2008 Greek insurrection

On 6 December 2008, 15 year-old anarchist Alexis Grigoropoulos was confronted and killed by two cops in Exarchia, Athens, the stronghold of the country's anarchist movement. Within an hour, anarchists began clashing with the police, and attacking banks, and luxury shops. Riots spread across the country. Universities were occupied for a month. The Void Network's Tasos Sagris estimates that more than 100,000 people participated in the December insurrection.

Despite being prompted by a police murder, the insurrection targeted much more than the police. A statement in the Greek anarchist magazine Flesh Machine evaluated: "This revolt was, in fact, a rebellion against property and alienation. A revolt of the gift against the sovereignty of money. An insurrection of anarchy, of use value against the democracy of exchange value. A spontaneous rising of collective freedom against the rationality of individual discipline." "We will not dialogue with the State, we will not sit down to chat with Capital. We will not tell them what we want because they already know: we want them to die," wrote A.G. Schwarz in a defense of the movement's refusal to make demands.

At the student occupation of Polytechnic University, people made decisions at a direct democratic general assembly. Occupiers opened the kitchen and dining hall and served meals to anyone who came to eat. Groups went out every day to expropriate food from supermarkets and bring it to the kitchen.

The insurrection set off many more years of protest. People around the country set up social centers and community gardens. Riots continued. In January 2015, the country elected the social democratic political party SYRIZA, which had participated in the protests. Upon taking power, this party quickly bowed to the interest of neoliberal capitalism. On 5 July 2015, Greeks voted in a referendum against accepting austerity policies that the European Union wanted to impose on Greece. A week later, the SYRIZA government agreed to a deal similar to the one voters had just rejected. Observing the undemocratic result and Syriza's recuperation of the insurrection, the social theorist John Holloway argued once a movement enters the government, "the conflicts move from the cities to the state, from the streets to the closed rooms of inter-state negotiation."