That reminds me of the French riots of a few years back, that were started when a couple of retarded gangbangers tried to hide from cops in... what was it? A power substation, or a transformer, or something equally retarded, and got themselves electrocuted. So the whole place goes up like a tinderbox, with rioters firebombing everything and attacking cops.
I fail to see your connection here. If a couple people get themselves killed while trying to hide after doing something actually wrong, then I agree with you. There was little cause for retaliation. This is very far from what happened in Greece.
I don't recall the specifics of it, only that a couple of kids tried to hide from police inside something to do with the electricity infrastructure, and were electrocuted as a result. The circumstances just reminded me of it. I suppose that's a pretty common way riots get started: someone, rightfully or not, is injured or killed by police (or in some manner tangentially related to police), and underlying resentment or tension flares into wanton destruction of random property. It doesn't really have anything to do with the incident that ignites it, which just serves as a spark to make already pissed off people go apeshit, at which point less-pissed-off people also go apeshit along with them.
In neither case is it a sane response. "Oh, some kid got shot by two glorified security guards, LET'S GO BURN RANDOM CARS AND PEOPLE, FUCK YEAH!"
... and people? What are you talking about? A quick read-up and recollection of the event as I followed it intently a couple years ago shows that 15 year old kid to be the only direct casualty of the event. Through the entire ordeal, lasting over a month, there were only two attempted deadly attacks against police with only a very few people involved in each. The only targets of burnings were banks, police stations, large corporate buildings seen as sources of corruption, and cars and trash bins and the like for tactical purposes. I see reports of police injuries, but any scratch or bruise could be reported as an injury. I find it especially likely considering how I see no official tallies of anyone else's injuries, and reporters were noted targets of police violence. This is actually one of the core legitimacies of protestors vs authorities in my opinion. The former harms only property and the latter harms only people.
Several attacks on police involved rioters throwing molotovs at them, in at least one case actually setting one on fire, although he survived.
The real funny thing is, you're an anarchist, yet you believe in violent revolution against any and every authority, by people who aren't anarchists, and will just install a new government that you'd find just as odious after it's been left to stew and rot for a few years.
Maybe, although this is less likely to be the case in Greece than anywhere else in the world, considering the starting and main focal point of the entire event was Exarchaia: a district in Athens that's been known as under almost complete direct control of anarchists for a long time. As for non-anarchists participating, they're learning the value of direct action and the power that they have personally and collectively, the possibility of taking direct control of their lives when they've been raised to accept domination, and the true values and nature of authority in putting property and power before people. If another equally horrible government is installed and people become dissatisfied with it all over again, hopefully they will remember that short period of time when they answered to no one and begin to think, "maybe that's just the way it should be?"
People far more often remember
just how terrible that is, because they've seen the chaos and collapse of society firsthand, and so are less willing to do it again, even when left with something worse. The next generation, however, will probably look to it and see the revolution of their forebears as an excuse for taking up a violent straw-anarchist stance and disregarding rule of law.
Actually, this isn't even revolution, it's just riots by a small minority of the population aimed at causing random destruction because they don't like that they're poor, which is even less in keeping with the principles of Anarchism, and even more in keeping with the straw-anarchist stereotype. In Egypt and Libya it was at least a popular movement against a dictatorship, rather than simple rioting, so there's at least some room for Anarchist support there.
The Greece uprisings were pretty massive, not a small minority of the population. It wasn't on the scale of Libya or Egypt, but still very large. It wasn't all youth, either. There were many active supporters and participants in the riots who still remember their country's transitional conflicts of the mid-70's. Your methods of downplay sound exactly like those employed by the controlled media. And there was much more motivation behind the whole thing than unhappiness about being poor. Corruption and failure in the economy was a major one, but I also remember reading lots of personal testimony about rampant police brutality and institutional racism as a major motivator. And regardless, no act so heinous should go unanswered.
That's not answering it though. That's just harming random bystanders who had exactly jack shit to do with the problems at hand.
And Pseudo, you've been very politically vocal on these forums, and the attitude I always see from you could be summed up as "The world sucks. People suck. Any attempts to change anything are always motivated by suck, and even if they're not will still only lead to more suck. So we all need to just suck it up and accept whatever suck we're given, no matter how bad it is." So I don't expect you to show any support for anything ever, anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely
hate how things are. I hate the system, I hate the corruption, and the inefficiency. I hate cops detached from the people they're supposed to be protecting, enforcing insane laws that should never have come into being. I hate corporate meddling and pointless security theater. But you know what I hate more than all that? Wannabe vigilantes and revolutionaries, people who think they know better than those who've made a career of managing the goddamn clusterfuck that is politics of every level, and the horrendous logistical problems that often go along with it, all because those people are occasionally corrupt. People torching random cars and businesses because of problems predominantly caused by people completely unrelated to the victims.
People violently attacking those same cops who are already too distant and aggressive. All of these things only exacerbate the problems that fuel them in the first place. If the system is to be changed it must be changed by its own rules.
Now I don't care one wit about local problems on the other side of the world, but I cannot look favorably upon rioters, even when I also cannot look favorably upon the incumbents they're railing against. It's one of those "just about everyone involved is in the wrong" kind of situations. I also can't stand the sentiment that anything good comes of burning a state to the ground.
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Topic: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine! (Read 373369 times)