#revolutionary-struggle — Public Fediverse posts

France: Statement by Nikos Maziotis for Evening of Support for Anarchist Prisoners

From Domokos prison in Greece, anarchist prisoner Nikos Maziotis sent a message of solidarity on the occasion of the Let’s Make a Front evening organized by Secours Rouge Toulouse in support of anarchist prisoners around the world.

Dear comrades, thank you for inviting me to the event you are organizing and I send you a big hug. I also send a big hug to all detainees, revolutionaries, anarchists, anti-capitalists around the world. There is a direct link between the struggle and solidarity for the release of political prisoners and the revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the international system of state and capital.

As we used to say here in the past, whoever forgets the prisoners of social and class war also forgets the war itself. However, unfortunately, the relationship between solidarity, imprisoned activists and the fight against the state and capital is not obvious and does not apply in many cases to at least some of those who define themselves as a movement.

Regarding solidarity, speaking of the Greek space, there are all kinds of divisions regarding the position towards imprisoned activists. Divisions linked to the differentiation between legal and illegal means of struggle, armed struggle and urban guerrilla warfare, their defense or the invocation of their innocence.

We experienced this ourselves within the Revolutionary Struggle organization, of which we were members. We were confronted not only with isolation from the mass movement and the space from which we come, the anarchist and anti-authoritarian space, but also with hostility directed against us. Some sectors have even gone so far as to support the separation and the declaration of repentance made by a former member of our organization in court.

Particularly during the period 2015-2019, when we were sentenced to life imprisonment for the attack on the Bank of Greece and the offices of the International Monetary Fund, and the State had taken away custody of our son, we were judged in empty courtrooms, facing the total indifference of a large part of the anarchist and anti-authoritarian space from which we come.

Finally, the slogan present in the Greek anarchist space, according to which solidarity is our weapon, is distorted to such an extent that, in some cases, it comes to mean that solidarity is our stratagem. I believe that such phenomena of lack of solidarity with revolutionary prisoners were also observed in the case of imprisoned members of the urban guerrillas of Western Europe in earlier eras.

Generally speaking, this unfavorable condition, combined with the intensification of state totalitarianism and the legislative deterioration of penal and carceral repression in recent years in the Greek space, consequence of the defeat of the social uprising of 2010-2012 against the programs of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission, as well as the failure of the anarchist and anti-authoritarian space to evolve towards a truly revolutionary space and movement, results in my remaining in prison, since the authorities refuse to grant me parole.

I am the only political prisoner in Greece, from the wave of arrests linked to urban guerrilla warfare since 2009, who is not serving a life sentence and who still remains in prison serving a 20-year sentence. And the reason why they have refused to release me for four years is because I do not deny or condemn the acts for which I was condemned, that is to say the Revolutionary Struggle organization.

However, comrades, in a short time, next September, I will complete my entire sentence, without parole, and I will be released.

I wish all the true revolutionaries and activists, the irreducible and coherent people throughout the world, wherever they are, strength, health and to hold on. I wish the same thing to you too, comrades, despite the difficulties and the repression, to continue and that we all continue the fight against the State and capital. For the revolution. To build a better world and a better society where solidarity will be a dominant value.

This world already exists and we carry it within us. Sending you a big hug from the prisons of Domokos in Greece. The struggle continues.

Nikos Maziotis, May 2026

Source: https://secoursrouge.org/toulouse-declaration-de-nikos-maziotis-a-loccasion-dune-soiree-de-soutien-aux-prisonnier%c2%b7es-anarchistes/

Greece: Eternal Honour to the Anarchist—Member of the Revolutionary Struggle, Lambros Fountas

HONOR FOREVER TO THE ANARCHIST –
MEMBER OF THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE, LAMBROS FOUNTAS

On March 10, 2010, in Dafni, preparations for a major operation by Revolutionary Struggle aimed at sabotaging the enforcement of the “memorandum” were in their final stages. The attempt to seize a vehicle that the organisation would use for this action resulted in a clash with the cops. Comrade Lambros Fountas, our beloved comrade-in-arms in the struggle, was killed. Nothing would ever be the same again.

The Revolutionary Struggle—the struggle to block the “memorandum,” the struggle to overthrow the ruling regime and bring about social revolution—suffered a severe blow. The organisation had publicly stated that it anticipated the Greek state’s bankruptcy as a consequence of the 2008 global economic crisis and had demonstrated the scale of its actions, primarily through the bombing of the stock exchange in September 2009. It had spoken of its goals and the opportunities that the economic crisis and the widespread delegitimisation of the political and economic system during that period would open up. It had publicly declared that the only way out of the crisis would be a Social Revolution.

A month later, the first crackdown against the organisation took place, along with the arrests.

The death of our comrade was a very significant event. It was significant not only for us, his comrades in Revolutionary Struggle, and not only for the anarchist movement in which he had been actively involved for many years and was particularly beloved by all his comrades. It was not only significant for Revolutionary Struggle, whose activities had been frozen for two years.

Above all, it was significant for the overwhelming majority of society, which was mercilessly battered by the devastating storm of loan agreements. Lambros was an integral part of a strategy of armed action that unfolded with the onset of the economic crisis and sought, through strikes of great political and economic significance, to prevent the political and economic system—which at that time was in a state of great instability and deep crisis—from regaining its stability.

For the loan agreements to be approved, social and political stability was a prerequisite. Armed action aimed at preventing the achievement of this goal, carried out through dynamic and effective measures, would have turned the Greek capitalist system into a dangerous arena because it would be vulnerable to armed attacks; this action would act as a brake on creditors’ decisions to transfer their capital to the country and lend to governments that would be unable to impose social and political control. Because the most decisive factor for the state and capital to overcome their systemic crises is the maintenance of faith in the system itself.

By 2010, confidence had collapsed within the global financial system. No economic or political actor trusted any credit or investment organisation or institution. No one trusted the Greek governments or the Greek banks. Because no one trusted any bank worldwide. In short, within the economic and political system, no one trusted anyone, and faith in the system of power itself had been deeply shaken.

The collapse of this trust was, for the first time in capitalist history, of such a large scale and significance. It was a structural factor in the collapse of capitalist functioning in the country and the de facto bankruptcy of the Greek state.

The loan agreements, with the onerous terms imposed, were intended to prevent an admission of bankruptcy. These were loan agreements designed to save the banks in Greece and Europe, to save the economic ruling class, to save the system—not the social base. This was the “bitter” realisation that the overwhelming majority of society eventually came to understand.

Comrade Lambros Fountas and his actions, the actions of Revolutionary Struggle during that period, sought to ensure that faith in the capitalist system and its re-stabilisation would not find fertile ground. Alongside the social reactions and uprisings of those years, Comrade Fountas’ actions could have become a significant factor in the overall struggle to prevent the “memorandum” from being passed. Comrade Lambros Fountas was destined to become the figure who embodied all the anxiety of society during that period. Because he was the armed fighter of all those who resisted the troika and the institutions, the Greek state, and the policies of social extermination for the economic “consolidation” of the capitalist system. Because he is the first and the last casualty of the struggle against the “memorandum.” Because he was and remains the voice of the necessity—then, now, and always—of the Social Revolution.

Today, sixteen years later, we are living through the aftermath of a profound political, economic, and social transformation that began with the 2008 economic crisis and the “memorandum” era. Because what was at stake in 2010 was not just the lending terms of the “memorandaum” the cuts to wages and pensions, the layoffs, or the closures of small businesses. Through these policies, a new model of power was established, and that period marked a historic turning point for the transformation of the capitalist system and modern state power. The “experiment” implemented in our country by lenders and supranational economic and political institutions did not concern only us; it concerned and continues to concern all countries.

It was an “experiment” that was imposed and cemented in the blood of an entire people, with thousands of suicides, with untreated illnesses, with children fainting in schools from hunger, with the conditions of a modern occupation and violence that became the norm for the years that followed, right up to the present day. It was an unprecedented class war. With this “experiment,” the centers of power in Europe and the world were asking “if a people like this, with its history of struggle and resistance, could endure the harsh measures we impose without revolting, then the most totalitarian control and the imposition of the most extreme measures of economic exploitation on any other people is possible.”

The fear of a social revolution in Greece in 2010 tormented all those in positions of political and economic power in Europe and beyond. They had explicitly stated, publicly and without mincing words, that a revolution in this country was a possible outcome. They themselves believed that there were subjective factors that could give impetus to such a development. Among the factors contributing to this fear, they considered the armed activities of Revolutionary Struggle, which were reaching their peak at that time, to be significant. Their fear was not limited to domestic destabilisation. A revolution, if it had taken place, would have swept up the countries of southern Europe and triggered a domino effect of capitalist collapses and social uprisings. Lambros Fountas’ actions sought to make this fear a reality.

In the end, the social backlash was not strong enough to prevent the imposition of the “memorandum,” a prevention that could not have been achieved without overthrowing the country’s political and economic power structure. This is the ultimate historical conclusion of that period.

Nothing has improved in the living conditions of the social majority, which is experiencing its own long-term and never-ending economic crisis that is reaching the brink of social collapse. On the contrary, the “resilience” shown by the social base in the face of the rapid rise in poverty during that period paved the way for the consolidation of the contemporary model of exploitation and oppression by the state and capital. The transformation that began then and was consolidated through ineffective social resistance gave rise to the cannibalistic system in a social context dominated by the illusion of the possibility of “individual detachment.” In other words, a context dominated by social defeatism, introversion, and resignation.

While official economic data paint a picture of economic prosperity for the wealthy in this country, the majority of people are sinking deeper and deeper into endless poverty. Greek debt is far higher than it was in 2010, yet faith in the Greek state’s resilience makes the country a model of subjugation for the extraction of profits and the security of capital investments. The loan agreements from the “memorandum” era will remain in force, along with their terms, for many more decades, and new debt will be added to the old, which future generations will be forced to shoulder.

As for the 2008 economic crisis, the greatest that modern capitalism has ever experienced, it never ended. The economic and political centers of power are still attempting to manage it with the same tools and formulas that created it. The concentration of economic, political, and social power in the hands of an ever-smaller few—which was the most decisive factor in the outbreak of the 2008 crisis— has now reached even more extreme levels, and class divisions across the globe have turned the gap between great wealth and poverty into an abyss.

The lack of a clear path out of the crisis is leading to the head-on transnational conflicts the world is currently experiencing. States, led by the United States, Israel, and Europe, are now revealing the true face of the state as an institution of centralized power and control over societies—manifested in brutal military and police violence, wars, and boundless repression. They are revealing in all its magnitude their hostile nature toward societies, the murderous nature of capitalism both within and beyond borders, and are bringing us ever closer to a catastrophic, all-out war.

The radical transformation of the system of power and the revelation of its true nature came about as a result of the dead ends created by the crisis, combined with the absence of radical social resistance and the unrestrained use of multifaceted methods to enforce social compliance with living conditions that are increasingly unbearable for the social majority. Housing, food, and health are no longer guaranteed for the largest segment of society, and even the minimal degree of their guarantee requires ever greater sacrifices. The social and political threat has ceased to exist following the suppression of the social resistance of 2010–12 and no longer concerns the centers of power. State control and violence are increasing more and more as this social threat from below fails to reemerge.

Since no revolutionary movement in 2010–2011 managed to halt or overturn the destructive policies that the state and capital had imposed on the country, a defeatist mindset—based on the assumption that nothing can be stopped or changed—has become ingrained in the social fabric. What the end of the struggles achieved back then was a profound psychological transformation of a society that accepted living without pride, without its dignity. Because these two factors were then, and will always be, decisive for a society that refuses to bow its head.

Comrade Lambros Fountas was, is, and will forever remain the example of the revolutionary who, with a weapon in hand, fought to prevent the defeat and subjugation of an entire society from becoming a reality. He will remain the light that enlivens the dignity, courage, and pride of anarchists, revolutionaries, and the oppressed. His struggle was the struggle of this society that did not want subjugation, did not want to bow its head.

Comrade Lambros Fountas embodies that unwavering dignity and fighting spirit that any struggle must possess to be victorious. That is why he is the champion of all the oppressed. He is and will forever remain the fighter who shows that the only way out of modern slavery, of daily social humiliation, the only way out of capitalist and state barbarism, wars, the threat of death—the only way out to a life of freedom, to a life of dignity—is the Social Revolution. We honor Lambros Fountas not only for who he was and what we knew of him, but also for everything he stood for. We honor him because he himself was the bearer of radical social change. He was the bearer of a society of equality and freedom

LAMBROS FOUNTAS WILL LIVE FOREVER IN THE STRUGGLE

FOR SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Pola Roupa

Nikos Maziotis, Domokos Prison

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1640103/

Greece: Eternal Honour to the Anarchist—Member of the Revolutionary Sruggle, Lambros Fountas

On the Trail of the Struggle: Lambros Fountas Present

by Marianna Manoura & Dimitra Zarafeta

On March 10, 16 years ago, Lambros Fountas, a member of the Revolutionary Struggle organization, was shot dead by the police. The murder of the anarchist comrade took place during the preparatory action of the organization in Dafni during an armed clash with the police forces.

The anarchist movement from the very first days defended and continues to defend the memory and content of the action of the armed fighter Lambros Foudas through marches, events, actions. The very organization of which he was a member carried out a blow to the Bank of Greece in 2014, dedicating it to his fallen comrade, taking responsibility under the signature “Commando Lambros Foundas”, thus paying tribute to the revolutionary.

Lambros Fountas, as a member of the armed revolutionary organization Revolutionary Struggle, chose to act through the armed proletarian counterattack at a time when the social base was affected by austerity measures. Measures imposed by the local and international elite in order to avoid the bankruptcy of the European banking system. And while politicians and channel managers present the memorandums and contracts as “means of salvation”, we experienced them as salary and pension cuts, as an impoverished today and as an uncertain tomorrow.

The Revolutionary Struggle organization fought against this condition, targeting the economically powerful, vigorously fighting the measures of the memorandums. He chose to create conditions of political instability, making it difficult to bleed the social base, leaving behind a great legacy in the international and domestic revolutionary movement. With actions against predatory “organizations” – Bank of Greece, City Bank, etc. -, the stock market, the uniformed killers of the MAT, he defended the armed social revolution, writing new chapters in the book of revolutionary history.

And maybe comrade Lambro Fouda and I have never met, never met, never fought side by side. But the thread of revolutionary memory bridges exactly this: fighters, movements and struggles that, while they developed in different corners of the planet and in different spaces and times, shared a common anguish and vision for liberation. Thus, the preservation of revolutionary memory is anything but a neutral process. It is a thorn in oblivion and a crack in the history of the rulers. That is why securing it is part of our own struggle, part of the present and the future. That is why, although the past was painted with blood, our dead managed to fill the inkwell of revolutionary history. And even if we hadn’t walked next to them, we had walked alongside them. And even if we hadn’t chosen the same path, we looked at the same skies. Because we shared the same dreams and hopes, experienced the same fears and rages. Thus, their struggle, the way they acted and the way they fell is an invitational struggle, a starting point and an occasion for new cycles of resistance. And as long as we keep the revolutionary memory alive, we also keep our history alive. A story built on the smiles and companionable looks of our own people, our own friends and our own partners. As did our comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris, who fell fighting almost a year and a half ago on 31.10.24, from the explosion in Ampelokipi. A comrade who envisioned a world of equality and freedom. A just world, built on the ruins of the old.

So for Lambros Fountas, Kyriakos Ximitiris and all the other fighters who saw themselves as part of the revolutionary history and poured themselves into the battle, it is our turn to make their death a cause of war. To stand worthy of our history and responsibilities and to perceive their death as a motivation to continue the struggle.

LAMBROS FOUNTAS IMMORTAL

KYRIAKOS XYMITIRIS PRESENT

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS

END THE FINANCIAL HOSTAGE OF COMRADE POLA ROUPA IMMEDIATELY

Marianna Manoura

Dimitra Zarafeta

Korydallos Women’s Prisons.

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1640123/

Honor and Memory of the Anarchist Guerrilla Lambros Fountas, Member of the Revolutionary Struggle

16 years after the murder of comrade Lambros Fountas in an armed clash in Daphne, on March 10, 2010, during a preparatory action by the organization against the enforcement of loan agreements.

The political significance of the state assassination of Lambros Fountas within the historical context of 2010 and the strategy of the Revolutionary Struggle organization.

Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis will speak.

COMRADE LAMBROS FOUNTAS WILL ALWAYS LIVE IN THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION

FREEDOM TO THE ANARCHIST NIKOS MAZIOTIS

Saturday, March 14, 7pm at the Self-managed Perasma hangout (95-97 Zoodochou Pigis & Isavron, Exarchia) Athens.

by Solidarity Assembly for the convicted members of the Revolutionary Struggle, Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis

Contact email: [email protected]

EN/EL/ [POSTER] EVENT: Honor and Memory of the anarchist guerrilla Lambros Fountas, member of the Revolutionary Struggle – The action of the organization E.A.

Pola Roupa: The State Is Taking Revenge on Me for Political Reasons Through Economic Extermination

Another sentence within the sentence that I have already served – and with the above – for my participation in the Revolutionary Struggle organization, is the complete colonization of my life in economic terms and is imposed by the Authority for Combating the Legalization of Proceeds from Criminal Activities (from now on I will refer to it as the Authority), with measures that exceed all logic and their cost is unmanageable. I had published a text on this issue a few months ago, where I wrote how the Authority holds hostage for life the lives of all those convicted under Article 187A (“anti-terrorism”), as well as those suspected of “terrorism”, and freezes all their assets. I had written at the time that I understand their anxiety to control where an asset comes from, since they have us as easy targets to present a project (the abundant black money that is “recycled” within the state, through its contracts with businesses, within the bosom of big capital is not illegal), but it is impossible for me to accept that I must pay exorbitant amounts to the state for fines and legal costs (they have amounted to 35,000 euros and my total debts to 45,000 euros, including inheritance tax along with all surcharges), without being able to utilize the one and only inherited asset that I have to repay the debt. That is, they tell me that with a basic salary that I was receiving and an unemployment benefit that I am currently receiving, I will pay installments to the tax office that are close to 200 euros per month for twenty years, with the best possible arrangement that exists in the… universe and at the same time, my child and I will live with the 390 euros that will be left over. In my previous text, I wrote that if they do not let me utilize the inherited assets that I have, they will not take a single euro since there is nothing left over. The Authority responded to my last application in September 2025 that it approves the transfer to the tax office of the amounts of money that are in the bank accounts of my cousin – whom I have inherited – for the repayment of debts and rejected my request to utilize 1/4 of the amount that corresponds to me (1/4 of which the objective value just covers the said amount) from the inheritance. Only the amounts it releases to be transferred directly to the Tax Office do not exceed 11,000 euros. So the math doesn’t work. I have 34,000 euros left that must be repaid. Are they joking with my life? This “joke” has a purpose. It aims at absolute revenge through financial annihilation on a lifelong scale, for political reasons and with purely political motives. Because how else can the Authority and the chief prosecutor’s insistence be explained, to prohibit me from utilizing a property, at a time when any money will go to the state?

