By Haris Farmakis
Hunger striker, action anarchist Nikos Romanos, proclaimed that, with his hunger strike, he was demanding a ‘breath of freedom’. A lot was written already about the rights that were at stake in this hunger strike, but I think that Romanos’ own words and stance cried out that the strike was not so much about the political, social, human rights mentioned by most of the supporters of his struggle. The defence of these freedoms is certainly important within our debased liberal democracy, but it does not fit squarely with the case; what Romanos was demanding (blackmailing politically, as he said himself), was something more fundamental: it was the primordial, corporal freedom sought instinctively by all people, especially young ones.
Τhe jurisdiction of the state to deprive prisoners of these breaths of freedom, preventively or even punitively, can certainly be defended with seemingly plausible arguments. It is equally obvious that Romanos’ blackmail and the wider appeal and significance it acquired, upset many people; each person interpreted the case in the light of his/her political views, reacting to it accordingly and drawing from it the conclusions that suited him/her. However, beyond theoretical, legal and moral analyses and political tactics, the core of Romanos’ struggle and actions was so clear, that no intellectually honest person could ignore it.
The generation of anti-establishment activists and rebels to which Romanos belongs, construes the notion of freedom with an idealizing romanticism. This makes it vulnerable to criticism from all kinds of cynical or simply theoretically sophisticated commentators of our social reality.
Moreover, the fact that this generation was, even before the crisis, trapped inside an anti-productive, non-creative, sterile and inextricable economic and social reality, possibly made its views and actions appear pointless, insignificant, or even backward, when considered inside the hyper-competitive globalised political field.
But, no matter how weak the justification of the anti-establishment actions of this generation might be, no matter how small and insignificant they might look when viewed from up high, nobody can ignore the fact that these youths had the readiness to react impulsively, corporally, explosively, to the barbarous act of the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
The young boys and girls of December of 2008, among them the teenager Romanos who happened to be at the epicenter of the explosion, were obviously feeling, long before the ‘official beginning’ of the crisis that followed, the suffocation that was being caused by the dominance of a catastrophic for young people’s potential, economic and political system.
What is more, if we view the murderous act of the government’s executive arm as a sign of the authoritarian counterattack that is being carried out by the power structures of western democracies over the last years, then the December insurrection acquires even greater value, considering that the youths that until then were apparently inert and indifferent, instinctively interpreted the murder as being part of this generalized attack on our fundamental right to freedom and rose en masse, first in their time among the youths of western societies, demanding that ‘the earth should stop, that it should not turn, until something comes out of it’.
This just ‘something’ has not come yet, something else has come instead, and it is even worse than what preceded it. Its brutal face was demonstrated to us by, among others, Romanos himself, when he raised his head high so that we could see the violence and torture he had suffered at the hands of authority. With his hunger strike over the last month, he turned his body into a barricade, as he said, demanding not so much the right of education, but that of a breath of primordial, corporal freedom. Whatever one thinks of Romanos and his actions, it is crucial that this barricade held up intact and that it succeeded in giving this breath, not only to those that consciously placed themselves behind it, but to a whole society that is suffocating, exhaling the constantly diminishing oxygen of freedom it is allowed to inhale.