MAOIST ASSAULT ON ATHENS ANARCHISTS EXPOSED A HIERARCHICAL POLITICAL CULTURE SHAPED BY PATRIARCHAL COMMAND HABITS ~ Blade Runner ~ Thousands took the streets across Greece on 17 November, in memory of those killed during the Polytechnic uprising of 1973, when students were gunned down as they rose against the colonial dictatorship. In Athens, more than 6,000 riot police were deployed for the demonstration and rally outside the US Embassy, with armoured vehicles cordoning off the march’s route in an attempt to deter mass participation. Forty-three people were arrested in police operations prior to the demonstration. Earlier, on the morning of 15 November, around 150 members of the Maoist group ARAS descended on the Polytechnic campus in Exarcheia during preparations for the annual commemorations of the 1973 revolt. They surrounded a small group of anarchist and anti-authoritarian students, launched a coordinated and sustained assault, and left more than a dozen hospitalised with concussions, broken bones, and severe head injuries—including people beaten while unconscious. The attackers operated behind a tight cordon, the campus gates were locked, and hundreds of other left organisations present were unable to intervene. The event was publicly condemned by the majority of the leftist and anarchist organisations in Greece. Far from being just another intra-left skirmish, the attack was a strategic attempt to stake out territory. Whoever holds the physical space of the Polytechnic does not just manage a campus; they lay claim to the meaning of its history, and with it to the future horizon of social struggle. ARAS has spent years imposing its dominance inside sections of the university student movement, reproducing an authoritarian posture analogous to the Greek Communist Party’s (KKE) hegemonic stance in the wider social-political field: the insistence on organisational control, the policing of dissent, and the decades-old line—embraced by both KKE and liberals—that rioters are ‘unity wreckers’ or undercover police agents. The assault belongs to a longer cycle of disillusionment, repression, and political decay. A generation came of age after the 2008 youth revolt—a moment that terrified the political class—only to watch the long disillusionment of the SYRIZA years unfold: hope evaporating, movement energy betrayed, and ‘left government’ shrinking into technocratic management. What followed was the right’s triumphant return, armed with a violently enforced TINA (‘there is no alternative’) and a counter-insurgency posture aimed squarely at the movements that shook the country in 2008 and during the memorandum years. In recent years, police authorities have increasingly attacked political squats—including inside university campuses with the cooperation of academic administrations. In this climate, authoritarian and patriarchal patterns have reasserted themselves not only from above but also inside the political field, with remnants of the left acting as buffers and internal counter-insurgency, absorbing anger and blocking the emergence of genuinely autonomous social alternatives. ARAS’s attack was a re-enactment of this broader tendency: the internalisation of state logic by a leftist formation desperate for recognition and power. The attempt to secure relevance and organisational survival in a landscape reshaped by the slow asphyxiation of the movements culminated in a grotesque rupture with the spirit of the Polytechnic—an authoritarian spectacle that mimicked the very forces the anniversary is meant to defy. Movements have a lot to fear when actors legitimise these formations in the name of ‘unity’ and thereby help them secure moral cover. Moreover, the attack’s brutality revealed more than a sectarian and authoritarian ambush; it exposed a hierarchical political culture shaped by patriarchal command habits—festering across parts of the Greek left (and the political spectrum more broadly)—and now emboldened under a government that fetishises discipline, punishment, and obedience. For decades, the Polytechnic has been held open by those who reject these narratives of order and inevitability. Very few of the political currents present have ever been ‘non-violent’ in the moralistic sense pushed by governments and liberals. They have defended occupations, confronted police, blocked mines, and built care infrastructures under fire. Their militancy is collective and grounded in mutual protection. ARAS’s violence was the opposite: authoritarian domination masquerading as discipline, a patriarchally inflected theatre of control posing as social struggle. This distinction is essential. Political formations that reproduce hierarchical and patriarchal command structures do not simply echo the state’s violence—they legitimise it. When a male-led sect storms the Polytechnic like a private riot squad, it functions as an unofficial extension of the repression the government has been escalating for years by suffocating movement spaces and expanding police powers under the banner of inevitability. In this context, ARAS’s attack reads less like sectarian madness and more like a grotesque amateur version of the state’s own narrative: ‘order must be restored; alternatives must be crushed.’ A violent echo of the TINA they claim to oppose. If movements want to survive this authoritarian phase—the criminalisation of dissent, the ‘good protester/bad protester’ theatre, the policing of youth politics—they must confront what enabled this attack. Not through vendetta or purges, which only recycle the same authoritarian circuitry, but by refusing to tolerate inside our own spaces the hierarchies, masculinities, and command habits that make such violence possible. Transformative justice is not a soft alternative to militancy; it is the only way militancy stays rooted in liberation rather than sliding into the logic of domination. The Polytechnic revolt remains powerful because it rejected hierarchy, patriarchal command, and the logic of inevitability. It was messy, plural, and contradictory—and therefore genuinely insurgent. What happened this year was a desecration of that memory by people faithfully reproducing the logic of the state more than its police. Our task now is not only to defend our spaces from external repression, but to defend our political cultures from internal rot. No movement that fails to uproot authoritarianism—whether carried by the state or by its imitators—can build the world it says it is fighting for. The post A left that carries the state inside it appeared first on Freedom News.