Especially, after a decision of the Authority telling me that I must proceed with the acceptance of an inheritance – which has a high financial cost – in order to be able to settle the issues, after I finally made the acceptance and proceeded with a new application to the Authority, it notified me that it prohibits the use of the assets. I mean, what did they want? To accept the inheritances without being able to use them to repay the debt. This is a brutal and direct predatory decision, but with what material return, since objectively, there is no monetary gain for the state? To have me held hostage for life with debts.

So I proceeded to appeal against the Authority’s decision regarding the prohibition to utilize 1/4 of the amount I inherited to repay the tax. The appeal was made to the Supreme Court, the only judicial body above the Authority, which has been determined for February 4.

The Authority is a public legal body established by Law 4557/2018, enjoys administrative and operational independence and was established to implement the decisions and conventions of the EU and the UN Security Council on “countering terrorism”. It is independent, but subject to parliamentary control. Therefore, its decisions and role are proportional to the respective political authority and the ruling party. In my case, it exceeds its role, which is the control of economic actions that violate the legal framework, and enters a sphere of political targeting that concerns my very ability to survive in a regime outside of prison. Its decisions conflict with articles and provisions of the Constitution and the ECHR regarding human rights, but its authority and its purpose place the issue of state security (public security according to itself) as a prominent criterion of its decisions with arguments that strongly contradict common sense, since it is about paying off debts to the tax office.

I know that all laws concerning human rights have always been, at least in part, pretentious since they were applied – whenever they were applied – with many asterisks, depending on which rights of which person they concerned each time. I know that the existence of an international law that had been institutionalized to delimit the limits of the power of states over people after the Second World War was always applied on a case-by-case basis, depending on the interpretation that each state body gave and depending on which social groups it concerned. The rights of the powerful have always prevailed over those who had no power and therefore, their rights could be violated depending on state priorities.

I know that in the era of neoliberal globalization, especially with the withdrawal of the so-called “welfare state” from history, all these supranational legal frameworks were violated incessantly according to the policies of big capital and states. I also know that today, more than any other era after the Second World War, where the model of the extreme nationalist-war state is becoming more and more visibly dominant, with power becoming the supreme factor in regime politics, as it is expressed both within and outside the borders, any institutionalizations regarding human rights have become tattered papers without any value. Especially in Greece, with the imposition of the “memoranda”, the Constitution has been dismantled, so any reference to it is without substance. The international law established by states has been blatantly violated in recent years with genocides, wars, ethnic cleansing, the extermination of the weak with military or economic weapons, with violence without limits on all social resistances.

I know that this era when someone could invoke international law and the Constitution has passed irrevocably, while within countries, human rights issues are treated as obstacles to the unhindered exercise of full state power. Besides, I have never had any illusions about the gravity and power of any legal framework that focused on the issue of human rights, but in our time it does not exist in practice, not even as a pretextual narrative for the maintenance of social cohesion around the necessity of the existence of state power.

If I mention the legal framework that prevails over the Authority and which it violates for me as well as for many who have been convicted under Article 187A and have served their sentence, it is because it reveals that it is more of a political than a legal institution, with the authority to take revenge in economic terms on political opponents of the political and economic system, through the imposition of a sentence above and beyond the sentence they have served (since they remain for life as potential “terrorists”) and secondly, because – as my case shows – the Authority is allowed to stand above and beyond any legal framework it wants, even common sense. Because what the Authority is telling me is that I have no right to something that is legally mine, that it is binding it to me forever, that I must have a debt that will constantly increase without any possibility of being paid off and that the door to prison will always remain ajar for me, as this debt will become even more difficult to bear.

The lifelong freezing of an asset is within its jurisdiction, since it can justify based on a court conviction that I was a member of a “terrorist” organization. Yes, I was arrested in 2010 for participating in the Revolutionary Struggle organization and from the very beginning I assumed political responsibility for my participation in it. I was arrested again in 2017. I have been convicted of all the political actions of the organization and have served the prison sentence imposed on me. Based on these facts, I have been included in the Authority’s list since 2011 and they are freezing all the assets that have passed to me forever. I have no ambition that they can ever remove me from this list, which makes me a hostage for life.

What is provided for by the legislation regarding the Authority, however, is that it can decide to release assets to cover general living expenses, for their maintenance or operation or preservation. Does this provision not include the issue of my livelihood, when the state obliges me to repay a debt of 45,000 euros? Does it prohibit the use of an asset, the value of which barely reaches the debt in question?

With this decision, it includes the transfer of money to the tax office in the “prevention of terrorist acts”. That is what common sense says. Because I have not asked them for anything more.

The deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court insists on the same decision. He proposes the rejection of my appeal because, as he says, the Authority rightly decided to maintain the seizure, since “there are serious reasons that make it necessary not to release the assets, even if they are legal, and they constitute… measures that are independent of money laundering, and were taken… exclusively for the prevention and suppression of relevant acts”. That is, the transfer of amounts from any exploitation of an asset to the tax office constitutes a “measure to prevent and suppress relevant acts”!

With the appeal that I have made to the Supreme Court, I am called upon to prove that the repayment of debts to the tax office does not constitute an action suspicious of acts related to “terrorism”? Because this follows from the prosecutor’s proposal. Behind the irrationality that characterizes the prosecutor’s proposal to the upcoming Council of the Supreme Court where my appeal against the Authority’s decision will be examined, it will be judged, through the justification of the decision, whether they intend to complete a plan of lifelong hostage, colonization of my life through debt, an organized economic extermination with the ultimate direction of prison, the door of which will open for me, depending on the political goals of the government at that time, which the legislative power will institutionalize and the judicial power will execute, regarding the penalties that the courts must impose in cases of large debts to the public in general for the whole of society and in particular for those who have dynamically opposed the political-economic system of power and are included for their entire lives on the state’s blacklists.

P.S.: Regarding the four court cases that were held in 2025 for the return of a confiscated external hard drive with files -photos and videos- of my child (I had published a relevant text last December), which had been confiscated during my arrest in 2017 and I had been trying to get it back since 2019, they ended with the last court decision in December, with which it was finally returned to me.

2/2/2025

Pola Roupa

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1639525/

For Comrade Christos Spilios – Nikos Maziotis-Pola Roupa

Comrade Christos left. He left us prematurely. He has accompanied us to the A/A for many years in demonstrations, assemblies, conflicts, occupations. In 1991, at the Polytechnic of 1995, in the course and conflicts against the Clinton visit in 1999, at the 2003 anti -war demonstrations, in Thessaloniki at the EU leaders’ meeting in the conflicts against the memorandums.

He was always present in the struggles. He has always been present in rallies and solidarity marches for imprisoned comrades. As well as the latest at the Solidarity Assembly for us, at the rallies in the courts in Chalkida, Lamia and in Domokos prisons.

He was the comrade of the uprising. He was the comrade of solidarity. He was the comrade of offering and selflessness. He was, is and will be our comrade in the struggle. He was, is and will be our favorite comrade Christos.

Goodbye comrade, we don’t forget you.

Pola Roupa-Nikos Maziotis, Prisoner for the Action of the Revolutionary Struggle, Domokos Prisons.

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1637921/

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=21823

#anarchist #ChristosSpilios #europe #greece #nikosMaziotis #polaRoupa #revolutionaryStruggle #rip

For Comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris – Revolutionary Struggle

A year ago, comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris lost his life while building an explosive device. He had decided to respond in this dynamic way to some great injustice, to defend a right, to a class and anti-social state policy… Whatever he had decided to do, whatever action he had chosen, it was certainly an armed political action against a savage and deeply unjust system of power that in our time shows more and more bluntly its antisocial and racist face. A deeply class-based system of power that now openly shows its hatred towards anything that does not bring profit and power.

Comrade Kyriakos lost his life walking on the path of armed anti-regime action. In the great world history of the armed struggle, many fighters have given their lives in the struggle against authoritarian governments, against authoritarian regimes, against anti-social policies, against interstate wars. They gave their lives in the struggle for a better society. They gave their lives fighting with a gun in their hands.

They gave their lives by placing or manufacturing explosive devices. They gave their lives for a society without divisions, without poverty, without wars, for social liberation.

In this struggle, no one is lost. Death does not erase their social and political imprints that remain deeply engraved in revolutionary history.

Today and every day that passes, we see the entanglements of the state and capital crushing millions of people. The system of power has brought to the surface every weapon at its disposal and uses it to stifle resistance, to consolidate consensus through coercion and violence, to maintain passivity in the social base, to impose any anti-social measure it wants, to increase the profits of big capital by stealing from the majority. Capital and modern states bring to the surface their most brutal, ruthless face in history. Either they will expand and strengthen their sovereignty over other states or they will let the privileges of their sovereignty shrink and wither. In a deep systemic crisis that has a past and a future and in which states and capital are sinking deeper and deeper, we experience every day generalized -indirect or direct- social cleansings, wars, genocides of entire peoples, raw racism, the extermination of the pariah, extreme economic exploitation. All of this is connected in a network of managing a crisis of survival of the system and maintaining profits for the super-rich of the planet. Along with every form of violence unleashed by the dominant system of power against the weak, the poison of hatred for the different and for the weak that infects the youth is also unleashed. Resistance and anti-state struggle are becoming increasingly demanding and at the same time increasingly necessary.

Fighters like Kyriakos who do not bend, who do not give up, who are not afraid to confront the choice of armed action in an era when excessive regime violence surpasses any modern historical precedent, the least that is due
to them is to become points of reference for the continuation of the struggle and the inspiration of all.

Comrade Kyriakos will forever remain a living example of total dedication and selflessness in a common struggle that concerns all of society.

Comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris will always be present in the struggle for social liberation from the shackles of the state and capital.

He is Immortal

Pola Roupa-Nikos Maziotis

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1637822/

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=21687

#anarchist #europe #greece #KyriakosXymitiris #nikosMaziotis #polaRoupa #revolutionaryStruggle

Pola Roupa: The Hostage-Taking Does Not End, It Just Changes Its Face

Conditional release imposes the well-known restrictions: Presence at the police station and a ban on leaving the country until the end of the sentence. This is a normal procedure. However, what the state reserves for the cases of prisoners convicted under 187A, the well-known “anti-terrorism” law, is the subjection of everyone to the control and restrictions of an authority that was also established in Greece following a European directive.

This is the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, Section B (from now on in the text I will refer to it as an Authority) which is headed by prosecutors. Based on Article 50 of Law 4557/2018, everyone who has been convicted of dynamic-armed forms of resistance, that is, for “terrorism” according to state phraseology and legislation, has no right over any asset in their possession, whether it concerns bank accounts or real estate or anything else, since everything is frozen by the Authority.

In order for someone to open a bank account (at a time when every economic activity is now required to pass through the control of banks), e.g. for payroll or for an allowance, one must apply to the Authority, which will approve the use of a single account for this reason alone. However, as far as other assets are concerned, it is obliged to apply to the Authority for the partial release of some assets and the Authority will only accept it if it considers that this is absolutely necessary. And as is always the case, the Authority gives negative answers. That is, someone with a house that he has inherited from his parents, cannot transfer it to his child, rent it or sell it since the Authority prohibits it, even if he has a significant problem of survival.

So while one would expect this Authority to deal with what its name declares, that is, to control the origin of the assets and income of a person convicted under 187A, its work extends to any property of legal origin that binds it and prohibits any use of it forever.

My case is one of those cases that face this problem and will face it for the rest of their lives. In the case of those convicted under 187 (“criminal organization”) there is a possibility to get out of this situation, in the case of those convicted under 187A, no. This is a serious element that confirms once again that for the state in the hierarchy of violators of the state legal framework, the first place is held by those who chose the path of armed revolutionary action. Even in the face of heinous and deeply antisocial crimes, armed political resistance to the regime is met with the utmost vindictiveness.

I was informed of the new hostage condition imposed by the Authority, when I attempted, shortly after my release from prison in November 2023, to get the allowance for released prisoners. Upon application to the Authority, I was able to obtain it, as well as I was able to use a bank account for payroll and for the unemployment benefit I am currently receiving. At the same time, I applied to be able to use for livelihood an asset that came into my possession after the death of a relative, since with a basic salary or with an unemployment benefit it is impossible to support ourselves, as one member of the family, my son, is a minor and another member is in prison, my comrade Nikos Maziotis who the state is denying the release to which he is entitled, as he has rejected seven applications for release and is about to finally serve his entire sentence (a unique case for political prisoners and for prisoners in general).

But it is not only the problem of livelihood, as after my release from prison the debts that the state demands me to pay were presented and concern trials that have been made for the Revolutionary Struggle and financial penalties that have been imposed on us. The amounts are dizzying. In total, at the moment, the debt from the courts exceeds 27,000 euros. Initially, the fines they imposed were 11,000 euros. With an increase of 110% imposed with the declaration of the amount, it reached 23,100 euros, which after eight months exceeded the amount of 25,000 euros. Court costs and fines reach 2000 euros. Because the Authority prohibited me from using any assets due to a freeze, I found myself unable to pay the inheritance tax, which is now at 9,000 euros. That is, the total debt – and since the authority forbids me to use any inherited asset – exceeds 36,000 euros and is increasing at an inconceivable rate.

As provided, after an amount or more, criminal prosecution is brought for debts to the state where the penalty is not avoided and imprisonment is not excluded. That is, I will again face the prospect of going to prison again, this time for debts to the state, because the Authority has paved the way to this end.

Debts and the Authority have now built a financial noose. This is a new hostage condition that is consciously imposed by the state to create a state of suffocation around every aspect of my life and, above all, my son’s life, since he is the direct recipient of this whole condition. Prospectively, and since there is a complete inability to repay even a part of these debts, the threat of a possible new imprisonment is visible in the next few years. If this is not a plan of political revenge, then what is?

It’s not enough that I stayed in state prisons for eight years and six months, it’s not enough that the courts have imposed these fines and debts on me, the Authority comes and prohibits any use of assets while knowing everything about my financial situation. It prohibits the use of these assets for livelihood purposes, knowing that this decision of hers is, in principle, against the interests of a minor teenager. Knowing how the “best interests of the child” are prioritized above the restrictions imposed by the state legal framework. Because, in this case, it depends on whose child it is, as we saw in the past with my arrest in 2017 and the exceptional-criminal treatment reserved for him by the state (detention in GADA, interrogation by DAEEB, confinement in a closed psychiatric ward for days under police guard, with the explicit prosecutor’s order to do all this under extreme secrecy, a ban on contacting relatives and his release after a hunger and thirst strike with my partner Nikos Maziotis).

Obviously, Revolutionary Struggle with its political activity and my political stance for so many years in the courts and prisons is estimated by some state employees to have to suffer a new type of life sentence, with the Authority becoming the new body of judicial political revenge. I made a new application to the Authority these days asking to be allowed to use the inherited assets to repay part of the debts that burden me, since only through this way can I reduce the exorbitant debt. In case of refusal, they are not going to get a single euro, since not a single euro is left over.

Instead of being able to use these assets for the care of my son, for his life, for his education, his survival, his health, I now ask to use them to reduce a debt, which is in itself a highly vindictive condition.

When the entire social base is crushed under the economic violence of the state and capital, when conquests of many decades are thrown into the baskets of historical waste, such as the eight-hour day, won through bloody struggles, when wages and pensions are not enough to cover basic survival needs, when housing becomes a luxury item so as not to harm the interests of a few who speculate in various ways with it, When quality and adequate food becomes a condition for a few, access to health and effective care becomes a privilege for the rich, when the majority is exterminated every day and slowly disappears, then we are talking about a universal hostage condition. But the dynamic political opponents of the regime in power, in addition to the long prison sentences imposed on them, from the moment they pass… outside the prison gate, have been sentenced for life to live in an even more suffocating, within the universal and for the entire social base, hostage. In a hostage within the hostage. The hostage of a well-planned and without any way out of economic, and therefore social suffocation that comes from the absolute and indisputable power of the Authority. This plan of vengeful extermination must be stopped.

Pola Roupa

14/9/2025

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1637572/

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=21442

#anarchist #europe #greece #polaRoupa #revolutionaryStruggle

Solidarity Concert for Nikos Maziotis of Revolutionary Struggle (Lyon, France)

Solidarity concert for the comrade of Revolutionary Struggle, Nikos Maziotis

Solidarity concert for the comrade of Revolutionary Struggle, Nikos Maziotis, following the rejection of his request for release and the extension of his captivity. For the sixth time, the judicial council refuses to grant him a suspended sentence, even though he has exceeded the 3/5 of his sentence since 2022, as defined by the “laws” for all prisoners. In Greece, he is the only political prisoner with a 20-year merged sentence—i.e., not a life sentence—who experiences this punitive condition, simply because he has not shown “remorse” or “moral improvement.” But revolutionaries are not “reformed” and do not “morally improve.” We stand in solidarity with the imprisoned comrade of Revolutionary Struggle, Nikos Maziotis.

During the gathering, comrade Pola Roupa will intervene via phone.

source: Act for Freedom

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=19966

#anarchism #europe #France #greece #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle

Intervention of N.Maziotis and P. Roupa at the Two Days of Discussion Against Prison

Comrades, greetings to all of you, I send you a big hug from Domokos prison in Greece. Thank you for inviting me to your event.

