Συλλογική Δήλωση Ολικής Άρνησης Στράτευσης, Δεκέμβριος 2012

ελληνικά/english:

αντιγράφουμε απο το μπλογκ της Πρωτοβουλίας για την Ολική Άρνηση Στράτευσης (Αθήνα)

Η δήλωση αυτή είναι το αποτέλεσμα της κοινής στάσης πέντε συντρόφων από την Αθήνα απέναντι στον στρατό. Αποφασίστηκε και συντάχθηκε με συλλογικές και αυτοοργανωμένες διαδικασίες στη βάση τόσο της ατομικής μας βούλησης όσο και της πολιτικής μας προταγματικής. Με τη στήριξη αλληλέγγυων συντρόφων/ισσών μοιράστηκε για πρώτη φορά σε 2.000 αντίτυπα στη συγκέντρωση της πορείας για τη 17η Νοέμβρη του 2012, θέλοντας η κίνησή μας αυτή να διεμβολίσει τους συμβολισμούς της ημέρας και να της προσδώσει την επικαιροποίηση μιας διαρκούς άρνησης απέναντι στον μιλιταρισμό.

Η δήλωση αυτή αποτελεί κομμάτι των εαυτών μας και των αρνήσεών μας απέναντι όχι μόνο στον στρατό αλλά και συνολικότερα στον πολιτισμό της εξουσίας. Το κείμενο της δήλωσης μπορεί κανείς να βρει αρχικά σε αυτοοργανωμένους χώρους και καταλήψεις της Αθήνας και του Πειραιά. Πρόθεσή μας είναι να φτάσει σε κάθε χώρο αντίστασης, αυτοοργάνωσης και αλληλεγγύης στην ελλαδική επικράτεια αλλά και έξω από τα σύνορά της. 

Για έναν κόσμο αλληλεγγύης, ισότητας και ελευθερίας, για έναν κόσμο δίχως έθνη, κράτη, τάξεις, σύνορα και στρατούς.

 

Collective Statement of Total Army Objection

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They call us to serve the world of authority, militarism, nationalism, patriarchy.

They mailed us countless letters. They called us from all competent offices. They summoned us, fined us and brought criminal charges against us. And once more all over again … Police, conscription bureaus, tax collection offices, district attorneys, municipal registries and other “charitable” institutions of the greek state, they all  reminded us, warned us, threatened us, sentenced us, charged us and “compelled us” to “serve the country”. The greek army, a death machine of hierarchy and enforcement, invites us to its thorny embrace. To be trained on how to kill and how to be killed “in a noble fashion”, of course not for our needs and values, but for the ones of those “above”. We thank them for not excluding us from their murderous and antisocial plans, but we object!

We object

…to the barracks imprisonment, individualization, fear, silence and militarism. We object to being drafted in the greek army under any capacity whatsoever. At the same time our objection is also a stance against all kinds of authoritarian relations and values that regulate society. We serve no apparatus that stands for relations of inequality, hierarchy, enforcement and submission. The army, a structure that is inextricably linked to the existence and functioning of the nation state and of capitalism, is one of the pillars of the production and reproduction of authority and artificial segregations. The values of this world, hostile to us, are not only contained in the barracks and are not only enforced upon the conscripts. From the barracks, the permeate society in a process of continuous interaction. The process of “drafting” and “military service” constitutes one of the visible bridges between army and society. Consequently, since the army does not end when the military service is over, our stance cannot be anything but total, unmediated, intransigent and continuous.     

Total, because we object to the philosophy and all the institutional, ideological and repressive precepts that the army stands for. We don’t just object to one aspect of it. That is why we consider all kinds of alternative civilian service, any kind of negotiation with the military services, all kinds of efforts to “remedy” or beautify a killing machine, as an inadequate attempt to deny it.

Intransigent, because we believe that our objection is not a right to be granted, but a conscious choice of opposition against military commands. A stance that reflects our position regarding any liberation struggle as well. The clash with the civilization of authority, its guardians and the violence of its apparatuses, is a prerequisite for individual and social liberation. In a parallel manner, the widespread liberating social antiviolence, set free from pacifistic dead ends, is an integral part –not an end in itself–  of the process of transforming society.

Unmediated, because we don’t expect any kind of promotion by the mechanisms of spectacle and the manipulative lenses of Mass Media. We establish and diffuse our every move in line with horizontal social relations, movements of resistance and solidarity, streets and neighborhoods. That’s why we object to this world of images, mediation, organized lie.

Continuous, because we believe that for as long as there are nation states, classes, regimes and leaders, for as long as artificial discriminations, oppositions and antagonisms exist, the army will exist too. Until the final abolition of exploitation of man by man, until the final abolition of the state organisation of societies, our objections and our struggles will be constant and ever present.

