Démocratie Réelle Maintenant des Indignés de Nîmes

Remainders of the temple of Apollo in Thebes

Thebes, April 27

Dear people,

The episode of the sphinx and the riddle comes from the story of Oedipus. The answer is man. As a baby he crawls, as an adult he walks upright and as an old man he uses a cane.

Oedipus gave the right answer and slew the sphinx. Thebes was liberated from a big nuisance to her traffic, and Oedipus was hailed as a hero. He married the princess, he inherited the throne, and they lived happily ever…

Or did they?

Thebes has a very prominent place in Greek tragedy. As a matter of fact, the ancient city was cursed from the moment that its founder Cadmus killed a dragon that was sacred to the war god Mars. He, and all his offspring, would suffer for it.

The three great ancient playwrites have dedicated various of their plays to the tragic history of Thebes.

Only a couple of dozen of their works have survived, but still Aeschylos, Sophocles and Euripides (in that order) are at the basis of theatre, and by extension cinema. Building on the ancient poet who sings the exploits of great heroes, they added more characters, a choir, and in doing so they invented a whole new way of storytelling.

Today their works stand out for their narrative force and inventiveness just like they did when they were written. They are truly ‘classic’, in the sense that they are perpetually contemporary.

Of the three, Euripides is probably the most appealing author, because of the profound humanity of his characters, and his timeless insight into their motives, strengths and weaknesses. They say that Sophocles himself admitted to this. “I paint my characters the way they should be. Euripides paints them the way they are.”

Banner representing the march

The Oedipus Rex by Sophocles tells the true story behind king Oedipus’ apparent fairytale exploits. Not in a lineary fashion, as they happened, but in restrospect.

The public knows the entire story from the start. All events are in the past. There is no way to avoid them.

The real tragedy of Oedipus Rex is not the horrible facts as they were foretold and consumed, but the way the main protagonist slowly finds out about them.

Oedipus is king. Thebes is subject to a horrible plague. Before they will lift it, the gods demand that a certain mysterious murder which happened years before is solved. It’s the start of a reconstruction of the facts.

Step by step, Oedipus begins to realise that all the years of apparent happiness were only an illusion. As a spectator or as a reader you suffer along with him while he becomes ever more desperate to cling on to any hope that the truth isn’t true. Finally, when the last shred of doubt has evaporated, he goes mad, he blinds himself and wanders off ravingly into the world.

Oedipus was born the son of the king and queen of Thebes, and the oracle had predicted that this unlucky prince would kill his father and marry his mother.

Fate is the central theme of Greek tragedy. No-one can escape fate. Not even the gods. Tragic heroes are those who try to do so nevertheless. In the end they realise that their effort to avoid fate was exactly what made fate accomplish itself.

When Oedipus’ parents learned about the curse, they abandoned their child to the wolves. They didn’t have the courage to wait and watch. So they didn’t know that the child was saved by a shepherd and brought to Corinth, where he grew up as a prince.

One day, Oedipus finds out about his fate. He decides never to go back to Corinth, because he is convinced that his step parents are his real parents.

Instead he goes to Thebes. On the road he kills a man that had failed to give him the right of way. Then he slays the sphinx and marries the princess.

During the reconstruction he finds out that he was a native of Thebes all along, that the man he killed was his father the king, and that the princess was his mother.

Making music

For Thebes it was only the first of many other tragedies to follow. Aeschylos, in his Seven Against Thebes, had already narrated the sequel. The two sons – and half brothers – of Oedipus inherited the throne and decided to reign alternately, a year each. At the end of the first year, Eteocles refuses to step down in favour of his brother Polynices. To claim his right, Polynices scrambles an army to attack Thebes. Each of the city gates is assigned to a great hero, and on the seventh gate the brothers confront each other in person.

They both die in combat. The throne befalls to their uncle Creon, who decides that only Eteocles has the right to a decent burial. The body of Polynices is to be left to the dogs. Those who try to bury him are to be put to death as well.

