In 2004, amid one of France’s many Islam-related controversies, anthropologist Emmanuel Terray published an article discussing the dispute over the headscarf as an instance of political “hysteria,” a concept borrowed from psychoanalysis. Drawing on Hungarian historian István Bibó’s explanation of the blindness and irrationality of interwar Central European politics, Terray discussed how real issues had been sidelined in favor of a “fictional problem” that, once “solved,” would supposedly allow the community to reaffirm its unity and “move on.”
This isn’t the only use of such a “fictional problem.” For to couch this kind of problem in the vocabulary of “crisis” or “danger” legitimizes all manner of excessive “responses.” Dire warnings, harsh “law and order” rhetoric, and the punitive stance adopted by the state’s repressive apparatuses all serve to create a sense of emergency. From this stems the state of exception that allows for the rights of particular individuals or social groups to be ditched.
After years of austerity, Greece is currently experiencing the effects of precisely this kind of political hysteria — one that targets a supposed “enemy within.” Indeed, as soon as a new right-wing government was elected in July 2019, a ferocious ideological rhetoric incessantly zoned in on the supposedly grave danger represented by a particular neighborhood in central Athens, renowned for its far-left and anarchist leanings. The target of this campaign was Exarcheia, a district of the capital associated with political dissent ever since the restoration of the republic in 1974.
Both the new prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the new minister of citizen protection, Michalis Chrysochoidis, stated as soon as they assumed office that Exarcheia must return to “normality.” So far, this return to normality has translated into police raids on fifteen squats, as well as to numerous reported cases of excessive police violence in the Exarcheia area.
But the new “normal” goes further. It includes overturning the law banning police from university campuses, as well as an unprecedented concentration of power in the Ministry of Citizen Protection. Indeed, this latter ministry, responsible for keeping oversight over the police, has now taken charge of the formerly independent Ministry of Migration and the penitentiary system, formerly overseen by the Ministry of Justice.
The whole effort was crowned by the minister’s ultimatum that anarchists must vacate their squats by December 5 — a highly symbolic date, set one day before the annual commemoration of the police killing of fifteen-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in 2008. Greece’s government is determined to stamp out a hub of dissent — with effects that spread wide beyond this Athens neighborhood itself.