Regarding your first question related to the current legal situation in which I am in for my release, the prospect is that I will be released towards the end of 2026 with the expiry of my entire sentence. What does this mean? So far I have made 7 applications for conditional release with the remainder of my sentence suspended. According to the old penal code in Greece, an old prisoner like me can be released on parole after serving 3/5 of his sentence. And when I say 3/5 of the sentence I mean including work in prison. For the remaining 2/5 of the sentence, the former prisoner is present at the police station of the area where he lives and is banned from leaving the country.

In my case, where I have been sentenced to 20 years, 3/5 is the 12 years with work. I completed the 3/5 in January 2022 having done 9 years in prison plus 3 years of work. Since then, as I said, I have made 7 applications for parole and probation for the remainder of the sentence but they have all been rejected. As I have made public in a text that you may have read (it was also translated into English), Until the end of the sentence – How did we get here (https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1634609/), the reason is because I remain consistent with the choices of struggle I made, namely the choice of guerrilla, of the organization I belonged to, the Revolutionary Struggle, and I refuse to make any statement of disavowal, repentance and disapproval of my action.

Also, in the rejection decisions in the judicial councils, apart from the fact that I still consider the choice of the struggle, of guerrilla warfare, they also mention various “disciplinary offences” that I committed mainly in 2017, which normally should not be counted as a criterion in the decisions for release from prison, since some time has passed since they were committed. Such ”disciplinary offences” were the destruction of monitors in the prison control and monitoring system, insulting the prosecutor and the prison director, destroying the isolation wing in which I was for a time in Korydallos prison and disobeying the orders of the prison guards.

So far I have served 12.5 years in prison plus 4.5 years of work, a total of 17 years. When I say work I mean that I am a cleaner in the ward where I am, where e.g. one day of work counts for 2 in serving the sentence.

So based on the fact that I have 3 years left to complete all 20 years with work, I have almost 1.5 years left in prison. That means I will have done almost 14 years in prison plus 6 years of work. The good thing is that when I get out of prison I won’t be present at the police station.

That’s all about the legal situation that I’m in and about when I’m going to be released.

In general, it’s a very bad development because until now it was not usual for them to do such a thing. However, in Greece in recent years there has been an increasing tightening of the legal framework of repression and the penal code and the “penitentiary” code in order to increase the sentences and the length of the prisoners’ stay in prison. And this is something that first and foremost applies to political prisoners like me who will probably be the first person with a 20-year sentence to serve the entire sentence without parole.

Regarding the questions on solidarity and the escape attempted by comrade Roupa in 2016, I will say a few things that I think will clarify what you are asking.

The attempted escape by helicopter attempted by Comrade Roupa in 2016 was clearly intended, if successful, to continue the action of the Revolutionary Struggle in a context in which the memoranda, the austerity programmes imposed on Greece by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund had been consolidated since 2010. The Revolutionary Struggle had already started a campaign of attacks against the policy of dealing with the economic crisis by the Greek governments, since 2009 after the December 2008 uprising, with bomb attacks against banks (Citibank, Eurobank), against the Athens Stock Exchange and also with the armed attacks against riot police officers after the ’08 uprising. So even when we were still in the illegal path in 2012, after our first arrests in 2010 – having been initially remanded in custody for 18 months and released because the trial had not taken place – we continued the action by carrying out the car bomb attack with 75 kg of explosives on 10 April 2014 at the building of the Supervision Directorate of the Bank of Greece where the office of the IMF’s permanent representative in Greece was located. This attack was dedicated to our comrade Lambros Fountas who was killed in a fight with police officers on March 10, 2010 in a preparatory action – car expropriation – that the organization was going to use in a bombing attack against the enforcement of the First Memorandum of 2010.

But after the defeat of the social and popular revolt against the imposition of the memoranda in 2010-12, conditions had changed dramatically for the worse. This defeat, as I have also formulated in my last text Until the end of the sentence – How did we get here (https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1634609/),is due to the absence of a revolutionary anti-state and anti-capitalist movement in 2010-12 -when the Greek people were besieging to occupy the parliament- with the aim of attempting a revolution in Greece at that time. This was something that the R.S. had proposed to the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement and the wider anti-capitalist movement as early as 2009 when the international economic crisis was starting to affect Greece when we were doing the campaign of attacks I mentioned before. The Revolutionary Struggle as it was stated then, only the Social Revolution would be the solution to overcome the economic crisis. But this did not happen. The defeat of the social revolt against the memoranda in 2012 but at the same time the political defeat of the ‘movement’ and the spaces of resistance had very serious consequences. This defeat has resulted in the state totalitarianism that we are living today, the permanent impoverishment and austerity, the state crimes such as the deadly fires in Mati in 2018 and the train collision in Tempe in 2023 due to the deliberate degradation of social infrastructure, and the simultaneous intensification of repression even at the legislative level such as the hardening of the legal framework in the criminal and ”penal” code that I mentioned before. There has been a general retreat of social struggles and resistances since then and the state passes whatever measures it wants with relative ease and almost without resistance regardless of the government, whether left or right. Another consequence of the 2012 defeat is that parts of the Greek anarchist/anti-authoritarian space supported the left-wing Syriza party after 2012 under the illusion that if it becomes government it will resist the lenders – the EU, ECB and IMF troika -, that the country will get out of EMU and that there can be alternative governance and opportunities for struggle!

It is well known that many anarchists voted for SYRIZA in the 2012 and 2015 elections. On the contrary, in 2014, when Revolutionary Struggle bombed the Bank of Greece’s Supervision Directorate and the office of the International Monetary Fund, it had predicted in its proclamation, in which it took responsibility, that SYRIZA, when it became a government, would also submit to the lenders’ troika, despite its promises to abolish the memoranda, which was confirmed.

In these conditions of general social defeat but also of political failure, retreat and opportunism of the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space and the “movement” after 2012, the Revolutionary Struggle encountered great difficulties in escalating its action from 2012 onwards. We found ourselves isolated and with a serious lack of solidarity and support. And this was exactly the cause of our arrests, mine in 2014 and that of comrade Roupa in 2017, and it was the cause of course of the termination of the Revolutionary Struggle’s action. We had no support to stand in the illegality even to survive. Because otherwise, how else can it be explained that Comrade Roupa alone attempted to hijack the helicopter so that I and others could escape from prison?

More generally, the lack of solidarity was one thing we encountered from our first arrests in 2010. And this is due to the bad tradition that exists in the Greek ‘movement’, in that it has difficulty in defending politically the militants who take political responsibility for their participation in the guerrilla organisations they are members of, while it is easier to defend some when they are arrested for such cases and declare that they have been the victim of a state frame-up or that they are being persecuted for their associational and political relations. This is a bad tradition in Greece compared to Western Europe and the Western European guerrilla movement of the 1970s and 80s where the assumption of political responsibility by members of guerrilla organisations was self-evident. We were the first in Greece at the organisational level, not individually as individuals, to take political responsibility for our participation in the Revolutionary Struggle in 2010. And this determined to a large extent, unfortunately, what solidarity we had from the space we came from. And when we went underground in 2012 to continue the action, in the conditions of the general social defeat, the retreat of resistance spaces and the opportunism shown by parts of the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space that saw the Syriza government positively, the solidarity deficit was even greater. And this deficit of solidarity combined with the state and regime totalitarianism that began to prevail after 2012 and with the intensification of criminal and ”correctional” repression in recent years, contributed to a certain extent to the brutal treatment we received from the state after our arrests in 2014 and 2017, which was also expressed in terms of sentences and the fact that after the arrest of comrade Roupa in 2017, they took away parental care of our son who was born in prison in 2010 and attempted to keep him in an institution.

More generally, parts of the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space have shown a belligerent attitude towards us, going so far as to support politically a repentant former member of our organisation who in 2017 had publicly stated in court that ”I have never declared that I am a revolutionary” and that ”the Revolutionary Struggle was defeated in 2010”, taking a clear separation from us, from me and Comrade Roupa who went underground and continued the action of the Revolutionary Struggle with the attack on the CBE and the IMF office and the attempted escape by Comrade Roupa. For these parts the Revolutionary Struggle was ”good” until 2010 but should not exist afterwards! In fact, the political support for the penitent went so far as to have 3 people from the area go to the court as witnesses for the defence of the penitent after he had made these statements in support of his separation from us and the separation in the history of the organisation, which is if anything a world first in the history of movements and guerrilla movements.

For all these reasons I mentioned above, the social defeat after 2012 and the retreat and opportunism of the “movement” and the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space, the attempted escape with the hijacking of the helicopter by Comrade Roupa, although it was an unprecedented action, did not have the results it should have had. The fact that the attempt was intended for others to join us made it an unprecedented act of solidarity which Comrade Roupa carried out at the risk of her life. But this was not appreciated either by the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space or even by those who were going to leave with us who were separated from us in the court that was held for this case. This is due to the erosion of consciences in the space, the extent of the defeat in the struggle and the alienation of the concept of solidarity as solidarity has become a matter of individual and self-interest.

But to be fair, I have to tell you that there are parts of the anarchist space and movement that are in solidarity with us, that support us in any way they can, as well as from abroad. But this does not negate the grim situation I have described to you. And this situation is the reason why I will be the only prisoner so far with a temporary sentence, not a life sentence, who will be released not on parole but on completion of the whole sentence.

Another thing I should point out is that at the moment in Greek prisons there is nothing like the 41 bis that exists in Italy and a general isolation regime. In 2014 a special regime was created, the type C prisons, namely in Domokos prison and I was the first prisoner to be transferred there. This regime was quickly abolished in the spring of 2015 after a hunger strike by political-anarchist prisoners. However, the current government from 2022 has legislated a special detention regime, the so-called ‘maximum security’ prisons, which however have not yet been opened and it is planned to detain those accused or convicted under the ‘anti-terrorism’ law, i.e. political prisoners, for ‘organised’ crime or prisoners who have committed disciplinary offences within the prison.

I should also point out that apart from the retreat of struggles and resistance in society, in the last 5 years, although the state has repeatedly revised the penal and “penitentiary” code for the worse, with the aim, as I said before, of increasing sentences and keeping most of the prisoners in prison by raising the parole limits, there are no struggles of prisoners in prison. All of the relevant bills have passed without any opposition. The only notable ones have been in 2020, a stand by women prisoners in Korydallos prison who kept their cells open at midday closing time which was organised by comrade Roupa – and related to covid measures – and for which the comrade was transferred the next day to Thebes prison. And a revolt also by women prisoners in Thebes prison at the same time when a prisoner died from inadequate medical care because she had to go to hospital and they didn’t take her. And more recently there were some mobilisations in the women’s prison in Korydallos. Also, while several bills were passed to revise the penal and ”correctional” code, there were some very late attempts of mobilizations in 2023-’24 in the men’s prisons without any success.

Unfortunately, comrades, we live in an ever-increasing state and regime totalitarianism with the state advancing and the resistance spaces and the “movement” constantly retreating. Nevertheless, we must not lose heart and continue the struggle.

Despite the cost I am paying, I am more convinced than ever of the rightness and justice of my choices and the rightness of the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, of the correctness of its proposals, of what it said. Because our analyses and predictions have been vindicated in time and because his proposals for another society, free of the staterand the capital and without classes remain relevant.

I wish all the comrades, the fighters strength and health. I send a big hug to all the comrades all over the world who are in prison and I wish that they remain standing despite the difficulties of incarceration.

STRUGGLE AGAINST THE STATE AND THE CAPITAL

SOLIDARITY TO ALL DETAINED REVOLUTIONARIES

LONG LIVE THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Nikos Maziotis,

convicted for the action of the Revolutionary Struggle,

4th ward of Domokos prison

Εδώ το μέρος της εκδήλωσης που αφορά τον Ε.Α.: https://we.tl/t-KxTe2iwR8M

  via: Νίκος Μαζιώτης-Πόλα Ρούπα

source: Act For Freedom

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=19704

#anarchism #europe #greece #revolutionaryStruggle

Nikos Maziotis: Until the End of the Sentence – Why We Came Here

Some time ago (26/2/2025), as I had published the text «Revolutionaries are not “corrected” nor “morally improved”»*, the Lamia Misdemeanor Council had rejected my request for conditional release for the umpteenth time. As I had also said, the fact that I will now serve my entire sentence, all 5/5, is the result of the general tightening, the last time, of penal and “penitentiary” repression, which in turn is a consequence of a long chain of socio-political evolution starting from the defeat of the social and popular uprising against the memoranda in 2010-2012. The retreat of social struggles and results in the state totalitarianism we live in today. However, I believe that part of this development towards the worst is the political defeat of the “movements” and resistance spaces that refused during the period of the anti-memorandum uprising in 2010-2012 to have a catalytic role and raise the issue of a subversive and revolutionary attempt at the time.

I will have to go back in history to understand what I mean. This retrospective has to do with the history of the Revolutionary Struggle, the context in which it acted, its proposals and the criminal treatment it has had throughout this period until today.

From 2003 to 2017, Revolutionary Struggle —the organization I was part of— was the greatest internal security threat to the regime in Greece, to the State, and to Capital. The history of the organization is placed within a specific historical context of socio-political conditions that were characterized, on the one hand, by the period of the rise of globalization, the dominance of neoliberalism and, at the same time, the existence of the war on “terrorism”, within a period where there was euphoria about the omnipotence of the system, and, on the other hand, by the period of the onset of the global economic crisis from 2008 onwards, which dramatically affected Greece. Within this historical context, the Revolutionary Struggle, after the uprising of December 2008, raised the issue of a revolutionary attempt in Greece in the favorable conditions for it, which were characterized by the debt crisis, bankruptcy, the political crisis of the representative system and the general delegitimization of the political-economic system in the eyes of the social majority due to the policies to address the crisis and the memorandum programs, the imposition of which the Revolutionary Struggle had predicted in 2009 when it had carried out the attack on the Athens Stock Exchange in September 2009. Revolutionary Struggle had already spoken about the risk of national bankruptcy in the event of a global financial crisis when it carried out an attack on the Ministry of Labor in 2005. With the perspective that the crisis presented a unique opportunity, the organization, through its campaign of attacks in 2009 —including armed attacks on riot police (MAT) after the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos, as well as bombings against Citibank, Eurobank, and the Athens Stock Exchange— proposed to the movement and resistance groups the creation of a revolutionary movement with armed struggle as one of its goals. The aim was to seize the opportunity at the right moment to overthrow the government and the state-capitalist system.

That opportune moment could have been the repeated sieges of Parliament by thousands of people during 2010-2012, where such a mass revolutionary movement could have hypothetically assisted in occupying Parliament and subsequently taking over all centers of political and economic power (ministries, banks, the Bank of Greece, etc.), leading to the collapse of the then-government of George Papandreou, the annulment of Greece’s submission to the IMF, ECB, and EU programs, and paving the way for a revolutionary attempt in Greece for the benefit of the people.

A revolutionary attempt, as Revolutionary Struggle advocated, would have led to the expropriation of capitalist and state property and means of production by the people and the working class, their socialization, and their management by the people themselves —through communities, popular assemblies, and workers’ councils, following the examples of past revolutions, such as the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian Revolution of 1917-1921, and the Spanish Revolution of 1936-1939.

In 2009, Revolutionary Struggle spoke of establishing an Athenian Commune. However, just as the organization was unfolding its campaign to sabotage Greece’s submission to the bailout program, at the most critical moment, comrade Lambros Foundas was killed in a shootout with the police on March 10, 2010, during a preparatory action of the organization (seizing a vehicle) that was to be used in a large-scale attack. His death led to our first arrests on April 10, 2010.

After our arrests, in a Political Letter to Society, we took political responsibility for our participation in Revolutionary Struggle and clarified that Lambros Foundas was a member of the organization, defending his actions and the organization’s struggle. Lambros Foundas was killed to prevent the bailout programs, which Revolutionary Struggle correctly identified as a policy of social genocide and euthanasia of sections of the population.

The governance of Syriza marked the final burial of reformism and the idea of alternative capitalist management. It erased the last illusion that any left-wing party could hold power today without transforming into a neoliberal force. This is why those within movements and resistance spaces who supported Syriza, believing it would resist the creditors, lead Greece out of the Eurozone, and create opportunities for struggle, were at best naive.

Revolutionary Struggle has always maintained —whether active in the field, in prison, or underground— that THE ONLY ANSWER TO THE CRISIS IS SOCIAL REVOLUTION.

This position of the Revolutionary Struggle was based on the analysis that the organization had before the imposition of the 1st memorandum, according to which the dominant role in the global system is played by the markets that have imposed their dictatorship. Thus, alternative avenues for the system in the current form of capitalism, such as the social-democratic (Keynesian) model that prevailed from the end of World War II until the 1980s, have gone bankrupt. So the memoranda were a one-way street for the system and the historical dilemma of the time was a Memorandum or a Revolution.

The Loan Agreements, the well-known memoranda, represent a profound turning point in modern Greek history. They essentially marked the end of the post-dictatorship era, the end of social consent to the capitalist system and representative pseudo-democracy, and the end of the illusion that capitalism brings prosperity. The memoranda are a form of serfdom or slavery for the Greek people, who from now on will live to pay off the overwhelming and unbearable debt, for which they are not responsible, but the political and economic elite of the country. This debt is impossible to repay or drastically reduce. Therefore, the austerity and impoverishment policies—essentially policies of robbery and plundering of the Greek people—will be a permanent and ongoing condition. This proves the lie of the governments about the end of the memoranda. The memoranda are not simply the loans granted by international organizations to the Greek state, which ended in 2018, but a set of conditions and terms that dictate these policies of constant austerity and impoverishment of the Greek people so that the debt can be paid. And as long as the debt exists—which it will forever—these policies will persist, imposing austerity, degrading social infrastructures, compressing labor costs, and selling off public assets that were mortgaged according to the first memorandum agreement of 2010 for the granting of the loans.

