WHAT DO YOU EXPECT WHEN YOU SPARE THE GRAPESHOT...:

What Unites the Stone-Throwing Black Bloc?: For days, youths in Athens have been fighting with police. The riots have spread to other parts of Europe, where left-wing radicals are protesting in support of their Greek brethren. They're considered the militant spearheads of an international scene that is largely united by violence. (Der Spiegel, 12/11/08)

The "First International of stone throwers," as one German domestic intelligence worker once put it, describing the international association of socialists that tried to bring togther left-wing political groups in the 1800s, functions, but its capacity for mobilizaition is generally limited. Still, Grigoropoulos' death has been a catalyzing incident, and it has driven leftist anarchists to the streets in a handful of cities across Europe. "This may have hit one person, but it was meant for us all," one German protester's banner read. And it doesn't take much coordinating before the anarchists are out on the streets expressing their rage.

But the "international" scene is, in fact, only loosely connected. The Internet has made it easier for different networks to connect with each other, but real organization would contradict the very self-image of anarchists. "The anarchist movement is not homogenous," states a report by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, on the country's estimated 5,800 Black Bloc members. There are "more or less consolidated and self-contained groups" who have "no unified ideological concept," the report maintains.

Instead, each individual tends to fight his or her own battle against the state, the political establishment or right-wing extremists. Indeed, the one thing that seems to unite these diffuse ideological fragments is a preference for the prefix "anti." "Anti-American, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist tend to be the Black Bloc's driving principles these days," says Wilhem Heitmeyer, a sociologist at Germany's University of Bielefeld who is a researcher in the field of youth violence. "That's what binds them."

Even more binding than any theoretical minimal consensus, however, is the extremely practical means with which the movement draws attention to itself: The idea that violence is the best way to fight against the "system" or "rulers." "Militance is an identity-building, formative component of the movement's experience," and a "necessary component of left-radical politics," a group of aging German anarchists wrote a few years back, recalling their experiences. In that regard, nothing has changed except that the principle has since spread around the world.

In this context, the Greek anarchists may feel confident of being viewed as the militant spearheads of the movement. And while there may have been relative quiet for the first time in days on Wednesday night, in the orgy of violence in previous days, it had looked as though an entire frustrated generation was unleashing its fury -- or as if the anarchists in Greece had a reputation to defend.

They do protest too much: Youth riots across Greece demonstrate why the country needs to change (The Economist, 12/11/08)

The pent-up anger of Greece’s youth, matched by the anarchists’ taste for mayhem, triggered five nights of riots, causing damage estimated at more than €100m ($130m). Hundreds of school students battled with police after the teenager’s funeral in a plush seaside suburb. Others threw stones at policemen on guard outside parliament, shouting “let parliament burn”.

Appeals for calm by Costas Karamanlis, the centre-right prime minister, were mostly ignored. Fearful of provoking even broader dissent, he refused to take such tough measures as imposing a curfew or ordering blanket arrests, on the ground that they might smack of the military dictatorship in the 1970s. Talks among political leaders in pursuit of a consensus on how to quell the unrest swiftly broke down. On December 10th a long-planned 24-hour strike by public-sector unions went ahead despite Mr Karamanlis’s televised call for it to be cancelled. George Papandreou, the opposition Pasok leader, urged the prime minister to resign and call a general election. “Effectively there is no government…we claim power,” he said.

Mr Karamanlis was already vulnerable. His New Democracy party controls only 151 of the 300 seats in parliament and trails Pasok by four or five points in the opinion polls. For all his party’s weakness, the prime minister’s personal approval rating has so far stayed well ahead of Mr Papandreou’s. But with his image as a safe pair of hands in tatters, that may now change. Small family-owned businesses and retailers, the backbone of support for New Democracy, are furious at the failure of the police to protect their property.

...but spoiled children? When they make this into an opera the chorus will be Oompa Loompas.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 11, 2008 4:00 PM