Collectively…

… because summoning by nature carries the element of individualization. The strictly personal draft document separates conscripts from the rest of society and anything that coheres their lives, in order for them to partake in camp life. We collectively object so that we can destroy this separation at its cradle, by negating the false personal nature of the draft and by putting forward, via our own decision, the collective and social character of our action. By asserting solidarity, mutual aid and collective resistance against repressive methods like criminal prosecutions and financial bleeding, methods which form part of a new repressive strategy that the greek state is introducing and of which the army is the avant-garde. Long before the escalation of the economic plundering of society, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Finance charged, indiscriminately, with unbearable administrative fines all those who refused to show up for military service. During capitalist crisis, according to the greek state, “lack of patriotism” costs 6.000 euros and the “national duty” is merged with tax collection statements.

 
Nation – State – Army: A waltz for three

Nations are imaginary communities of capitalist societies.
Even though, according to the propaganda, they are presented as inherent and eternal “ingredients” of human nature, the reality is quite different since they are less than two and a half centuries old. Up to the 18^th century, the word nation, as far as it existed, was an insignificant or even pejorative term used in reference to small social groups irrespective of origin, language or religion.

They gained their contemporary meaning at the end of the 18^th century (in the epoch of the American and French revolutions), thus forcing human communities to set territorial boundaries and homogenize as regards their characteristics (cultural, linguistic, religious etc.). They helped not only overthrow of the old empires, but also brought the bourgeoisie at the steering wheel of the modern state, perpetuating in this way the suppression and segmentation of “those below”. Occasionally, as it is also the case with Greece, tones of blood had to be shed and bones piled in huge heaps so that the “others” and those “different” would either be assimilated or just disappear. In this process, the armies had, and still have, the leading role.

Nationalism, an ideology that attempts to identify politics with ethnocentricism, is basically a proposition put forward by state and capitalism; it is a well tested and successful tool that rulers have used in order to disorientate and subdue the suppressed. The inconceivable disasters that nationalism brought upon humanity, during the 20^th century alone (such as the nazi atrocities or the numerous bloodthirsty dictatorships worldwide), are labelled “extreme deviations of certain sick minds”. In this way they try to cover up the fact that authority does not consider such sick minds and their followers as an “extreme”, but as a straightforward systemic option, which the army is always ready to serve. This is something that is becoming more and more apparent these days…

Army: Guardian of nation and state – Enemy of societies

The greek army –like every other army–  is a killing and repressive machine. It is a centralized pillar of state violence, without which the dominant economic and political elites would be doomed. Ideologically, it forms a nodal terrain of constitution and diffusion of militaristic and nationalist values. Values that, through mandatory military service, create scope for the reinforcement of army-based pedagogy of social consciousness. Ruthless discipline to humiliating commands of an absolute hierarchy-of-uniforms extend the levels of submission to social and class hierarchy of an unequal society. The severe uniformity of appearance and conduct breeds hatred towards anything different. Patriarchy, with all its sexist and prejudiced manifestations, legitimizes the indescribable superiority and tyranny of men and physical force. And of course, there is nationalist frenzy, with its ethnoracist hatred and chauvinist prattling that adore state authority and despotism (there is no better shelter for the extreme right and nazi rhetoric…). It’s nationalism itself that never showed any moral hesitation when silencing and wiping out the hundreds of soldiers that committed suicide (and still do) at the greek barracks. All these synthesize an authoritarian civilization that is both by nature and choice hostile towards anything liberating. And all these create an intertemporal mosaic that explains why we, in our turn, both by nature and choice, object to serve this civilization…

A murderer’s profile…

Since the creation of the greek state, the history of the army is branded with the blood of millions of people killed for the benefit of the greek ruling class and its international allies. The part that the army played – especially during the first 150 years since the foundation of the greek state – has  been crucial and manifold. There is no example of a government (be it royal, monarchic, fascist or democratic) that managed to stay in power without the support, or at least the tolerance, of the army. The army has played an important part in an unaccountable number of seditions and coup d’états (the most prominent example being the 1967-1974 junta), in the dethroning and enthroning of leaders, in cases of major political decision making, in wars of expansion, in the process of ethnic cleansing. It has also had a major role in the ruthless suppression of civil revolts, labor and social struggles, in imposing the death sentence, in the creation of concentration camps for dissidents, in their torturing or in establishing deserted islands as places of exile. At the same time, it formed alliances and collaborated with foreign armies, joined NATO and took active part in various military operations that all had to do with give and take bargains of greater geopolitical interests. (Ukraine in 1919, Korea in the 50s, Yugoslavia in the 90s, Afghanistan in 2003, Libya in 2011 etc.). We should not leave out the constant warfare against the impoverished waves of migration caused by these same armies, a warfare that includes assassinations, arrests, tortures, imprisonment in concentration camps that the state has constructed along its land and sea borders. The greek army has been the most cynical tool of conquest, preservation and administration of power, consolidation of capitalist machinery through the suppression of “those below”; ultimately the army has been the enemy, and not the guardian, of society. There is no way we will offer any kind of service to the dynasts of the past, but most importantly of a very critical present…