Furthermore, the memoranda signified the ongoing crisis and decline of the representative political system, as it no longer matters what the people vote for every four years or which party is in power. The policies implemented by Greek governments, regardless of the party and ideological origin, are dictated by the decision-making centers of the international state-capitalist power bloc: the EU in Brussels, the IMF, the ECB in Frankfurt, NATO, the US, the G7, or the G8.

Greece and the greek state are a colony of the international power system, which imposes a permanent regime of dependence and subjugation. The memoranda are a monstrous social crime, the greatest in modern Greek history. They are responsible for thousands of deaths—murders—due to austerity, impoverishment, lack of healthcare, suicides, while the degradation of social infrastructures is also the cause of massive social crimes—not accidents—such as the Tempe disaster two years ago and the Mati fire in 2018.

And the culprits for the memoranda are the state itself, the executive and legislative branches, all those who voted for it, whose main interest is to pay the debt to the bosses of the transnational elite and enrich themselves. Just as guilty are the country’s own economic elite but also the “independent” judges who declared them “legal” and “constitutional” while they are illegal and unconstitutional that violate all legally guaranteed human rights.

When the Revolutionary Struggle carried out the attack on the Bank of Greece and the IMF in 2014, and comrade Roupa attempted the helicopter hijacking for my escape in 2016 from Korydallos prison, the conditions had changed dramatically. The defeat of the social uprising of 2010-2012, coupled with the loss of the unique opportunity for a revolutionary attempt in the country, is the cause of the social deadlock we face today at every level. After the regime overcame the obstacle of the 2010-2012 uprising, it can now impose any policy with almost no resistance and with relative ease, regardless of which government is in power. This also affects the way criminal repression is carried out and how the Revolutionary Struggle has been treated since 2014, as well as some other political prisoners, but not all. Throughout history, criminal and “correctional” repression is first applied on political prisoners and opponents of the system and then extended to the rest of the criminal prisoners. For example, I was the first prisoner, and in a state of injury and disability, who was transferred to the type C prisons in Domokos in December 2014—established by the Samaras government— and this transfer had been announced as early as July 2014 when I was arrested after the clash in Monastiraki, by the then Minister of Public Order, Kikilias (former Minister of Civil Protection and Climate Change and current Minister of Maritime Affairs and Island Policy).

.I would like to remind you that previously, the 187 law of the Penal Code on “organized crime,” imposed at the request of the UK and the USA, served as the first anti-terrorism law and was applied initially in the trials of post-dictatorship resistance organizations such as 17N and ELA (Επαναστατικός Λαϊκός Αγώνας – Revolutionary People’s Struggle) in 2003-2004, and then became widespread.

Due to our consistent and unwavering stance to defend the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, due to our choice to continue the action of the EA after 2012, after the defeat of the anti-memorandum uprising, due to the danger of the Revolutionary Struggle for systemic stability, as had been admitted by regime actors, both I after my arrest in 2014 and comrade Roupa after her arrest in 2017, We suffered a particularly brutal treatment, whether the government was New Democracy or Syriza. It is no coincidence that the Revolutionary Struggle and its members were bountied twice, once in 2007 when the organization had hit the US embassy with an anti-tank rocket RPG and the State Department offered €1 million. dollars while the Greek state 800,000 euros for our arrest and a second time, in 2014, when the Greek state gave us a bounty by name, me and comrade Roupa, offering 1,000,000 euros. It is no coincidence that since 2015, despite being in prison, I was placed on the State Department’s list of “international terrorists”. Thus, for the attack of the Revolutionary Struggle on the Bank of Greece and the IMF in 2014, both me and comrade Roupa were sentenced to life imprisonment (during the Syriza government), an extreme and disproportionate sentence for an attack that had no fatalities since there was a warning precisely to prevent injuries. Let me point out that in the trial of 2015-’16 in which I was sentenced to life imprisonment for this attack. The comparison between the first trial of the Revolutionary Struggle, which ended in 2013 where we were sentenced to 50 years in prison for 16 actions of the organization, and the life sentence for a single action, for the Bank of Greece-IMF attack in the 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 trials, dramatically demonstrates the change in social and political conditions and balances for the worse after the social defeat of 2012.

However, the worst was the treatment reserved for our 6.5-year-old child in 2017, when comrade Roupa was arrested. It was an unprecedented treatment, one that only fascist and totalitarian regimes have shown in the past. The state treated our child as if he was the “terrorist” himself, who, instead of being handed over to our relatives, was kidnapped by the “anti-terrorist” unit and transferred to the psychiatric department of the Children’s Hospital. At the time, the Juvenile Prosecutor M. E. Nikolu (the same one who, a year earlier, had proposed the acquittal of the main accused in the rape case of the 12-year-old from Kolonos) removed our parental rights, even though she had no jurisdiction. It is well known that the then Minister of “Justice” from SYRIZA publicly defended the inhumane treatment of our child, providing clear political cover for this outrage. In their attempt to deal with us, they even exceeded the limits of the law. Although SYRIZA, during the period it still resisted the Troika in the spring of 2015, abolished type C prisons for clientelist reasons, aiming to absorb parts of the “movement” and the resistance sectors—including some of the anarchists and political prisoners who viewed their rise to power favorably—at the same time, along with the Paraskevopoulos law, they passed a provision that imposed consecutive sentences for prisoners who committed acts of violence within prison, which would not be merged with the main sentence, as had been the case until then. This resulted in longer prison sentences. Later, when SYRIZA made a major shift and capitulated to the demands of the creditors after passing the third memorandum, they planned to pass a “penal” code that would, among other things, provide isolation wings for “disobedient” or “dangerous” prisoners or those who attempted or succeeded in escape, similar to the high-security prisons legislated by the Mitsotakis government in 2022. Indeed, when comrade Roupa and I went on a hunger strike in November-December 2017 with demands to not limit our visits with our child (so we could see them four times a year) and for me to be released from illegal solitary confinement for five months, following an incident in court when a former member of our organization openly separated from us and made statements of repentance, we also demanded the withdrawal of the provision for isolation wings in the bill that was under consideration but was ultimately not passed. However, before Syriza left power, they legislated a section on July 11, 2019 (with Minister M. Kalogirou) that stated that multiple-life prisoners would have the right to apply for conditional release after 25 years instead of 19, as was stipulated in the old penal code. This is now being applied retroactively by the Mitsotakis government in Domokos prison, even though, according to the law, for older prisoners, the more favorable provisions of the previous penal code should apply. The pilot implementation of this provision was first applied to comrade D. Koufodinas and later to other multiple-life prisoners in Domokos prison.

The difference between the last SYRIZA and ND governments regarding criminal repression is that while SYRIZA followed a more selective approach to repression, ND follows a more sweeping repressive policy against everyone. The period of SYRIZA’s “left-wing interlude,” which made the expected turn to comply with the demands of the Troika, paved the way for the bulldozer of the ND government from 2019 onwards. It is a link in the chain of the socio-political evolutionary path from 2010-2012 to today, as I mentioned at the beginning of the text. The ND government from 2019 onwards has revised the criminal and “penal” code more times than any other government in the past. The first revision of the penal code was the first thing they did during their term, as early as August 2019.

Apart from the ongoing policy of surpluses, which arise from the continued plundering of the people to pay the enormous debt, at the repressive level, they immediately implemented an aggressive policy based on the doctrine of “law and order.” Thus, they evacuated most of the squats in the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space and the refugee and migrant squats, legislated restrictions on demonstrations, and reduced the right to strike. During the same period, in the fall of 2019, Kikilias made a statement that Maziotis would be able to be released in two years, a statement that seems more like a warning/advice to the judiciary, since indeed in January 2022, I had completed 3/5 of the sentence required for conditional release according to the old penal code.

The defeat of 2010-2012 also paved the way for the unprecedented totalitarian measures (e.g., total lockdown) applied during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Measures that led to a zombie society, which did not aim at citizens’ health but at the management of the health system, which was impossible to handle due to the governments’ previous undermining and destruction of it—an ongoing process due to the austerity policies. Regarding the revision of the criminal and “penal” codes, this was primarily aimed at targeting political prisoners who had remained in prison since the summer of 2019 and later, as well as prolonging the stay of prisoners in prison.

Thus, the maximum limit of temporary imprisonment sentences increased from 15 years (as defined in the 2019 penal code) to 20 years. In cases of multiple cumulative sentences, the maximum limit rose to 25 years instead of 20. The conditions for parole have become stricter, as the required time served for most temporary imprisonment cases increased from 3/5 to 4/5 of the sentence, while for a single life sentence, the threshold rose from 16 to 20 years. In the “correctional” code, the limits for granting prison leaves have also been extended. In most cases of temporary imprisonment, the previous threshold of 1/5 was abolished, and now the required time served has nearly reached the parole threshold, making the right to prison leave almost extinct. For a single life sentence, the threshold for granting leave increased from 8 to 12 years, while for multiple life sentences, the limit is extended by three years for each additional life sentence, with a maximum cap of 22 years. Now, not only is the right to prison leave practically abolished, but parole itself is granted in minimal cases. In fact, disciplinary infractions from the distant past, even those that should no longer be considered per the law, are still being used as a reason for denial. Additionally, prisoners convicted under Article 187A—essentially political prisoners—have been excluded from serving their sentences in agricultural prisons, as well as certain categories of convicts serving life sentences under Article 187 (criminal organization). The purpose of this measure is to prolong incarceration since the work credit system in agricultural prisons allows for a greater reduction in actual sentence time compared to high-security prisons. Finally, Type C prisons have been reintroduced as high-security facilities, where, among others, prisoners convicted under Article 187A—i.e., political prisoners—will be held. Another crucial amendment, in direct contrast to previous legal practice, states that parole is no longer solely based on a prisoner’s behavior while incarcerated. Instead, it also depends on the state’s perception of the “moral reprehensibility” of the crimes committed and whether the prisoner acknowledges the supposed gravity of their actions.

This provision was already applied in my case by the previous Council of Misdemeanor Judges of Lamia, which denied my parole request. The decision cited, among other things, my refusal to renounce my actions as one of the reasons for rejection—clear evidence that the ruling was politically motivated.

Thus, ruling 175/2024 of the Lamia Council of Misdemeanor Judges states in its reasoning: “…In this regard, the character traits of the defendant are taken into account, as they were demonstrated during their remote personal appearance before the present council via technological means. During this appearance, the defendant exhibited complete disregard for the justice system and the prison facility where he is serving his sentence. These positions have been consistent, and the defendant has not abandoned them… by persistently refusing to acknowledge the criminal nature of the acts for which he was convicted, emphasizing that he does not recognize them as violations of social harmony or criminal offenses… This stance, in any case, indicates the defendant’s personality structure, of which delinquency is a fundamental component, as evidenced by their refusal to exhibit the appropriate remorseful behavior. It is also indicative of his lack of moral rehabilitation, which is the intended purpose of the sentence imposed and served, despite its long duration, and which the defendant has explicitly stated he has no intention of demonstrating.”

Within this context of escalating state and regime-driven authoritarianism—an outcome of the defeat of the 2010-2012 social and popular uprising against the austerity memoranda— and in conjunction with the tightening of criminal repression, it becomes clear why my parole request has been denied seven times over the past three years, despite the fact that I have been granted 17 temporary prison leaves. The same logic explains why, when comrade Roupa was released under restrictive conditions in November 2023, the Deputy Prosecutor of Appeals in Chalkida immediately filed an appeal against her release. Two court rulings were issued within a year to decide whether she would remain free or return to prison. It is now certain that I will pay the full price for the history of Revolutionary Struggle—a crucial chapter in contemporary social and class struggles, as well as modern Greek history—until the very last day of my sentence.

The armed revolutionary struggle, according to our perception, must go hand in hand with social and political correlations and conditions, with the wider social environment, while there is also a dialectical relationship and interaction with the rest of the “movement” and the spaces of resistance that feed it.

The blows that the Revolutionary Struggle received in both 2010 and 2014-’17 were parallel blows to society itself, social resistance and the “movement” from which we come.

The failure of the organization to escalate its action again, at the time of the memorandums, from 2012 onwards, was the result of the defeat of the social anti-memorandum uprising of 2010-2012 and the retreat of social struggles and resistance in the immediate aftermath, and on the other hand of the retreat of the “movement” and the spaces of resistance whose sections saw “opportunities for struggle” during the Syriza government in 2015-’19. The result of the retreat of the “movement” was, to some extent, the lack of solidarity we faced, which in turn fed the brutal criminal treatment we had on the part of the state. But the Revolutionary Struggle was never defeated politically. Because defeat is not exclusively a “military” defeat but first and foremost political defeat. And political defeat is not the killing of someone on the struggle like comrade Lambros Fountas, nor the long-term imprisonment, as long as he remains consistent in his struggle, his action and his choices. Political defeat is the revision and repentance, the discrediting of revolutionary action, the separation of one of his comrades in front of the court in order to save or lighten his position, a stance supported by parts of the “movement” in a court of the Revolutionary Struggle, something that is a world first in the history of movements and armed revolutionary organizations. The Revolutionary Struggle may have ceased to act as some within the “movement” wanted – from 2012 onwards– but it was never defeated politically. Because his analyses and predictions have been vindicated over time. Because his proposals for another society, without state and capital and without classes, remain relevant.

PS: The fact that after many years after February 12, 2012, millions of people in Greece took to the streets against the state crime of Tempi – a result of the degradation of the social infrastructure of all the Memorandum governments (G. Papandreou, Papademos, Samaras, Tsipras, Mitsotakis) –is a hopeful message. However, the complete overthrow of the current state and regime totalitarianism remains a… revolutionary cause.

Nikos Maziotis,

convicted for the Revolutionary Struggle

4th wing Domokos prison

* Nikos Maziotis: Revolutionaries are not «corrected» nor «morally improved»

https://epanastaticosagonas.wordpress.com/2025/02/26/nikos-maziotis-revolutionaries-are-not-corrected-nor-morally-improved/

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=17613

#anarchism #europe #greece #guerrilla #resistance #revolutionaryStruggle

Fifteen Years On, Comrade Lambros Fountas Lives

On March 10, 2010, the anarchist Lambros Fountas was shot and killed in a battle with greek police. On the fifteenth anniversary of his death, Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis, imprisoned comrades from the organization Revolutionary Struggle, to which Fountas belonged & on behalf of which he was acting at the time of his murder, have released the following text (original at Athens Indymedia).

While their text memorializes the anarchist martyr Lambros Fountas, it also provides deep, valuable analysis of both the context in which he was acting and the situation in the present day. I have translated it below.

In all revolutionary social-liberation movements, the fighters who lose their lives fighting for a free society become a political reference point not only for those who lived and fought with them, but – mainly – for those who come after them, for the new generations of fighters. However, for a fighter to remain alive over time, the responsibility lies with his contemporaries. To have honored him as he deserves, to keep him with them in the struggle, to refer to him. This is achieved by honoring the struggle he himself participated in, the political struggle for which he lost his life, his political values, his political-social goals and their historical timelessness.

2010 was a year of political milestones for the whole of society and for those involved in struggle. It was the year that the country plunged into an unprecedented – in its modern history – crisis. A crisis that began as a financial crisis triggered by the collapse of subprime mortgages in the USA in 2007, expanded into a global financial crisis and brutally hit this country as a financial and debt crisis. The PASOK government under the auspices of G. Papandreou, since late 2009, was preparing to hand the country over to the long-term supervision of supranational economic and political institutions (the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, the European Central Bank), in order to avoid the admission that bankrupt Greece had not gone bankrupt and thus to save the domestic Greek banking system and by extension the European one. The price for this would be a series of loan agreements with the most abominable terms for the people. The social base would bear the entire burden for the restoration of the economic regime and the survival of the political system, which had passed into complete social delegitimization.

All of the above was already apparent in the fall of 2007. It began to crystallize in 2008 and in 2009 it was clearly inevitable. It was up to the movement to recognize the coming storm in time, not to protect itself, but to be ready for the opportunities for struggle that the crisis would create. In the previous years, the years of “growth and prosperity”, capital and the state had implemented economic policies that supported capital expansion through debt.

It was a given that for Greece the debt bubble would burst leading to a major fiscal crisis, as we had written as Revolutionary Struggle in 2005, in the proclamations with which the organization assumed responsibility for attacks on the Ministry of Employment and the Ministry of Finance. When in 2007 it seemed this time was coming, the Revolutionary Struggle organization devoted itself politically and operationally to preparing for action in the coming crisis. Through a series of actions and proclamations in 2008 and 2009, Revolutionary Struggle focused on exploiting any systemic instability and highlighting political opportunities for struggle with analyses, with organizational proposals for the revolutionary movement and society, and with proposals for a radical way out of the then-current crisis and from every crisis.

Comrade Lambros Fountas lived and acted within this political framework. This political framework cannot be removed, because to do so would erase his politics. Comrade Lambros Fountas, a member of the Revolutionary Struggle, was assassinated by a police bullet on March 10, 2010 in Daphne [a suburb of Athens] during an attempt to expropriate a car for the organization for an action related to the imposition of the first “memorandum”, the first memorandum agreement imposed by the troika and accepted by the Papandreou government and the entire political and economic power in May of that year. It was an action in line with those that had preceded it within the same political direction, intensifying the struggle against a political and economic system of power that was sinking into crisis and had begun to falter.

Lambros Fountas stands to this day and will forever stand above the supranational financial system Citibank, one of the pioneers of the economic bloodletting of the peoples. He stands above Eurobank and the domestic banking system. He stands and will stand, alive, above the stock exchange, the temple of social robbery, the temple of pillage and social plundering. He stands and will forever stand above all the key economic and political institutions against which Revolutionary Struggle acted. He stands alive above the Bank of Greece, the branch of the European Central Bank, and the office of the International Monetary Fund that the Revolutionary Struggle struck four years after his death, thus continuing the shared path of political struggle against the imposition of loan agreements. The IMF was and remains a central pillar of the country’s supervisory regime, then as one of the troika, today overseeing the economic policy of governments. This attack was dedicated to the comrade and was undertaken in his name. Comrade Lambros Fountas stands alive with the entire society that acknowledges him and next to every fighter. Lambros Fountas is alive, as alive as the content and messages of his actions. Time is frozen and he is everywhere. He turns today into 2010 and brings 2010 in all its meanings to today.

