A-Infos (en) Greece, Protaanka: Presentation of the Anarchist Initiative of Agioi Anargyroi - Kamaterou at the event for the fake referendum of July 5, 2015 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On Tuesday, July 8, the event-discussion for the 10th anniversary of the 
fake referendum of July 5, 2015, was successfully held at the Idionymi 
bookstore, with the active participation of dozens of comrades/same-sex 
and residents of Korydallos. The dialogue that followed on the illusions 
of the previous decade, the real stakes of the referendum and the path 
up to the 3rd memorandum, as well as the discussion about today, was 
rich in content and highlighted the necessity of not falling into the 
trap of "the lesser evil of governmentism" again, no matter where it 
comes from and no matter what kind of "radical" or supposedly 
"anti-systemic" it wears. ---- The following is our collective suggestion:

The completion of ten years since the referendum of July 5, 2015 was an 
event that did not pass by "in vain" in the public debate. On the 
contrary, it marked a first-class opportunity, initially to trumpet in 
all tones the propaganda of "justification", of "YES to everything". 
Television shows, tributes, articles, interviews, "historical videos" 
and "documentaries" of that period came to bombard the collective 
conscience with the "rights of YES" and the "justification" of the 
memorandum one-way street and the Euro one-way street that the then 
SYRIZANAL government also "ultimately" served, transforming the result 
of the referendum (according to the same propaganda) from "NO, to YES".

Of course, bourgeois propaganda, by recruiting the events of 2015, is 
not simply interested in triumphing for a moral justification. In fact, 
the propaganda of the "justification" of "YES to the memorandum and to 
Europe" has clear material goals, in the here and now. The 
"justification" of "YES to everything" is put forward to forge the 
government narrative of "development" that supposedly succeeded the 
"black memorandum years", the narrative that the "country overcame the 
difficulties" and that the memorandums were a "necessary evil" so that 
we could reach the "normality that we are experiencing again today". 
Moreover, this "justification" is still being recruited 10 years later, 
in order to once again identify the "break with the system" with the 
"NO" that the then government of the "first time left" declared as a 
voting option in the referendum. Consequently, the "justification" of 
the denial of the supposedly anti-systemic "NO" continues to be 
identified by the "YES to everything" as a denial of the "break" in the 
system itself, as "naivety and unreality".

Of course, these days there were also some, extremely limited in 
relation to the "YES triumphants", events and announcements by political 
forces that have references to the "NO". These forces, mainly SYRIZA 
splits (e.g. MERA25 and Popular Unity) are trying so many years later to 
convince that "there was another way" through the negotiations between 
the government and the "lenders", a way that despite SYRIZA's primary 
commitments to "tear up the memoranda", was not followed at the last 
moment. Essentially stepping on the propaganda of the "kolotoumba", 
these forces are defending their supposedly "irreconcilably 
anti-memorandum" stance, making "fish meat" every now and then for the 
extension of the 2nd loan agreement in February 2015 or for the 
commitment to a series of memoranda measures that they had already 
locked in before the referendum. Facts, among many others, certify that 
the third memorandum was predetermined and not a "last minute turn".

Of course, the admission of "mistakes" such as the agreement at the 
Eurogroup of February 20, 2015 by these forces cannot wash away their 
role as former participants in governance and parts of the path leading 
up to the 3rd memorandum. Needless to say, we cannot accept the 
invocation of "human errors" when referring to government decisions, 
especially a decision to extend a memorandum that entailed millions for 
the repayment of loans from the pockets of the starving social majority. 
We are talking about class politics and conscious mobilization on the 
side of serving the interests of the dominant side in the class struggle 
by these forces. Even 10 years later, we have a responsibility to 
confront the "scam" that all of them tried to throw at us, that the 
negotiation was also "ours" and that between the government there were 
the "compromised traitors" and our "allies". We will come back.

