Police Violence, Ideology and the Myth of Representation
By Augustine Zenakos
The protesters must widen the discussion and attack the fundamentals, not the symptoms - with an eye not only to Greece, but to the world.
Most people are familiar with Jan Vermeer, one of the most famous painters in history. What is perhaps less known is that up to a point in his career, so the legend goes, Vermeer was hardly an outstanding artist. It is assumed that he developed his unrivalled mastery of light and colour through the use of a camera obscura, a device that projected images on a surface through a lens. Now, what is even more interesting is that Delft, the city where Vermeer lived and worked, was home to yet another 17th century innovator, the lens-maker Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Reclusive and secretive to the point of paranoia, Leeuwenhoek never allowed much information to leak out about how precisely he achieved such staggering results in optics – serious stuff for a century that was taking an increasing interest in the observation of the natural world. As for art historians, they will probably never know how much of Vermeer’s success in art is owed to Leeuwenhoek’s technology. We know that Leeuwenhoek was listed as an executor of Vermeer’s estate, after the latter’s demise, but no optical device has been found among the painter’s belongings. So, we can assume, but we do not know...
The point of this apparently unrelated introduction is to illustrate that history and experience teems with associations and arguments that produce convenient and attractive analyses – if only we could be sure they are true. These analyses may well point to actual events, then again they may not. We should take the lesson into the present.
The Greek Police attacked protesters in Athens, who have been demonstrating peacefully on Syntagma Square for 27 days now, with unspeakable violence and mostly without provocation on Wednesday, June 15th. I say “mostly” without provocation, because there were riots. These riots, however, were relatively isolated and did not include the main body of protesters at Syntagma, who for the most part were singing and dancing, as tear gas started exploding in their midst.
Was this a preplanned turn of events, a targeted effort by the Greek Government to suppress the protests? There are reasons to believe so. Many are aware – this writer being an eye-witness – that there are secret Police among the demonstrators, disguised as rioters, often carrying petrol bombs and other material. (One of them was actually found out by demonstrators on the 15th, carrying, rather stupidly, police identification.) Did the Police, then, provoke the riots? We may suspect they had a hand in it, but like with Vermeer’s and Leeuwenhoek’s relationship, the evidence is circumstantial.
Perhaps, then, what is needed is to change the subject. In the same way that when visiting a museum, it is only to a point that one will dwell on the possibility that the great Dutch artist “cheated”, so we should not unduly dwell on whether the instigators of the violence on the 15th were undercover policemen or members of fringe, militant political groups. Whatever the case, the Police found a convenient moment to attack everybody, in a monstrously disproportionate response. This is the issue, and for this, there is plenty of evidence.
It is vital to change the subject, also, because the mainstream Media in Greece maintain exactly this: that extreme groups battle the Police, and the Police is only reacting to the violence. This was echoed by the Police Press representative’s official statement, which said that they were only protecting peaceful demonstrators from extreme rioters. This is false. (That it is deliberately false is also obvious, but at the moment unprovable.) There are now a number of witnesses and video recordings that indicate clearly that the Police attacked peaceful protesters without provocation. So, if we dwell on whether or not the riots are a conspiracy, we are really playing the Police’s and the Government’s game, focusing on the riots and not on the disproportionate use of violence, which should be our main concern, in that it may lead to a discussion of what the European Governments, the European Bank and the IMF – and not really the Police – are doing.
The magnitude of events hit me full on when I heard a beloved friend’s voice on the phone: “They are criminals…” she croaked. She was choking. I could not reach her, I was trapped between two rows of Riot Police, behind Syntagma. I certainly cannot describe how it is to hear someone suffering like that – especially as I could not get to her. It was as if someone had filed down her throat, a horrific asphyxia, the stuff of nightmares. The Police had attacked suddenly. The demonstrators were singing and dancing. Tear gas was everywhere, yet many protesters managed to stay there and hold the Square – a staggering feat, as anyone who has ever been attacked with tear gas will know.
The Police bombed Syntagma for nearly two hours. Without cause. Disproportionate, unprovoked violence, poison against the unprotected, police armed to the teeth against unarmed citizens. And then, the motorized “DIAS” Police squads appeared. They speeded down Stadiou Street, a few blocks from Syntagma, and started beating people up without reason. I saw that, too, and heard the distressed question, echoing through the street: “Why are you beating us?”
