The name is absent

163

undertake idiosyncratic identity negotiations, and which have come to include
IocalZtranslocal anti-state discourses, promote anarchic public action. Moreover, it is
easy to see how the political consciousness of the youth demographic may be coming to
allow more radical anti-state groups and their tactics within the spectrum of acceptable
politics. When individuals make a subjective ethical decision to indirectly support
violence against the state in the spirit of solidarity with others taking a stand against the
establishment, sympathy or at least tolerance for more intensely violent anti-state action
becomes possible. Hence, Athens burned for days, more violent elements were able to
act out, and the media became saturated with images of hooded youth, smashed
storefronts, and fearful citizens.

Of course the media coverage was partial. Newspapers and television programs
splashed countless images of anarchists, or individuals resembling anarchists, on their
front pages and across their screens, but broadly ignored the participation of a number of
groups of other unconventional citizens. With the exception of a few references to, and
images of, visible minorities in the news, who were without exception accused of
perpetuating and intensifying violence, the participants were broadly represented as being
white youth. Likewise, most researchers have also overlooked the participation of other
unconventional citizens, again with the exception of some who have noted the presence
of visible minorities, or “foreigners”, among the protest participants'⁴³. Considering the
sorry state of mainstream¹⁴⁴ minority activism in the country (Gropas & Triandafyllidou

¹⁴³ For example, Andreas Kalyvas spoke on the participation of minority groups in his lecture entitled “An
Anomaly? Reflections on the Greek December 2008” which he gave at Princeton University, December
2009.

¹⁴⁴1 say ‘mainstream’ here because one might argue that anarchist groups and other far-left groups
advocate for minorities, immigrants, and illegal migrants, albeit unofficially.

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