However, it is not only the agreement in the Eurogroup or the well-known 
authorization of the former minister of austerity G. Varoufakis to 
Tsakalotos to negotiate the third memorandum that are "proofs of guilt". 
All these figures of the "uncompromising SYRIZA" were subsequently 
trapped in their own attempt to convince that they were 
"anti-memorandum". They are the same ones who "revealed" in every detail 
the memorandum commitments and the acceptance of the 3rd memorandum by 
the Maximos leadership group before July 5th. "Revelations" that they 
brought to light for their own oppositional political reasons towards 
their parent party, to prove that they "knew" about the 3rd memorandum 
and how "fraudulent" Tsipras was. What they "missed" through the 
"revelations" is that the admission of this "knowledge" makes them 
complicit in the popular mockery that they themselves invoke. In other 
words, they remained in government and contributed to the illusions of 
the supposedly "rupture NO", while even according to their own 
testimonies, this "rupture" would never come.

We also saw the "betrayed NO" from the side of the so-called 
extra-parliamentary left, especially from the ANTARSYA parties that 
sided with the government in 2015. We should not forget the 
responsibilities that these forces have for the illusions of 2015, 
initially hailing the victory of SYRIZA as a "defeat of the bourgeois 
parties", then participating in the shameful pro-government 
demonstrations in Syntagma in February and March 2015 and finally with 
their stance on the referendum. These forces, by propagandizing the 
"exit from the E.U." within the state and capitalism with a 
bourgeois-governmental initiative, in reality they lost the propaganda 
of the "YES" front according to which "NO" would mean "exit from the EU 
and the euro". And since this expectation of theirs was denied, they 
declare themselves betrayed to this day and attempt to spread their own 
"bitterness" towards the then government that they supported with all 
their might, to the entire working class and the exploited social majority.

We will say it many times: the working people are not in the same camp 
of interests as the bourgeois governments to feel "betrayed". SYRIZA as 
a government has always served the interests of the dominant bourgeoisie 
that raised it and not of the socially majority class, that is, ours. 
The political forces that supported it, that reinforced the illusions of 
a "human capitalism", that wanted to grant the then government the right 
to negotiate with a "movement and popular support" for our lives, that 
projected the left-wing government as part of "our camp" against the 
"memorandum right and the bad Germans" are ultimately the ones who 
should, albeit belatedly, reflect honestly on the concept of class betrayal.

The referendum as a precursor to the 3rd memorandum

What was the question of the referendum on July 5th? What did "YES" mean 
and what did "NO" mean?

The announcement of the referendum came at a time when the months-long 
negotiations between the Greek government and the "institutions" had 
reached a standstill. The focus was neither on the exit from the EU and 
the eurozone, which were only brought to the negotiating table by the 
German side as a lever of pressure, nor on the adoption of measures that 
had already been agreed upon for the most part, with a typical example 
being the high primary surpluses that are in force to this day. There 
were two issues at issue from the Greek government's side. The first was 
the achievement of a debt restructuring and the avoidance of the entire 
package of measures promoted by the "other side" and the second was the 
communication "mechanism" that would bring the third memorandum with the 
least social and class reactions.

As for the second part, the communication part, the then government 
presented the 3rd memorandum as "blackmail" from the beginning. This was 
the word with which Alexis Tsipras defined the "ultimatum" of the 
institutions in the referendum speech, paving the way for the third loan 
agreement, and this was also the word that was used afterwards. The "NO" 
to the "ultimatum" was of course not a "NO" to the memorandum. It was a 
"YES" to the Greek memorandum that had been proposed, with a little debt 
restructuring, a little "Keynesianism" and a little avoidance of minimal 
measures. Regarding the debt restructuring, in retrospect we can 
underline that the government side seems to have sought more negotiating 
power from the IMF, which was positively positioned towards the prospect 
of "making the debt sustainable", than from the "popular verdict" on the 
bogus referendum question. For the record, both "papers" never 
succeeded. The "American friends" and the secret friend in the German 
chancellery did not put their hand up!