Only one person challenges cruel Creon’s supreme disrespect for the dead. Antigone, sister of the two fallen brothers.

In the homonymous play by Sophocles, the stubborn pride of Creon and the brave disobedience of Antigone finally lead to the complete and utter destruction of the royal house of Thebes.

All the while, blind Oedipus wanders the world. Everywhere he goes, people chase him away as a bringer of bad luck. Much worse than death, his divine penalty is a long life of sufferance.

Just before he died, Sophocles wrote a sequel to his Oedipus Rex. It was called Oedipus at Colonus, and it was first represented posthumously. It’s a touching piece about aging, remorse, madness, and love.

The true heroin of the play is once again Antigone. She is the only person in the world who hasn’t abandoned Oedipus. With loving dedication she guides her father and half brother through the darkness to his final resting place. Colonus, where Sophocles himself was born.

View of modern Thebes

Apart from the legend, also in history itself, Thebes is a cursed place.

She sided with the Persians against her great rival Athens during the invasion of Xerxes, and she would pay for it dearly. It was only due to the subsequent rivalry between Athens and Sparta that Thebes was able to regain importance, and finally live a brief season of dominance under her great general Epaminondas in the twilight years of the city state.

Finally, the fate of the city was sealed by Alexander.

After the decisive defeat of the Greek city states at Chaeronea, the Thebans still dared to rise up against their Macedonian overlords.

Alexander decided he would turn the city into an example for all of Greece. He ordered Thebes to be razed to the ground. According to tradition, the only building he wanted to be left was the house of the poet Pindar.

In modern Thebes, you can still find some lone rocks here and there with a sign that says ‘archeological site’. It doesn’t amount to much. Alexander’s troops did a good job.

The new city is built on the same hill as the ancient one. In the absence of significant landmarks there are no tourists. Instead there is a quarter with some old houses and a lot of immigrants. The place feels authentic. It’s a city on a human scale. But even though true misery isn’t directly visible, Thebes is definitely suffering.

I see countless empty shop windows all over town. Shoe stores, fashion stores, grocers, bakers. For lack of customers with purchasing power they have all closed. What remains is a sign that says ‘for rent’. ‘Ενοικιαζεται’, you find that word wherever you go.

The middle class is fading away, the downtown shopping district is slowly becoming a wasteland and foreign-owned discount malls are sprouting up like sphinxes on the outskirts of town to cash in on the crisis.

Thebes has suffered disasters of much greater magnitude in her long history. But always people kept faith that a hero would come along to save the day.

Nowadays, it seems like people here have lost all hope that something or someone can still save them.

Internal assembly under Liberty Tree

Max and José Miguel

 

Aliartos, April 25

Dear people,

We have entered the fertile valley of Boiotia, the clouds have finally gone and now the sun makes it feel like summer. We march to the tiny village of Alalkomenes, where you see more tractors on the street than cars.

There is one bar which looks like it has closed twenty years ago. Next to it there are the remainders of a gas station from the nineteen-sixties. The old homes of the peasants are either in ruin, or in use as hen houses or sheds. The former water tower is being consumed by creepers. In between it all, there are modern concrete homes, slowly supplanting the old village.

Opposite the ancient gas station, and right next to a rusty tractor, there is a little square where we camp.

Arriving in Alalkomenes

Of all places, this is where a car stops and two hitch hikers with bag packs get out. They are from France, and they come to join the march.

After a couple of days of meditative silence in the group, it was exactly what we needed. Fresh blood.

“How did you find us?”

“Easy. The route was published on the internet.”

Indeed it was. Something is working out well with our march, and it bears fruit. In the March on Brussels we had a dozen people working in ‘Communication’, but no-one on the outside really knew anything about where we were or where we were going.

Comrades José Miguel and Max

Comrade Leonidas making coffee

I take a sunset walk through the fields.

