The alarm spread in the heart of Athens when the right-wing party New Democracy (ND, Greek abbreviation) won the elections on 7 July: The district of Exarcheia ran the risk of being attacked. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who had just taken over from Alexis Tsipras (Syriza), talked about the dismantling of Exarcheia and the dissolution of the anarchist group Rouvikonas, who was campaigning for elections, and announced within a few days of the formation of a new government that had prepared a plan to attack the Greek police station barrio.Dicho and made: In this first offensive four occupied buildings were evacuated – Spirou Trikoupi 17, Transit, Rosa de 1994 and Gare – dismissing over a hundred neighbours.

Since then, the neighborhood has been under continuous police attacks and repression has inevitably increased tension. To date, various buildings have been evicted in the various offensives, violence against neighbours has been used, houses and premises have been registered, searches have been carried out and anti-terrorist operations have been carried out, several people have been arrested and a militant has been severely beaten. The Government wants to empty all the self-managed buildings of Exarcheia and dismantle the social movement in order to take control of the neighbourhood, but it has a whole neighborhood in front of it ready to prevent this from happening and that in the struggle is quite difficult. Since the summer, whether painted, banners or posters, they won't pass! [Motto in Spanish, They will not pass in Basque] can be read in all corners of the neighborhood, perpetuating the echo of the motto launched by the neighbors in the mobilizations.

Exarcheia, non-modal utopia

By imagining a neighborhood with the characteristics of the exarcheya, it will hardly be placed by one in the center of the city center, and even less by a upper-middle class neighborhood. However, in this case it is as follows: In the heart of Athens, a few meters from the Colonaki district, one of the richest areas, is Exarcheia. What until the 1970s was an extension of the wealthy neighborhood, due to the resistance of the students against the military dictatorship of the Junta de Coroneles, has been transformed with anarchism and the radical left. Being the Polytechnic University of Athens in the neighborhood the main stage of this student struggle, both the rise of the Polytechnic of 1973 and the military massacre against it made the construction of the current identity of the neighborhood inevitable. An identity, of course, opposed to authority. Several events that have occurred since the 1970s, such as continuous attacks on the neighborhood, murdered by the police, have been confirmed in this radical character.

Currently, the neighborhood has more than twenty occupied buildings and so many, a kind of fortress for the autonomous laboratory. Projects such as occupied dwellings, self-managed social centers, the multitude of libraries and cafeterias, the self-managed health center ADYE or the recent political kiosk removed by the police – as they called the container that distributes food, medicines and readings – knit the neighborhood daily with other logics of capital. A fabric sufficient to accommodate a group of refugees rejected by the European Union and, in this case, by the Greek Government. In recent years, Exarcheia has opened its doors to thousands of people from across the Mediterranean.

Migrants who have stayed in Greece during their journey have found in self-management the key to survival. To give them accommodation, they have occupied several buildings in the neighborhood, each of which has become a self-managed community, and each community is part of the structure of the neighborhood. Beyond housing, neighbors also manage other types of social services, so that they do not lack either health or education. Thus, with solidarity and self-management as axes, Exarcheia has become a dignified alternative to refugee camps that increasingly have more unbearable conditions. Of the 23 buildings occupied in the neighborhood before eviction began, 12 were migrant housing.

However, those who make life on site stress that the neighborhood is far from a utopia. “Exarcheya is like any other place in the world. What makes them different are the wrestlers,” says Andreas, a member of the assembly No Pasarán, who has spoken with ARGIA. However, the mere insinuation that a society that puts life at the center is possible has put the government's eyes on them.

The Government, acting as "clean-up"

An anarchist neighbor [anonymous] stated in an interview with the CrimethInc network that “the ND has made it clear that it has a long-term plan to eradicate not only the occupied buildings of Exarcheia, but also refugees, migrants, anarchists, young people and other people who have made the neighborhood known globally. The goal is to destroy the culture that Exarcheia has defined.” In his own words, the plan will extend and probably end with the construction of the Exarcheia Square Metro Station. Beyond the ideological war, it can be deduced that the government of Mitsotakis also has economic interests in Exarcheia. Andreas makes it clear: “Attacking the movement also makes room for the gentrification of the neighborhood.”

The journalist John Malamatinas has explained in a report published in ROAR magazine that a decade ago one could see that the neighborhood was in a gentrification process. However, the economic crisis that occurred in 2009 as a result of the government ' s accumulated financial debt blocked that process. As the real estate sector moved to red numbers, the occupations increased in the neighborhood, following the needs of the organization, and to accommodate the wave of migrants. Today, the gentrification process seems to have resumed. According to Malamatinas, the central geographic location attracts the neighborhood in the eyes of those who seek to “mobilize rebel citizens” and occupy their place “high-income yuppis”. In this sense, the colleague who spoke to CrimethInc warns that an invisible enemy has entered the neighborhood: Airbnb.