Ultimately, the referendum of July 5 came as an "escape route" from the 
government's responsibilities for the 3rd memorandum. It came as a 
transfer and diffusion of responsibilities, in the context of "we all 
fought together, we all were defeated by the ruthless European 
establishment". It was, in other words, the "heroic fall" of the 
government from a negotiation that was rigged in terms of its results, 
which would have led to the 3rd memorandum anyway. In this "heroic fall" 
its "kinematic" foundations were fully utilized, which were dragged with 
it to the cliff, unfortunately dragging along an entire society and an 
entire historical period of great social struggles and resistance.

In this way, the referendum of July 5th was, on the one hand, the 
precursor to the 3rd memorandum and not a step towards the "rupture" 
and, on the other hand, the last stop of the anti-memorandum struggles.

It is therefore clear that the "NO" in the referendum never meant a 
rupture, it never meant an exit from the E.U. and the eurozone. These 
characteristics in the referendum came "from the outside" and not from 
the government which from the first moment made it clear that there was 
no question of exiting the "European family" and had already "locked in" 
memorandum measures. They did not come either from the class and popular 
will as the extra-parliamentary left and a negligible part of our own 
political space argued with idealistic vagueness for a "CLASS NO". It 
was the propaganda of "YES" that gave the referendum the characteristics 
of a "rupture" with the E.U. and the eurozone and not the content of the 
referendum itself. It was the "YES" propaganda that pushed the "NO" and 
the illusions around it, ultimately doing the most damage, managing to 
identify the "NO" with "anti-systemism" and "anti-systemism" with a 
bourgeois government.

The political responsibilities for the illusions of 2015

This chapter could only be adequately developed in volumes. And this is 
because in the previous decade a great historical opportunity was missed 
for the construction of a revolutionary movement of overthrow, when the 
crisis of political trust and representation led hundreds of thousands 
of people to the streets of struggle against the barbaric plunder of 
social life by the predatory memorandum measures. The "ears" at that 
time had opened, the people were looking for solutions and were willing 
to make sacrifices to claim better days. Ultimately, it was trapped 
again in the assignment to intrasystemic "solutions" with the 
collaboration of the political forces that led it into the arms of the 
"first time left" and the illusions surrounding social democratic 
governance. Fatally, this entrapment naturally encountered dead ends and 
the denial of expectations, disappointments, privatization, and 
de-massification of the lines of social and class resistance.

There are certainly political responsibilities and these should be held 
accountable.

However, we must first look at ourselves as an anarchist space. Because 
what concerns us is what we should have done differently, not so much to 
"reflect" on a theoretical historical level that has little importance, 
but to equip the "here and now" with conclusions and directions.

What was missing first of all in the previous decade was a revolutionary 
counter-proposal that could inspire the struggles in a revolutionary 
direction. The political positions, the analysis, the answers to the 
issues of the time were missing. And the body (an anarchist 
revolutionary organization) that could effectively promote this 
proposal, which was competitive with the existing socio-economic system, 
through words and deeds, fighting so that the necessity of revolutionary 
change would become a common cause within the large social majority.

What we should have done was to highlight that no "break" with the 
memoranda is possible without a revolutionary break, without revolution 
and overthrow. And not only on a theoretical and declarative level. We 
should also highlight the reformist and misleading character of the 
proposals for "exit" from the EU and the eurozone within capitalism and 
the state, to clash hard with the nonsense about "debt cancellation" on 
a government initiative, to fight the various "dependency theories" that 
were being deployed to transform the anarchist space into an 
anti-imperialist reformist left, replacing the class struggle with 
imaginary schemes against "bad Germans" and good or "compromised" 
bourgeois governments that would "clash" or "subordinate" to the 
"European establishment".

We should have vigorously confronted the management proposals, something 
that we did not manage to do due to the inadequacy of submitting our own 
counter-proposal. The illusions also drowned the social and class 
movements themselves. The greatest proof is the referendum itself, when 
the issue of the "rupture" was assigned to the government and identified 
with the outcome of a negotiation that was not ours. Some dared to 
include the exploiting social class in the same camp in the class 
struggle together with the government and did everything for an entire 
six months in order to suppress every anti-state and anti-governmental 
voice. For them, on the one hand there was the government and the 
"movements", and on the other hand the troika and the parties that had 
voted for the memorandum.