The variety of beauty in Greece is really overwhelming. The valley of Boiotia is another example of this. It has a splendid natural configuration. You can imagine it as a giant pussy.

The valley has a long oval shape, it’s dominated on the far end by Mount Parnassus and it’s closed by two ridges of mountains visible from all over the plain. You can see them converge in the distance. Over the mountains, on both sides, there is the sea.

Fresh water comes running down the slopes into the valley. There is no lack of it here. In fact, of old there used to be a lake in the center of the valley. We are walking across its former shores.

The lake was drained at the end of the 19th century by a British company. Back then, just like today’s bridge to the Peloponnese, the terrain was private property of the foreign investors. Only in the 1950s the polders of Boiotia were returned to the Greek government.

View of Alalkomenes

Sundown behind Mount Parnassus

It has been ten days, and still Mount Parnassus is visible in the distance. When it has absorbed the setting sun, I return to the village. In front of one of the houses there is a family enjoying the evening cool. They wink me over, a daughter called Freedom speaks English and translates. They want to know everything about the march, about Holland. And they tell me about old Boiotia.

It takes all evening. A bottle of tsipouro and homemade spinach cake are brought to the table. They induce me to eat and to drink. They are proud to speak about the valley.

The history of this place is so vast that it goes way back beyond everything we know from written records. You almost get the feeling that this is where things started.

Ancient tales speak of a golden age when man lived peacefully and happily in harmony with nature for countless generations. After the golden age came strife and war and corruption, followed by the great cataclysm, when Zeus ordered the waters to swallow the world and only Deucalion and Pyrrha could save themselves on the peak of Mount Parnassus.

The lake was one of the remainders when the waters retreated. And all around it, the valley flourished again.

The Boiotians claim the great hero Hercules to be their own, as well as Cadmus, founder of Thebes, of whom they say that he brought the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge from Phoenicia to Greece – the alphabet.

Also Dionysos, the horny god of wine, and the cult of Mother Earth, are native of Boiotia, so they say. The locals even claim their valley to be the birth place of the men who are at the root of our written history. Doubtfully great Homer, and more realistically Hesiod, author of the Theogony, one of the first accounts of the genesis of the world, dating from the Greek middle ages.

“Boiotia far precedes Athens. The territory of Athens is dry and unfavourable to agriculture. That’s why they set out with their ships. Before the age of navigation, fertile Boiotia was the throbbing heart of Greece.”

Still, as I walk through the fields, I’m sad. There are only a handful of people living here to work all the terrain with mechanical means.

Sterile seeds from corporations, artificial fertilizers, pesticides. Miles and miles of plastic irrigation tubes which last only one season. Complete dependency on oil.

We have come to treat Mother Earth as a whore, I think.

For thousands of years the valley of Boiotia was worked by small communities of farmers, until very recently, only a generation or two ago. You can still see the traces of those days fading away.

I’m not at all against appropriate use of technology. But I’m convinced that part of this revolution should be the re-establishment of a direct link between human society and the land. This is where our food comes from. This is what we live off in the end. Money is just an invention.

Sustainability means respect and love for Mother Earth who nurtures us. And respect for the earth means respect for ourselves and for our offspring.

Acampada Alalkomenes this morning

Camping under Liberty Tree in Aliartos this afternoon

 

 

Max and Mount Parnassus

Livadia, April 22

Dear people,

It’s a marvellous walk through the shire of Boiotia, from Karakolithos down the valley to the little town of Livadia. The hills are curly green with forests, the valleys are chequered with patches of cultivation, the road is winding, and the sun has finally returned.

As we get are getting closer to Athens, the historical matter starts to thicken. Of course I could have written the chronicles of this march without any reference to history, but I’m sure the resulting narrative would be very pale. I like to see things in four dimensions, especially here in Greece. There is no other way to put things into perspective.

Up until now, I have limited myself to narrating certain historical events without any chronological order, whenever there was a good occasion to do so. But at this point all the facts and dates and stories could become a bit confusing without a general outline of ancient Greek history.

