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