This is not the first time that Police have used disproportionate and unprovoked violence, it has happened rather a lot. But it is perhaps the first time that so many people, who were not experienced in street demonstrations, witnessed it and fell victims to it. This “fortunate” disillusionment, I suggest, might help us make a few observations:
Firstly, despite the mainstream Media’s efforts to present this as a conflict between extreme groups and the Police, many more people were on the street this time, they were eye-witnesses themselves, and so remained for the most part unconvinced. The street verdict, so to speak, condemns the Police.
Secondly, a connection must be and was drawn between the Police and its political leadership. One or two policemen may go berserk under pressure, but such generalized brutality cannot but have orders behind it. The police might be the executioners, but the guilty ones are the Government.
Thirdly, the attack had not happened for over twenty days. It happened only when the organized Left and the Unions were marching in Athens, and there was the danger that they will join up with the “Indignants” of Syntagma Square. To put it more clearly, one of the characteristics of the “Indignants” movement, that they up to now expelled any Party or official organization from their ranks, has been attractive to disappointed former voters of big parliamentary Parties, but has also been paradoxically convenient to the Government. To give but one example, one can protest all they want, but they cannot call a general strike or seriously affect economical life without the Unions. Last Wednesday was the first occasion where it seemed that the movement had matured enough, so that an organic way might be found for all forces to fight together – not the Unions taking control of the “Indignants”, but rather the “Indignants” laying down the agenda for the Unions and other “battle-hardened” but politically dubious formations, forcing them to serve public interest in an unprecedented way. This was the scary possibility of Wednesday the 15th and this is exactly the moment when the Police attacked. (Which makes the 29th, the day when the medium-term Austerity Plan comes to a vote in the Greek Parliament, really dangerous. The Police will be waiting.) This may or may not be what the Government had in mind. But it is the actual sequence of events.
Lastly, it has been widely discussed that the “Indignants” are apolitical. This is so untrue, it borders on being slanderous. Occupying the central square of a major city for three weeks, opposite the Parliament, is poignantly political. The expressed disdain for all political Parties is also a political statement. And doing so in the manner of a “camp” or “feast” of sorts, which however includes a nightly open forum, the People’s Assembly, further avoids the stereotypical language of the organized Greek Left – a fact that only deepens the political appeal of the protest. So the criticism on the lack of politicization seems misguided.
What would perhaps be a more accurate and more constructive criticism is that the politics of the “Indignants” is still quite narrow. Though they might appear crucial to us here in Athens, our Government, tomorrow’s parliamentary vote, the Greek austerity plan, are not in themselves the actual stakes of this historical juncture. Simply overthrowing this Government and going to elections might in fact diffuse the power of the movement, without actually changing much overall. Rather, we might remember that there is a wider program – an ideological operation – at work: this is a transfer of public wealth – roads, ports, energy, communications – to private hands, fewer than ever before, promoted through the rhetoric of a State of Emergency, and imposed through violence and restriction of freedoms that have unmistakable totalitarian overtones.
The ideology behind which this program is masked has two main, interrelated points: First, Greeks - the European periphery follows close behind - are culturally, intrinsically inefficient and corrupt; and, second, what is needed here are rational, practical solutions to a technical problem. (Incidentally, this insistence on rationalism and pragmatism is what constitutes the mystification of this ideology and makes it appear non-ideological, commonsensical, even. It is anything but.)
This wider program does not concern just Greece. It concerns the whole of the Liberal-Democratic political paradigm. And the “Indignants” must finally come to realize that what they are in fact criticizing is the staple of Liberal Democracy itself – the myth of “representation”, and the way it facilitates an apparently unavoidable distribution of wealth which is plainly unfair and brutal.
But this is no “conspiracy” in the usual sense, and thus it not detective work that is required, but rather an increasingly acute political reading. We should not imagine shady players in a back room making devious decisions. We should observe processes and facts, such as the extensive privatization program publicized recently by the Greek Government, or the war over waste disposal that was raging in Keratea, near Athens, between police in the service of private business and local residents. The Syntagma protesters must realize that what they are up against is a system, fully equipped with its legitimizing ideology, not just practical decisions that can be assessed through criteria such as “efficiency” or “trustworthiness”. They must widen the discussion and attack the fundamentals, not the symptoms. And they should do so with an eye not only to Greece, but to the world. For the first time in history, tools are available in order to have a truly global movement.
I cannot – no one can – be sure whether this is the moment. But it is undoubtedly one of the moments, building up to a change. What I am definitely sure about, though, is that we should leave conjecture aside and deal with what is plain before our eyes. Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek, at least, would have advised us as much – that is if they actually did anything together, which, as we said in the beginning, we do not really know.
