Wir erhielten dieses Lagetelegramm aus Athen:
"We're all right, but the situation has been really horrible. 45 C with an atmosphere full of dangerous particles and ashes all over Athens. Apart from the people who saw their homes, agricultural fields and cars burnt where the fires burned, the part of Athens population that does not have air-conditioning at their homes (i.e. the poorest one) suffered very hard during the previous days.
Certainly there is political discussion around what happened. The main points are the following:
- The Left and the initial discourse of the government have identified climate change as the culprit for the wildfires.
- Within the left, the anti-authoritarian scene and a significant part of the hard-hit population there is a critique of the systematic defunding of the forest service and of the fire department (i.e. of the reduced material resources and workers employed) as a part of the general "neoliberal" attack on social services (health, education, infrastructures, etc.). Connected with that there is a critique of the increase of expenses for the police, which have skyrocketed in the two years of Mitsotakis' government.
- Regarding the last point, a very emblematic event in the management of the wildfires by the government is the presence of thousands of cops instead of firemen and fire-fighting equipment. Policemen's role was mainly to enforce the evacuation of the areas and to prevent looting. (It seems similar e.g. with the management of Katrina). Many people attack the government with regard to the fact that for the first time there was a priority to the evacuation and that the effort to fight the fires was really weak and disorganized. Actually, we also do not remember another case when the destruction of houses, businesses and infrastructure were so widespread and at the same time so downplayed by the government and most of the mass media.
- There has been resistance to the evacuations by local inhabitants who tried to save their villages from the fire, especially in Northern Evia which was left for many days almost helpless, due to the priority to fight the fire in the northern (and mainly rich) suburbs of Athens. This raises also an important question regarding evacuations: the self-organization of the local communities against the wildfires was a rather important part of their extinguishment in the past; a strategy that prioritizes evacuation completely undermines the effectiveness of the fire fighting efforts.
- An answer that has been provided to this question is that Mitsotakis wants to avoid at all costs the repetition of the catastrophe in Mati, when more than 100 people have died and which was an important event for the downfall of Syriza. We are not sure if this is the case, or if there are deeper reasons behind the new strategy.
- The presence of cops is also justified with the fight against supposed arsonists. After the initial discourse around climate change, the right wing media and circles around the government have spread rumours about the presence of arsonists, agent-provocateurs, etc. etc. whose identity is rather fuzzy (from "illegal immigrants", "agents of Turkey", to "anarchists" to "SYRIZA, etc.) This is also promoted by the extreme right wing.
- The government has been broadly attacked in the social media with the swearword ("Mitsotaki fuck off) which on the one hand expresses the anger of many people. This is actually a hashtag that had appeared in the beginning of March at Twiitter during the protests and riots against police brutality during the lockdown. However, due to its abstract character it has been appropriated by fascists who also went one step forward to an openly homophobic hashtag ("faggot government").
-A group of the fascists has also attacked a TV crew –from the TV station which paradoxically is the most critical against the government. Some left journalists have identified this group as fascist hooligans connected with a football team which is ran by a ship magnate very close to the Mitsotakis family. The police did not intervene and no arrests were made.
-SYRIZA's line as expressed by Tsipras press conference on the 10/8 is to support the government in relation to its management of the fires despite the generalised anger of the majority of the people, in order to appear as a "socially responsible political force" signifying a move towards the political centre and in order to appease the dominant fraction of capital that has systematically blocked its access to the majority of the highly manipulated mass media and press in Greece.
- Within the left / anti-authoritarian milieu there is also a connection of the fires with new capitalist development plans destroying wild nature (e.g. the installation of wind generators). This is with regard to the effects correct, i.e. that after the fires there may be a private appropriation of the areas for the expansion of the city or for the installation of generators, as has been seen in the past. However, there is a strong element of conspiratorial thinking is such a discourse (i.e. that the fires are put in order for the development plans to be implemented, by paid perpetrators).
- Finally, we have to note that Northern Evia which is still burning and has been completely destroyed is a very poor area. Before 30 years, most of the people were miners or poor farmers. Now, most of the people worked in the tourism sector or were poor self-employed farmers (beekeepers, resin gatherers, stock breeders, etc.) Nobody knows what will happen with them after the fire is put out. It is very possible that many of them will migrate to the urban centres…"
