The terrible failure of the liberal mind to deconstruct the value of its children’s resistance with a sophisticated attitude November 1973.
Last year, the eve of his anniversary Polytechnic, cartoonist Dimitris Handzopoulos published a sketch in Kathimerini that ten years before (before the financial crisis) would have been impossible, if not impossible, for anyone to imagine. The sketch shows one of the deepest images in the collective memory: The tank approaching the main gate of the Polytechnic. Except that it is not the students who are now under siege (therefore the defenders of democracy), but the MAT, and on the contrary, the potential invaders are not soldiers or policemen (therefore the enemies of democracy ), but some, of an unspecified type. , anti-authorization.
This reversal – even at the level of deliberately provocative comic representation – would have been unthinkable had it not been for a series of previous attempts with the ostensible goal of downgrading the Polytechnic uprising, to stop it functioning as a symbol of resistance against authoritative. powers and as a constitutional myth Tuesday Hellenic Republic. These efforts continued during the years of the crisis and were built mainly on two denials: The first denial relates to the dead of the Polytechnic • the second to the contribution of the Polytechnic to the fall of the dictatorship.
I will not deal with the first one here. It is, after all, an artless attempt by the Far Right to construct a meta-truth that, however, does not convince those already caught up in the communities enmeshed in its irrational universe. The second, however, the one that questions the contribution of the Polytechnic rebellion to the fall of the Junta, is a more sophisticated denial and deserves attention. First of all, because it does not come from unpolished or graphic artists of the true right spectrum, but from intellectuals and social scientists of the liberal space. Nor does it question hard facts; he did not criticize the intentions of the rebels;
From the many texts in this category, I choose the most challenging one, an autobiography containing retrospective judgments, written by the author Apostolos Doxiadis, who is currently the coordinator of national activities for unaccompanied refugee children.
“One thing is certain”, writes Doxiadis. Quite the opposite, actually. It ended in a barbaric and tragic way, and a few days later another Junta came, worse than the first, a deterioration of the situation that probably would not have happened if the Polytechnic profession had not preceded it. […]From there, the opinion that the Polytechnic, even if it did not bring down the Junta, was the beginning of the end of the Junta, in circulation among some old timers. […] There was only one thing suppressing the violent Polytechnic: Junta Ioannidis, which was much worse than Papadopoulos. And it was not the end of the dictatorship, but of the opposition against the dictatorship, with the hope that it would end in the future. […] The Polytechnic Ioannidis gave a lot, Ioannidis the coup in Cyprus, and this was the reason that created “Attila”. […] without the Polytechnic and the chain of events it probably started […] the Cyprus tragedy would not have happened.”
The first thing that can be noticed in these passages is a lack of internal logical consistency. Doxiadis first claims that the Polytechnic uprising did not at all contribute to the fall of the dictatorship, but on the contrary caused its rise. After that, however, he builds a chain of events that causally links the Polytechnic to the invasion of Turkish troops in Cyprus. But, of course, following this line of reasoning, the next logical link in the chain is surely the fall of the Junta. Therefore, if Doxiadis wanted to be consistent in his own reasoning, he would have to accept that the Polytechnic was the starting point of a chain of events that eventually led to the fall of the Junta, even if that chain included the tragedy of Cyprus.
But Doxiadis cares to causally link the Polytechnic only to the two negative developments (the Ioannidis junta and the Cyprus tragedy), but not to the positive outcome (the fall of the Junta). This lack of logical consistency in his reasoning shows the ideological starting point of his argument: The purpose of the analysis is not the “cool” assessment of things – as
More broadly, the positive reasoning of liberal intellectuals suffers from something deeper than a lack of logical consistency. He understands history precisely as a linear chain of events, in which each subsequent one arises in a straight line, self-evidently and without intervention from its predecessor. It therefore seems perfect for them that Attila’s invasion would automatically cause the fall of the junta, as if the ESA were merciless torturers, those who kept thousands of citizens in prisons and exiles, people who shot teenagers in cold blood at the Polytechnic University. , they suddenly felt an unbearable regret for the result of their activity in Cyprus and offered themselves voluntarily to the Republic without conditions, therefore with a strong possibility of their own exile or imprisonment.
But of course there was no intention of giving up, and that is why they went ahead with a general mobilization, just as any state leadership would do in a similar situation. The general mobilization, ie the practical invocation of the external danger, did not create internal unity at all, as happened in other cases, for example in the invasion of the Italians in ’40, when the whole of Greek society came together around that time. leadership although it was also a dictatorship. On the contrary, conscription signaled the end of any vestige of regime legitimacy. In a convincing article of theirs, two political scientists (Georgos Tsiridis and Dimitris Papanikolopoulos) include several accounts that testify to the situation that prevailed in those first chaotic days. I mentioned two elements: description and picture.