Augustine Zenakos is a journalist, an art critic and a curator. More of his writing can be found on his blog Trébuchet (http://thetrap.wordpress.com)
The protesters must widen the discussion and attack the fundamentals, not the symptoms - with an eye not only to Greece, but to the world.
Most people are familiar with Jan Vermeer, one of the most famous painters in history. What is perhaps less known is that up to a point in his career, so the legend goes, Vermeer was hardly an outstanding artist. It is assumed that he developed his unrivalled mastery of light and colour through the use of a camera obscura, a device that projected images on a surface through a lens. Now, what is even more interesting is that Delft, the city where Vermeer lived and worked, was home to yet another 17th century innovator, the lens-maker Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Reclusive and secretive to the point of paranoia, Leeuwenhoek never allowed much information to leak out about how precisely he achieved such staggering results in optics – serious stuff for a century that was taking an increasing interest in the observation of the natural world. As for art historians, they will probably never know how much of Vermeer’s success in art is owed to Leeuwenhoek’s technology. We know that Leeuwenhoek was listed as an executor of Vermeer’s estate, after the latter’s demise, but no optical device has been found among the painter’s belongings. So, we can assume, but we do not know...
The point of this apparently unrelated introduction is to illustrate that history and experience teems with associations and arguments that produce convenient and attractive analyses – if only we could be sure they are true. These analyses may well point to actual events, then again they may not. We should take the lesson into the present.
The Greek Police attacked protesters in Athens, who have been demonstrating peacefully on Syntagma Square for 27 days now, with unspeakable violence and mostly without provocation on Wednesday, June 15th. I say “mostly” without provocation, because there were riots. These riots, however, were relatively isolated and did not include the main body of protesters at Syntagma, who for the most part were singing and dancing, as tear gas started exploding in their midst.
Was this a preplanned turn of events, a targeted effort by the Greek Government to suppress the protests? There are reasons to believe so. Many are aware – this writer being an eye-witness – that there are secret Police among the demonstrators, disguised as rioters, often carrying petrol bombs and other material. (One of them was actually found out by demonstrators on the 15th, carrying, rather stupidly, police identification.) Did the Police, then, provoke the riots? We may suspect they had a hand in it, but like with Vermeer’s and Leeuwenhoek’s relationship, the evidence is circumstantial.
Perhaps, then, what is needed is to change the subject. In the same way that when visiting a museum, it is only to a point that one will dwell on the possibility that the great Dutch artist “cheated”, so we should not unduly dwell on whether the instigators of the violence on the 15th were undercover policemen or members of fringe, militant political groups. Whatever the case, the Police found a convenient moment to attack everybody, in a monstrously disproportionate response. This is the issue, and for this, there is plenty of evidence.
It is vital to change the subject, also, because the mainstream Media in Greece maintain exactly this: that extreme groups battle the Police, and the Police is only reacting to the violence. This was echoed by the Police Press representative’s official statement, which said that they were only protecting peaceful demonstrators from extreme rioters. This is false. (That it is deliberately false is also obvious, but at the moment unprovable.) There are now a number of witnesses and video recordings that indicate clearly that the Police attacked peaceful protesters without provocation. So, if we dwell on whether or not the riots are a conspiracy, we are really playing the Police’s and the Government’s game, focusing on the riots and not on the disproportionate use of violence, which should be our main concern, in that it may lead to a discussion of what the European Governments, the European Bank and the IMF – and not really the Police – are doing.
The magnitude of events hit me full on when I heard a beloved friend’s voice on the phone: “They are criminals…” she croaked. She was choking. I could not reach her, I was trapped between two rows of Riot Police, behind Syntagma. I certainly cannot describe how it is to hear someone suffering like that – especially as I could not get to her. It was as if someone had filed down her throat, a horrific asphyxia, the stuff of nightmares. The Police had attacked suddenly. The demonstrators were singing and dancing. Tear gas was everywhere, yet many protesters managed to stay there and hold the Square – a staggering feat, as anyone who has ever been attacked with tear gas will know.
The Police bombed Syntagma for nearly two hours. Without cause. Disproportionate, unprovoked violence, poison against the unprotected, police armed to the teeth against unarmed citizens. And then, the motorized “DIAS” Police squads appeared. They speeded down Stadiou Street, a few blocks from Syntagma, and started beating people up without reason. I saw that, too, and heard the distressed question, echoing through the street: “Why are you beating us?”
This is not the first time that Police have used disproportionate and unprovoked violence, it has happened rather a lot. But it is perhaps the first time that so many people, who were not experienced in street demonstrations, witnessed it and fell victims to it. This “fortunate” disillusionment, I suggest, might help us make a few observations:
Firstly, despite the mainstream Media’s efforts to present this as a conflict between extreme groups and the Police, many more people were on the street this time, they were eye-witnesses themselves, and so remained for the most part unconvinced. The street verdict, so to speak, condemns the Police.