ARSON IN BERLIN, MARCHES AND REPRESSION IN GREECE MARK A YEAR SINCE FATAL ATHENS EXPLOSION ~ Kit Dimou ~ The past week saw a series of anarchist actions and memorials across Europe, marking one year since the death of Greek anarchist Kyriakos Xymitiris, who was killed on 31 October 2024 in a bomb explosion in Athens. Most lately on Tuesday (4 November), an anonymous group calling itself “the three funny four beavers” claimed responsibility for setting fire to a transformer station at a Virtus data centre construction site in Berlin, dedicating the action to Xymitiris. In a rhymed communiqué titled “Fire and flame to the data centres!”, the group denounced the AI industry’s environmental destruction and its role in militarism, including the use of artificial intelligence in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. It said gasoline and car tyres were used to start the fire, although police gave mainstream media a contradictory account. Palestine, West Bank Commemoration events for Xymitiris began on 30 October with a public gathering at Athens Panteion University, discussing revolutionary memory and presenting a book on armed struggle. The following evening, hundreds marched in central Athens under banners remembering the fallen anarchist and demanding freedom for those imprisoned in connection with the 2024 Ampelokipi explosion: Marianna Manoura, Dimitra Zarafeta, Nikos Romanos, and two others. The march was violently attacked by riot police as it entered Exarchia, with stun grenades and chemical sprays used against people sitting in nearby cafés. Witnesses reported dozens detained during the dispersal. In Crete, the same morning saw large-scale raids in Heraklion targeting anarchist structures including the Evangelismos squat. Several people were arrested after a recent public confrontation with the far-right former minister Makis Voridis, whose long history with Greece’s military junta and neo-Nazi networks has once again drawn scrutiny. The raids coincided with the anniversary of Xymitiris’s death and appeared aimed at disrupting planned memorial assemblies. In Hamburg, comrades gathered to hang a banner reading “Revolutionary hearts burn forever — Kyriakos X.” and to share discussion and remembrance. Further statements of solidarity appeared from Portugal, Palestine, and Germany’s autonomous housing scene. A collective from the squatted building Rigaer94 in Berlin published a long text recalling Xymitiris’s presence in the city and linking his memory to struggles against eviction, militarism and digital control.     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Verified machine edit The post Attacks and memorials for Kyriakos Xymitiris appeared first on Freedom News.

WIDE COALITION OF TEACHERS’ AND PARENTS’ GROUPS ORGANISED PROTEST OVER SCHOOL CONDITIONS ~ Kit Dimou ~ Six children required medical care at a nearby clinic and one 7-year-old boy ended up in hospital after police tear-gassed and attacked a protest at a primary school in Exarcheia, Athens last Thursday (23 October). MAT and OPKE riot police set on a demonstration of around 100 parents, teachers, union members and schoolchildren from the 36th Primary School with beatings, tear gas and flash bangs. The protest, outside of the regional Directorate of Primary Education, opposed plans to merge school classes and highlighted lack of care for children with disabilities.  The protest was called groups including the Parents Federation, all the teachers’ associations from this part of the city, as well as the parents’ associations of 15 separate schools. Nevertheless, the police and right-wing press blame the incidents exclusively on the presence of parents who are members of the two local collectives “NO metro in Exarcheia Square” and “Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill”, accusing them of trying to break police lines and force their way into the building. While anarchist parents and children may have been present, other workers and parents in the protest were anything but anti-authoritarian. As stated by the Strefi hill assembly, parents and collective members are not “horrible aliens from Andromeda” but “parents who fight for their children as they have learnt to fight for their neighbourhood, Hill, park and square“. This is not the first time the schoolchildren at 36th Primary face violence and tear gas. In April, following the eviction of the “Exostrefis” squat on its first birthday, a number of cultural and educational activities took place around Strefi hill, with the support of the School’s parents’ assocation. The climbing and tightrope walking activities were interrupted violently by riot police.  So far, the parents’ attempts to bring this up in the supposedly “progressive” Athens City Council have fallen on deaf ears. The post Athens: Police tear-gas schoolchildren, blame anarchist parents appeared first on Freedom News.

CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED TO COVER APPEAL COSTS FOR KOUKAKI SQUATS COMMUNITY ~ Kate Moschou ~ As their appeal trial approaches, members of the Koukaki Squats Community (KSC) in central Athens have launched a funding campaign to help cover mounting legal costs. Several comrades face 6.5 years in prison after being convicted on three misdemeanour charges, following their arrest during the 2020 eviction of one of the squatted buildings. The Koukaki Squats Community (KSC) in central Athens included three buildings which had stood abandoned and decrepit before being occupied in 2017. Until their final eviction in 2020, the squats—at 45 Matrozou Street, 21 Panaitoliou Street, and 3 Arvali Street (also known as the Blue House)—were a hub of anarchist struggle and communal life. KSC opened its doors to people in need of shelter and collective living, who wanted to fight back against state violence and injustice. The community hosted a lending library, public baths and laundries, a free clothing bazaar, and spaces for political assemblies and public events. As part of wider struggles against gentrification, state repression, and ecological destruction, it stood in solidarity with political prisoners, anti-fascism, and resistance to patriarchy, racism and militarism. Fascist groups carried out multiple arson attacks against the squats, while the state launched a campaign of repression. All three buildings were violently evicted—first in 2018, again in 2019, and finally in 2020. On each occasion, squatters mounted combative resistance and attempted to reoccupy the spaces. These actions led to multiple court cases, aimed at exhausting them economically and mentally. After the final eviction of the Matrozou squat in 2020, the arrested comrades were convicted of three misdemeanours, yet received an unprecedented sentence of six and a half years’ imprisonment without suspension. This outcome followed a state-led media offensive, with even the President of Greece publicly calling for attempted murder charges. Although the sentence is currently suspended pending appeal, this is the first time in Greek history that squatters—and more broadly, political activists without felony charges—face the real threat of prison. Legal costs for all KSC-related cases—including lawyers’ fees, court charges and potential financial penalties in case of conviction—are enormous. Solidarity events and donations have covered part of the expenses, but needs remain high. To help meet these, the Koukaki Squats Community has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Firefund and are appealing for comrades to donate. The appeal trial is set for 2 December 2025. The post Athens: Squatters face prison after years of repression appeared first on Freedom News.

THE SERIES OF RAIDS, WHICH TOOK PLACE OVER THE COURSE OF A SINGLE WEEK, HAVE BEEN LABELLED A DESPERATE RESPONSE AS STATE FORCES STRUGGLE TO CONTAIN PUBLIC ANGER OVER PERCIEVED CORRUPTION AND INCOMPETENCE. ~Kit Dimou~ On the morning of April 22nd, the historic Evangelismos squat in Heraklion, Crete, was evicted once again having been reoccupied on 1 December 2023. The brief announcement of the squat stated: “AS IT HAPPENED THEN, SO IT HAPPENS NOW, NOTHING WITHOUT A FIGHT. NOT ONE STEP BACK”. Six people who were inside the building have been held on charges of breaching the peace and possession of weapons (flags and makeshift shields), while the police refused them communication with their lawyers. Evangelismos was an abandoned hospital when leftists and anarchists first took the initiative to open it for the community in Heraklion in 2002. Since then, it has been at the forefront of anti-authoritarian struggle in Crete, particularly in recent solidarity actions with the Palestinian people.  