On the road to the construction of a mold neighborhood in line with the neoliberal city, when it comes to replacing the current neighbors with others that have a more moderate mentality and higher incomes, the government has been clear where to start; what to “clean”, according to its words.

ND, victim of the nostalgia of the dictatorship

The electoral defeat and the anti-fascist struggle of recent years have led the neo-Nazi party Egunsenti Urrekara to be in the process of dissolution and about to end the macro-trial against him begun in 2015, which could be described as a criminal organization in a few moments. Despite this progress towards the victory of fascism, one of the details that point to the fascist use of the word “cleanliness” of the ND and the police is that the disease persists. However, according to the journalist Hibai Arbide, who lives in Athens, it is necessary to clarify a little: “Egunsenti Urrekara was not just an extreme right-wing party, but a neo-Nazi paramilitary organization. In that sense it has been a very important victory to put an end to them.”

However, you have warned: “The ND can give a party similar to the Spanish PP, but it has within it clear elements of the far right that have never regretted, have never hidden their past, and there they are, they are vice-presidents [referring to Adonis Georgiades].” It refers to the sector that has jumped from the far-right LAOS to the ND, “a party created in the 1980s by the nostalgic dictatorship,” according to his words. To understand how close the relationship of the present government with fascism is, he has disseminated a fact: ND Deputy Thanos Plevris and Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos have acted together in the EPEN fascist party, formed after the dictatorship.

On the table, it is not difficult to figure out why Mitsotakis has placed among his priorities the end of the anarchist and leftist movement, and not the golden dawn, immersed in a macro-judgment. The head of government has had one enemy in his mouth: “Groups that mix corners and spread such a dangerous revolutionary desire for democracy.” That is, the anarchist movement and especially known Rouvikonas.

Refugees and Rouvikonas, Turkish head of government

Yannis Youlountas alasbarricadas.org says in a report that “the situation is in a position to blow up the revolt in different parts of the world. That’s why power takes a harder stance, that’s why it needs Turkish heads to entertain it.” The Mitsotakis government has long chosen its own to divert public attention: refugees and the anarchist group Rouvikonas.

The origin of the drug and arms trafficking in Athens, which originates in Exarcheia, was the Government ' s excuse for starting the attack on the neighbourhood. With this argument, the occupied buildings were evicted in search, according to them, of drugs, weapons and combat material. If you take stock of what happened from the first evacuations to the last ones, this does not appear anywhere; and if there is one thing to highlight, it is the number of refugees who have stayed on the street, which are hundreds. In the first offensive on 26 August, almost all those expelled from their homes were refugees and, with the intention of revising their legal situation, were transferred to the Aliens Office. Other similar attacks have followed, which have affected hundreds of refugees who have been evicted from their homes. Many of them have become at risk of deportation, while many others have been relocated in camps.

In parallel with these developments, the government has drafted a new law aimed at reducing the number of asylum seekers, which has just been adopted in November. In addition, several measures have been announced: It will close the camps in the Aegean Sea to relocate refugees arriving at the Alien Detention Centres; and has announced that it will deport 10,000 people by 2020. All of this, as Youlountas explained, while the Police Minister suggests that there may be jihadists among migrants, presenting to public opinion people who call on their shores as terrorists.

The main enemy of Mitsotakis, however, is the anarchist group Rouvikonas, considered one of the most influential groups in the world. According to the member interviewed by CrimethInc, in December 2008, the reptiles of the arrest of Alexandros Grigorophils, after the death of young anarchist Alexandros Grigorophils, united to the economic crisis and a sense of displeasure, gave way to a group of massive explosion of bombs, but Conspiracy of Cells of Firusb says “The Greek Right” had to build.

The action of Rouviconas is correct. It points out, by means of public actions, those responsible for social problems – institutions, governments, companies, etc. – by attacking the seat of the responsible person. Its tactic is usually to cause symbolic material damage. The carrying out of symbolic actions has allowed them to have an echo and, at the same time, avoid fat sanctions. It seems, however, that the Government is trying to change that: “It is making corrections in the penal code to punish more strongly any form of resistance,” Youlountas said. “They want to qualify all unexpected acts as terrorism, and that’s a direct attack on Rouviconas,” says Arbide. Rouvikonas therefore runs the risk of being considered a terrorist group.

