Statement by the Open Assembly of Anarchists for November 17 (rally), regarding the attack by the left-wing para-state on the Polytechnic (52 years since the Athens Polytechnic uprising of 1973 during the Greek military junta)
… people who have nothing to say
in positions of power just babble …
Now and forever rekindling
(song: “For now and forever”– Genia tou Chaous, 1989)
In our call to the oppressed, the rebels, and the people of the struggle, to join our anarchist/anti-authoritarian rally bloc for November 17, we wrote: “The invocation of the democratic polity by the state and its supporters, under whatever guise, left or right, is a deception for those at the bottom. Authoritarian violence and the attempt to displace subversive social struggles and their rebellious characteristics from the public sphere and collective consciousness are means of terrorizing and silencing subversive ideas and freedoms. […] Free Polytechnics here and now for all, everything and everyone, outside the shackles of party manipulation and deception”. And as history has shown, it was as if we were foreshadowing with this address what would follow on the first day of this year’s three-day Polytechnic “celebration”, with the repressive attack (and attempted displacement from the public historical space) on our assembled body in the courtyard of the National Technical University of Athens by the party army of ARAS (left anti-capitalist coalition).
Comrades answered our call, including people of all ages and libertarian forces in general, forming a diverse front of solidarity and unity against repression. This included the Open Occupation of the Mechanourgeio-building* and, finally, our bloc at the November 17 rally. However, a repressive reaction came from the establishment bloc of counter-insurrection, which was then implemented in the field of the Polytechnic: by this well-fed authoritarian bloc that was reborn from the bowels of the 2015 “first left-wing” government of SYRIZA (& ANEL –let’s not forget that, as well as P. Kammenos’s relations with the theorist of the junta, G. Georgalas) and the internal rivalries and disputes with the former constituents over the matter of “national sovereignty”, to the current parastatal version of the “final solution”, targeting sovereignty mainly within but also outside university campuses.
Moreover, with internal repression, attempts to impose certain tendencies, collaborations with groups affiliated with ARAS, the sometimes communist and sometimes social democratic entryism, and the artificial distinction between “good/legal” and “bad/illegal” anarchists, the ground was more than prepared. This is a clearly anti-insurrectionary and anti-revolutionary political position and attitude that has been cultivated for a long time within the movements.
Listen to Polytechnic 2025 (“Polytechnic Here”)
On Saturday, November 15, 2025, the first day of this year’s three-day Polytechnic “celebration”, 40 years after the murder of anarchist Michalis Kaltezas (1985) and 30 years after the mass uprising that led to the occupation of the Polytechnic in 1995, the state’s repressive apparatus, due to the possible inadequacy of its purely police and military means in certain areas, chose to launch an attack during the three-dayof rebellious remembrance, but also to displace anarchist groups through left-wing collaborators of the regime and, specifically, through their operational party army in the field of universities.
From early in the morning, the entire Polytechnic complex, with a line of battalions around the wider circular radius of the Averof-building (which, it should be noted, had been ceded as part of the overall plan to the left-wing Student Associations just a few days earlier), was under the military-style control of groups of guards wearing red armbands and red Student Association stickers (on their helmets and jackets). Following days of methodical and operationally organized attacks, it should be noted that the ARAS members had taken care from the moment of their arrival to take all technical measures in the courtyard area to prevent the recording of the serious injuries they intended to cause. In fact, as it later became known, ARAS members from many different cities had participated in the attack, arriving in Athens specifically for the three-day period of the Polytechnic uprising remembrance. This fanatical army rallies around the traditional KKE (Communist Party of Greece) narrative and the leftist narrative in general, which denounces those who threaten its power and the state mechanism as a whole, as well as around the fairy tale of black block “provocation” and “unmasking” that is systematically cultivated by the media snitches to protect institutional stability as effectively as possible.
The repressive operation, its planning and execution (even with the use of pepper spray during the siege of the MAH-building door, until the ARAS finally entered the building), and especially the encirclement without any way out, can lead to an extremely dangerous situation. When you compress violence into such a small space, with no room for release, with disproportionate dynamics (as is customary for those in power and abusers with a desire for hegemony and suppression of any unmediated action in universities), you immediately create a suffocating atmosphere, multiplying the chances of incalculable losses. A characteristic example is the image of even unconscious people being beaten, as well as that of the comrade who was found on the windowsillof the MAH-building at the peak of the pogrom, with the ARAS members below in the courtyard shouting “fall, fall, die”.
We would like to note the deeply sexist nature of these battalions, as the party army is composed strictly of men (who did not hesitate, of course, to abuse women who did not have a guarding role), while the female members are limited, based on gender stereotypes, to roles of “spying” and informing. It is no coincidence that a senior ARAS official in Heraklion, Crete, has committed rape and harassment and remains, of course, completely untouched, while the survivors are bullied.