The description: “The look itself [των επίστρατων] It was a de facto denial of military rule. Attempts by the hierarchy to change this appearance met with effective resistance. No one would cut his hair or beard. Patriotic propaganda left them indifferent. They didn’t even find meaning in the war.[…] It was clear that, in the event of a conflict, the desertion as well as the death of an officer would take a large number of people.”
This elimination of precisely every trace of legitimation that emerges in the two splits was the necessary contribution of the Polytechnic: getting rid of the minimum amount of oxygen that would maintain a necessary space around the Dictatorship. The uprising acted as a catalyst for many to abandon fear, resulting in six years of widespread regime tolerance due to fear combined with the benefits of economic growth. And although the benefits had already been eliminated by the oil crisis, the fear occurred precisely during the three crucial days of that November. Because, although one cannot speak of the pandemic support of the students, the bells rang in the districts, the amateurs broadcast the Polytechnic station increasing its scope and thousands of Athenians risked a passage from Patision. After all, the escape for a moment gave even the pluralistic and self-censoring newspapers of the time. For example, Vima wrote on his front page, precisely on November 17, 1973.
“In these critical hours, it shows how unprofitable the obsession with authoritarian regimes is. The people of Greece as a whole, as well as their loyal friends in Europe, want political peace for our country. But it is not an imposed rut that causes dangerous outbursts of discomfort from time to time, but a democratic normality that would put an end to a situation that is clearly unsustainable.” (“The lesson”, Chun Vima, November 17, 1973.)
What liberal intellectuals observe, therefore, is the vital role of social movements. Its instrumental role is not exactly functional – that is often small. The role of the movements is broader and longer-term, because they change the dominant assumptions of the world, reset the established hierarchies and reform the values that focus on the many. And all this always works the second time, they do not follow direct, but circuitous paths, precisely because associations do not, like Pavlov’s dog, respond automatically and predictably to stimuli. A movement can influence in many indirect ways, even through the Elites, defining the terms and limits of their movements, aspects that we can recognize for example in
Of course, most of the liberal intellectuals, and they are perceptive and excellent connoisseurs of the problems of the movements. So we can assume that their attitude rather than their contemporary purpose arises, rather than from a concern for a valid anatomy of the past. In other words, if you are interested in eliminating movements from the present and the future, you have every reason to reduce their role in the past.
“Let’s end this ideological nonsense”! If we take into account the ten-year systematic deconstruction effort that preceded it, yesterday’s prime minister’s crown no longer seems out of place. The fact that Chrysochoidis’s movements are spared in the Handzopoulos sketch is not: the police are finally looking at Patision from inside the gate. The Polytechnic was and is a battlefield. Then real, today symbolic. The prime minister knows it. The minister too. But so are we.
Haris Athanasiadis is Professor of Public History in the Department of Political Science and History at Panteion University
*The article was published on documentonews.gr on 15.11.2020
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Ce their historical significance. By downplaying or questioning the contributions of social movements like the Polytechnic uprising, they effectively seek to minimize their legitimacy and impact in contemporary discourse. This serves a dual purpose: it reinforces the power structures that these movements challenge, and it suggests that meaningful change can only come from established political processes, rather than grassroots activism.
Moreover, the narrative that reduces the influence of the Polytechnic uprising to mere backlash or unintended consequences is a form of historical revisionism that seeks to erase the agency of those who rebelled. By framing these events as causal chains leading only to negative outcomes, liberal intellectuals divert attention from the real lessons of the Polytechnic, which demonstrate the crucial role of civil resistance in confronting tyranny.
In essence, the argument can be made that Doxiadis and others who take a similar stance are engaging in a discourse that is deeply rooted in preserving the status quo. They are not simply offering a critique; they are participating in a large-scale effort to obscure the transformative potential of collective action. This kind of intellectual orthodoxy, which favors narratives that align with a liberal framework of gradual reform through institutional channels, overlooks the possibilities for genuine upheaval and change that can arise from movements like the Polytechnic uprising.
Thus, the historical significance of such uprisings should not merely be measured by their immediate outcomes but must be contextualized within a larger narrative of resistance and social change. The Polytechnic uprising highlights the importance of civic engagement and the capacity for individuals to challenge systems of oppression, ultimately helping to pave the way for future movements and societal transformations. By reassessing the ways in which we understand and evaluate these moments in history, we can better appreciate their lasting impact and the potential they hold for inspiring current and future generations.