Crisis as a “national” event: a useful distortion

One of the clearest ideological choices of the regime, in order to handle today’s crisis, is its inclusion in an ethnocentric narration. Capitalist crisis – a process of violent plundering, subjugation and coercion of “those below” unfolding not only in the greek state but in many other as well – has been presented, ever since it began, by both political and economic authorities, as a “national disaster and hardship”. In one voice, greek ruling class, mass media, E.U., even the economics-based technocrats of the IMF, from the beginning, they all rushed to proclaim that “crisis affects greeks” and not that both greek and foreign masters seize upon the poor (both indigenous and migrants). As a consequence, we are faced with a generalized revival and intensification of nationalism, both at the ideological – where national ideals form the basis of almost every argumentation (without the exception of the “anti memorandum voices of the left”) – and political level – with the formation of “national salvation” governments (the first one had a banker as a prime minister) and the institutional entrenchment of extreme right or nazi groupings that shape the political agenda.

As a consequence, ethnocentricm defines social/class relations in a multitude of ways. On the one hand, it imposes gross and artificial communities of a national character: “all Greeks” suffer, regardless of the fact that some suffer and die while others “suffer” and get rich by exploiting the rest. On the other hand, it alienates “those below” from each other and undermines the extension of solidarity: “crisis affects all greeks”, even if some of us have more in common with the millions of unemployed and dispossessed in e.g. Spain or Italy, than e.g. with greek industrialists and shipowners.

And finally, it redirects the rage of the suppressed from the the upper classes to their own ones: the poorer and most exploitable strata, migrants, become the new “national enemy” (while other social or resisting groups will soon follow) that is either marginally framed under conditions of social crisis or demonized with a variety of tricks, like the nazi invention of collective responsibility.

The statements of the minister of finance in 2011 inaugurated the new set of ethics for a plundered society: “we are at real war”, thus blurring – and in most cases nationalizing –“who is attacking whom”. And when social and class warfare is propagated as “national”, then society is summoned by its own enemy to “line up” to his ranks and militarism is being promoted in order to become the most basic characteristic of society.

Militarism: a recipe for the suppression, discipline and control of society

The military dimension of crisis, in its systemic aspect, has a pious hope: a subdued and obedient society that complies with the commands of “those above”, exactly as political leaders and Mass Media dictate. A “war of all against all”, that is increasingly becoming a “war among the poor” (for the long-living of bosses). The hordes of police units at the squares and the streets, official and unofficial armed militias of nazi enthusiasts, migrant-hunts, concentration camps, walls, fences and barriers at the borders and around neighborhoods, growing fear that is being imposed, the dictates of  politicians and mass media for “obedience” and “loyalty” to this scene of death that they set. All these, in combination with the ever growing espousal, by parts of the population, of physical strength, discipline, chauvinism, intellectual poverty, misery of uniformity, are snapshots of the new social model that is being promoted. The army could have nothing less than a central place in this model, since the military is in fact the functional template of such a world. Militarized society is the system’s proposal when faced with the danger of a revolted society that will openly defy it.

Systemic crisis and the army

The endogenous crises and contradictions of the state/capitalist model create an environment of fluidity and systemic instability, that intensifies war –by all means– against “those below”. The army has always been the defender of dominance and the enemy of every struggle for social liberation. There is no sign whatsoever that this is not the case during the current crisis. On the contrary…

The army’s new military dogma: internal suppression and policing

Capitalism, impoverishing western societies, has no illusions: states are no longer in danger only of other states, but also of the liberating insurrections of their own subjects. In this way, they plan their wars not only outside their borders but also inside. Systemic projects such as the NATO report “Urban Operations 2020” (Military Operations in Urban Territory) are symptomatic.

