Discussion with the total army objectors from Greece
Topic: Antimilitarism – Anarchists against the army – total army objectors in Greece
Date: 10 October 2024
Transcribed using AI (and checked for mistakes) from the live audio recording of the online discussion. Be advised that mistakes may occur in the text.
Comrades presenting: Markos (changed name) from a region of Northen Greece
Komuna:
Okay so now it’s officially on and recording. So yeah, I think that Markos can talk directly on the points that he actually prepared for this, and we have some questions regarding that. But maybe just to tell the context of Kosovo and why it is important, specifically for Kosovo.
I mean, Kosovo was always like a clusterfuck when it comes to constant tension happening between Kosovo and Serbia, and this kind of gives legitimacy to the militarization of society to such a degree that now in Serbia and also in Kosovo they are talking about introducing mandatory military service. At the same time, there is a rise of expenditure in both armies—specifically Serbia is way ahead, they are even buying airplanes from France—whereas Kosovo has raised military expenditures by 400 percent in the last three years after the mandate of the last government.
Adding to that, Kosovo has recently passed this strategy for whole-of-society mobilization, which is mostly a kind of program for how to mobilize society when it comes to conflicts or natural disasters. One important part of it is the role of the educational system in preparing society for this. So we are seeing this constant drive by elites that are pushing societies towards more militarization as such.
In the Balkans, this is even more prominent due to the geopolitical reality of the region. On one side you have NATO, on the other side you have the Russian Federation, and both are using the Balkans for their own imperialist purposes. But then again, we should not forget the local imperialists who use and abuse militarization against the societies first and foremost. We have seen this since the Yugoslavian war—there is always this tendency of elites mobilizing society and repressing any type of dissent or social movement through militarization and nationalism.
I think one good point in all of this, because there’s a bit more different context as well as a deeper resistance to it in Greece, is that Markos and his experience can really tell us how the reality of militarization is in Greece and how the resistance towards that looks. Maybe we can get some inspiration on how to actually organize against the militarization of our society, which is daily slipping more into a more militarized and nationalist one.
So Markos, without further ado, maybe you can present yourself and then maybe you can start telling us a bit more about the context in Greece, however you want to start from history to current context, whatever you like.
Markos:
First of all, thank you for calling me. I come from a small city called [Censored]. It’s the [Censored] biggest city of the [Censored]. There has been a significant presence of anarchist activities the past 20 years in the city but not more.
Sorry for not being able to join your festival in June, in July sorry. What’s really important to understand is that what I’m going to express now is not let’s say my personal opinions in a way that I’m not some kind of, how should I say, an stepped philosopher that has ideas. Many years I have been participating in collectives, readings, struggling in the streets. This has formed the way I view the world and somehow what I express is collectivated.
We have to admit that about 100 years ago the states that we live in were more, they were not saying so many lies. For example, their ministries were called ministry of war, not ministry of peace, defense. When they were conquering a place, they said that we expanded our territory. Now they say that we liberated the place or we liberated the people.
And of course, always there has been this argument about defense. No state would claim that we are organizing this war in order to attack someone. Every state says that it has to defend between the cultures and the civilization, defend the women, defend the western bloc, defend the eastern bloc, defend from the other countries that they want to attack us. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Even Hitler used this argument of defense saying that I have to defend from the injustice of the treaties that form the First World War. As you said, there is a talk about re-inauguration of compulsory military service in Kosovo and Serbia. But at the same time, this is happening in Croatia also. But of course, there is a big discussion in Europe.
Everything tells us that there is not a war that is going to come. There is a war that is going on right now. The point is, the question is, what is our position in this?
I don’t know if you are familiar with the ancient Greek history, when the states used to be city state, not nation state. But back then, soldiers were only the citizens. The citizens were owners of wealth, were owners of privileges, were owners of slaves. Nobody would think that they could give swords and arrows to the slaves so as to fight for the city, for the state. Because they knew that the slaves would use them against them.
So it was the citizens, the free citizens, that had this privilege to join the army. And their main goal was to have as much more profits out of the wars. New territories, new fields, new mining activities, more gold, more silver, more working force. The basic things that the wars are made for.
So what I think is the most important thing for us is to destroy this argument about defence for every state that we live in. And the second thing is that our interests are not somehow being served through the procedures of war. The interests of our class enemies, yes, they are served. But are these interests our interests? I say no.
Komuna:
Maybe you can tell us a bit of the context of militarization in Greece as well.
Markos:
Yeah, I will say some things about this. I don’t want to speak about other countries. This is something that the comrades in these specific countries should do. But what is really important to have in mind is that if something is supposed to be revolutionary, it is every action that declines the militarism of our own state, that creates problems for our own state, that creates problems for our own government.
And in Greece, since the 30s and the 50s and of course the 70s, the ideology of the left parties was dominant. And this ideology has as a result people to think that Greece is always a small state that has many enemies and it is dependent to big countries. So there is no reason to fight against your own government, to fight against your own army. There is a reason to fight against NATO, for example, or against the US government.
So the field of the social and class struggle, according to the left ideology, was transferred 5,000 kilometers away, 10,000 kilometers away. Not here, not where we live, not where we are being exploited. We are being tortured by the police, exploited by our bosses or suppressed by the cops.
So one main point is to get rid of this heritage. And this has been a really tough task for the anarchist and anti-authoritarian and autonomous movement in Greece. And we still have problems on that.
So what I’m going to show you with these slides is that I will try to say that every state has its own interests. Every state needs armed forces to impose these interests. And that whenever a diplomat is saying an argument in one conference, in the reality, it is the weapons behind him talking. If there are no weapons, his arguments will never be heard.