What has changed in these 15 years? The precious opportunity for struggle that the system itself granted us via its deep crisis was not utilized. Lambros Fountas and Revolutionary Struggle showed the way. From protest, from uprising to social revolution. From rebellion, to the formation of a revolutionary movement with goals and prospects for a new social organization. From rebellion, to a collective plan for overcoming the state and capital.

The “memorandums” were imposed and instead of being a cause for overthrowing the system, they became a steamroller that ushered the political system into its current authoritarian form. Because when we do not seize the political ground that a deep systemic crisis leaves free, when we as liberation movements and as a society do not seize ground that delegitimization of the system of domination opens up, then it will instead be occupied by the state, which, ever more furious, will impose an increasingly merciless power, an increasingly brutal oppression.

The whole of society, the lower social strata, experienced and are experiencing the results of all the lost opportunities in the two years 2010-2012 and of the political directions taken by the movements in the years that followed. And this political space that proposes another society, a society of freedom, equality and social solidarity, has the greatest responsibilities in this period. Because no generalized social uprising and – above all – no social revolution, no radical social change is ever achieved in history without the active presence of a revolutionary movement.

During these fifteen years, all governments have implemented and are implementing the same policy for the management of – ​​and not the treatment of – the crisis that broke out in 2010. They follow the same policy of creating surpluses in state coffers through the increasingly ruthless exploitation of the socially weak, through cuts in health, education, wages, pensions (the increases that are given from time to time are a mockery, everyone knows, since their purchasing power steadily decreases). Through cuts in public transport safety, the response to fires. Through the support of profiteering, since via this and the over-taxation of the weak, but also through indirect taxes, billions enter the state coffers that are intended for the reproduction of the state and the profitability of capital.

At the same time, the state debt is growing. In 2010, when the loan agreements were imposed, the debt was at 127% of GDP (we entered 2010 with a debt of 295 billion, which within a few months of an escalating crisis reached 142% of GDP). Today, this debt has exceeded 400 billion. The New Democracy government celebrates because it is “reducing” the debt by increasing it, and it achieves this by maintaining inflation and refusing to control prices, since inflation, as is known, “gnaws” at the debt. So, if there is a question as to why the government refuses to do anything about cost of living, but instead does everything it can to maintain it, it’s because this is its strategic policy: through inflation, debt appears to be reduced as a percentage of GDP and at the same time increases GDP percentages by financially draining the lower social strata through price increases and over-taxation, but also by reducing public spending in terms of the daily life and problems of the economically weak, that is, the majority. And the cycle of borrowing and over-indebtedness of the next generations continues…

Thus, the faith the economic ruling class and, by extension, the supranational supervisory institutions have in the Greek economy remains unshakable. The supervisory institutions that will monitor the course of the Greek economy throughout its life, the European Central Bank, the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) and the Single Resolution Board (SRB), congratulate the government on the economy’s outperformance, while the latter is increasing its cash reserves through taxes, cuts, and withholding billions from the Recovery Fund, all of which it presents as revenue. All of the above lead to the Greek state attracting lenders who see government outperforming debt in an environment of stability. A temporary stability that is recognized as such by the vultures of debt, the lenders, since they are not used to buying long-term, but short-term Greek debt.

And yet, it is not an oxymoron. In 2010, a global bubble burst that was born from a growth model largely based on the creation of profit through debt. Debt was and will continue to be a very important source of profit for capital. At the same time economic growth is collapsing for most countries, falling short of the 3% safety limit for the reproduction of capitalism, global debt has tripled since 2010, with the USA leading the way as the most indebted state of our time; while the gap between rich and poor is increasing everywhere, debt is – even moreso since 2010 – the industry of the fastest and greatest profitability for capital, with state debt occupying a significant position. Consequently, a new global crisis has already hatched and is expected to manifest, with the well-known consequences for the social majority, which will be forced, yet again as historically, to bear the burden of making capitalism and the state whole again. To pay for the debts of the rich, to pay so that capital has the smallest possible losses.

Comrade Lambros Fountas fought to radically address the causes that give rise to crises, so that we do not experience such crises again. To address the real causes that are none other than the permanent and timeless policies of capitalist development, the profitability of the rich and the reproduction of the state.

Fifteen years later, the lower social strata, that is, the social majority, are living a bleak situation at all stages of their lives. They exist in the vortex of a merciless economic bloodletting to support the state and strengthen the rich. They live with exhausting working hours and starvation wages, without being able to cover their basic needs and with housing becoming a luxury. Workers are killed in work “accidents”, epidemics spread without the possibility of meaningful treatment, with the health system in disarray.

The social majority lives more immersed than ever in the anxiety of survival and the depression of an existential void that grows as long as it sees no prospect of a better life. It sees its children abandoning their homeland, becoming immigrants. It sees a political system doing everything it can to throw the children of the poor out of school at ever younger ages and pushing them into the most precarious jobs with starvation wages.

It sees its the deaths of its children in Tempi validate the dominant position of those who hold power and wealth, reinforcing that the lives of those who do not have power and wealth have no value. It sees people of all ages being burned alive in Mati for the same reasons. Because the repayments of debt to the bankers, the creation of surpluses by squeezing the poor to strengthen capital, were, are and will be of greater value than the secure life of the social base. Because the price of the existence of capital is profitability in every way and the devaluation of life in the face of profits and power.

It sees the lives of “third-class” people, immigrants and refugees, lost in the Greek seas and the Mediterranean being transformed into an immense cemetery. It sees the dozens drowned in Pylos with the government responsible and covering up this crime with a terrifying indifference. This same political and economic system, with the exploitation of countries, with the wars of Western states, multinationals and their allies, with the climate crisis and the destruction of the planet, gives rise to immigration and treats the uprooted wherever they are on earth as garbage, as waste products of capitalism. The social majority sees wars flaring up. In Palestine – with the blessings of the government and the Western states as a whole – it sees a merciless genocide being carried out for the interests of the Western states.

It sees how the lives of all those who do not possess power and money are increasingly devalued and, ultimately, crushed in the “head-on train collisions” caused by the thirst for profit and power. And as these lives are completely devalued, they are buried under “tons of rubble,” so that the crime may be forgotten.

The political and economic regime of power is a regime of covert and sometimes overt hatred for the lower classes and socially disadvantaged. Because the state was born through competition, racism, sexism, discrimination, separation, violence of the strong against the weak. A hierarchical social structure makes it impossible to promote equality at any level, impossible to participate in social solidarity, to prioritize people’s lives.

Fifteen years later, the social base is looking for its new “footholds” to resist through high-profile events such as the Tempi crime, attempting to leave behind the defeatism that brought about a period of deadlock in social resistance to the “memorandums”.

Lambros Fountas is present in the new struggles. Fifteen years later, comrade Lambros Fountas stands and shows the way. The path of increasing resistance, the path of making struggle meaningful, the path of a struggle with deep, durable, material substance, a struggle that shows ways out and does not stop at denouncing the impasse. It shows the path of the highest militant social solidarity. It shows the path of Social Revolution.

HONOR FOREVER TO COMRADE LAMBROS FOUTAS, MEMBER OF REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE

Pola Roupa – Nikos Maziotis,
convicted members of Revolutionary Struggle

https://anarchistnews.org/content/fifteen-years-comrade-lambros-fountas-lives

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=17572

#anarchist #europe #greece #lambrosFountas #martyrs #revolutionaryStruggle

Revolutionary Struggle Prisoner Nikos Maziotis Refused Release: Greece

For the sixth time in a row, the Lamia Juvenile Crimes Council has rejected the request for conditional release of Nikos Maziotis, a prisoner of the organization “Revolutionary Struggle”, because he has not been “rehabilitated” and has not shown “moral improvement”. In addition to these six rejections by the Council for Minor Offences, the Court of Appeal confirmed the case. The last refusal comes when he has already served more than four-fifths of my sentence. Against the backdrop of tougher criminal legislation – which includes increased sentences, stricter conditions for parole and furloughs, and the creation of maximum-security prisons – Nikos may well become the first person in Greece sentenced to 20 years in prison to serve his full sentence. The length of a life sentence under the old penal code was 16 years.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=17434

#anarchism #europe #greece #revolutionaryStruggle

Nikos Maziotis: Revolutionaries Are Not “Corrected” and They Do Not “Improve Morally”

26/2/2025

Once again, for the sixth time in a row, the Lamia Misdemeanors Council has honored me with its decision to reject my request for conditional release on the grounds that I have not been “rehabilitated” and have not shown “moral improvement”!
Indeed, a committed fighter, a revolutionary, an anarchist like myself could never be “rehabilitated” or “morally improved” by prison, no matter how many years they remain incarcerated.
A committed fighter, a revolutionary, an anarchist can dedicate their life to the struggle, as did comrade Lambros Foundas of Revolutionary Struggle; they can risk their life for the cause, face the threat of being killed by the state’s praetorians —just as I almost was; they can spend many years in prison —I have already served 12 years for Revolutionary Struggle and another 4 in the past—but they must never take a step back, express repentance or revision, or, in other words, demonstrate “rehabilitation” and “moral improvement,” as the judicial council puts it.
From this perspective, all the decisions of the judicial councils—six from the Misdemeanors Council and one from the Court of Appeals— honor me and show me that I am on the right path. If I were to say the opposite, I would begin to wonder whether I had made a mistake and violated my ethical principles and values. My only objection is the council’s reference to my “pretextual” good behavior. This is truly unfair to me. If such a thing were true, then during the council hearings, entirely “pretextually,” contrary to everything I believe in, everything I have been convicted for, and all the disciplinary violations I have committed, I would have mumbled apologies and expressions of remorse—just as most criminal inmates do to secure their release. However, such a thing is unthinkable for me.
The latest rejection from the Lamia Misdemeanors Council effectively excludes me from the possibility of conditional release, even though I have already served more than four-fifths of my sentence.
In the broader context of recent years’ tightening of penal and “correctional” legislation—which has included increased sentence limits, stricter conditions for conditional release and furloughs, and the effective abolition of these rights, along with the establishment of maximum-security prisons (similar to the old Type C prisons, but worse)— I may well become the first person sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment who will serve the full sentence, all five-fifths, without suspension, effectively approaching the duration of a life sentence, which under the old penal code meant serving 16 years.

“No revision” – No repentance!

Nikos Maziotis,
convicted for the Revolutionary Struggle
4th wing Domokos prison

Received by email

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=17202

#AnarchistPrisoners #europe #greece #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle

[Greece] Intervention of Nikos Maziotis at the Book Presentation Event of “State Against Commune” by Pola Roupa

The following text is a transcript of comrade Nikos Maziotis’ telephone intervention at the book presentation event of “State against Commune” by comrade Pola Roupa, organised by the Solidarity Assembly for the convicted members of the Revolutionary Struggle P. Roupa and N. Maziotis on 31/5/2024 at Panteion University): “[…] … None of them are recognised as political prisoners, but their discriminatory treatment is obvious. We have similar deteriorating conditions in Greece, towards keeping political prisoners longer in prison. E.g. the multi-lifers convicted for Revolutionary organization 17 November who have completed more than 22 years as is my case as I am not a lifer, yet I have far exceeded the parole limit but they do not release me because I refuse to make any statement of disavowal, “correction” and repentance … [Nikos Maziotis, convicted member of the organization Revolutionary Struggle, captive in Domokos prison (Greece)]”

“Comrades, I greet you. I wish you all strength.

The truth is that the book presentation of “State against Commune” by comrade Pola Roupa should have taken place two years ago and more, when the comrade was still in prison.

I assume that comrade (Pola) will speak in more detail. I will only dwell on the issue of the concept of political opponent, political “crime” and therefore political prisoners, and its historical evolution. First of all, let me say that “State against Commune” is the fruit of the political defence of the Revolutionary Struggle in the trials of the organization throughout the years. It is the fruit of a political defence, which, as we have declared in all the trials of the Revolutionary Struggle, is a natural right of resistance against every
state power and its arbitrary actions. That is why we have never felt guilty for the actions of the Revolutionary Struggle and have never apologized as “criminals” in the courts.

The right of resistance against the State and every authoritarian power has a timeless historical legitimacy, based on the natural law on which the stateless or self-organised societies based on communalism, solidarity and mutual aid of their members were based.

And in these self-organised societies, as for example in the free cities, the communes of Europe that existed from the Middle Ages until the emergence of the centralised nation-state, the right of resistance and reaction -especially armed resistance- against authoritarian leaders and states, monarchs, feudal lords or the upper ecclesiastical clergy, existed as a natural right.

This right of resistance was reflected, for example, in constitutional charters in the communes of Europe as well as in the Constitution of the French Revolution of 1793 -the most democratic of the French Revolution- which provided that people had the right to revolt against their government when it violated their rights.

Something that happened here with the 2010-2012 revolt against the memoranda, which are illegal and unconstitutional contracts even under current law.

Regarding the concept of recognition of political opponent or political “crime”, there is a historical evolution.

When communitarianism was the dominant social organization worldwide since antiquity, and the State and authoritarian power were the exception to this rule, societies treated the action of states and authoritarian leaders as a “political crime”, monarchs, emperors, aristocrats, slave owners, church rulers, who by force, war and massacres, tried to subjugate and impose their power on peasants, on free cities, on the people in general.

This was also the case in the ancient Athenian democracy, where the citizens treated as “political crime” the attacks against the citizens (Demos), against the Republic by the followers of oligarchy and tyranny. That is why the killing of those who preyed on the Republic, the murder of tyrants, tyrannicide, was honoured by the citizens, was a non-punishable act and was recorded in the so-called resolution of Demophantos, at the “Ecclesia of Demos” (Citizen Assembly) in 411 BC.

Later, at the historical turning point, the transition from feudalism to bourgeois society and the emergence of the centralised nation-state which aimed at a monopoly of the management of all social affairs by forcibly seizing this competence from the communities -which it finally succeeded in doing-, the concept of “political crime” and the concept of political opponent changed and now concerned the action of popular movements against the centralised State.

Up to some point, even the rising bourgeoisie up to the middle of the 19th century, because it had not yet consolidated its power and pursued the elimination of feudal remnants, recognised the concept of the political opponent and glorified the political “criminal”.

It was a time when there were revolutionaries honoured by popular movements, such as the members of the Conspiracy of the Equals, Gracchus Babeuf and Filippo Buonarroti who lived through the French Revolution, and the well-known revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, all advocates of conspiratorial armed action by dedicated revolutionaries to overthrow the regime.

The imprisoned Blanqui had been proclaimed in 1871 honorary president of the Paris Commune. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, whose positions were supported by the majority of the sections of the First International, was an equal advocate of conspiratorial armed action by committed revolutionaries. When, after the armed uprising of the working class against the bourgeoisie in Paris in June 1848 and, above all, after the massacre of the Paris Commune (1871), when the bourgeoisie was now established in power in France -in England it was already in power-, in Germany and in the USA, the bourgeoisie no longer recognised that there were political opponents, only criminals and terrorists.

And the first to be so described were the anarchists, at a time when, from the 1890s to the interwar period, anarchist “propagandists by the deed” carried out the execution-tyrannicide of kings, presidents of states, prime ministers, military and police officials or attacks on capital targets.

Unfortunately, both Engels and the Marxist social democracy of the time condemned such actions, describing them as acts of “individual terrorism”, favouring the participation of socialist parties in elections for the State.

Later, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the designation of criminals and criminal elements in an attempt to depoliticise and criminalise them, included communists and communist parties.

This was something that we saw in Greece, starting with Venizelos’ “Idionymon” law of 1929 and especially after Metaxas’ dictatorship, culminating in the civil war years of the 1940s and the 1946-1949 period, when communists and the guerrillas of the Democratic Army (of Greece) were labelled “bandits” in an attempt to depoliticise their identity or even dehumanise them in order to eliminate them. There was the so-called “headhunting”, as in the old days when the heads of bounty hunters were cut off.

In occupied Europe in World War II, the guerrillas of the National Resistance movements, many of whom were communists in Greece, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, were characterized by the Axis powers and the collaborating Axis governments and states as “terrorists” and bandits.

Anarchists in Spain during Franco dictatorship were also still described as “terrorists” and bandits, those who made an armed struggle against the regime.

Until the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991, the collapse of the regimes of “actually existing socialism” and the emergence of the US as the sole superpower and the strengthening of neoliberalism, there was a contradiction in Western Europe and the Western world -“Western” in the political sense of the term-, where, in part and on occasion, the concept of political opponent or political “criminal” was recognised, mainly in terms of militants acting against dictatorial regimes, liberation movements and groups fighting for national liberation against imperialism-capitalism.

For example, François Mitterrand’s socialist government (when Mitterrand was elected in 1981) had granted amnesty to imprisoned members of the guerrilla organization Action Directe, recognising their political status, just as Mitterand had also refused to extradite Italian comrades -as requested by the Italian state accusing them of “terrorism”-, and gave them political asylum. But this was reversed shortly afterwards, when Action Directe reactivated and concluded the anti-imperialist pact with the RAF.

Another example is that until 1976 British prisons recognised IRA prisoners as political prisoners. This reversal after 1976 caused a backlash on the part of IRA prisoners, culminating in the great hunger strike of 1981 -under Thatcher government-, during which 10 strikers, including Bobby Sands, died. In Greece, this contradiction was reflected in the original decision of the Athens Court of Appeal in 1976 rejecting West Germany’s request for the extradition of Rolf Pohle -a member of RAF-, who had been arrested in Greece after his release in 1975 -along with other prisoners-, as a result of the kidnapping of Christian Democratic Union member Peter Lorenz by the guerrilla group 2 June Movement, demanding the release of guerrilla organization prisoners.

The reasoning of the Athens Court of Appeal for Pole recognized his action as political, i.e. his organization as political against imperialism and monopoly capitalism -this was exactly the wording of the Athens Court of Appeal.

This decision of the Athens Court of Appeal was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court and Pohle was finally extradited to West Germany.

This point was very aptly made by comrade Pola Roupa in the 1st trial of the organization Revolutionary Struggle in 2011, when we had objected to the lack of jurisdiction of the court for political “crimes”, asking to be tried by a mixed jury of 4 lay judges, i.e., citizens and 3 professionals (judges) as the Constitution defines for political “crimes”.

