In 2008 the December riots were an “image from the future”
Today they’re a “NO HOPE” slogan on the walls.
On the 12th of December, 2008, the streets of Athens were still burning. A youth movement that took the streets back was an, “image from the future”,… or so they claimed. Now the future is here, but where is the youth movement? Are there any clever lessons to be learned from the outbreak on 6th December or are we still at chapter one; trying to understand the prophecy proposed by the youth?
“On that festive Saturday night of 6 December — the feast of Saint Nicholas — nothing forebode the storm that would follow. The weather was good, it was a big celebration, those celebrating were many and, as usual, Athens was at a standstill, the streets jammed with people going to the theater, the cinema, clubs, bars, cafes.”
This was how Antonis Karakousis, Editing Director at ‘To Vima’, captured the start of the events, which would become known as the December Riots. He wrote the phrase in an essay six months later, trying to understand the following riots and protests, which occurred after the death of the 15 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos on the 6th of December, 2008.
“It only took an exchange of a few harsh words between some youths and police officers in Messologiou Street in the flammable and for many years ‘free’ district of Exarchia, to stir the blood and to lead a ‘macho’ police officer to raise his weapon and fire. As a result the first youth found in the path of the bullet was shot dead,” Antonis Karakousis continues.
The news about Alexis Grigoropoulos’ death started to circulate. Youth hangouts in central Athens and the suburbs found out, mainly via mobile phone and the Internet. People started showing up in Exarchia.
Simultaneously, different university buildings in Athens became the meeting point for leftist, anti-establishment and anarchist groups and soon the rage and anger against the police turned into violence in the area around Exarchia, which spread fast.
The murder happened between nine and ten o’clock in the evening. From midnight onwards, violent episodes and clashes with the police escalated.
The next day Athens looked “bombarded.” Three days later the look of Athens was even worse. At this point riots, protest and destruction of shops were not only taking place in Athens, but in different cities throughout Greece.
In 2008, all kinds of protest appeared; against police violence as one thing, but also education politics, wage cuts, corruption, among others. Today the day is still used for multiple reasons. You can read about six different reasons here.
The Greek police are characterized by a longstanding authoritarian tradition that, despite occasional attempts since 1975, have never been successfully limited, Anastassia Tsoukala explains. She is a lawyer and a professor of law who works with human rights and with the police violence against protesting citizens.
“I see a deeply rooted conviction among members of riot police that they do not feel the need to be law-abiding, which is constantly reinforced by the outrageously tolerant way police violence and abuse are being dealt with both by police hierarchy and the judges,” she argues.
“I strongly believe that excessive police violence against protesters is above all the arrogant manifestation of disrespect to citizens by state power holders. And in case of left, far-left or anarchist protesters, is further fueled by the fact that the majority of riot police vote for Golden Dawn,” she continues, explaining the tensions between protesters and police, which still is dealt with today, although at a different level than in 2008.
She explains the December as mass youth revolt against the established order. They expressed exasperation due both to the longstanding police arbitrariness and the worsening economic situation. In 2008 the youth became conscious of their own power “but, at the same time, they came to realize that it was impossible to achieve reform through these protests,” she argues that this led some of them to more radical ways of action, while others abandoned the street and opted for more individualist life strategies.
The murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos can be understood within this context and the history of police violence, but also with the phrase: the tipping point. A phrase used by American journalist and sociologist Malcolm Gladwell to explain certain social movements or phenomenons, where a drastic change happens, things pick up in speed, and people behave in unusual ways.
Looking at the tipping point, here eight years later, at least in terms of police violence, Anastassia Tsoukala doesn’t see a general change, but instead an exception from the rule.
“Patterns of policing protests have not really evolved since 1975. When confronted to social unrest, riot police usually have recourse to excessive and, more often than not, uncontrolled violence. December 2008 is an exception because, as social unrest could easily lead to broad social revolt, police violence against rioters and protesters was kept to relatively moderate levels in order to avoid further escalation of the conflict,” she argues.
“But on the other side, we do have a visible fall in police violence against protesters. To my eyes, this reflects a twofold government strategy: a genuine attempt to control undemocratic police trends and the wish to protect government’s image from spectacular shows of police brutality,” she continues.
In May 2009, when Antonis Karakousis wrote his essay on the December Riots, he noted that already much had changed.
“The economic crisis is deepening and continuously affects more people; the state recedes and the politico-economic system is disputed; the credibility of politics is eroding; youth discontent simmers; crime rates are on the rise; the instances of political violence and terrorist actions have multiplied; fear and insecurity nestles for good in the minds and soul of many people; the police becomes continuously more aggressive, as do the media, and no one knows any longer what the next unforeseen and accidental event, like that of last December in Exarchia, will bring,” he wrote.