Undoubtedly, many of you know all this. For those who don’t, I’ll be brief.

The archaic history of Greece is centered on the island of Crete and the city of Mycene.

Crete was the first European civilization. Its most important town was Knossos, its most legendary ruler was king Minos. In our collective memory, it’s best known for its famous Labyrinth and the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

We know little about the Cretans, because their language – known as Linear A – is still to be deciphered. All we have to reconstruct their society are the archaeological remains. According to comrade José Miguel, these are very interesting, because in Crete there were hardly found any traces of either weapons or fortifications. Instead, the few remaining artistic representations of Minoan society, give an image of wealth and beauty.

The decline of the Cretan civilization was dramatically accelerated by the eruption of a volcano on the island Thera. It caused a tsunami which must have completely destroyed many settlements on the northern coast of Crete. According to some, this event inspired the legend of Atlantis, as narrated by Plato a thousand years later.

After the Cretan age came the Mycenian age. This is the period of the warrior kings narrated by Homer. The time of gods, demi-gods and heroes, and the great battle for control over Troy, the crossroads between East and West.

The invasion of blond haired, blue eyed Dorian tribes from northern Europe put an end to this civilization, and gave way to the Greek middle ages. The Dorians settled all over the peninsula. The most famous of the cities they founded was Sparta.

Like in the history of Europe, after the middle ages came the age of expansion. The little city states were growing, their inhabitants started exploring the seas and settling on far away coasts all over the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

The flourishing Greek city states were regarded as an easy prey by the enormous Persian empire, which had united all the known lands of the East. But a free man is a more worthy soldier than a slave, and the Persian empire got defeated twice, against all odds. It marked the beginning of the golden age of the city state.

It lasted maybe three or four generations, but it encompassed the most violent explosion of human genius in history. I could fill this article just by giving you the names of the great artists, scientists, philosophers and statesmen which marked the age, but I won’t. You already know them.

The leading city state, and the cultural heart of Greece, was the naval power of Athens. Its great competitor was the proto-fascist state of Sparta. In Sparta all the work was done by slaves, and all the citizens were soldiers.

In thirty years of warfare, Sparta managed to defeat Athens and become the dominant power of Greece. It was the beginning of the decline. Sparta would later be eclipsed by Thebes, and after that, the ‘barbarians’ came.

From the northern mountains, king Philip of Macedonia marched down the peninsula to unite all of Greece under his scepter. I look down the valley, on the other side of the hills to the northeast, at Chaeronea, the Macedonians met an army of Greek city states headed by the Sacred Band of Thebes.

The Greeks were decisively defeated and submitted by the Macedonians. Among the latter, the young son of king Philip gloriously withstood his baptism of fire. His name was Alexander. And for him, Chaeronea was only the beginning. After uniting Greece and inheriting the throne he would go on to obliterate the entire Persian empire in one of the most epic adventures of all time.

Arrival in Livadia

We arrive in Livadia, a modern town along a snorring mountain stream. The French among us are excited. Yesterday, the indignant Marches to Paris arrived in the capital to coincide with the French presidential elections.

I haven’t been able to follow them closely, but I have received some first hand news about them on various occasions.

At the March to Brussels reunion party on new year’s eve I first heard about the idea. Some of our comrades from Bayonne were active in organising something similar to the popular marches in Spain last summer. Afterwards, during Agora Roma, the idea got form, and at the beginning of March, people started walking.

There have been six marches in total, departing from Bayonne, Marseille, Toulouse, Lille, Angers and the banlieues of Paris.

A few weeks ago I heard from Jesus Christ, a veteran of the March on Brussels, who participated in the Bayonne march. He wasn’t positive about the revolutionary spirit of his comrades, and he later switched to the Toulouse march. But all the same, I think it’s extraordinary that something like this has been organised in France. And I’m proud of it.

