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 uprising targeted much more than the police, focusing on the State and the entire capitalist world-system. 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 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. A dog named Loukaninos, known as the "riot dog," ran alongside the protesters at many demonstrations, barking at riot police and, according to some reports, even kicking tear gas canisters back at them.

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. In a referendum held on 5 July 2015, Greeks voted 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 government, "the conflicts move from the cities to the state, from the streets to the closed rooms of inter-state negotiation."

On 22 May 2017, the New York Times reported that, "Anarchists Fill Services Void Left by Faltering Greek Governance." Anarchists were running some 250 community centers, providing homes to Syrian refugees, distributing food and medicine, and patrolling neighborhoods to stop drug sales.