Will Right-Wing "Austerity" Schemes Snap The American Social Compact The Way It's Already Snapping In Europe?

The kind of anarchism we're beginning to see in Greece is the response from frustrated citizens with the feeling that they can have no impact on their own lives because society is being run for and by a tiny privileged ruling elite. With social cohesion disintegrating, Greece could well be on the verge on bloody confrontations. And it is anything but far-fetched to think that the models of governance embodied in the fascist-oriented regimes of Republican governors in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Jersey and by any further pushes on the federal level in the direction of Ayn Rand's extreme right dystopian vision, won't bring a similar reaction here in America. Maybe not in Florida, where people are too passive to act, but even in Arizona there's a movement afoot for the sane part of the state around Tucson to secede from the fascist-oriented areas that are virtually too dumb and too-hate obsessed to realize they've sold themselves and their children down the river to the elites.

In Greece, increasingly frequent protests and a breakdown in respect for laws that seem to favor predatory elites "are an emblem of social discontent spreading across Europe in response to a new age of austerity," writes Anthony Faiola in the Washington Post. "At a time when the United States is just beginning to consider deep spending cuts, countries such as Greece are coping with a fallout that has extended well beyond ordinary civil disobedience."

Perhaps most alarming, analysts here say, has been the resurgence of an anarchist movement, one with a long history in Europe. While militants have been disrupting life in Greece for years, authorities say that anger against the government has now given rise to dozens of new “amateur anarchist” groups, whose tactics include planting of gas canisters in mailboxes and destroying bank ATMs.

Some attacks have gone further, heightening concerns about a return to the kind of left-wing violence that plagued parts of Europe during the 1970s and 1980s. After urban guerrillas mailed explosive parcels to European leaders and detonated a powerful bomb last year in front of an Athens courthouse, authorities here have staged a series of raids, arresting dozens and yielding caches of machine guns, grenades and bomb-making materials.

The anarchist movement in Europe has a long, storied past, embracing an anti-establishment universe influenced by a broad range of thinkers from French politician and philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to Karl Marx to Oscar Wilde. Defined narrowly, the movement includes groups of urban guerillas, radical youths and militant unionists. More broadly, it encompasses everything from punk rock to WikiLeaks.

...The rolling back of social safety nets in Europe began more than a year ago, as countries from Britain to France to Greece moved to cut social benefits and slash public payrolls, to address mounting public debt. At least in the short term, the cuts have held back economic growth and job creation, exacerbating the social pain.

And Greece is not the only place in which segments of society are pushing back.

Though unions and political movements have always used tough tactics in Europe, observers are particularly noting a surge in lower-grade militancy among a “lost generation” of young Europeans who have come of age in the aftermath of the global economic crisis. For most-- like the Italian students who draped the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Rome’s Coliseum in anti-austerity slogans last November-- protests have become a cathartic outlet to express genuine discontent. For others, they have become an invitation for more radical acts.

In Britain, for instance, 10 activists formed the UK Uncut group in a North London pub late last year, spawning a national wave of civil disobedience against spending cuts, bankers’ bonuses and tax evasion by the rich. During a March protest, they used Twitter and text messages to organize a “flash mob” that saw hundreds occupy and vandalize London’s famous Fortnum & Mason’s food store. In recent months, other actions have forced at least 100 bank branches across Britain to temporarily close.

Last week, officials in the western city of Bristol said they uncovered a plot by violent demonstrators to throw Molotov cocktails at a supermarket and arrested 30 protesters after a pitched battle with riot police.

“There is a sense of general injustice, that the government bailed out capitalism and the citizens are footing the bill while the capitalist system is running like nothing ever happened,” said Bart Cammaerts, an expert in anarchist movements at the London School of Economics. “And yet, things have happened. There are more taxes, less services, and anger is emerging from that tension.”