These will at some point be analyzed in the depth they deserve.

What is certain is that the past decade was marked by opportunities and 
illusions, by hard struggles and even harder disappointments. And 
assessing the responsibilities and attributing them for the illusions 
and disappointments constitutes today an important political 
responsibility. But even more important, is the responsibility to 
overcome the deficiencies that prevented the exploitation of the 
opportunities and struggles to promote the revolutionary overthrow, so 
as not to experience new defeats in the present and in the future.

The law of abstention

Our collective emerged from forces that were active in 2015, that had 
clearly responded to the false dilemmas of the referendum and 
participated in the organization of rallies and actions in favor of 
abstention during the week of the referendum. From forces that had stood 
against the government from the very beginning, declaring "kicks to the 
merchants of hope," participating in the organization of the first 
anarchist demonstration in the SYRIZA era in February 2015, and also 
clashed fiercely at that time with the government's satellites, fighting 
to keep the movement and the struggle afloat.

Ten years later, we should thunder that the forces that called for 
ABSTAINMENT from the referendum are the forces that were ultimately 
vindicated. Morally and politically. They were vindicated because the 
course of events justified not general ideological certainties but 
specific political considerations regarding the passing of the 3rd 
memorandum , the European continuity and the depth of the integration 
that would follow. They were vindicated because they not only declared 
abstention but also organized the anarchist conflict bloc - the last of 
that period - that engulfed the forces of repression in flames in front 
of the parliament on the day the 3rd memorandum was voted on , which 
they predicted and warned about when others were dancing guerillaly with 
the EPAM during Tsipras's prime ministerial speech at the "NO" rally.

Should we admit that a part of the abstention spoke only ideologically? 
Is it true? Should we admit that a large part that supported the 
abstention did so only on the basis of (fair) value principles and did 
not "get involved" with the critical stakes of the time? And this is 
true. However, the comrades who remained (and did well) in adhering to 
their principles and (very badly) did not move further, are hardly 
concerned with the referendum today. Therefore, the critical invocation 
to this day of "ideological purity" on the part of the movement's "NO" 
supporters towards the anarchist forces that called for abstention, 
constitutes maximum politicking and opportunism, equal to that of their 
stance in 2015. Because political confrontation requires looking your 
political opponent in the eye for what they are really saying and not 
flying a kite.

What is certain is that 10 years later, the right - at every level - of 
abstention is our obligation to safeguard it, to promote it, and in the 
coming years to make it clear within the anarchist space that the choice 
of "NO" was a choice not only against our principles, but also a 
counter-revolutionary and opportunistic choice, a black page in our 
political history for those who politically supported it.

Ten years later, we have a responsibility to assess not only what 
happened in 2015 but also what followed. Today, we are told, that Greece 
has emerged from the memoranda, that growth and normality have returned 
to the country. What is the reality? Have we indeed entered a "new" era 
of recovery and stability as initially proclaimed by Tsipras from Ithaca 
and then by Mitsotakis, "seizing" his narrative? Then what are the 
primary surpluses and fiscal discipline for? Why do all the memoranda 
measures remain in force and have been supplemented with new anti-labor 
laws, bankruptcy codes and "Hercules"-type plans? The global capitalist 
crisis that broke out in 2008 was ultimately dealt with "successfully" 
and today we are experiencing new "successive and successive crises" due 
to "unstable factors" (e.g. pandemic, wars, energy); Or are we 
experiencing "episodes" of this same crisis that were caused and 
strengthened by the very policies of "dealing with" it? These questions, 
which we have often approached both through the columns of our newspaper 
"Black and Red Flag", as well as in our occasional public analyses and 
announcements, we will attempt to answer in the discussion that will follow.

INITIATIVE OF ANARCHIST SAINTS OF ANARGYROS - KAMATEROS

https://protaanka.espivblogs.net/2025/07/13/eisigisi-tis-protovoylias-anarchikon-agion-anargyron-kamateroy-stin-ekdilosi-gia-to-kalpiko-dimopsifisma-tis-5is-ioylioy-2015/
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