The attack by the ARAS party army was essentially directed against the Polytechnic itself, at the time they chose to carry it out. Our position is that the attempt to obstruct political processes and demonstrations —which are deemed “undesirable” by the state and its institutions —constitutes a diversion from the main enemy, which is none other than the authorities, the state, and the capital.
The ARAS “leaders” were present from the very beginning, even before the battalions moved into position around the courtyard where we were standing, between the MAH and Gini buildings: they coordinated, supervised, and participated operationally at various points. A high-ranking ICAP [1] executive and eternal bully of the student movement, from the side lawn of the MAH-building, and the other leader on the front line in front of the MAH-building repeated history: in the Department of Chemistry (University of Athens) in 1979, a KKE (Communist Party of Greece) member named Malamis stormed into the assembly with the KNE assault squad (KNE: Communist Youth of Greece) and levelled everything and everyone to prevent the occupation. Just as then, with the political embrace of DAP, PASP, PSK, and EKON Rigas Feraios (party youth organizations), so now, with the political protection of MERA25, LAE, and KNE (left parties), the 60-year-old “new Malamis” attacked an anarchist student who had already been beaten and was leaving the Polytechnic with a skullcap and a knife.
Also present at the attack in a supporting role was a candidate for parliament for MERA25 party in Piraeus, while on Sunday, November 16, after returning to the premises of the ARAS (acting as personal “guards” for the secretaries of the Macedonian patriots of LAE party?), the secretaries of LAE-AA party, Mariana Tsichli (a senior member of ARAS) and Dimitris Stratoulis, laid wreaths for the 52nd anniversary of the uprising and informed us in a video statement that “the ban on gatherings during the three-day of the Polytechnic due to Zelensky’s visit is a provocation”, that “the struggle for freedom is more relevant than ever”, while the same was also said about the uprising. Meanwhile, they forgot to gather their “political orphans”, the people who are only fighting for parliamentary and professional careers.
On the eve of NATO coalitioner Zelensky’s visit to Athens, November 15, 2025, ARAS, a genuine product of social democracy as a split from EKON Rigas Feraios party and currently affiliated with the Alternative Intervention of Lawyers, worked in close cooperation with the right-wing government, the university administration, and the NTUA (National Technical University of Athens) security guards in an attack on anarchy, the MAH-building, the NTUA workers, and the three-day remembrance event in general, with the aim of finally stripping the Polytechnic of everything free, alive, creative, confrontational, and rebellious. The patriotic guardians of order have never really confronted fascists, cops, and capital. They proclaim that they are the opposition within their democracy, while acting in favor of every regime, left and right, covering up for the entire left with “butchers and frappe makers” (OPEKEPE scandal protagonists concerning deep state corruption), Georgiadis and Lignadis (child abuse scandals protagonists, the first ex-member of parliament, the second actor under the protection of the Ministry of Culture), Predator surveillance scandal, Siemens and Novartis financial scandals, and the “research programs” of the National Technical University of Athens in collaboration with fascist, genocidal Israel.
Prosecution of comrades following arrests after fascist attacks
We now know with certainty that the publication of the details of the two anarchist comrades who were arrested in summary proceedings and spent the night injured at the GADA (Attica Police Headquarters) was done by the administration of the EKAV (National Ambulance Service), while the details of four more comrades who are expected to be summoned in the near future were also made public.
Of course, it is worth mentioning that one of the comrades was not transported by ambulance, so an employee of Evangelismos Hospital certainly provided his/her details to the cops. Likely, all the other names of the comrades who were injured and treated at Evangelismos Hospital have also been leaked. The same thing happened recently with the injured comrades after the vicious and unprovoked attack by the riot police on October 31, 2025, at the end of the memorial demo for comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris, who died while handling an explosive device last year. In this case, employees of the Red Cross hospital allowed state security officials to photograph the referral letters of seriously injured individuals, and thus the names of two of them were found in the case file that was compiled for that day. What business does state security have circulating in the “war zone” of Greek hospitals where medical and nursing staff, together with patients, fight daily battles? In the face of widespread social cannibalism and snitching, we must put solidarity first.
When those who build provocations accuse the anarchists of “coup-like occupations”
Starting with the anarchist occupations at the Polytechnic in 2017 and 2018 in the recent past, with all the criticism that can be levelled at them (we are not referring to the provocations and attacks by left-wing groups and “outraged citizens”/fascists of the past decades of the post-dictatorship era, from the 1973 uprising to the subsequent occupations of the 1980s and 1990s —on the path paved by the despicable issue of ΚΚΕ Panspoudastiki No. 8 on “the 350 provocateurs of the EYP (National Service Agency) and Roufogalis-Karagiannopoulos”[2]), the left-wing para-state seems to be reviving its traditional repressive methods to protect the regime. Once again, it’s the same old story, with denunciatory publications about “coup-like occupations by provocateurs” and the rallying of the flock to the institutional “sheepfold”.