On the same morning, April 22nd, police in Thessaloniki evicted a space at the Physics School of Aristotle University which had been squatted by students for a year, the ‘Steki Fysikou’. Upon the completion of the operation, university management provocatively announced that this space was “liberated from a group of anti-authoritarians and delivered to the university community for the use of the sensitive group of people with special needs”. Local comrades have denounced the hypocrisy and disableist language of this statement, especially given the general inaccessibility of the Aristotle University: “in the university, education, liberated spaces and accessibility only come through struggle”. Finally, on the morning of April 15th, cops raided and evicted the newly-founded ‘Rasprava’ squat in the centre of Exarcheia. Despite the hopes of the state, there were zero comrades inside, while the only ‘evidence’ found was some rubble and anarchist graffiti. ‘Rasprava’ was an abandoned orphanage, squatted by anarchists on March 28th following a public event about revolutionary memory where imprisoned anarchist Marianna M. spoke via the phone. The ‘Rasprava’ squat explicitly intended to promote a culture of revolutionary and insurrectionary direct action in Exarcheia: ‘to turn words into action, to move from defense to attack’ in the struggle to protect the collective memory of the neighbourhood from touristification and integration.  The squatters argued that the eviction was a desperate response of the State to the recent bombing attack on Hellenic Train, as well as clashes with the police at a Palestine solidarity concert in Exarcheia on Saturday 12 April. The collective noted:  “The governing circus […] incorrectly believes that the ideas and practices that Rasprava represents are limited to the walls of a building, and that with its eviction, they will disappear as if by magic. A tear runs down one cheek, but one of laughter. The revolutionary culture we promote and want to return to its predominance in the anarchist space, direct action, will haunt your dreams, as well as your subordinated reality.“ The post Three squat evictions in a week as Greek state ramps up attack on anarchist movement appeared first on Freedom News.

NO INJURIES IN THE ATTACK, CLAIMED FOR PALESTINIAN MARTYRS AND KYRIAKOS XIMITIRIS  ~ Kit Dimou ~ A lengthy manifesto has been published on Greek Indymedia claiming responsibility for the detonation of a backpack near the offices of Hellenic Trains, Greece’s main railway company, on Friday evening (12 April). There were no injuries and only minor damage was caused in the micro-bombing. The Tempi train disaster, in which 57 people were killed, sparked mass protests in Greece earlier this year, followed by riots on its anniversary. According to police, the backpack exploded at 9:35 p.m., 42 minutes after anonymous calls to two media organisations warned of a device set to detonate in the location, stressing it was “not a prank”. While police states it “judged the incident as a serious threat”, clearing the area and evacuating the building as well as a nearby hotel, the backpack was allowed to pop without examination by the bomb-squad called to the site. The device was descrobed as a “makeshift low-powered watchtime mechanism”. Using the moniker “Revolutionary Class Self-Defense”, also used in the micro-bombing of Greece’s Ministry of Labour on 3 February, 2024, the manifesto dedicated both actions “to the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance” as well as honuoring “Kyriakos Xymitiris and to all those who fell fighting on the path to the social revolution”. The manifesto accuses the government and Hellenic Train of covering up the true causes of the Tempe train disaster, by attributing it to human error and using it as an excuse for further privatisations. It criticises the government for not prosecuting Hellenic Train and for continuing to allow the company to operate the railway, effectively taking political responsibility for the disaster. The manifesto calls for continued class struggle and organisation, suggesting that the only way to achieve justice and safety for workers is through collective action and revolutionary change. The document also mentions solidarity with the Palestinian people and the intensifying international antagonisms, linking the struggles in Greece to broader global conflicts.  The post Greece: Hellenic Train micro-bombers protest “cover-up of the crime in Tempi” appeared first on Freedom News.