Back then, the youth movement prophetically claimed that they were, “an image from the future,” and since then, many will nod surely, that the situations in Greece have deepened further, evidently making their despair connect directly with circumstances today. Today, the graffiti-painted streets of Athens is seeing a new saying: “NO HOPE” it dooms.
Vassilis* was a part of the December Riots of 2008. Back then he was 26 years old, studying in London, and travelling in the Balkan countries, to present some work he had done.
On that night of Grigoropoulos’ death, he got a call from friend, babbling away; suggesting all kinds of initiatives and things they should organize, due to the recent event. Vassilis couldn’t quite follow.
“What event?” he asked.
“A child was murdered in Exarchia. He was 15 years old,” Vassilis’ friend replied.
“When I heard that, I completely changed my plans,” Vassilis explains.
“I changed my travelling and got the first plane to Athens. I had to go back. I told my university in London that was going to be away for a little while, and I basically dropped out of my Ph.d. studies. I just knew as soon as I got back in Athens that it was important. The environment was like that, it didn’t take much thinking,” he says.
He was back in Athens on the 8th of December, walking down a street and having a ‘post-apocalyptic feeling’.
“Everything was smashed up, there were thousands of people still smashing everything. People were going to all kind of assemblies and meetings, it felt like complete mayhem,” he says.
“Looking back,” he continues, “it felt like it was a much wider part of society, or that most of society was emphatic towards the actions, and I don’t think that is true now,“ he reflects.
“But when you were in it, it felt like that.”
Vassilis is a part of an anarchist group in Athens, and he understands the December Riots as both repressed and unfinished.
“It was a repressed revolt, first from the police and later from the mainstream left, which tried to recuperate it and make it their own. Like SYRIZA today, trying to claim it,” he says.
“Already at the first anniversary in 2009, the mainstream media was saying ‘the amazing moment of the students’ representing it like a great event, while back then they were actually condemning it. I thought ‘okay — they are rewriting history already,’” he continues.
“And today, when I see the way SYRIZA tries to present the event, it makes me angry. Nobody can claim it, not even the anarchists,” he says. “To me, they were trying to channel this anger into basically mainstream politics. That is what they try to do.”
On the 6th of December, Vassilis started the day by going to the crime scene, where Alexis Grigoropoulos were shot. He did not attend the student demonstration that was taking place during the day, “that belongs to the students,” he explains, and the broader demonstration during the evening he doesn’t attend either.
But in the night, when anarchists claim the streets of Exarchia, Vassilis will be there.
The riots in Exarchia on this particular day, are a concrete consequence of the tipping point in 2008. The basic idea is to defend Exarchia and to stop the police coming entering the neighborhood, Vassilis explains.
“For me the state operates as a kind of parental figure. It is there to provide for you, but it is also there to keep you in close reach. So what the state does, to me, is creating a very suffocating environment, where you never really can imagine yourself outside. You can never really imagine yourself fully independent.”
“If the police would just stop trying to get in to Exarchia, I don’t think there would be any trouble,” he says.
The night is nevertheless troubled: violence, fires on the streets, and tear gas in the air, but Vassilis doesn’t understand the acts from anarchists as directly violent. Instead he suggest the word counter-violence.
“If you have police force, standing with automatic rifles, at a certain point the whole time, to me, they represent the violence. The fact that it is legitimate for a force to be there, to have people in uniforms and guns walking around, that is a violent manifesting. And there is no way to encounter that without being at the slightest extend violent yourself,” he says.
“For me the structural violence is more violent than any rock or Molotov cocktail thrown.”
Vassilis saw the acts of 2008 as a warning. “If people had paid more attention, things might have been a little bit better,” he claims.
“This was before the official crisis, and we had all these kids, migrants, and anarchists, the vulnerable part of society, and maybe the most sensitive, and they said: something is seriously wrong. People didn’t listen then, but maybe people will listen now,” he tries.
Do you feel like people are listening now?
“I’m not sure. I still feel like this is the opening chapter, I don’t think we have moved that much. I think we are seeing a delegitimizing of power. What we saw back then is now complete; we have Trump as a mainstream politician that must be the absolute delegitimization. So maybe now, people might start thinking about alternatives,” he says.
“The general slogan in 2008 was: ‘December isn’t an answer it is a question,’” Vassilis says, “it might be a cliché by now, but it think it is still true. All the questions are still there, even more urgent than before.”
- Vassilis is a made-up name, he wishes to stay anonymous. AthensLive respects his wishes and we are known with his identity.
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