What's brought this on? Greece and much of Europe have basically been following the exact same savage austerity agenda being pushed by the ruling elites in this country, most ruthlessly by characters like John Boehner and Paul Ryan, but by conservative Democrats as well as virtually the entire Republican Party. In Greece "pensions have been cut, the retirement age extended and public sector pay slashed," precisely what the GOP is attempting to institute here. They were taken aback when a usually complacent population expressed anger over the Ryan budget that every House Republican had voted for save 4.

Fascist plutocrats in Europe and the U.S. are working furiously and sparing no expense to channel the anger into right wing movements-- like our own, heavily subsidized, so-called Tea parties-- and to point towards classic scapegoats, like immigrants. Holland may be on the verge of electing an actual fascist thug, Geert Wilders, to head their government. Last week the Williamson County Tennessee Republican Party hosted him for a day of barbeque and Islamophobia. That's Marsha Blackburn country and that's largely her own political organization.

It's worth mentioning, though, that in Greece angry, disillusioned young people are not turning towards fascist front groups but towards left-wing youth groups and organizing along the lines of Greece's "I Won't Pay" campaign which encourages people to refuse to cover highway tolls, bus fares, even fees at public hospitals. After the government, as part of the austerity regime, raised transit fares, the "I Won't Pay" campaign supporters began jumping aboard public buses and blocking other customers from punching their tickets. Organizers of the movement claim 10,000 supporters are now just saying no to transit fares and highway tolls in protest.

“They are taking everything away from us,” [19-year-old law student Nikolas] Ganiaris said. “What will happen when I finish law school? Will I only find a job making copies in a shop? Will I then need to work until I’m 70 before I retire? Will I only get a few hundred euros as pension? What future have I got now?”

A radical minority is energizing the anarchist movement, a loose network of anti-establishment groups that sprung up in force in the 1970s in opposition to Greece’s former military junta. Over the next two decades, anarchists would assassinate Richard Welch, a CIA station chief in Athens, as well as Greek politicians and a British military attache.

...[T]he economic crisis has helped the movement thrive, with anarchists positioning themselves as society’s new avengers. Long a den of anarchists, the graffiti-blanketed Exarchia neighborhood is alive anew with dissent. Nihilist youths are patrolling the local park, preventing police from entering and blocking authorities from building a parking lot on the site. On one evening at a local cafe, an anarchist group was broadcasting anti-government messages via a clandestine radio station using a laptop and a few young recruits.

In the most recent attacks, only one person has been injured, a courier who handled a letter bomb, but over the past two years, anarchist attacks have claimed four lives in Greece, including a journalist and a minister’s top aide. Left-wing radicals also appear responsible for the deaths of three civilians-- including a pregnant woman-- after a bank was firebombed during an anti-government protest last year.

Still, there is a line to be drawn between the far larger group of young anarchists hurling Molotov cocktails at street demonstrations and the smaller, more dangerous cells of urban guerrillas. But experts are increasingly concerned about growing militancy on the streets and the emergence of dozens of new anarchist groups on the Internet.

For some Greeks, like Nikos Galanos, a 20-year-old chain-smoking in an Exarchia cafe, the anarchist movement has become an outlet for anger. Last year, during a wave of government cutbacks, Galanos’s mother lost her job as a guard at the ancient Acropolis perched above Athens. His father, also a government worker, saw his salary slashed by 15 percent and must now labor more years before meeting the retirement age, boosted last year to an average age of 63.

Galanos, an electrician, has few job prospects outside the massive black market economy in Greece. But with the nation’s economy still contracting, even the off-the-books work he counted on to put himself through technical school has dried up.

Over the past two years, he has become more involved in the Anti-Establishment Movement, which, while it is among Greece’s less militant anarchist groups, still wields firebombs during protests. The movement’s rallies, which two years ago drew 2,000 to 3,000 young loyalists, now command small armies of 7,000 or more.

“I don’t support violence for violence’s sake, but violence is a response to the violence the government is committing against society,” Galanos said. He later added, “It is now hard for any of us to see a future here. I feel it’s my duty to fight against the system.”