On October 26th–27th, 2011, interventions were actualized at schools in Elliniko, Ano Glyfada and Argyroupoli (southern suburbs of Athens, renowned for their capitalist character). Secondary students had written and distributed the following text against the parade of October 28th:
One-TWO! One-TWO! Parade (or sheep’s) rehearsal for the army?
We were born and grew up considering parades on national anniversaries as a given… HOWEVER, things aren’t quite like that. This nationalist delirium hasn’t always flourished. The displays of militarism and nationalism came from Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascistized society, and were planted in Greece by Metaxa’s dictatorship, while other totalitarian regimes (North Korea, Soviet Union, Cuba) also established parades in order to shape morale and discipline the students.
Parades are traditionally powered by a dense and homogeneous appearance (dress uniforms, gait, and alignment) and pursue to merge the individuality, cultivating discriminations at the same time —e.g. boys marching ahead of girls, the tall ones ahead of the short, and especially, deserving students ahead of the plebs. In fact, only the six students of a corps d’elite usually attend the Orthodox Christian doxology and always march ahead, separated from the rest of the school students ‘mob’.
The school, in turn, creates a climate of terrorism towards the students so that they’ll participate in the parade —since most students ignore that their participation is optional, rather than obligatory. Thus, either they’re given the promise that their school absences will be erased, if they parade, or they’re threatened with a punishment of more absences, if they don’t. In extreme cases, the school governing bodies go as far as to threaten the students with suspension or expulsion.
This definitely indicates that the school serves as a means of preserving fascist methods and practices, rather than focusing on solving practical problems of students, such as a lack of teachers and books.
It is obvious that as anarchists we stand on the opposite side of this nationalist absurdity which defends an institution that cultivates hate and war against fellow humans based on national and racial criteria.
We don’t commemorate the resistance with parades, but with insurrections.
Anarchists from the southern