Greek anarchists have some lessons for Trump’s America

Generations of anti-fascists built Exarchia, including fighters who opposed the Nazis during World War II and self-organized brigades who fought against domestic and foreign fascists during the Greek Civil War. Decades later, people were outraged by the government’s killing of dozens of protesters and bystanders Polytechnic University in Athens in 1973 helped overthrow the US-backed dictatorship. In 2008, anarchists took to the streets again after a police officer murdered a 15-year-old. This led to protests across the country, expelling the police from Exarchia and establishing a new degree of autonomy.

If you imagine a neighborhood full of thugs wearing black balaclavas, think again. From Strefi Hill in Exarchia, a park maintained by residents, you can watch children playing basketball and people walking dogs and having rap battles, while the Acropolis and the shining sea are visible in the distance. The balconies are filled with climbing jasmine and gardens. The buildings themselves form a vast, interconnected mural of graffiti tags and abstract and figurative paintings. Bitter orange trees line the streets and bloom white in the spring.

It is difficult to distinguish a friend from the community choir, your dentist, your mechanic or your neighbor’s grandmother from an antifascist. Every week, Exarchia residents hold open meetings in community centers and in squatted spaces – vacant buildings that have been occupied and repaired; their agenda is determined by what is most urgent in the community.

Decisions are carried out by those who are most enthusiastic and have the relevant skills. For example, an agronomist would voluntarily examine environmental reports about the neighborhood. People who served in the military or went to law school may have ideas about safety. Exarchians have created their own migrant shelters and community centers, free food kitchens, and parks and libraries in squatted spaces. Anti-authoritarian groups provide food and medicine to those in need. They do all this because they have accepted that the government, churches, and nonprofits cannot be trusted to provide these services.

There are, of course, downsides to living in Exarchia. It’s good to have a reliable gas mask, in case police use tear gas to disperse protests. Vandalism in Airbnb rentals is common. Despite the efforts of residents, gentrification has taken hold.

In recent years, Exarchia has been threatened by the conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The government has evicted squatters and sent migrants from the community to refugee camps. It has clear-cut trees in the central square and units of militarized police stationed on the streets to guard the highly controversial site of a new metro station. which residents see as a step toward gentrification. These types of actions destroy communities.

This is how Exarchia fought back.

Maintaining the atmosphere in the neighborhood is essential. Exarchia is known for festivals featuring the community choir and local orchestras, carnivals and all-night dance parties, some of which commemorate past victories or memorials to anti-authoritarian fighters. The history of the movement is kept alive, especially for children. When an angel statue in the square was destroyed on government orders, puppeteers created replicas of the angels and brought them to festivals and protests. During Carnival, costumed demonstrators danced the Sirtaki around a giant burning effigy of Mitsotakis in front of military police. Last spring they created a huge papier-mâché tiger that roamed the streets. Excited children hopped around it and put their heads in their mouths.

A diversity of tactics is essential to protect the neighborhood. This ranges from sabotage of construction equipment to boycotts of gentrifying businesses, to protests filling the streets and lawsuits filling the docket of the courts. What makes all these methods so successful is the variety of people involved; young and old, rich and poor, lawyers operating within the system and militants fighting in the streets. Each act of resistance strengthens the other, and they have collectively been effective in stopping the usurpation of public space, arrests and evictions – the violent kind by police and the silent kind by landlords. that increase rents or foreign investors that buy up buildings.

Exarchia’s tactics should feel familiar to Americans, as many are inspired by American history, which has seen a surprising number of autonomous popular movements — agricultural collectives, networks of enslaved people working as cells to bring themselves and others to the freedom, the abolitionists who helped them, the Industrial Workers of the World and the indigenous resistance, underground abortion networks, the anti-AIDS task force ACT UP, anti-pipeline activists, and the Earth Liberation Front, whose once radical ideology about protecting the earth has largely become mainstream.

For Americans who feel caught in the snare of an openly hostile government, it is essential to understand how to organize without a leader. The greatest lesson of Exarchia may be that when the state fails or turns against us, punishes us, denies us resources, restricts our speech and freedom of movement, and attacks the weakest among us, all we have is each other: our courage, our competence. , our joy, our anger, our refusal to back down or see another hurt. People have the power to overthrow dictators.

Cara Hoffman is a novelist and founder and editor of ‘The anarchist review of books.“ She teaches at Johns Hopkins University.