Below is a text handed out by the Anarchists assembly for the connection of struggles within the prison-society (“Sasta”), in Thessaloniki, concerning recent house searches in the framework of an anti-terrorist “pincer operation” unleashed by the Greek police against anarchist/antiauthoritarian individuals since January 21st, 2014.
Lately, in the cities of Thessaloniki and Athens, cops of the anti-terrorist force and the state security have invaded homes of fighters and residences of their wider friendly milieu, based on the ostensible pretext of receiving an “anonymous complaint” about weapons and explosives, while they declare—to television receivers—that this operation is linked to the investigation for the detection of Christodoulos Xiros (convicted member of the revolutionary organization “17 November” who recently escaped while on prison furlough). These raids tend to become just another ordinary phenomenon; in the last month alone, 60 house searches were conducted, with the Greek police giving a true recital… Hooded cops occupy our personal spaces, roam our neighbourhoods, and detain our comrades, carrying out an anti-terrorist “super operation” as too many times before…
This operation cannot be seen as a detached action involving only persons of the anarchist milieu. We have witnessed similar moves being tested a year ago, also on a large scale, with searches in the homes of residents in Halkidiki Peninsula (Northern Greece), who are resisting gold mining. Also then, the State’s goal was to disarm social reflexes and halt action within that struggle.
The specific practice can only be viewed as a show of force by Power that aims to intimidate and terrorize all those who resist; those who are against Power, those who do not choose to stand uninvolved in the enslavement regime which the authorities want to impose on us. A practice adjacent to the rest of the State’s repressive plans: establishing a maximum security prison for revolutionaries, banning prison furloughs and tightening the legal consequences for fighters, conducting chemical war in demonstrations, unleashing pogroms against migrants, evicting squats, etc.
This “spectacular” repressive operation is an offensive—this time against anarchists—which aims to serve as an example against those who resist the State and its mechanisms, but also as a warning to anyone intending to oppose its dictates.
At a time when our daily life is strangled by recurring schedules in workplaces, schools and universities, stacked in buses, queues at public services and supermarkets, and subjugated to the “desires” of dominators, we cannot turn a blind eye.
At a time when our everyday life is consuming fear from the 8pm news bulletins, feeding itself with advertisements and psychopharmaceuticals, socializing on online social media, and confined in concrete cages, to consider ourselves free is alarming. As it is equally worrying to get accustomed to the chains we wear and remain passive, swallowing social purity perceptions that they display without even chewing them.
In our own time, when the face of democracy is clearer than ever, also the necessity of struggle against democracy becomes clear. The necessity of acting and organizing ourselves, staying away from mediations and hierarchies, in order to form structures of resistance, communities of self-organization and solidarity in every neighbourhood, in every workplace, in every school and university, in every prison. We must not let cops, fascists, journalists, snitches and all sorts of lackeys do their job without troubles.
We must reciprocate, in every possible way, the violence they enforce daily over our lives.
We must not let what eats us be fully sated.
SOLIDARITY – SELF-ORGANIZATION – ANARCHY