE DERAILMENT — THURSDAY 2 MARCH

The Greek mainstream media is abysmal by any standard. The average Greek is far more educated and literate than the average American, but the news paradigm here starts at the Balkan equivalent of Rupert Murdoch and gets more right-wing and tabloid-y from there. It's an ideological spectrum that runs from "solemn regurgitation of ruling-party propaganda" to absolute wingnut conspiracy shit.

As the government scrambled to corral and redirect popular anger, the Greek people were offered carefully crafted explanations for why we shouldn't blame New Democracy, the right-wing cadre that's been in power since 2019 and for twelve of the past twenty years.

On the sober side, the media and government scapegoated a single 59-year-old stationmaster; the newscasters did a deep dive into his culpability, running pictures of his family members (why?), vilifying and anathematizing him while never mentioning the multiple automated fallback systems that should have prevented his supposed "human error."

On the conspiracy side, populist pundits and online trolls pushed a rumor that Roma (aka Gypsies, a perennial target of the right wing) had caused the crash by sabotaging the lines. There were also the first stirrings of Sandy-Hook type "questions" from online nationalists about e.g. whether what occurred might have actually been a mysterious explosion rather than a collision.

I don't enjoy relaying the above, but I think it's worth understanding the Greek media environment. What matters more is that in the wake of the train crash there was near-unanimous rejection of these lies. The obvious government & mass-media bullshit campaigns only seemed to make people angrier.

The Thursday evening demo was at Syntagma. As we walked there, it began to rain. A steady and increasing flow of people were walking the opposite way. I am a guest of the movement here in Greece, and to some degree a guest of the Greek people, so I try to tread carefully when I speak of "the Greeks" as a monolith, but there's no denying that Greeks abhor bad weather. The mildest sprinkle or rain shower spawns cancellation of everything imaginable; everyone runs indoors. It's a cultural characteristic. Thus the rain on Thursday meant, to me, that this demo wouldn't happen.

My demo partner was very angry about the train derailment and determined to at least try and march, and I wasn't going to be a party pooper, so we slogged to Syntagma in what had become a full, chilly downpour.

The streetlights around Syntagma were out, which gave things an even gloomier vibe. "Darkness is our ally," I assured my comrade– a sentiment I believe, but which didn't feel particularly true in the moment. It was quite dark and getting colder. Rivulets of water ran the contours of the street and sidewalks, and the only sounds besides the drumming rain were a lone woman screaming "Burn this government!" and an authoritarian communist sound van blaring tinny music. There in the dark boulevard outside parliament, a few hundred sodden but steely young communists stood in resolute formation with their symbolic cudgels (red flags on stout sticks — seldom if ever used as weapons).

the scene at syntagma. video from https://twitter.com/vedatyeler_/status/1631336369879490564

For a few minutes we wandered the saturated situation, searching for other hooligans, but nobody looked the type. The metro lines were closed due to strike, but we went down the big stairs into Syntagma's square and sheltered under the overhang of the metro entrance. Despite conditions, it was kind of a cute scene: a random assortment of would-be protesters all standing jammed together in a stone archway, chatting and sharing cigarettes. Eventually, someone appeared at the top of the steps near our shelter: "C'mon, kids," he called, "It's moving!"

When we emerged from the tunnel shelter, we saw that a march was indeed underway, and it was shockingly large– it was thousands. I have never in my life seen so many Greeks stay out in such absolutely miserable weather. We tried to find a spot near people roughly in line with our own beliefs and ended up by a pretty macho anarcho-communist group. The best thing I can say about them is that at least when they chanted "Go ahead, people, don't bow your heads" they'd conclude with "The only path is gasoline and a bottle" instead of the more traditional "The only path is resistance."

Visibility was low. We kept getting jumbled around, but knew we were in the roughly correct piece of the march because we had a bunch of riot cops flanking us on either side. The march was enormous, slow-moving and uneventful, the kind of event I normally find dispiriting, but it was made powerful by its defiance of the rain.

Μεγάλη #συγκέντρωση διαμαρτυρίας στο Σύνταγμα και πορεία προς τον Σταθμό Λαρίσης παρά την αθηναϊκή μπόρα πριν από λίγο.
Κράτος και κεφάλαιο δολοφονούν!

Στους 57 #Τέμπη #ΟΣΕ #Hellenictrains #antireport pic.twitter.com/sZn2lpEBww

— Αυτολεξεί (@aftoleksigr) March 2, 2023

We were followed by more riot cops and the Aura, Greece's iconic oversized water-cannon truck. The Aura, unlike most implements of state repression, inspires in me something bordering on kitschy affection. Make no mistake, it's genuinely terrifying when it's roaring directly on your heels and seems like it may run you over, but from a distance the armored beast looks so funny and old-fashioned, like a piece of Warhammer Ork technology. When you spot it lumbering across an intersection or laboriously maneuvering a 9-point turn there's a tinge of humor to the spectacle, like watching a clumsy old elephant.

The highlight of the demo was when we passed Rex, a theater recently occupied by striking artists and actors, and they cheered for us from behind their barricaded entryway. The bloc responded with a thunderous chant: "10, 100, 1000 squats, against the world of organized rot!" The riot cops sandwiched between the theater and the march began uneasily turning back and forth, and the spacing of their previously organized line bunched up and collapsed as they hurried to get clear of the theater.

Eventually we reached (and filled) Omonia square, still under steady rain. I was hoping the demo might visit the nearby police station, but instead it wended on towards the Athens train station. We stepped away and found that, hilariously, the pair of us had been marching the last little ways behind a banner for the political party of clownish neoliberal Varoufakis… but please keep that a secret. My credibility could never recover.

When I got home and dried off, I learned that there had been big marches all over Greece, many of them braving similar rainstorms. The comrades in Thessy had attacked a police station, I noted jealously– but there had been big, angry demos in Volos, Larissa, Patras, all sorts of different cities and towns, not just leftist or anarchist hotspots. There were photos online of massive demos in towns I'd never even heard of– and Greece is, as I've said, not that big. It reminded me a bit of the USA's George Floyd summer, in that there was action popping off in places one wouldn't normally expect to see it. It was beginning to resemble an uprising.