In this context, a member of Rouvikonas has been charged with taking part in an action against a group of police in early November, as reported by the Department of Security. Through this accusation, the group is accused of an attempt to murder National Police officers. This militant was arrested and proceedings have been opened against him, in which he has also reported that he was violently beaten by the detainee. In the action reproached to him, a group attacked a riot police bus with Molotov cocktails, hurting three officers. The attack has not been claimed by anyone and Rouviconas claims all his actions. However, it seems that this is where the Government has seen the opportunity for the group to be considered terrorist.

In the November 9 anti-terrorist operation on the Atica peninsula, Youlountas stated that the State has found an "internal enemy that can argue new laws". However, no change in the penal code has yet been approved, although the joint presentation of the words "Rouvikonas" and "terrorism" is having an impact on public opinion, according to Arbide. The Government is seeking majority support, which helps to make it the last blow of the operation launched against Exarcheya: Meeting with the Rouvikonas group. This not only values the group itself, but also the self-managed building K*Vox. Among many other groups, it is the headquarters of Rouvicalias, and it houses projects such as the health center. Attacking K*Vox, you can deduce, it would be like hitting near the heart of Exarcheia.

Impasse to the next onslaught

Neighbours are living on suspicion that the next aggression could take place at any time since the first repressive coup on 26 August. According to his colleague from CrimethInc, that date was not chosen randomly by the government. In addition to the repeal of the university's asylum law at the end of July, which prevents the police from entering the university in the absence of authorization from the head of the university, obtained after the massacre that the military caused in the uprising of the students of the 73 Polytechnic, the government freed Alexis Grigoropoulous, two serious provocations directed, according to the interviewee, to the anarchist and autonomous movements. The fact that in the short term the operation against Exarcheya, in his words, “means that war has been declared against Exarchei and the anti-fascist and anti-police social experiment it represents.”

The battle that has taken place has strained the environment and as the days go by the tension is increasing, so the police have taken care of it, through aggression and threats. Arbide has stressed that pistols have been removed on at least two occasions and have not been withdrawn. According to several testimonies collected by the Ertzaintza, the police abuses that have taken place since the formation of a new government threaten neighbours with things going to be like this. As the tension was rising, the threats have been made explicit, until one of the agents yelled “The Board is back!”, showing the same respect as the government for the dictatorship. On November 17, coinciding with the anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising, the police launched the threat. The aforementioned date could be seen on the horizon through a black fog.

On 17 November it came with many similarities to the 73’s context, following a nostalgia between the Government and the police, in protest at the abolition of the asylum law at the university. After a demonstration that brought tens of thousands of people together, the Police forcibly seized Exarcheia, located in Tahrir Square. There were incidents on the street, resulting in several injuries and detainees being detained for the incidents. Andreas made the following reading on the facts: “After the demonstration of strength on 17 November, I would say that the government meant: no matter how many you are, you will be crushed. The same logic has been applied to evictions; in the days after the massive demonstration called by No Pasarán, more buildings were evicted.”

Faced with the erosion caused by threats and aggression, neighbours do not intend to take a step backwards. “No Pasarán!”, the name of the assembly created for the organization and self-defense in the face of government attacks, has already become a cry of struggle. Many anarchist groups, and two of the occupied buildings housing refugees and anarchists, one of whom has already been evicted, form the assembly, as Andreas explained. They remain in resistance with a conviction that helps them to keep them firm: Buildings may be, but ideas can never be emptied.

“There is not much difference between attacking the Exarchei or attacking the social movement, as Exarcheia is the center of the movement in every sense,” says Arbide. It can be said, therefore, that the Greek Government has found in that neighborhood a gap in which to attack the whole social movement; but to the same extent that this gap opens the way to the offensive, it can lift the entire anarchist and radical leftist sector against it.

As they write these lines, the neighbors, suspecting that the next assault would arrive, stay inside. The Government has extended a 15-day ultimatum to the neighbours of the occupied buildings for voluntary evictions. The deadline will end on 6 December, the anniversary of the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulous, when more incidents occur and the date is unknown. Judging by the panorama, it does not seem to be a matter of chance, just as the statements by the Minister of the Interior, Panagiotis Theodorikakos, do not seem so innocent: “Some seem to be asking for another Grigoropoulous.”

Faced with a state in which the longing for death moves him, the heart of Athens is beating resistance. It is about to see what will happen in the coming days, weeks and months.

“Many have fought before us around the world, it’s now up to us to give continuity to the struggle,” says András.