Photos and report by Jed Brandt.

The Thessaloniki Expo is Greece's equivalent of the US State of the Union speech. The Prime Minister retreated behind barricades for the first time, as he is universally despised for selling the country to European bankers and the International Monetary Fund, and imposing austerity. The current ruling party, PASOK, is nominally social-democratic, but just as Obama is imposing austerity in the US — the "left" face of the ruling class always knows who butters its bread.

These are the first significant protests since the Squares movement of the early summer. The traditional left parties, some unions, the Squares movement, and thousands of indignant Greeks showed up to convergence points around the city to challenge the Prime Minister. They were met with walls of police. Half the cops in Athens were trucked up to Thessaloniki, and the week leading up to the Expo saw the mainstream media hype fear of "violence." A 2.5 kilometer zone was put around the Expo, banning vehicle traffic. At least 5,000 riot police were deployed.

A KOE demonstration against the International Monetary Fund

by Eric Ribellarsi

We in Kasama, and many others, have been engaged for several years now in trying to imagine new ways to fuse revolutionary ideas with the popular discontent of the people. It is part of what drew our Winter’s End reporting team to Greece and what draws us now to discuss the Communist Organization of Greece (known as the KOE, and pronounced ‘Koy’).

All around the rim of the Mediterranean Sea there has been an eruption of massive anti-government movements. Many people in the U.S. know about the “Arab Spring” that swept North Africa – starting in Tunisia, then Egypt, and Libya – and erupting in nearby Yemen and Syria. Meanwhile, similar mass movements also filled the city squares on the European, northern side of the Mediterranean – though these movements in Greece and Spain have been much less well known than eruptions on the southern, North African side.

Among the common features of these “movements of the squares” is that they have drawn large numbers of youth into political life – often with a sweeping sense of rejecting previous politics (both existing governments and the oppositional parties). There is a sense that everything “before” is corrupt, complicit and exhausted, and everything “after” must now make a break. And while there are obviously deep concerns and frustrations that drew people into the squares, it also stands out that the politics of these eruptions were extremely unformed: People have had only a vague sense of what they wanted to put in the place of current politics.

Great and energetic hopes often masked underlying naiveté and fracture lines that would inevitably come to the fore: how should these popular movements view the existing army (in Egypt), or the intrusive Western powers (in Libya), or problems of defining specific solutions, or the organizational problems of creating political instruments?

A Legacy with Real Strength and Real Baggage

In Greece, much more so than in North Africa, the country’s politics have a strong, historic and diverse set of communist currents. And so the question was sharply posed from the beginning: How will the various parties of that older left engage Greek’s new popular movement of the squares? What will they propose? How will they present themselves? Will they allow themselves to be transformed?

Obviously, our own primitive communist projects in the U.S. have a great deal to learn from such experiences. We too hope to create new politics in the context of great eruptions, and we hope to approach such movements with some clarity of purpose and creativity of method.

Photo credit: Eric Ribellarsi

The following is the third of a three part series. Part 1 and 2 are also available.

We went over to the party. About 500 young, mostly anarchist, radicals were dancing and drinking in solidarity with their imprisoned comrades. Halim introduced us to an autonomist (an anarchist trend focused on factory take-overs, wild-cat strikes, and syndicalist type politics) named Alfonso, who has come from Italy to join the movement here.

Alfonso and I spent some time talking about Antonio Negri (the author of Empire, a book which argues for a spontaneous transition to a communist society among other things, who he called a traitor to his movement), and about the movement in Syntagma Square.

Alfonso confessed to me that he has decided to stay out of Syntagma. He has not joined the people's assemblies, and has chosen a different strategy for revolution in Greece.

Ibrahim Kaypakkaya, martyr of the Turkish Maoists

The following is the second of a three part series. Part 1 is available here.

by Eric Ribellarsi

We met Halim, a Turkish Maoist bar owner who has been affectionately dubbed by his anarchist peers “the mayor.” Why the mayor? Because everyone in this entire district knows (and loves) Halim, and wants to debate with him about revolution. He is out every night, walking through the parks and sharing drinks with comrades from all different trends.

Halim and others in Exarchia spend their evenings debating history, his experiences in the revolutionary struggle of Turkey, what is unfolding in Exarchia, and what it will take to free Greece (and ultimately the world). And the anarchists come to his bar, and see him as a sort of mentor. Even if they disagree on strategy, they have deep respect for the people’s war in Turkey (in a way that reminds me of the way that anarchists in America have always respected the Black Panther Party).

Like Halim, many Turkish immigrants have been forced to flee Turkey because of the brutal repression of the communist movement in their countries. They have ended up in places like Germany, Sweden, and Greece. In each of these places, they have worked to dig deep roots among the people of those countries, to learn about their particularities, and have played a role in helping build the revolutionary movement those countries. The partisan base they are forming in Exarchia is part of this.