It is no coincidence that this reversal of the recognition of the concept of political opponent, political “criminal” and political prisoner in the international legal system coincides with the rise of neoliberalism and its ascendancy in the Western world in the mid- and late 1980s, which became a global state after 1989-1991, with the fall of its rival, “actually existing socialism”.

So it is no longer considered that there are political prisoners in the Western world, the concept of political opponent is not even recognised, nor is the concept of political “criminal”. Now, in the attempt to depoliticise the political opponent, the current system of globalised capitalism and statism uses the vague and ambiguous term “terrorism”, which was consolidated after 9/11 and “the war on terrorism”. These changes were highlighted in the trials of the organization Revolutionary Struggle. These changes are the result of the fact that over the last 30 years, the totalitarianism of State and capitalism, i.e. the dictatorship of the markets, has been advanced and strengthened.

Special “anti-terrorist laws” have been enacted everywhere, it has become a crime to merely form and join a guerrilla organization, and these cases are no longer heard by mixed jury courts where the majority of the judges are lay judges, i.e. citizens who may accept the political status of the guerrilla organizations, but exclusively by professional judges for a sure conviction and more severe sentences. Not only that, but the criteria for parole have also become stricter, i.e. conditional release, where the main requirement is now a declaration of renunciation and repentance.

Even at this level, there is a deterioration of the situation compared to the past.

To make a comparison with the past, in Greece, the ELAS guerrillas who were convicted after the Varkiza Agreement and the DSE guerrillas -at least all those who escaped execution- did not spend more than 15 years in prison, give or take. In the early or mid-1960s they were released from prison. In contrast, Western European urban guerrilla political prisoners were in prison for more than 20 years or more, 25, or 27 in many cases.

Recall that G. I. Abdallah of the FARL has already been in prison in France for 40 years, because he remains unrepentant, and Carlos has already been in prison for 30 years, as has Maurizio Ferrari of the Red Brigades. They have also surpassed Blanqui. Öcalan is also already 25 years in prison and there is no prospect of him getting out.

None of them are recognised as political prisoners, but their discriminatory treatment is evident. We have similar deterioration in Greece, towards keeping political prisoners in prison longer. E.g. the multi-jurisdictional convicts for Revolutionary organization 17 November who have completed more than 22 years, as is my case as I am not a lifer, yet I have far exceeded the parole limit but they do not release me, because I refuse to make any statement of disavowal, “correction” and repentance. And as you know, there has (had) been an appeal in the case of comrade Pola Roupa.

Nowadays, through the legislative framework, the repression and the mass propaganda by the system-controlled media but also due to the regression of the movement, the following thesis has been established, that nothing political exists outside the State, nothing political exists outside the system of representative parliamentarianism, just as nothing exists outside supranational institutions such as the European Parliament and the European Commission, i.e. the Brussels bureaucrats and the meetings of the leaders of the EU member states.

The fact that nothing political exists outside the State was also reflected in the Greek legal system by the 2010 decision of the Supreme Court, which stipulated that “terrorism”, meaning the action of guerrilla revolutionary organizations, is not appropriate, i.e. capable of bringing about political or constitutional changes, except for military coups, which are of course carried out by hard-core members of the state apparatus itself. That is, by military fascists, Nazis, all kinds of right-wing extremists of state totalitarianism. That is why the action of urban guerrilla organizations is not considered political. That is, nothing political outside the State.

For the dominant international state-capitalist system of power, political opponents are now considered only rival states – terrorists, such as North Korea in the 1990s, Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq until his overthrow in 2003 and the occupation of Iraq in the context of “the war against terrorism”, Milošević’s Yugoslavia bombed by NATO in 1999.

Today the political rivals for the international state-capitalist power complex are still Iran and North Korea, but mainly China and Putin’s Russia after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, because both China and Russia are seeking a more multipolar system of power in contrast to the monopoly of power of the USA which insists on being the leading power of world capitalism.

On the contrary, the Federation of Northern and Eastern Syria that emerged from the Revolution in Rojava after 2012 is not considered a political entity, precisely because it is not a state but a Confederation of Communities (Communes), and so its representatives are not recognised to participate in the consultations for the resolution of the Syrian civil war.

However, the current totalitarianism of the State and the global dictatorship of the markets has not only been followed by the non-acceptance of the political motives of the armed struggle which is labelled as “terrorism”, along with the consolidation of the concept of “terrorism” for the armed struggle, but has also proceeded to the repression and depoliticisation of other forms of struggle, non-armed ones such as. e.g. occupations of public spaces, the reduction of the right to public assemblies and demonstrations, the reduction of trade unionism freedom and the right to strike.

This is what we have seen in recent years in Greece, too, with the successive legislative reforms. Movements, citizens’ struggles, trade unions and strikes, according to the prevailing logic, do not practice politics, because only professional politicians within the exclusive framework of the State do politics, governments, members of parliament, parties subsidised by the State and supranational organisations, the EU, the European Commission, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, which are not elected and are not controlled, but dictate the policies of elected governments and parliaments of nation-states worldwide.

That is all I had to say in general terms, comrades. In conclusion, I would like to stress that, despite the fact that we live in bleak times where the totalitarianism of the state is being reinforced along with the dictatorship of the markets, we must defend our political identity, our political action and seek the re-appropriation of politics, i.e. the management of the commons by the citizens themselves, the ordinary people, as it was in the years of the Commune and communitarianism, against the centralisation and totalitarianism of the state and capital. The conflict, the struggle of the State against the Commune represents history itself from long ago, it is history itself, and in this is included the class struggle.

Comrades, thank you for listening to me.”

Received by email

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=13908

#AnarchistPrisoners #europe #greece #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle

Greece: Gathering at Lamia Court of Law, in Solidarity with the Anarchist Comrade Nikos Maziotis

IN SOLIDARITY WITH ANARCHIST COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS
State and capital are the only terrorists – Solidarity with the armed rebels

On Thursday 16 January ‘25, we held a solidarity gathering for the imprisoned comrade – sentenced to several years imprisonment for his participation in the Revolutionary Struggle organisation – at Lamia court.

Comrades from Athens, Lamia and Chania, with loud pulse and slogans, we stood outside the courthouse of Lamia, which, as a mechanism of state and economic domination, applies tactics of political extermination, inspired by the tradition of counter-revolutionary terror courts.

Its staff of judges “cut off” the licenses of militants (D. Koufontina) and vindictively reject the conditional release of political prisoners, such as the comrade Nikos Maziotis, while on the other hand, they show selectivity in cases of Nazi and cops – murderers.

Even though the solidarity gathering was called on a working day, so that the courthouse would be in operation when we would be standing against them, and in defiance of the heavy winter, we sent a strong signal of solidarity to our comrade Nikos Maziotis, who told us in a phone call from prison: “I am always free – Strength and a comradeship hug to all comrades!”

At the same time, with a fighting spirit and pulse, we sent a strong message to the judicial staff of Lamia that comrade Nikos Maziotis is not alone!

After the end of the gathering, we left in a coordinated manner with slogans of solidarity towards Parkou Square. Around the court there were police forces (teams of OPKE and YMET as well as policemen from Lamia
police station), while riot police was deployed outside the court building.

We inform you that the anarchist comrade Nikos Maziotis, on Friday 24 January, will be heard via skype from prison by the notorious judicial council of Lamia, which will decide whether he will be released from prison or whether he will continue to be in captivity.

IRREVOCABLE* – DEFINITIVE RELEASE OF COMRADE POLA ROUPA
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS

SOLIDARITY WITΗ THE IMPRISONED COMRADES
UNTIL EVERY PRISON IS DEMOLISHED

Ⓐ

*P.S. We also announce that the council of Chalkida has issued a positive decision for Revolutionary Struggle comrade Pola Roupa. However, the decision will become irrevocably final after 10 days from its issuance.

https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633726/

With solidarity from Athens – Greece,

Solidarity Assembly for the convicted members of the Revolutionary
Struggle P. Roupa and N. Maziotis
contact e-mail: [email protected]

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=13793

#AnarchistPrisoners #europe #greece #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle

Solidarity Rally for Comrade Pola Roupa at the Court of Chalkida

In solidarity with the condemned comrade for her participation in the Revolutionary Struggle, Pola Roupa, and for her final “liberation” from the state-judicial hostage-taking, dozens of comrades formed a gathering body sending a strong signal of solidarity -with slogans, banners, flyers and texts- while the comrade was once again before the judicial council of Chalkida yesterday, Friday, January 10.

Early on, long before the three-member judicial council began “questioning” the comrade, police forces were lined up in front of the two judicial buildings of Chalkida (court of appeal and court of first instance), while snitches who were closely following the gathering were evicted by comrades.

This time, the hearing of the comrade by the judicial council was much shorter than last year’s long proceedings. Comrade Pola Roupa stood – as in all the years of her captivity – with political ethos, consistency and dignity throughout the process.

The first information from the comrade herself and the lawyer who attended the council is that there is a positive climate regarding the result. However, this remains to be proven in practice. Perhaps, from what we have been informed, the final decision will be taken in the near future (possibly next week). In any case, there will be an immediate announcement about the decision.

Comrade Nikos Maziotis is also facing a crucial battle, waiting for his request for conditional release after 16 years (with daily wages) of a closed prison and 14 real prisons to be examined by the competent judicial council of Lamia.

Nobody/nobody/no one/alone/only in the face of repressive mechanisms

Solidarity Meeting on Thursday 16/1 at 12:00 at the courts of Lamia in solidarity with comrade Nikos Maziotis

FINAL RELEASE OF COMRADE POLA ROUPA

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS

UNTIL THE DEMOLITION OF THE LAST PRISON

SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON

Solidarity Assembly for the condemned members of the Revolutionary Struggle

P. Roupa and N. Maziotis

[email protected]

P.S. It is customary for stupidity, snitch and disinformation to be a characteristic of many snitch journalistic sites and “ingenious” reporters, the latest being that “members of the Revolutionary Struggle hold a protest rally outside the courthouse of Chalkida”. Solidarity is our weapon, therefore, and in the context of the international week of solidarity (10-16/1/2025) for the condemned comrades of the Revolutionary Struggle Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis, comrades in solidarity carry out solidarity movements, microphones, events and rallies, in Greece and abroad.

Athens Indymedia

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=13655

#anarchist #europe #greece #polaRoupa #revolutionaryStruggle

Video for International Week of Action for the Comrades of Revolutionary Struggle

The International week of action for the comrades of Revolutionary Struggle Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis is taking place 10-16 January 2025.

A video for the week of action was posted to Athens Indymedia.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=13647

#anarchist #europe #greece #revolutionaryStruggle

Text by Pola Roupa in View of the Judicial Council in Chalkida on January 10, ’25

I was released on November 17, 2023, after 8.5 years of detention in prison for my participation in the Revolutionary Struggle.

Under the current legal framework for a twenty-year prison sentence like mine, I could have been released earlier if I had more wages. However, the large number of trials, my constant transfers from Eleonas prison to Korydallos prison and the repeated quarantines that I was forced to undergo due to the transfers (covid regime), were the reasons why I lost many months of wages, increasing the time I spent in closed prison. The judicial council that decided on my release did nothing more than refuse to place me in an exceptional situation and decide as it has been deciding for years for the many hundreds of other prisoners.

A few days after my release, a deputy prosecutor of appeals in Chalkida appealed the decision of the Thebes misdemeanor court by which I was released, asking to return me to prison. On January 10, 2024, I was tried by a judicial council in Chalkida on the basis of an appeal requesting my re-imprisonment.

It is a given that this appeal was decided following multifaceted political pressures exerted upon my release. This development was evident from publications, journalistic and political commentaries. Various regime cadres, engaged in the most extreme manifestations of state repression and without even knowing the legal framework they invoke, protested my release and my sentences, without knowing me, without having done the slightest research, without having ever been to any of my trials, without having read anything that I have testified in my many trials. With publications instigated by regime political factors or by their own political choice to push repressive politics and systemic politics in general towards increasingly extreme (always towards the far-right) tendencies, they contribute to the formation of a “circulating atmosphere” that determines – despite whatever ridiculous arguments are used from time to time – the behavior of the courts.

This has happened in many cases of political prisoners, and not just in my case. Without overlooking, of course, the fact that there are some judges or prosecutors who themselves hold extreme right-wing beliefs and express them in the sentences and decisions for the release of political prisoners by imposing the strictest ones, as happened in the continuous decisions of the Lamia misdemeanor council that rejected the release of my comrade Nikos Maziotis.

The above does not exclude direct interventions in the judicial function by regime political actors, especially in times like the one we are going through, when the drastic suppression of any form of social resistance, even social protest, dominates state policy, especially given the fact that social living conditions are so dramatic for the majority of people that they have made the struggle for daily survival a real nightmare.

In my own course in the courts and prisons, there have been some within the judicial system of power who have recognized that their beliefs or political beliefs cannot determine their decisions and, as the decision of the Thebes misdemeanor court stated, “the prisoner should be required to demonstrate moral values according to the judge’s scale, which, of course, is far removed from that of the applicant for a sentenced person”.

I have been out of prison for a year. The appeal filed against my release is the first to be applied to a political prisoner and the one-year (and longer, it seems) wait for the final decision, with the peculiar hostage regime that this wait means, is also an “innovative” condition. If, in the end, the Chalkida Judicial Council decides to reincarcerate me, decides – to use the words with which the prosecutor’s proposal asking the Chalkida Appeals Council to keep me out of prison ends – “the burdensome and violent interruption of her free cohabitation with her family and especially with her child”, it will be the most extreme and the most vindictive – politically and personally – choice. A choice that can only be interpreted as a “gift” to the political system of power and as a contribution to the course of political totalitarianism.

Pola Roupa

Jan 8, 2025

Athens Indymedia

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=13606

#anarchist #europe #greece #polaRoupa #revolutionaryStruggle

[Bίντεο για τη Διεθνή Εβδομάδα Δράσης 10-16 Γενάρη 2025, για τα συντρόφια του Επαναστατικού Αγώνα Πόλα Ρούπα & Νίκο Μαζιώτη] - ΚΑΘΕ ΕΞΕΓΕΡΜΕΝΗ ΚΑΡΔΙΑ & ΕΝΑΣ ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΤΙΚΟΣ ΑΓΩΝΑΣ ✌️

#solidarity #roupa #maziotis #revolutionarystruggle #antireport @antireportgr

[Bίντεο για τη Διεθνή Εβδομάδα Δράσης 10-16 Γενάρη 2025, για τα συντρόφια του Επαναστατικού Αγώνα Πόλα Ρούπα & Νίκο Μαζιώτη] - ΚΑΘΕ ΕΞΕΓΕΡΜΕΝΗ ΚΑΡΔΙΑ & ΕΝΑΣ ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΤΙΚΟΣ ΑΓΩΝΑΣ ✌️

Italian |  French | German | English | Spanish

◾️Περισσότερα: adespotos.org

#solidarity #roupa #maziotis #revolutionarystruggle #antireport @antireportgr

📢 Διεθνής Εβδομάδα Δράσης για τα Συντρόφια του Επαναστατικού Αγώνα Πόλα Ρούπα & Νίκο Μαζιώτη | 10-16 Γενάρη 2025 [EN,IT,GER,FR]

Καλούμε σε συγκέντρωση αλληλεγγύης στη συντρόφισσα Πόλα Ρούπα, στα Δικαστήρια της Χαλκίδας, την Παρασκευή 10 Γενάρη 2025, στις 12.00, καθώς και σε συγκέντρωση αλληλεγγύης στον σύντροφο Νίκο Μαζιώτη, στα Δικαστήρια της Λαμίας, την Πέμπτη 16 Γενάρη 2025, στις 12.00. Να ενδυναμώσουμε την αλληλεγγύη.

Italian https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633519/
French https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633552/
German https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633512/
English https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633509/
Spanish
https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633560/

◾️Περισσότερα: https://adespotos.org/2025/01/06/diethnis-vdomada-drasis-epanastatikos-agonas/

@antireportgr @antireport

#solidarity #roupa #maziotis #revolutionarystruggle #antireport

📢 Διεθνής Εβδομάδα Δράσης για τα Συντρόφια του Επαναστατικού Αγώνα Πόλα Ρούπα & Νίκο Μαζιώτη | 10-16 Γενάρη 2025 [EN,IT,GER,FR]

Καλούμε σε συγκέντρωση αλληλεγγύης στη συντρόφισσα Πόλα Ρούπα, στα Δικαστήρια της Χαλκίδας, την Παρασκευή 10 Γενάρη 2025, στις 12.00, καθώς και σε συγκέντρωση αλληλεγγύης στον σύντροφο Νίκο Μαζιώτη, στα Δικαστήρια της Λαμίας, την Πέμπτη 16 Γενάρη 2025, στις 12.00. Να ενδυναμώσουμε την αλληλεγγύη.

Italian https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633519/
French https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633552/
German https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633512/
English https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1633509/

◾️Περισσότερα: https://adespotos.org/2025/01/06/diethnis-vdomada-drasis-epanastatikos-agonas/

@antireportgr @antireport

#solidarity #roupa #maziotis #revolutionarystruggle #antireport

Every Rebel Heart, A Revolutionary Struggle: RS

Practical solidarity: In the face of the world of the state, the bosses and the horrors of their wars, we stand in solidarity with the condemned comrades of Revolutionary Struggle, Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis, who through the ranks and action of the organization Revolutionary Struggle, fought steadfastly and uncompromisingly on the side of the class oppressed by the violence and terror of economic exploitation, poverty and political extermination in the sweatshops of wage slavery. With consistency and dedication to the struggle for social revolution, the comrade and comrade took on the political responsibility of their participation in the organisation, as befits guerrilla dignity and revolutionary consistency.

