The name is absent

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paréa descended on the city at a precipitous rate. On the first night of the protest my
anarchist contact described meeting with “professional protesters” as they are known in
Greece: individuals who are paid to escalate public action, cause damage, and to goad
reluctant crowds. However, he noted, the youth on the street did not need the
encouragement of professionals to cause trouble: while the protesters did not seem to
come with the intention of smashing and burning the city, they stayed when the violence
started creating impromptu masks to protect their identities and to lessen the sting of
teargas. The youth seemed eager to attack the symbols of the state (like government
buildings and universities), the perceived partners or puppet-masters of the state (banks
and large multinationals), and the state’s protectors (the police). In fact, at the height of
the violence, young people managed to coordinate the simultaneous attack of about 45
police stations across Greece, mostly over mobile text (Gravriilidis 2009) and without the
intervention of anarchist organizers or their henchmen.

It is important to note that not all of the youth on the streets of Athens that
December identified themselves as anarchists, nor did they claim to be taking part in
anarchic action, despite acknowledging the powerful anti-state sentiment that seemed to
unite the crowd. Most people I spoke with claimed they were there only to protest police
brutality and to demand justice, not only for Alexis Grigoropoulos but for “all the youth”.
However, engaging in violence seemed, for many of these consultants, to be a natural
extension of protesting the state and, even though most people on the streets did not turn
to violence themselves, they nonetheless broadly condoned the looting, arson, and
general property damage taking place around them. As demonstrated in chapter three,
there is no question that the discursive spaces within which the youth of Greece

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