Abstract
On December 6, 2014, according to BBC News, five thousand demonstrators in the Greek capital of Athens looted shops and banks, hurled petrol bombs at police, and destroyed bus stops. The riot was the sixth installment of a ritual that has become an annual event. Six years prior, on December 6, 2008, the 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulo was shot dead by police, sparking violent protests across Greece; and ever since his death, he has been commemorated in the same violent fashion. That the young protesters are discontent is obvious, but what they are trying to achieve is less clear. Even social scientists are puzzled.
The contributions to Violent Protest, Contentious Politics, and the Neoliberal State attempt their best to explain. In fact, although the events in Greece are foremost in the minds of the editors, the method is comparative. After all, in addition to Greece, a number of other countries have witnessed similar outbursts of violence—Britain, France, and Germany, but also, more surprisingly, Sweden; then there are the recent upheavals in the Arab world, street protests in Iran and Thailand, and the United States, as always, contributing more than its fair share of race riots. The question is only what can be said in general, and as a matter of theory, about this rather disparate collection of cases.
There was a time, not too long ago, when people who fought the police were revolutionaries guided by Marxist principles and street violence was interpreted as a harbinger of revolution. At least some social scientists joined their struggle, hurling theories, if not stones, at the authorities. Yet these days are long gone. The protesters in Greece are protesting against cutbacks in welfare provisions, against neoliberal reforms and general EU meddling, but there is no socialist vision. The same is true for violent protesters in other countries. There is no alternative society to which we are invited; it is in fact not even clear that there is an alternative to the austerity measures themselves. Social scientists too are at a loss. Although the contributors to the volume under review clearly are sympathetic to the protesters, they are at the same time not quite sure what to make of them. The protests seem too expressive, too emotional; there are too many anarchists on the streets and too many youths who just want to fight the police. And many of the most violent protests come from the opposite side of the political spectrum—nationalists and wannabe fascists.
In their introduction, Seraphim Seferiades and Hank Johnston try their best to bring analytical rigor to these impressions. The common assumption is of course that violent protest has no legitimate place in democratic societies. Here there are established channels where complaints can be voiced and established channels for political action. Violence, in a democratic society, is a rejection of these institutions; violence, in a democracy, is necessarily authoritarian. But what are democrats to do if the system itself does not work? If the state is acting against the best interests of large sections of the population, and if established parties and trade unions are unable to transform the demands into policies? This, say Seferiades and Johnston, is where Greece finds itself today, and as other contributors to the volume make clear—including Jack Goldstone in a comprehensive survey of violent protests outside of Europe—this is where many other countries find themselves, too. What is needed is not more Marxism but more, and better functioning, democracy.
The situation, in other words, is inherently exasperating, and it is this frustration that the protesters express. This is why many of the contributors to the volume emphasize the importance of affect. Hank Johnston, in a single-authored chapter, goes as far as singling out cognitive factors, in particular the imaginative, if rather reckless, way in which young people tend to analyze and react to political events. It is easy to imagine what the Marxist theoreticians of yore would have made of such “psychologism.” Yet, as Frances Fox Piven points out in her chapter, political violence has always been expressive and thereby undeniably theatrical. Violent protest is a way to intimidate the authorities and the middle class, to make sympathizers take heart and to recruit supporters to the cause—if indeed there is a cause to be recruited to.
Frances Fox Piven has recently drawn much fire from right-wing commentators—Glenn Beck in particular—who have accused her of encouraging the use of violence. She does not return to that controversy here, but for scholarly purposes the salient question is rather whether the use of violence works. That is, do violent protests achieve their goals better than alternative methods? Given the obvious methodological problems involved—how do you measure success?—it is not surprising that the evidence is somewhat mixed, yet there is no doubt that the media responds far more strongly to a bit of violence than to lots of peaceful protests. A violent clash with the police is a way to stage a drama that can be observed by bystanders and that, in today’s society, is quickly disseminated to a worldwide audience via the Internet. In many cases, more mainstream protesters are dependent on the attention that is brought to their cause in this violent fashion—although they are unlikely to acknowledge the fact in public. The only problem, as Seferiades and Johnston point out, is that the level of violence required to grab the media’s attention is constantly increasing. Aware of the media logic involved, the protesters are all too happy to oblige by providing the requisite headlines. Thereby, surely, the media shares a measure of responsibility for what is happening.
The volume as a whole is thus full of insights into the violent logic which seems to be tearing contemporary societies apart, in particular in Europe. Yet the contributions are at the same time quite disparate in their theoretical and methodological focus and, as is nearly always the case in volumes of this kind, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It makes a lot of sense to read the chapters one by one but not to read the volume from cover to cover. In the final analysis it is indeed the chapters on Greece that stand out. In addition to the ones already mentioned, there are highly insightful contributions by Loukia Kotronaki, Kostas Kanellopoulos, and Nikos Lountos.
By the way, BBC News just reported that Nikos Samanidis, the founder of Greece’s Coalition of the Radical Left, is well positioned to win the general election scheduled for the end of December, 2014. Samanidis, the BBC points out, has a picture of the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg on the wall in his office. Perhaps the political system is not working so badly after all, not even in Greece. Then again, Samanidis’ party seems to have toned down its rhetoric. The Coalition of the Radical Left is now reportedly looking for allies within the business community and insisting that even a radical government is prepared to stand by the country’s debt obligations. The violent protests are likely to continue.