So, the “neutral and “defensive” greek army has been, for years now, upgrading and organizing its institutional and operational contribution in the suppression of “internal enemies”, side by side with all sorts of police units. The “NATO’s New Strategic Concept 2020” provides clear guiding lines to national armies and the present and future militaristic ideology. Apart from “external enemies”, militarists now also focus on the so called “asymmetric threats” that can develop within NATO countries. They believe that “social confrontations”, “economic hardship”, “migration outbreak”, “climate changes” can give birth to these “asymmetric threats”. In reality, greek army (that is already collaborating with Frontex in policing and eliminating migrants at the borders or is part of an invasion or occupation force abroad) is preparing to join in the suppression of struggles and people within the greek territory, alongside with the greek police, the european army (Eurogendfor) and the mixed NATO units located in every state of the “alliance” (Battle Groups).

For faith and… bourgeoisie

One of the greatest and most lucrative sectors of the capitalist system is war industry. Armies play a major role in the accumulation, circulation and destruction of capital, in the creation and overcoming of crises (as in 1929 worldwide economic recession, that was overcome only through the mobilization of war industry and the outbreak of World War II) both at war and peace: armaments, operational expenses, arms industries, all these set the tempo for a party of colossal economic magnitudes, that determine both the fiscal policies of the states and some of the most profitable private capital investments.

The greek army is an illustrative example: in periods of capitalistic growth, it played a central part in formal and informal economy by managing tens of billions of euros (at least officially), sums of money that were totally disproportionate compared to both the relatively limited GDP of a small EU state and the notorious “dangers” that it had to face. While today, the “guardian” of a bankrupt society works for the protection and strengthening of local bosses either by entering in wider geostrategic alliances (such as NATO’s redistribution of libyan economy, after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, or like the case of the cypriot EEZ) or by implementing neoliberal commands for its own structural reconstruction.

These strategies are constantly supported and fuelled, and vice versa, by the neo-nationalistic and militaristic ideologies promoted in the midst of crisis. Moreover, it’s proper that this relation is not confined within the borders of the state: greek militarism (like the one of every other nation) is not only reinforced by greek nationalism but also by “rival” ones. And they are mutually underpined and feed off each other to the disadvantage of societies in every state and every nation…

Our objections are our lives

In these times that we live in, it is a desideratum for “those below” to generalize their objections to every single aspect of the tyranny of “those above”. Our objection takes an active stance not only at present but also for the days to come. We will never turn against “those below”, those who walk or will walk at the path of revolt, the suppressed or dispossessed (native or just happening to have been born at other side of the border), those who migrate or starve to death by dominant choices. We could never join the ranks of our class and social enemy: of state and capitalism. This is why it is equally out of our order of things when the suppressed support the organized armed forces of their oppressors, namely when they join the ranks of their real enemies. The army, the police and every militaristic sect form parts of the dominators’ apparatus. The borderlines are bloody slashes on the body of the planet.

The generalization of social objections is still in the beginning and it will intensify as the oppressed start to know themselves better, their class and their real enemies; and further on, insofar as they decide to take position in the social/class struggle. Already, some early moves trace their possibilities: widespread civil disobedience to any predatory measure, mass refusals to pay off debts, escalating spirit of confrontation in the streets against the defenders of injustice, rising social aversion to political parties and mediators, strengthening of radical and self-organized projects, horizontal assemblies of workers and unemployed, propagation of solidarity, mutual aid and self-organization in both social and political activities but also at the neighborhoods. And this is just the beginning.

Two worlds in conflict

As anarchists–antiauthoritarians we don’t integrate ourselves in any artificial community and we are not defined by national delusions. On the contrary, we assert our self-definition on the basis of our individual and social choices, our struggles and our values of freedom, equality and solidarity. Our bodies are neither expendable material for capitalist plans, nor quantifiable for any big or small national idea. Our bodies are not some militarists’ pawns, they neither constitute any unified mass nor blindly obey “orders from above”. Our bodies cannot be walled by any military campsite. On the contrary, they function in a way inseparable from our thought, ideas, conscience, struggles for a society of freedom and not a prison society, for a society of equals amongst equals and not a society of leaders and hierarchy, for a society of communities and not a society of proprietors. We detest individualization and mass uniformity, manipulation, alienation and cannibalism, processes by which authority loves to mould useful subjects. Therefore, we could never have ourselves to the disposal of any general, minister, nation, country, of the world of authority.

Our world is that of solidarity, self-organization, resistance and counter-infrastructures. A world of unhindered creativity and expression, of processes and social relationships that are alive, of horizontal assemblies at squares, neighborhoods, amphitheaters, squats. Let bosses, militarists and fascists lock themselves up at the military campsites.

We are not food for their wars and armies
They may neither count on us

December 2012

Alexandros Karakostas/Kostas Karas/Dimitris Niotis/Zacharias Ousoultzoglou/Lazaros Petrakis

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