They did not review and defended politically, one by one, the 18 armed and bombing actions undertaken by the Revolutionary Struggle, one by one, on high-important symbols and infrastructures of the state and capital, from 2003 to 2018, achieving significant blows to the correlations of domination: Ministries – of Economy and of Employment -, Evelpidon Courts, Police Departments, Police Officers and riot police,
Minister of Public Order, US Embassy, Stock Exchange, Bank of Greece – branch of the European Central Bank – office of the International Monetary Fund in Greece, banks – Citibank, Eurobank -, up to the attempted escape of comrade Nikos Maziotis and other prisoners from the Korydallos prison by helicopter (hijacking), which was personally undertaken by comrade Pola Roupa.

Judicial Power – Repentance – Double Prison: The state bi-historically maintains to the end its practices of war of attrition and subversion, against its armed political enemy, the militant(s) who attacked it by all means, challenging and shaking its imperium in practice.

“Justice” as a pillar of state violence and terrorism, assumes the regime’s role of “punishing” not only the class oppressed and undisciplined, but also the execution of the total “punishment” of the armed political enemies of the state and capital, constantly upgrading the criminal arsenal and the “maximum security” prisons and imprisoning the struggling comrades with heavy sentences. At the same time, it acquits cops/killers/nazis, child rapists, politicians, big businessmen-businessmen, etc. And when the time comes for the release of the militants from the “penitentiaries of democracy”, the dirty role is taken over by the judicial councils which, in the case of political prisoners, are intended to damage their political choices and  revolutionary conscience by extracting “statements of repentance.”

DEFINITIVE RELEASE OF COMRADE POLA ROUPA
On 17 November 2023, comrade Pola Roupa was released from prison with restrictions until 2032. One month later, the mechanisms of the terrorist state, with an appeal by the deputy prosecutor of the Chalkida appeal court against her release, tried to put her back in prison. Last year, on 10 January, the comrade passed a court hearing in Chalkida and since then, the decision has been pending and she remains hostage. Exactly one year later, on January 10, 2025, the comrade with a new summons and a new positive prosecutor’s proposal for her release, will be back before the judicial mechanism, so that the judicial council of Chalkida will decide on her release or re-arrest. And this, at the same time that the comrade is required to pay exorbitant fines which were imposed for her participation in the activities of the Revolutionary Struggle organization and which crush her survival, forcing her and her child into economic extinction, while her companion remains a prisoner of the state.

The selflessness, the militant integrity of the comrade and her contribution against social misery, highlight the revolutionary resistance within the socio-political disaster and against global totalitarianism. Through its ranks, the Revolutionary Struggle organization has made it clear that the state, banks and ministries will accept guerrilla social resistance for all the violence, bloodletting and bloodshed they have unleashed on the exploited and oppressed sections of society. On the side of solidarity, we stand by the anarchist comrade Pola Roupa in this new judicial trial.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS
After 16 years (mixed) in prison for the action of the organization Revolutionary Struggle and with the completion of 4/5 of the actual serving of the 20-year sentence last month, comrade Nikos Maziotis will
pass the next period of time by the judicial council (in Lamia), as he filed an application for release on November 25, 2024. This is the 7th request for conditional release, after 6 consecutive rejections. In the
case of a new rejection, he is effectively forced into captivity at least until March 2027, with vindictive and abusive (even by their laws) serving up to the last day of the entire sentence. This despite the fact that he has long ago (since January 2022) fulfilled the prescribed conditions (state of exemption).

The judicial staff of Lamia – as a mechanism of state and economic domination – applies tactics of political extermination, inspired by the tradition of the counter-revolutionary terror courts. It releases and grants regular licenses to Nazi murderers, in contrast to the continuous denial of the conditional release of the anarchist Nikos Maziotis and the cutting of the licenses of militants (D. Koufontinas). It demands a definitive exit from prison only by enforcing the renunciation of value and moral principles. The regime of blackmail of repentance that they attempt to extort from comrade Nikos Masiotis implies the alienation and imprisonment of conscience, in order to achieve absolute discipline through the pervasive control of the core of the revolutionary’s consciousness and values.

The anarchist Nikos Maziotis is at a rather critical point in his captivity. We should not leave the comrade hostage in state captivity, because most probably this condition of exemption from conditional release, while he has already served 4/5 of the total 20-year sentence, will not only set a precedent, but foreshadows the future that they have in store for other prisoners in an era of intensifying repressive treatment by the state for the world of struggle.

To strengthen solidarity. To stand by the anarchist comrade Nikos Maziotis.

We call for a gathering in solidarity with comrade Pola Roupa, at the Courts of Chalkida, on Friday 10 January 2025, at 12.00. We call for a gathering in solidarity with comrade Nikos Maziotis, at Lamia Court, on Thursday 16 January 2025, at 12.00

STATE AND CAPITAL ARE THE ONLY TERRORISTS
DEFINITIVE RELEASE OF COMRADE POLA ROUPA WHO REMAINS IN A HOSTAGE
SITUATION DESPITE HER RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS
SOLIDARITY WITΗ THE IMPRISONED COMRADES

Ⓐ

Solidarity Assembly for the convicted members of the Revolutionary
Struggle P. Roupa and N. Maziotis

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=13472

#anarchist #europe #greece #revolutionaryStruggle

The quality of those who were charged with persecuting us, with the pursuit of the Revolutionary Struggle and myself as a wanted person and bounty, meaning the security forces, the so-called “protectors of the citizen”, prove in the end, they really are the ones who are dangerous to the citizens by committing heinous social crimes.

According to recent media reports, a retired “protector of the citizen”, who in the expropriation of Piraeus Bank in Kleitoria in 2014 was injured and disarmed by me and was decorated for his zeal to save the bank’s money, was recently arrested as a member of a criminal organization that deceived elderly people and specifically, for fraud against an elderly 70-year-old woman by extorting 40,000 euros.

Of course, this is not the first time that a “protector of the citizen”, who was involved in our persecution, has committed a crime against a fellow citizen when he was in office. Let me remind you that the policeman of the DIAS team who had shot me in Monastiraki in July 2014 contributing to my arrest – he was also honored for this by the then government – two years later robbed and killed a taxi driver and has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

After all, what kind of “citizen protectors” are these police officers who rob, kill, or deceive citizens? And they are not the only examples.

Unlike our persecutors, I and the Revolutionary Struggle may have turned against political-economic power, we may have expropriated banks, i.e. predatory usury institutions that legally rob citizens and we have the political responsibility for this, but we have not turned against any citizen who is a day laborer and poor. We did not rob or deceive a citizen, we did not take or cut the pension and salary of any elderly and salaried person, we did not deprive anyone of their home as the banks protected by these “protectors of the citizen” do. We did not deprive anyone of health and care, nor did we deprive anyone of food. We did not condemn anyone to poverty, misery and death as the implementers of the memoranda did. These were done by the bosses protected by the so-called “protectors of the citizen” who persecuted us and the entire state-capitalist cabal: governments, ministers, parliamentarians, bankers, capitalists, the international transnational cabal called the IMF, ECB, EU. Moreover, by their actions these “buds” of the police, whether past or present, do nothing but confirm again and again the rightness of my choices, the righteousness of the action of the Revolutionary Struggle.

Nikos Maziotis

condemned for the action of the Revolutionary Struggle

Fourth wing Domokos prison.

Source: Athens Indymedia

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/09/23/nikos-maziotis-the-quality-of-the-protectors-of-the-citizen/

#AnarchistPrisoners #europe #greece #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle

Greetings comrades

We would like to send you some news about the imprisonment of anarchist comrade Nikos Maziotis -who is in Domokos prison for his actions in Revolutionary Struggle- and the special “state of exception” for him.

as a summary:
The Lamia Misdemeanors Court Council recently rejected the comrade’s request for conditional release. This is the sixth time his request has been rejected (five rejections by the first-instance council and one by an appellate court where he appealed only once). Three of the six requests Nikos Maziotis has submitted for his release were rejected by a council presided over by the same judge. And in all three instances, his request was accompanied by three consecutive positive prosecutorial recommendations.

With the recent conditional release of the Nazi Michaloliakos, the above was proven once again. According to journalistic, legal, and judicial circles, this decision was signed by Christina Papagianni as president of the Lamia Misdemeanors Court Council. Thus, with the decision No. 121/30.4.2024, the specific one was released, while his first release request was accompanied by a negative prosecutorial recommendation. From the very beginning, there was not only political cover but also a concerted and coordinated effort by state (and judicial) authorities to keep the name of the council president who released the Nazi. This attempted cover-up did not succeed. The president’s name was immediately revealed through leaks from journalistic (and not only) offices. And despite the fact that the Nazi is now back in prison (after an appeal was filed against his release by an appellate prosecutor), the selectively biased stance of far-right elements within the “justice system” who release Nazis, yet are the same ones like this particular judge who keeps comrade Nikos Maziotis imprisoned, can no longer remain hidden.

We do not forget our imprisoned comrades all over the world until the freedom from the cells of democracy
We defend comrade Nikos Maziotis and comrade Pola Roupa for their actions and political choices as anarchists and as convicted members of Revolutionary Struggle. We call on the world of struggle to mobilize and show solidarity for the:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS, who remains imprisoned in the cells of democracy for the actions of Revolutionary Struggle.
FINAL RELEASE OF COMRADE POLA ROUPA FROM STATE CAPTIVITY

Their justice in the years of democracy: the “exception regime” and the imprisonment of Nikos Maziotis

The militants of revolutionary organizations who are imprisoned face a special “state of exception” during all stages of state and criminal repression —from their arrest, trials and long-term imprisonment in the cells of democracy, to the moment of their release. This “state of exception” primarily affects the militants who, through their actions, sought to overthrow the existing state-capitalist world. Despite the increasingly harsh judicial and repressive environment, the imprisoned comrades consciously stand with dignity and consistency, defending their political actions.

This stance of the rebellious revolutionaries constantly reminds us that the struggles against the state and capital, even if temporarily, are not defeated and are not in vain. On the contrary, their political legacy in every historical era has always been (and continues to be) the catalyst that ignites the struggles of the present and the future. This prospect is what continuously frightens political and economic power. For when people who struggle are at the forefront of history, everywhere and always, they are victorious. They fear nothing and have nothing to lose but their chains.

Among the fighters with these political characteristics are the convicted comrades of Revolutionary Struggle, Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis. Precisely because of these political characteristics, the anarchist comrade Nikos Maziotis, who is in prison for his actions in Revolutionary Struggle and does not negotiate or bargain for his freedom on terms of submission and repentance as the state and “justice” seek, is experiencing an additional “state of exception”. He remains imprisoned in the cells of democracy and is deprived of his freedom despite having served his lengthy sentence for over two years. Comrade Pola Roupa, despite being released under restrictive conditions for months, remains in political captivity. Notably, just one week after her release in November 2023, the appellate prosecutor of Halkida appealed her release, and a final decision has been pending since January 2024. As long as this judicial uncertainty exists, she is at risk of being sent back to prison.

The “state of exception” for Nikos Maziotis

The Lamia Misdemeanors Court Council recently rejected the comrade’s request for conditional release, as he himself publicly announced (Nikos Maziotis: Regarding the latest rejection of my release https://epanastaticosagonas.wordpress.com/).

This is the sixth time his request has been rejected (five rejections by the first-instance council and one by an appellate court where he appealed only once). Three of the six requests Nikos Maziotis has submitted for his release were rejected by a council presided over by the same judge. And in all three instances, his request was accompanied by three consecutive positive prosecutorial recommendations.

It is well known that in the comrade’s case, the reasoning behind the continuous rejection of his conditional release is systematically based on similar ideological and political characteristics. This is reflected in all the rejection decisions, with particular emphasis on the latest request. He is one of the few prisoners panhellenicly —if not the only one—with a 20-year sentence who has been denied suspension for two years. They may be attempting to force him to serve the entire sentence, even though he has completed more than the required three-fifths of the sentence according to their own laws, since January 2022.

This “special” treatment by the judicial authority and particularly by the president of the Lamia Misdemeanors Court Council against the political prisoner Nikos Maziotis strengthens—if nothing else—the political assessment that his continued imprisonment is based on the political nature of his case. The same happened with comrade Pola Roupa. However, this case, and especially the continued imprisonment of comrade Nikos Maziotis, not only deprives him of his freedom but could also set a precedent against the world of struggle, should this action be directed explicitly against the state-capitalist system of political and economic dominance. This highlights how much their democracy fears the actions of millitants and guerrilla organizations that oppose the state, capital, and all forms of authority and imprisonment.

As comrades fighting within the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement, we stand hostile to the state and its mechanisms, its laws, and its prisons. Consequently, we know how the state and its mechanisms treat our comrades and how they treat “their own”. Whether they are political figures involved in criminal (and other) cases, or uniformed servants of the political and economic power system who have committed state murders, or fascists, Nazis etc.

(Para)state, political-judicial mafia and democracy

With the recent conditional release of the Nazi Michaloliakos, the above was proven once again. According to journalistic, legal, and judicial circles, this decision was signed by Christina Papagianni as president of the Lamia Misdemeanors Court Council. Thus, with the decision No. 121/30.4.2024, the specific one was released, while his first release request was accompanied by a negative prosecutorial recommendation.

From the very beginning, there was not only political cover but also a concerted and coordinated effort by state (and judicial) authorities to keep the name of the council president who released the Nazi. Moreover, this was to prevent the “integrity” of the “justice system” itself from being questioned. This attempted cover-up did not succeed. The president’s name was immediately revealed through leaks from journalistic (and not only) offices.

And despite the fact that the Nazi is now back in prison (after an appeal was filed against his release by an appellate prosecutor), this selective decision by the particular judge does not diminish the political significance of this favorable stance by the state and judicial authorities, nor can it mitigate the social and political contempt it caused. However, the selectively biased stance of far-right elements within the “justice system” who release Nazis, yet are the same ones like this particular judge who keeps comrade Nikos Maziotis imprisoned, can no longer remain hidden.

Fascism and neo-Nazism in all their forms and under whatever political guise they appear seem to find “support” from repressive and judicial authorities due to their political affinity and organic connection within the mechanism. The authorities treat them as an extension of their own political reach, as they do not pose a threat. Instead, fascist, Nazi and other nationalist enclaves, as an ideology, political expression and practice, are the perfect political complement to the state-terrorist, in whatever form it occasionally takes. It is well known that since the post-civil war years, they have been consistently integrated into the structures and institutions of the state itself. Moreover, they complete its work whenever, for reasons of integration, appeasement, and deflection of social anger, the political power does not want to “expose” itself further.

Focusing on this selective tactic toward the specific Nazi and the vindictiveness and deprivation of freedom for comrade Nikos Maziotis, the political “sympathy” of the president and, more generally, the ideological and structural blending of state power with such ideologies and practices (such as fascist, Nazi, racist, gender-based and other intolerant pogroms and murders) is fully confirmed. As when “justice” (the Komotini three-member Court of Appeals for Felonies) a month ago, awarded with suspension and released the three fascists who acted as vigilantes in Alexandroupolis, who hunted down and imprisoned 13 refugees/migrants in a trailer-cage! In fact, in August 2023, when they were first arrested, the Alexandroupolis prosecutor recommended their release with restrictive conditions until their trial. Or when the state and its mechanisms allowed the Golden Dawn’s attack squads to operate unchallenged. Let’s not forget that shortly before the neo-Nazi squads of Golden Dawn murdered the antifascist Pavlos Fyssas in Keratsini, members of the current party that is in the government, as well as journalists from mainstream media and later parliament members of New Democracy, who saw their dominance and “votes” in the nationalist right being threatened, were in talks with members and parliament members of the neo-Nazi formation to bring about this political convergence with a perhaps … “more serious” … Golden Dawn (sic)!

The struggles of rebellious people for a stateless, classless society of freedom, equality and solidarity cannot have any relation to the hateful characteristics of fascist or Nazi ideology. As part of the state’s efforts to depoliticize social struggles, in Europe—and not only—democracies are trying on a criminal-law level to equate insurgent-revolutionary actions with the practices of murderers. Recently, the judiciary in Greece and the informers of the regime media have been reproducing the narrative of the “unrepentant” fascists as an argument for the “victory of democracy” in the re-imprisonment of the “Führer”. A jurisprudentially subversive argument for the unrepentant stance of revolutionaries, like that of the imprisoned comrade Nikos Maziotis.

We do not forget our imprisoned comrades all over the world until the freedom from the cells of democracy

We defend comrade Nikos Maziotis and comrade Pola Roupa for their actions and political choices as anarchists and as convicted members of Revolutionary Struggle. We call on the world of struggle to mobilize and show solidarity for the:

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS, who remains imprisoned in the cells of democracy for the actions of Revolutionary Struggle.

FINAL RELEASE OF COMRADE POLA ROUPA FROM STATE CAPTIVITY

Solidarity Assembly for the condemned members of Revolutionary Struggle P. Roupa and N. Maziotis

Athens Indymedia

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/08/06/update-about-the-special-state-of-exception-for-the-anarchist-nikos-maziotis-convicted-comrade-of-revolutionary-struggle/

#AnarchistPrisoners #europe #greece #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle

Nikos Maziotis: On the Latest Rejection of My Parole
#RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/06/30/nikos-maziotis-on-the-latest-rejection-of-my-parole/

For the 5th time, the Lamia Criminal Court has recently rejected my request for conditional release despite the 3rd consecutive positive prosecution. During the last 2.5 years since I have reached the law of suspension by law, Lamia’s judicial councils, including the Lamia Council I had once appealed, have rejected a total of 6 times my request for conditional release. It is now very likely that I will be one of the few prisoners nationwide – if not the only one – with a temporary prison sentence with the maximum sentence of 20 years under the 2019 Presidential Code that will get the entire sentence without parole. And I will probably be the only one of dozens of political (anarchist and other) prisoners who have spent the last 20 years in prison with a sentence of temporary imprisonment, who is exempt from parole. Of course, the reasons for rejection are still political-opinional: that I refuse to recognize as criminal the acts for which I have been convicted, namely the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, as mentioned in the recent rejection decree, but also the precedent of September 2023.

The issue of repentance for the political opponents of the political-economic regime has now been historically established as a necessary criterion and condition for the granting of conditional release, thus continuing the historical tradition of the Greek state in other eras, from the years of the Metaxas dictatorship, the years of the civil war and the post-civil war period to the junta of the colonels.