The ARAS guard platoons lined up in front of the Mechanourgeio-building, after their movements within the Polytechnic complex, with changes and formations like the riot police guarding Strefi Hill and Exarcheia Square, and after the completion of the organized attack, reveals the terror in front of the shelter of our ideas and events, in the face of the influx of young people into open interactions beyond the control of the state, in the face, ultimately, of their political opponents, those who resist and act, the young people, the very people they love to talk about so much.
The Open Occupation of the Mechanourgeio-building came to fruition, in defiance of the times and against the silence of their sterile world —because the left remains resoundingly silent about the necrosis of the Polytechnic complex, while the fascist university rectors transform the Polytechnic into a panoptic “shop” for the obedient and an academic island for business. For an entire day, the historic site of Mechanourgeio-building was once again filled with activists, students, and visitors who were simply wandering around the historic site. Mass meetings of the anarchist movement were hosted, and a telephone conversation was held with political prisoner Dimitris Hatzivassileiadis about the history of the Polytechnic occupations and riots since the 1990s. The space reopened and came back to life because anarchists historically open closed spaces, those that the state (in this case, through the university authorities) excludes from society through controlled access, and which state security forces such as ARAS, KNAT, or the former PASOK guards (party armies) fiercely protect. We know very well that historically, nothing has ever been won “bloodlessly” without a struggle.
We will not back down, we will not be displaced – in rupture with the existing order
The massive counter-repressive gathering outside the MAH-building at the Polytechnic at noon on Sunday, November 16, with the entire anarchist movement rallying together, against the devaluation ofthe three-day of the Polytechnic by all kinds of party battalions of occupation and for their displacement from the historical field of struggle, proved that justice is won with soul and not with fascist imposition of power. The same was proven by the massive anarchist bloc in the November 17 rally, as its diversity, from kids to parents and fans, was indicative of the fact that freedom gives everyone space to fit in and express themselves against fascism. The Polytechnic and Exarcheia, born out of the rage of the Wild Youth in the decades, will not surrender to party lackeys, no matter how hard they try. They belonged and belong to the world of rebellion and the anti-state movement, to the world of destruction and reconstruction, to the autonomy of thought, organization, and action.
Consciousness, resistance, and conflict with the leftist counter-revolution
The state has once again clearly shown who its informants are. The war against the world of anarchy is a war against freedom. No matter how many establishment mechanisms attack us, parastatal, cops, fascists, leftist collaborators, sycophants, petty officials, thugs, or mafiosi, our only path is resistance and rebellion, the struggle for social liberation.
You have chosen to attack so fiercely those who advocate social and political nonviolence against the state, as a just act in the here and now, precisely because you are the pillars of the rotten system of power into which you beg to enter, either through votes or through jobs and deals with those in power. This is what you defend, as the “long arm of the state”, and this is how you will be judged and treated by history.
The anarchist and the libertarian movement in general must form an organized action of resistance and conflict against the anti-insurrectionary and counter-revolutionary leftist repression that aims to servethe regime, to assimilate dissenting voices and actions into their democracy, or else attempt to eliminate them with clubs and batons. The artificial dichotomies imposed from above, which are often reproduced within thesocial foundation, have always left us coldly indifferent. Anti-establishment struggle from the free territory of the Polytechnic to every neighborhood, against guardians and masters, against rulers and tyrants, against the state and capital.
The political annihilation of ARAS is considered immediate and imperative within the broader student and competitive movement
Fascist tactics of imposing power have no place inthestruggle
Solidarity, horizontality, anti-hierarchy, multifaceted struggle with all means, for a free world of equality and solidarity
AGAINST THE INTERNATIONAL OF FASCISM
NEITHER FASCISM NOR DEMOCRACY, DOWN WITH THE STATE, LONG LIVE ANARCHY!
Open Assembly of Anarchists for November 17 (rally)
November 2025
The state’s fear of the unbridled collective power at the Polytechnic as a field of historical conflict is confirmed by the recently announced decision to revise the framework for commemorating the 1973 Polytechnic uprising by the Rector’s office and the Administrative Council of the National Technical University of Athens. Following the methodical operation, the state intervenes as a guarantor of legitimacy, blatantly demonstrating the collaboration of ARAS —as its vanguard— with Rector I. Hatzigeorgiou and the entire state mechanism.