“NO ONE WILL BE LEFT ALONE AGAINST THE REPRESSIVE CAMPAIGN OF THE STATE AND CAPITAL”, DECLARE DEMONSTRATORS ~ Kit Dimou ~ Greek anarchist Nikos Romanos has been arrested in connection with the explosion in an Athens flat on 31 October, which authorities attribute to a bomb-making accident. According to media reports, Romanos’s fingerprint was found on a bag containing a unused weapon in the blown-up apartment. The explosion killed Kyriakos Ximitiris, a long-term activist in the anarchist milieu, and seriously injured another comrade, Marianna M.. Two other individuals connected to the flat were also arrested, allowing the police to invoke anti-terrorism legislation. Marianna M. underwent multiple surgeries and remains heavily injured, but was nevertheless recently transferred to Korydallos prison, which does not even have a hospital. Romanos, who was arrested on 18 November as he was returning to his home, is well-known to the Greek public as a friend of Alexis Grigoropoulos and an eyewitness to his police murder, which triggered the 2008 uprising in the country. Romanos was in prison between 2012-2019, sentenced for possessing and planting explosive devices and for participating in two bank robberies. While in prison he went on hunger strike after authorities refused him access to further education, drawing support from a mass mobilisation on the streets of Athens. Over the weekend, actions, assemblies and demonstrations in memory of Ximitiris and in solidarity with the imprisoned comrades took place in response to an international call for action. Across Greece, In the quarter of Exarcheia in Athens, a political memorial was held where statements written by Marianna and comrades in Greece and Germany were read out. Banner in the Basque country. Photo: Athens Indymedia The event continued with a march to the Polytechnic university, commemorating the 51st anniversary of the 1973 student uprising. The demonstration passed in front of the US and Israeli embassies with a banner in his memory and in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. In Thessaloniki, the parallel demonstration ended in a mass petrol bomb attack on the police, although there were fewer commemorative clashes than expected. Solidarity actions also took place in London and Glasgow. In Rome, two people were arrested and fined for dropping a solidarity banner in front of the Colosseum. Anarchists across the Iberian peninsula have also dropped banners in memory of Ximitiris. In Hamburg, several dozen angry people marched unannounced and masked through the St. Pauli district. Slogans were sprayed, fireworks set off,and an office of the ruling Social Democratic party was attacked. A convergence of insurrectionary cells in Chile have written a letter to Kyriakos and Marianna titled “A death in action is an eternal call to struggle“. Romanos is expected to appear in court again on Friday to state his defence. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top photo: Solidarity demonstration in Leipzig. Athens Indymedia The post Athens explosion: Prominent anarchist arrested, solidarity actions worldwide appeared first on Freedom News.

MATROZOU 45 RE-OCCUPIERS SENTENCED TO 77 MONTHS TOGETHER WHILE 79 DEFENDERS OF THE PROSFYGIKA COMMUNITY GO ON TRIAL TODAY ~ Kit Dimou ~ In Athens, the trial continues today of 79 defenders of the Prosfygika community who resisted a police raid in 2022. On Tuesday, four participants in the re-occupation of the Matrozou squat in 2020 were sentenced to 77 months in prison between them. The Prosfygika community is an occupied neighbourhood in the heart of Athens with over 400 residents. The area was invaded on 22 November 2022 by anti-terror units, who arrested anarchist Kostas Dimalexis in connection with an arson attack by an anarchist group in July 2022; while Kostas was eventually found not guilty and released after a year of prison, his 79 comrades who participated in the defence of Prosfygika against the raid face heavy charges, including breach of the peace, assault on police officers, carrying offensive weapons, and illegal possession and use of pyrotechnics. On Tuesday, the iconic Matrozou 45 reoccupation case reached its conclusion. The four comrades who participated were found guilty and sentenced to 77 months in prison in total; they are currently on parole until appeal. The attempted reoccupation on 11 January 2020 involved two of the three squats operated by the Koukaki Squat Community. This was an initiative resisting the far-reaching gentrification and touristification of this traditionally proletarian neighbourhood. Along with the Panaitoliou squat, it had been evicted a month earlier. This was part of the provocative ultimatum announced by the right-wing New Democracy government, demanding all illegally occupied spaces in Greece to be abandoned by 6 December 2019, the anniversary of the police murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos in 2008 which sparked a historic uprising in the city.  The re-occupation failed, as crowds outside the squats were brutally attacked by police and driven out of the neighbourhood in an operation that lasted several hours. The  comrades inside defended themselves tooth and nail, leading to six police injuries, but were ultimately arrested. As opposed to those involved in the Panaitoliou reoccupation, who were unanimously found not guilty, the Matrozou comrades were treated exceedingly harshly by the court. While initially only facing misdemeanour charges, the charges against them were upgraded to felonies after public expressions of outrage by Prime Minister Mitsotakis, government ministers and the Police Union. At trial, no extenuating circumstances were taken into account. Even the prosecutor’s recommendation that the accused only serve half their prison time was not accepted by the president of the court.  The trials are taking place against the background of recent evictions and re-occupations of famous squats — Evangelismos and Kasteli hill in Crete, and Ano-Kato in Athens. In the Athens Polytechnic, another ultimatum is currently threatening three long-standing occupations on campus with eviction. The post Greece: Harsh sentencing for squatters  appeared first on Freedom News.