Secondly, a connection must be and was drawn between the Police and its political leadership. One or two policemen may go berserk under pressure, but such generalized brutality cannot but have orders behind it. The police might be the executioners, but the guilty ones are the Government.
Thirdly, the attack had not happened for over twenty days. It happened only when the organized Left and the Unions were marching in Athens, and there was the danger that they will join up with the “Indignants” of Syntagma Square. To put it more clearly, one of the characteristics of the “Indignants” movement, that they up to now expelled any Party or official organization from their ranks, has been attractive to disappointed former voters of big parliamentary Parties, but has also been paradoxically convenient to the Government. To give but one example, one can protest all they want, but they cannot call a general strike or seriously affect economical life without the Unions. Last Wednesday was the first occasion where it seemed that the movement had matured enough, so that an organic way might be found for all forces to fight together – not the Unions taking control of the “Indignants”, but rather the “Indignants” laying down the agenda for the Unions and other “battle-hardened” but politically dubious formations, forcing them to serve public interest in an unprecedented way. This was the scary possibility of Wednesday the 15th and this is exactly the moment when the Police attacked. (Which makes the 29th, the day when the medium-term Austerity Plan comes to a vote in the Greek Parliament, really dangerous. The Police will be waiting.) This may or may not be what the Government had in mind. But it is the actual sequence of events.
Lastly, it has been widely discussed that the “Indignants” are apolitical. This is so untrue, it borders on being slanderous. Occupying the central square of a major city for three weeks, opposite the Parliament, is poignantly political. The expressed disdain for all political Parties is also a political statement. And doing so in the manner of a “camp” or “feast” of sorts, which however includes a nightly open forum, the People’s Assembly, further avoids the stereotypical language of the organized Greek Left – a fact that only deepens the political appeal of the protest. So the criticism on the lack of politicization seems misguided.
What would perhaps be a more accurate and more constructive criticism is that the politics of the “Indignants” is still quite narrow. Though they might appear crucial to us here in Athens, our Government, tomorrow’s parliamentary vote, the Greek austerity plan, are not in themselves the actual stakes of this historical juncture. Simply overthrowing this Government and going to elections might in fact diffuse the power of the movement, without actually changing much overall. Rather, we might remember that there is a wider program – an ideological operation – at work: this is a transfer of public wealth – roads, ports, energy, communications – to private hands, fewer than ever before, promoted through the rhetoric of a State of Emergency, and imposed through violence and restriction of freedoms that have unmistakable totalitarian overtones.
The ideology behind which this program is masked has two main, interrelated points: First, Greeks - the European periphery follows close behind - are culturally, intrinsically inefficient and corrupt; and, second, what is needed here are rational, practical solutions to a technical problem. (Incidentally, this insistence on rationalism and pragmatism is what constitutes the mystification of this ideology and makes it appear non-ideological, commonsensical, even. It is anything but.)
This wider program does not concern just Greece. It concerns the whole of the Liberal-Democratic political paradigm. And the “Indignants” must finally come to realize that what they are in fact criticizing is the staple of Liberal Democracy itself – the myth of “representation”, and the way it facilitates an apparently unavoidable distribution of wealth which is plainly unfair and brutal.
But this is no “conspiracy” in the usual sense, and thus it not detective work that is required, but rather an increasingly acute political reading. We should not imagine shady players in a back room making devious decisions. We should observe processes and facts, such as the extensive privatization program publicized recently by the Greek Government, or the war over waste disposal that was raging in Keratea, near Athens, between police in the service of private business and local residents. The Syntagma protesters must realize that what they are up against is a system, fully equipped with its legitimizing ideology, not just practical decisions that can be assessed through criteria such as “efficiency” or “trustworthiness”. They must widen the discussion and attack the fundamentals, not the symptoms. And they should do so with an eye not only to Greece, but to the world. For the first time in history, tools are available in order to have a truly global movement.
I cannot – no one can – be sure whether this is the moment. But it is undoubtedly one of the moments, building up to a change. What I am definitely sure about, though, is that we should leave conjecture aside and deal with what is plain before our eyes. Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek, at least, would have advised us as much – that is if they actually did anything together, which, as we said in the beginning, we do not really know.
Augustine Zenakos is a journalist, an art critic and a curator. More of his writing can be found on his blog Trébuchet (http://thetrap.wordpress.com)