[1] ICAP: A Multinational consulting and management company that also resells databases of all kinds. They have been accused of unlawful dismissals. In addition, a collection agency operated within ICAP in the past; they have been fined for leaking personal data from “Teiresias” (the national bank data system) for their own use and benefit, and they have implemented unilateral salary reductions. They mainly do business with the public sector, collaborating with AUEB (Athens University of Economics and Business) professors to process financial data from students working for free or for an internship, and then reselling it at exorbitant prices through databases to public and private agencies, ministries, etc. Finally, they have a direct collaboration with rector I. Hatzigeorgiou NTUA (National Technical University of Athens) again for internship positions —how Marxist and “pro-people” does all this sound?
[2] This is a 1974 Panspoudastiki – KNE (Communist Student Youth of Greece) publication that spoke of 350 KYP (Central Information Service) agents involved in the 1973 Polytechnic clashes, with the aim to undermine anarchists and leftists who were the first to start the historic occupation of the Polytechnic in 1973 as provocateurs.
*Mechanourgeio Building OccupationTextAnnounced on the 16th of November 2025
In view of the three-day commemoration of the 1973 Polytechnic uprising against the junta of the colonels, we took the collective decision to proceed with a symbolic occupation in a building of the central Polytechnic campus. We emphasize the word “symbolic” in order to make it clear that we understand the Polytechnic campus, and specifically during these three-day period, as an institutional concession by the state from November 15 to November 17. Only when the territory is freed from the shackles of power and transformed into a center of struggle, serving the needs of the social foundation horizontally and indefinitely, when they choose the act of occupation at the time and place they determine, only then can we speak of a land occupation project, expropriated from the clutches of statism and economic-political intrigues.
The Mechanourgeio Building Squat (Mechanics Workshop) lasted 23 years, one of the oldest occupations of the Polytechnic (perhaps the largest in terms of square footage), and indeed one of the most recently evacuated on the 24th of May, 2025. For years, it stood as a bastion of subversive expression, openness, and radical counterculture. It was founded on solidarity, through countless self-organized solidarity concerts for a variety of issues related to the anarchist and broader movement. Thus, the occupied Mechanourgeio has contributed to the contemporary history of the anarchist movement as well as to the self-organized (mainly punk and rap) music scene. It has combined music with the rebellious noise that framed our nights and caused turmoil in the normality of the city, through the “metropolitan cannons” of anti-hierarchical class warfare. It gave momentum to solidarity and free creation, connecting the radical parts of society both in the center of Athens and throughout Greece. It was a space for self-organized sports teams —it even had a climbing wall—. a place for horizontal collective meetings and assemblies, and a field for creative expression with artistic or thesis work by individuals studying at the polytechnic (or elsewhere) who did not fit into the increasingly fewer official “studios”.
(here) Polytechnic 2025: Rector I. Hatzigeorgiou has decided and ordered the evacuation and destruction or conversion of any occupied space into cafes and generally spaces producing money, always with the aim of “tidiness”, as he likes to say. There have been numerous police raids and arrests of protesters. He calls graduate students who protested during “Τhe evening of a researcher” as “incompatible grafts” and then female students who participate in the struggle as “escorts”. The sterilization of the space by erasing dozens of political graffiti is more than obvious, and its absolute surveillance as a panopticon, with physical and technical means, from informants to video and audio cameras, is now a daily occurrence. The goal is the complete sterilization and alienation of the university campus, with the dissolution of any unrestrained and unmediated political expression within the institution and its transformation into a “shop” for the obedient, an “academic island” for corruption and business, and in general for obedient people. Finally, the involvement of the NTUA in the signing of a memorandum of cooperation with the University of Crete and Rector G. Kontakis is considered very important, with the signing of a cooperation memorandum for the architectural study of the reconstruction of the Evangelismos Squat in Heraklion, Crete – where there is repression, the NTUA is always present.
However, we know that collective struggle can thrive in the open fields of battle, in buildings that are open and accessible to all society, in lively discussions, in the open conflict between two different worlds, that of domination and that of freedom. From individual rebellion to collective revolutionary actions for the complete destruction of the state and all authority that aspires to thrones and palaces. After all, if the barbarity of domination is not completely crushed, we will count our losses again and again, and suffer state violence in our souls and bodies.
We believe that complete liberation from the yoke of state and capital violence, solidarity and equality among people, through the convergence of direct action and self-organizing structures, can provide a collective impetus for total rupture and the creation of organized community hubs, cultivating a new free world.
We call on the world of anarchism and struggle to support this dynamic meeting with their presence, words, ideas, inspiration, creativity, consistency, and action.
Against the silence of their sterile world…
May our liberated world be off-limits to the “kings” and their lackeys…
Open Occupation of the 2025
Mechanourgeio-Building
November 2025
source: Athens Indymedia