Proud, because if people have been walking from various corners of the country to the capital, organising popular assemblies in the villages, that is in great part thanks to us who walked all across France to Brussels last summer.

So I wasn’t surprised to see some of those very same people with whom we danced around the fire at the stroke of the new year, being interviewed by Le Monde about their reasons for marching. Real popular democracy, instead of a recurring election mascarade.

It’s still early, we’re still very small, but last year’s seeds have started to germinate.

From Livadia, Greece, two weeks marching from Athens, I warmly salute all of our revolutionary brothers and sisters who walked to Paris to give life to something new.

Acampada Livadia

 

Internal assembly in Delphi

Arachova, April 20

Dear people,

We could have seen it coming, and many of us did, but only since yesterday it’s official. As far as Athens goes, we don’t have any illusions any more.

Our comrades organising the International Agora have been very silent lately. And even though in general ‘no news is good news’, Greece is different. News or not, it’s bad. And yesterday evening comrades Getafe and Laurentina showed up in Delphi to bring us the bad news in person.

There is no Agora Athens. For two months, ever since they left the march in Salerno they have been trying to organise something, together with local movements. Yesterday they admitted defeat. Reality has dealt them the final blow.

Athens is a city of five million inhabitants. Many of them are depressed or even desperate. It’s a city under shock. If we had arrived last summer, when Syntagma was occupied and there were oceanic demonstrations in front of parliament every night, we would have found it to be a warm bath. Now we are only the distant echo of a movement whose brief season has already ended here last autumn.

From a different perspective

People don’t believe in popular assemblies or demonstrations or peaceful resistance any more. They have no hope, and if they take the streets to demonstrate it’s mainly for the adrenaline kick.

In two weeks time, when our march will arrive, hardly anyone will notice, and those who do will shrug their shoulders. Especially with elections being held the day after, we definitely won’t make any difference.

Our liaison comrades, and others before them, told us that there is no lack of resistance movements in Athens. In fact, there are far too many of them. According to Getafe, twenty-five different anarchist movements have been trying for two years to establish common objectives. By now only five of them are still talking to each other, the others have gone their separate way. And that is just the anarchists. The fragmentation among communists and other groups is much worse.

Pacifism is frowned upon as useless by most movements, even if relatively few of them actively profess urban guerilla. Those who do are invariably manipulated by the mainstream media. On tv the acts of violence are highlighted at the expense of the underlying motives.

All we can do in this giant maelstrom is what we always do. We go, we take a square, and after that, we improvise.

With hindsight, the auspices for the organisation of an ‘international agora’ hadn’t been favourable from the start. In Belgium or in Italy, the word ‘agora’ may recall the ancient public square where people met and exchanged ideas, but in new Greek agora means ‘market’. It might be a bit confusing for some.

Dark clouds over Arachova

All the while the march is in the mountains. Today we had another 500 meters of ascent to do. Looking up from Delphi, we see the town of Aráchova high above, guarding the mountain pass. In the early evening, when dark clouds gather around the peaks, the town sounds and seems a bit like the gate to Mordor.

Even without hope or illusions, we will have to pass.

Me personally, I’m a bit relieved. The march is one thing, Athens is another. We need to concentrate on the road now, show strength and carry on. Cueste lo que cueste.

Yesterday I talked about the situation with comrade José Miguel, the archaeologist. He has been with us every day from Rome, he has put up with all the shit that has happened along the way, and he always kept working for the group, cleaning the square, doing difusion with charm and with a smile.

“How do you manage?” I ask.

“Look,” he says, and he takes a business card out of his pocket. “This is from a mister Georgios Kristopoulos. He has a jeweller’s shop here up the road. Just now I told him about our march. I gave him our flyer, and he cried. All because of this lousy piece of paper which explains our reasons for marching. He cried out of gratitude for what we’re doing. That’s why I’m still here. I’m doing this march for mister Georgios Kristopoulos.”

On the square in Arachova