Of course, the Council of Misdemeanors of Lamia has proven that it has double standards in these cases, as proved by the case of the recent – albeit temporary – release of the “führer” of the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn. In a country and a place where many do not have a short historical memory as the state authorities want and hope, the Lamia Misdemeanour Council was irreparably exposed socially and this is not negated by the fact that the release order was overturned by an appellate prosecutor after government-political intervention.

Once again, the historical tradition of the Greek state is confirmed and the political sympathies of several state bodies are not hidden. Just as the collaborators after 1945, the Security Battalions, the Chites, the ancestors of Golden Dawn, were treated favorably by the post-occupation state, few of them were tried and even fewer remained in prison, so today we see their descendants receiving the same favorable treatment from the current state and their “justice”. Of the 28 convicted of the neo-Nazi organization after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, 21 are already free, while the rest do not have significant time left in detention. After all, they are “their own children”. It was nothing but a parastatal apparatus, i.e. an offshoot of the state apparatus itself, which had been operating for years, since the 1990s, with the tolerance of the police, and did the “dirty” work of the state. That is, anti-immigrant pogroms and racist attacks, beatings, stabbings, assistance of riot police in clashes with anarchists posing as “indignant” citizens, attacks on hangouts, occupations of the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space. Traditionally, the Greek state has always treated the parastatals with the glove, such as these fascists, nostalgics for the colonels’ junta who in 1978 carried out indiscriminate bombings at the Rex and Elli cinemas because they screened films that were not politically correct according to them, with content that was not “nationalist”. It is no coincidence that among them was the later “führer” of Golden Dawn. The same was done to the parastatal assassins – members of ONED-ND – of Professor Nikos Tebonera in January 1991 who had been ordered to break in a “dynamic” way the mathematical occupations of that period.

The double standards of state “justice” and specifically of the Lamia Misdemeanour Council are also proven in the case of another of “their own children”, not a parastatal but a former representative of the law, the police killer of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, from whom the Lamia Misdemeanour Council never asked for statements of repentance or disdain for his act when it released him in 2019. And the same applies to the Lamia Court of Appeal, when he had been appealed in 2022 and had returned to prison for a short time. And now that he has returned to prison after a second appeal by the Supreme Court, the issue is not whether he has repented or has naturally expressed disdain for the murder he committed, but about the mitigating circumstance of the “lawful” life granted to him with which he broke the life sentence and was released on parole. The killer of Alexandros Grigoropoulos was the only one of the dozens of police killers since the transition to democracy, who served some years in prison and this because of the uprising of December 2008 and the social condemnation of his crime. Facts which the court that tried him could not ignore. When in other cases the courts acquitted the police killers, e.g. Melista, murderer of 15-year-old Michalis Kaltezas, or threw them on the soft side, they served no sentence or served very little.

However, on the occasion of the fact that the eliciting of the declaration of repentance and disdain has now been established as a necessary condition for the granting of parole and conditional release for political opponents of the political-economic regime, I would like to refer to the political error made by some leftists, such as lawyers of the civil action in the trial of Golden Dawn, who, after the provisional release of its leader, also spoke about the issue of his non-repentance, aligning themselves with the prosecutor who, for the same reason, had proposed the rejection of the request for his conditional release, but also with the prosecutor of the Court of Appeal, who made the appeal. In order not to be misunderstood, let me make it clear that it is quite another matter that someone must continue to serve his sentence and the question of repentance as a necessary condition of release is completely different. The appeal of non-repentance by lawyers in this case, whether they realize it or not, throws water on the mill of the state in refusing for the same reasons, the conditional release to us militants who are condemned for acts of urban guerrilla warfare, armed popular violence and resistance that over time are part of the practices of the popular and revolutionary movement. Indeed, the fact that some of them know the history of persecution of the left in other times and have invoked it in trials of revolutionary-guerrilla organizations as a defense makes their political error even greater. Invoking repentance as a necessary condition of release cannot be applied selectively. Either it applies to everyone or it does not apply at all. However, its general application confirms the practice of the state today that has the theory-fraud of the two “extremes” by equating the theory and propaganda of neo-Nazis with urban guerrilla fighters, anarchists, extreme leftists, antifascists, but in practice it caresses neo-Nazis who are “its own children” and exhausts its severity on the political opponents of the political-economic regime.

Also, the issue of repentance has been raised at the hearing of the Chalkida Court of Appeals last January by comrade Paula Roupa when the decision of her conditional release by the deputy prosecutor of appeals of Chalkida was overturned – apparently by order from above.

The ruling of the Lamia Misdemeanour Council, on the grounds of rejecting my conditional release, also cites as a reason my contempt for “justice”. But a justice that caresses fascists and neo-Nazis, convicted rapists who walk free and happen to have connections with New Democracy, that caresses racist murderers who walk free (Zak Kostopoulos case), that rewards murderous police officers of the Dias group (Sambanis, Frangoulis cases), who also walk free, that behaves with the glove to the rapists of the case of the 12-year-old girl of Kolonos – where the prosecutor Maria Eleni Nikolou had proposed the acquittal of the main defendant and it is the same one that had stripped us of the custody of our son and ordered his confinement in the Children’s Mental Hospital – a “justice” that covers up massive state crimes such as that of Tempi or the shipwreck of Pylos, is an accomplice in the greatest mass crime of modern Greek history such as the memorandums. Such “justice” can only cause disdain and disrepute.

Apart from the rejection of the conditional release, the decree of the Lamia Misdemeanour Council states that criminal charges are pending against me following a report by the chief commander of the external guard of Domokos prison for allegedly disobeying legal orders of the staff and threatening violence against members of the prison staff. In fact, one of the first things the president of the Lamia Misdemeanour Council did at the skype hearing on May 15 to examine my request for conditional release was to show me the report against me of the commander of the external guard, proving her biased attitude towards the already preconceived decision to reject my conditional release. After all, he was president of both previous boards that rejected my conditional release.

The incident referred to concerned the incident I had made public on 14 May when I refused to be subjected to an undignified body search by members of the outer prison guard. That is, to take off my clothes in order to be transferred to the hospital of Lamia for orthopedic examination. The insubordination corresponded to my refusal to undergo such an undignified body search, while the threat of violence concerned that I asked for the details of the police officers of the external guard after my refusal to transfer me to the hospital of Lamia for the scheduled examination. However, despite the fact that I was unanimously acquitted by the prison disciplinary board of both baseless and false charges and I was even transferred to the hospital of Lamia a few days later under the conditions I wanted, that is, without undergoing the undignified body search I required, the Misdemeanour Council reports that criminal charges are pending against me, but there is – at least for the time being – no such criminal proceedings against me. In many cases, in addition to the disciplinary penalty in prison for violations of the “penitentiary” code, prisoners are also prosecuted for the same violations and a trial takes place. If such a procedure were to be taken against me, it would be nothing more than a scheme to cut off the regular leave I have been taking for the last 2.5 years while such proceedings are pending until the trial takes place. Because one of the criteria for granting permits in prison is that no criminal proceedings are pending either for a felony or for a misdemeanor involving acts of violence or threat of violence, for which if the prisoner is convicted, his sentence is served without merging with the rest of the sentence, i.e. upon expiry. This is probably what the president of the Lamia Council of Misdemeanors would have wished for when she mentioned it in the rejection decree.

Having already served 11.5 years net and together with 3.5 years of beneficial work calculation almost 15 years, I have 2.5 years left in prison with the calculation of wages. I will then have served at least 14 years clean in prison and together with 6 years of work I will have completed all 20 years of sentence until the last day.

A sentence that under the current penal code for former prisoners like me – before its last revision – will approach serving a life sentence, where the law stipulates the possibility of parole at 16 years, a sentence equivalent to a conviction for murder, a charge for which I have not been convicted. I have already served a disproportionate amount of time in relation to the charges and sentence for which I have been convicted. The state and its “justice” in my case considers it a greater crime that I do not revise my views on the acts for which I have been convicted than the acts themselves. However, to be released in 2.5 years with an expiration of sentence without having been “imprisoned”, without repenting, without discrediting the acts for which I was convicted, but still having the view that the actions of the Revolutionary Struggle were just, that they were carried out for the social good and for the benefit of the social-popular majority – acts that over time have been part of the practices of the popular and revolutionary movement – It will prove their total failure, the total failure of state “justice” and the total failure of prison as a repressive institution to force me to change my positions and my morale about what I have been condemned. They are already losers and failures.

Nikos Maziotis, convicted for the action of the Revolutionary Struggle

Fourth wing Domokos prison

Athens Indymedia

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/06/30/nikos-maziotis-on-the-latest-rejection-of-my-parole/

#AnarchistPrisoners #europe #greece #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle

Report from the Event for the Presentation of the Book State vs. Commune by Comrade P. Roupa
#RevolutionaryStruggle

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/06/13/report-from-the-event-for-the-presentation-of-the-book-state-vs-commune-by-comrade-p-roupa/

Report from the Event for the Presentation of the Book State vs. Commune by Comrade P. Roupa
#RevolutionaryStruggle

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/06/13/report-from-the-event-for-the-presentation-of-the-book-state-vs-commune-by-comrade-p-roupa/

Our assembly, in the context of organizing solidarity movements and interventions for the final release of comrade Pola Roupa and the immediate release of comrade Nikos Maziotis, organized an event for the presentation of the book STATE AGAINST COMMUNE, REVOLUTIONS AND POLITICAL “CRIMES” THROUGH THE CENTURIES by Pola Roupa. The book presentation took place on Friday, May 31 (at the amphitheater Sakis Karagiorgas I) in Panteion, in the presence of comrade Pola: it is the first time that the comrade’s book is presented publicly in the world of struggle.

It is a historical and political legacy for the expropriation of the history of the oppressed from the dominant historical narrative. Indeed, it concerns the historical space long before the existence of organized state power when it was politically established with the imposition, violence, wars, terrorism and social destruction, oppression and extreme class exploitation by the existing state-capitalist system and power. The book references the history of subversive struggles, uprisings and revolutions of the oppressed for a society of equality and solidarity outside and beyond the political norms of the state (in all its manifestations). Outside and beyond the capitalist complex of economic sovereignty, outside and beyond the norms of domination and the “fairness” of the powerful. After all, the political stakes of the book comes to complement the world history of the revolutionary perspective, seeking the ways in which human and non-human societies will create a communal society of free coexistence, equality and solidarity in harmony with living beings and the natural environment, to send the slavery of social inequality once and for all, to the trash of history.

In our estimation, the positive imprint of the event – apart from the presentation of the content by comrade Paula Roupa herself and the intervention of comrade Nikos Maziotis from prison – is the interesting discussion and dialogue that followed. And above all, the positions and critical opinions submitted during the event by many comrades who attended the book presentation.

Here is the audio of the event: https://epanastaticosagonas.wordpress.com/

We would also like to inform you that comrade Pola Roupa’s book has been republished and is immediately available for those comrades and collectives who wish it to be in their hands.

Solidarity Assembly for the condemned members of the Revolutionary Struggle P. Roupas and N. Maziotis

Contact e-mail: [email protected]

Athens Indymedia

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/06/13/report-from-the-event-for-the-presentation-of-the-book-state-vs-commune-by-comrade-p-roupa/

#anarchist #europe #greece #polaRoupa #revolutionaryStruggle

During a phone call with the Solidarity Assembly, comrade Nikos Maziotis reported that in the disciplinary council held today in Domokos prison (in the presence of the prosecutor and the prison director), he was acquitted of the 2 disciplinary offenses that tried to accuse him of disobedience and threat against the head of the outer guard. At the same time, he reported that he is suspending the hunger strike after his request to go to the hospital in Lamia without the humiliating physical examination was satisfied. A decision on his release or continued captivity is pending.

The comrade himself will report in detail.

THE COMRADE IS NOT ALONE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF ANARCHIST COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS
FINAL RELEASE OF COMRADE POLA ROUPA
STRENGTH TO THE POLITICAL PRISONERS KIDNAPPED IN THE CELLS OF THE REPUBLIC

Assembly of Solidarity with the condemned comrades of the Revolutionary Struggle

From: athens.indymedia.org/post/1630428/

Translation in Spanish posted on 20/05/2024: Contra Info

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/05/22/greek-prisons-anarchist-comrade-nikos-maziotis-ends-hunger-strike/

#AnarchistPrisoners #europe #greece #hungerStrike #nikosMaziotis #revolutionaryStruggle

Hunger Strike by Nikos Maziotis
#RevolutionaryStruggle #hungerstrike

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/05/15/hunger-strike-by-nikos-maziotis/

Text by Nikos Maziotis on the Health Care Conditions in Domokos Prison
#RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/05/14/text-by-nikos-maziotis-on-the-health-care-conditions-in-domokos-prison/

Video from the Solidarity Gathering for Comrade Nikos Maziotis in Lamia and Domokos Prisons
#RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/04/06/video-from-the-solidarity-gathering-for-comrade-nikos-maziotis-in-lamia-and-domokos-prisons/

Honor Forever to Anarchist Fighter and Member of R.S. Lambros Foundas (Greece)
#LambrosFoundas #RevolutionaryStruggle

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/03/10/honor-forever-to-anarchist-fighter-and-member-of-r-s-lambros-foundas-greece/

Pola Roupa: They Want to Put Me Back in Prison
#PolaRoupa #RevolutionaryStruggle #Greece

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/12/30/pola-roupa-they-want-to-put-me-back-in-prison/

Text of N. Maziotis, Convicted for the Action of Revolutionary Struggle for the 4th Rejection of Parole in Greece
#AnarchistPrisoners #RevolutionaryStruggle #Greece

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/12/24/text-of-n-maziotis-convicted-for-the-action-of-revolutionary-struggle-for-the-4th-rejection-of-parole-in-greece/

For Comrade Alfredo Bonanno from Nikos Maziotis, Member of Revolutionary Struggle
#AlfredoBonanno #RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners
Via @Nae_Midion
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/12/11/for-comrade-alfredo-bonanno-from-nikos-maziotis-member-of-revolutionary-struggle/

"He who negates present society, and seeks social conditions based on the sharing of property, is a revolutionary whether he calls himself an anarchist or a communist."
-- Johann Most --

"Celui qui renie la société actuelle et cherche à instaurer une organisation sociale basée sur le partage de la propriété est un révolutionnaire, qu'il se considère comme anarchiste ou comme communiste."
-- Johann Most --

#quotes #citations #anarchy #communism #RevolutionaryStruggle #UnitedWeStandDividedWeFall

📢 Συναυλία αλληλεγγύης και οικονομικής ενίσχυσης για τα αιχμάλωτα συντρόφια του Επαναστατικού Αγώνα Πόλα Ρούπα και Νίκο Μαζιώτη
#antireportgr
Περισσότερα εδώ:
https://athens.indymedia.org/event/91780/

#kesariani #solidarity #athens #revolutionarystruggle #events #antireport @antireportgr

Anarchist Political Prisoner Pola Roupa : On My Extraordinary Permit and Parody-Transfer
#AnarchistPrisoners #RevolutionaryStruggle #PolaRoupa #Greece

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/08/03/anarchist-political-prisoner-pola-roupa-on-my-extraordinary-permit-and-parody-transfer/

Message by Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis of Revolutionary Struggle from Prison
#RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners #Greece

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/07/20/message-by-pola-roupa-and-nikos-maziotis-of-revolutionary-struggle-from-prison/

Μπαρ οικονομικής ενίσχυσης για ιατρικά έξοδα και οικονομική στήριξη της οικογένειας και του συγγενικού περιβάλλοντος των αναρχικών κρατουμένων Π. Ρούπα και Ν. Μαζιώτη.

#antireport #solidarity #revolutionarystruggle #anarchists #prisoners #greece #antireportgr @antireportgr

Δεν υπάρχει εναλλακτικό τέλος από αυτό της επανάστασης. Συνέντευξη με τον Επαναστατικό Αγώνα.
#antireportgr @antireportgr
#antireport #solidarity #revolutionarystruggle #anarchists #prisoners #Greece

https://adespotosblog.wordpress.com/2021/05/07/den-iparxi-enallaktiko-telos-apo-auto-tis-epanastastis-video/

Call for Financial Support for Relatives of Revolutionary Struggle- Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis
#AnarchistPrisoners #Greece #RevolutionaryStruggle

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/06/02/call-for-financial-support-for-relatives-of-revolutionary-struggle-pola-roupa-and-nikos-maziotis/

Honor Forever to the Comrade Lambros Fountas
#RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners #Greece

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/03/11/honor-forever-to-the-comrade-lambros-fountas/

Pola Roupa & Nikos Maziotis, Members of Revolutionary Struggle: Solidarity to Comrade Thanos Chatziangelou on Hunger and Thirst Strike
#RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners #Greece

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/01/06/pola-roupa-nikos-maziotis-members-of-revolutionary-struggle-solidarity-to-comrade-thanos-chatziangelou-on-hunger-and-thirst-strike/

Revolutionary Struggle Prisoners Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis: Daphne Vayanou, For Us, You Will Always Be Here
#Greece #RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2022/05/24/revolutionary-struggle-prisoners-pola-roupa-and-nikos-maziotis-daphne-vayanou-for-us-you-will-always-be-here/

An Analysis of the Struggle in Latin America and Rojava

#LatinAmerica #Rojava #RevolutionaryStruggle #Revolution #NoState

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2022/04/30/an-analysis-of-the-struggle-in-latin-america-and-rojava/

Message from Imprisoned Revolutionary Struggle Members Pola Roupa & Nikos Maziotis in Honour of Fallen Comrade Lambros Fountas

#RevolutionaryStruggle #AnarchistPrisoners

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2022/03/12/message-from-imprisoned-revolutionary-struggle-members-pola-roupa-nikos-maziotis-in-honour-of-fallen-comrade-lambros-fountas/

Anarchist Prisoners Nikos Maziotis and Giannis Dimitrakis Begin Hunger Strike in Solidarity with Dimitris Koufondinas

#AnarchistPrisoners #RevolutionaryStruggle

https://www.amwenglish.com/articles/nikos-maziotis-and-giannis-dimitrakis-begin-hunger-strike-in-solidarity-with-dimitris-koufondinas/