The unanimity of the fearful.
Throughout history, leaders of all kinds of totalitarian regimes aim at social cohesion. Through this cohesion the mass-human is produced – more flexible, more disciplined and more conservative toward the prevalent social behaviours at all given times. It is the contemporary class of these socially integrated citizens who then discover their common identity and crouch around the common interest, common aspirations and desires. All the lonelinesses of the western world meet for a moment in the snap-shot of consumerist frenzy.
In greece during the 80s social cohesion was inspired by the dream of “change” and invested in the owner-mania of house-building. Multi-storey flats in athens and thessaloniki were built one after the other in order to accommodate the absence of life emerging with the appearance of family ownership-property. Everyone was seeking their own property as recognition of their social value in the social class of the “neo-greek”, which required owner-property status.
In the 90s came the swoop of micro-electrical appliances of mortgaged joy and the second car. The neo-greek bourgeois were parading around their absence in a new environment of technological comfort and digital pleasure promised by the delayed greek capitalism. Loans for new living room couches and electrical appliances became a routine.
And so the bourgeois got to acquire all the characteristics of a class. They have common desires, common aspirations, common language and no consciousness. Yet they also have something else, something that in times of crisis becomes the strongest negotiation strategy for its administrators: They have common fears. Fear of loss of all these material “ideals” acquired with so much compromise, tolerance and humiliation. The peaceful bourgeois is capable even of killing someone should they threaten their property. Because in this very property they have invested everything they are. When someone loses their illusions, they become worse than him who has consciousness of the real loss.
In illusions all hopes for a future that will never come are placed upon; daily humiliations are soothed, stressed micro-egos get to rest. Leaders invest in the politics of crisis and fear once social cohesion of the common dream collapses, as a natural malfunction of the capitalist machine.
First of all, the notion of a crisis as constantly bombarded upon us through the media is in itself a military order, an order dictating social alert. The social fear parading in front of the unknown of the crisis has its own, very distinct smell. It is the smell of the cowardliness of all that the bourgeois has accepted, all the desires they never discovered, all the humiliations they never reacted to, all the roles they played in front of the empty stage of their bourgeois fantasizing. Social fear also has its own expression – it is vengeful, stingy and conservative.
Social cohesion is reclaimed by fear. From the religious time of crisis by some “god” to the national crises, even their breaths are tuned in military style. The entire society of zombification dances along the rhythms of the crisis, incapable of even realising what has happened.
These artificial conditions of alert act as military exercises against social polarisation. The times at which they are tested are very carefully chosen. Because they are not limited to one state, especially the economic crisis, they acquire different versions between them, so as to act more efficiently.
For example, the current economic crisis in the USA as a response of the conservative “white” republicans to the established democrats and the restructuring in the health system serve different purposes to the crisis in greece after the revolt of December. And also, the crisis with the outbreak of the new flu also comes to serve other purposes.
The politics of crisis proves to be a rather successful technique because except for the “wise ones” (political authority, journalists, analysts, “experts” of all sorts) who propagate it, there is also a stupid audience of faithful (society) ready to accept it and take orders.
In greece after all the technique of the crisis is a rather usual method. Often after social tension and clashes or ruptures caused by the enemy within, such crises of national unanimity make their appearance.
1991 was the year of the mass school occupations and the assassination of teacher Nikos Temponeras while the next year saw the crisis with skopje and the macedonian demonstrations. 1995 was the year of the largest mass arrest – 500 people in the Athens Polytechnic – while 1996 saw the Imia crisis (skirmishes between the greek and turkish army over an unpopulated rock –trans). 2008 saw the revolt of December and 2009 was the year of the migrant crisis, pogroms, concentration camps, turkish airspace violations and the revealing of the execution of missing greek-cypriots by turkish-cypriots. This does not mean to say that events were “produced” in order to disorientate the zombified public opinion. Imia did not happen to cover the Polytechnic arrests, nor was the supposed migrant issue highlighted to cover for December. Plus the fact that the economy is damaged and collapsing is a reality. The technique of the crisis is simply the director-like ability to highlight certain scenes at the right moment, so to direct the viewer’s gaze.
Air-space violations and incidents with greek rocks have happened many times, and yet in the case of Imia they were particularly promoted. (Undocumented) migrants have been living in the centre of Athens for years, and yet it was now that they had to be “revealed”. Illnesses and epidemics exist or are created constantly, yet once their usefulness period is over they disappear without anyone knowing their ending, like in the cases of the mad cow disease and the asian flu.
Economy is constantly in the red, yet now this has to be emphasized. Tables of statistics have no importance whatsoever, nor do the facts by financial authorities or financial analyses. What needs to be understood by the revolutionary force and the new urban guerilla tendency, is the social value of the financial crisis, the social value of fear – we need to proceed to our counter-analyses and to launch an attack on all fronts.
Economy is not a mere maths equation, it is a factory of production of relationships. The coming elections offer the visible exit from the crisis. They are the diffusing of the amassed social fear and its replacement by the hope for reconstruction of the bourgeois dream. We know that even sad people who carry as a badge of honour the title of the citizen, think of elections as outdated – and yet they are the only thing they have. After all as we said, illusions and idiocy are near-totally unbeatable, but not without their weaknesses.
Because we, like other comrades of the new urban guerilla tendency, do not participate in fixed games, nor do we participate in the official fiestas of demonstrations, in called-for marches such as that against the international expo in thessaloniki, we chose our own time to act.
And so at the dawn of Wednesday September 2 we placed a self-made exploding device comprising of two time bombs and 8 kilos of explosives in the back entrance of the ministry of Macedonia-Thrace. In order to avoid injuries we notified one tv station and the police.
The selection of that particular target was more of a challenge for the police protection plans devised for the particular location. The policemen by the entrance, the riot police unit in the courtyard, the police blocks on the adjacent Ayiou Dimitriou str, the patrols around the building were all a good opportunity for us to send them run panicking.
Each time that we emphasize on the operational part of a plan we do not do so in order to claim some credits for operational flawlessness and bravery. That is nonsense. Whatever we do, we do simply because we feel it and it fills us with the meaning of our existence. These references to some operational parts take place as an invitation to new comrades in order to share with them our belief that responsibility, good organising, trustworthiness, comradely feelings and decisiveness can attack that which until yesterday seemed unapproachable.
After all, the consecutive attacks that took place in our city during the summer by different groups prove that the new urban guerilla tendency is already under way and prepares its own charge. Broken doors, smashed shop fronts, smoke from the torched buildings, the chaos of the sabotages, is a network of communication beyond and outside the foreseeable. It is a way to tell our losses, our contradictions, our desires, ignoring the registries of authority and laughing at its established rules. No respect to the authorities of this city and its obedient citizens.
We shall return…
Coalition of the Cells of Fire
About 30 anarchists with helmets and hoods went into the supermarketnear the university of Saloniki and destroyed the security system! They took the foodstuff from the shelves and also took the moneyfrom the cash desk and burnt it outside the supermarket!nobody arrested!!