The Greek Revolt, the World Crisis and Freedom of Expression

Abstract

The December 2008 Greek popular revolt1 , with mass youth participation, was misrepresented by the mainstream media, in Greece, as a ‘nihilistic’ manifestation of ‘blind violence’ of ‘marginalized elements’ against police brutality without any political agenda. In reality, judged by its width, depth and duration, it was the biggest rebellion from the time of the 1973 revolt in the Polytechnic University of Athens, which was brutally repressed by the tanks of the military dictatorship and possibly even from the time of the civil war in Greece in the 1940s. Paper presented at the Critique Conference 2009 on Capitalism and Repressive Tolerance, London School of Economics, 27 March 2009. The battle for freedom of expression, information and counter-information, the use of the Internet, etc. became a crucial element in the confrontation. The December events were not a repetition of past conflicts in the turbulent history of Greece but its first metropolitan revolt, as the social economic structure, class composition and power relations in the country had been profoundly transformed under the impact of capitalist globalization and its crisis. The Greek revolt combines features from May 1968, and from the French suburbs rebellion in 2005, but it presents also new features, ‘ coming from the future’, as the rebels were saying. It is the first political explosion of the current world economic crisis, and thus it has world significance.