63
but held more mainstream political opinions: servicing the needs of the movement
pursuant to the anarchist ideal required freedom to act outside the law and across several
incompatible social networks inevitably attracting police attention which could be
harmful to his associates, I was told.
“The problem with the Greeks”, Nikos explained to me, “is their simultaneous
dependency on, and detestation of, the system”. I had heard this before in my
conversations with other Greeks; however, Nikos argued that this phenomenon was the
result of intentional state strategy, rather than the product of socio-political and economic
history as I was generally told elsewhere. He claimed that this situation was achieved
through the centralization of not only the mechanisms of the state, but also of the minds
of its citizens. Asked what he meant by the centralization of the mind and why the state
would endeavor to centralize the citizen, Nikos explained, rather abstractly, that
centralization was the political operating paradigm in Greece. Large centers of
administration create the illusion of power on which citizens subsequently focus their
actions. This was a way of controlling the public59 and of projecting an image of strength
which, he continued quickly, Greece ultimately wished to deploy beyond its borders in an
effort to remain dominant within the Balkan region and to spread its influence beyond.
Nikos argued that the Balkan region was of special concern to Greece due to the recent
birth of post-socialist states and their struggle with neoliberalism. He explained that
these states, still largely in transition, were open to Hellenic political influence which he
suspected was already flowing through various channels to shape fledgling foreign
591 imagine he meant spatially. Niko was unwilling to pursue the idea of a “centralized citizen” further. I
suspect this was part of the anarchist rhetoric he deployed elsewhere, but which didn’t seem to work in this
conversation.
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