So I will focus a little bit on Greece. For the part of the movement that I participate in, Greece is not a dependent state. Greece is an expansionist state. And Greece is the America of the Balkans. This is how we call it.
So the aim of the presentation is to understand that the Greek state has geopolitical interests and expansion strategies. And that these strategies are long-term and don’t change because a new government comes, like it happened in 2015 with the left government of Syriza—left and with a coalition of a right-wing party, of course. And that all these strategies have militarism and national unity as a base.
Greece was established as the kingdom in 1830. And after that, one politician, Colettis, in 1844, he proposed his great idea about the nation and the state of the Greeks. He said that Greece as a territory should include all Greeks. So according to his great idea, Greece should be of two continents and five seas. The two continents are Europe and Asia. And the five seas are the Black Sea, the Marmara Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Ionian Sea, and the Sea under Crete.
In order for Greece to fulfill these strategies, it started some wars. So between 1912 and 1922, Greece participated in five wars: the First Balkan War, the Second Balkan War, the participation of Greece in the First World War, the mission against the Russian Revolution (Greece sent troops to Ukraine in 1919), and then the Greek-Turkish War between 1919 and 1922.
You have to have in mind that in 1922, the Greek troops advanced 55 kilometers away from Ankara. So it is really weird and of course it is really dangerous that the Greek state pretends after five wars in one decade, that it is a state that loves peace, that maintains peace and is defending itself.
As you can see, Greece was the deep blue part [noting photos in the presentation]. And if you see a map of Greece now, you will see that it is two times, two times even more bigger. And this is a propaganda map of the nationalistic aspirations of Greece.
We have to remember that after Romanism and the French Revolution and the idea for one nation, one state, every state has its own nationalistic aspirations. So this is the map of the Great Greece, as it was called. And you can see these aspirations.
There is a big problem in this map. Can you recognize the problem if you are good at geography? Down on the left, there is Cyprus. Cyprus is not there. But it is an aspiration of the Greek state. At that time Cyprus belonged to the British Empire.
The Greek state started a nationalistic guerilla in Cyprus between 1955 and 1959 and Cyprus became independent from the British Empire. So Greece has also conducted a war, a proxy war, with nationalistic guerillas run by Greek lieutenants, also against Great Britain.
So I am saying all this to understand that even though the states pretend to be small, that nobody loves them, that they have enemies around them, if we dig deep inside the history, we will find many, many atrocities and many crimes that they have done.
So this is a map that we had in the schools. I remember this map. Cyprus went on the right side. But of course it is not there. Cyprus is supposed to be an independent sovereign state. So by having it in the map of your state, it means that you believe that this is yours.
At the same time, all the words, all the titles of the territories that are neighboring Greece, and somehow are part of the aspirations of Greece, are not written with their international name, but they are written in Greek names. For example, in the south of Albania, where the Greek nationalistic narration calls it North Ípeiros, the names are in Greek. It is like trying to remind us that these places are places that we have to fight by the army, and take them back in the motherland.
And as you can see, the name of Albania here does not start from the borders. It starts many kilometers up. So this is the way how we, in schools, were prepared to acknowledge the aspirations of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Greek Ministry of War—Peace and Defense.
So what is the important thing about Greece? Greece also pretends that it is a really small state, that nobody takes care of it. But Greek capitalism is a naval force. It is the number three ship-owning nation. The owners, the bosses of the boats that are connected, they have Greek passports, are now in the number three rank. They used to be number one. In some special categories like tankers, they are number one.
And this is the reason why Greece is always orientated towards sea.
Komuna:
I’m sorry, just to stop you one second. You are saying not the military naval force, but we are talking about tankers, the commercial ships and stuff like that. The transport.
Markos:
Bravo. Because what is the state doing? The state is protecting and prevailing its capitalists. Despite the fact that these capitalists have conflicts between them, in the end they need someone to take care of them. That is the reason why Greece is now participating in this naval force that is trying to protect the Red Sea from the Houthis. Because if you have the number three fleet in the world, you have to take care of your fleet.
The point is that they want us to go for our mandatory, obligatory military service to fight for their tankers. But if it was not nationalism, if it was not patriotism, if it was not the school behind it, if it was not national unity—if it was more of class war—we wouldn’t adopt their interests as ours. We wouldn’t think, as the Left in Greece says, that going to the army is our patriotic duty. This is what the Left says in Greece.
And unfortunately, many people, despite participating in the anarchist movement, in the end, under the pressure of career or under the pressure of family, go to the army. They say, okay, let’s go for 12 months to finish with this obligation. And this is something very, very bad. It’s disappointing.
So, every state does not only want to expand on the soil, they want to expand also on the sea. In 2010, Greece came up with a new argument that this should be the exclusive economic zone of Greece, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. According to the aspirations of Greece, that means that almost 50% of the Southeast Mediterranean Sea would be under Greek control.
Of course, the states neighboring Greece don’t accept this plan. They have another opinion on how these borders of the exclusive economic zone should be. But what is really important here is to understand that the strategies of expansion for the states are long term. This map is based on a convention of 1982. It was only in April 2010 that this came up in public discourse. So, the Greek state waited for 28 years in this diplomatic poker to use another argument. That means that states have long-term strategies. And if sometimes they lose in one of their conflicts, that doesn’t mean that they give up.
For example, during the First World War, Greece captured parts of South Albania in order to annex it and claim it as Greek soil. After the treaties of the First World War, this didn’t happen. But since Greece had long-term strategies, when the Second World War started and Italy attacked Greece, and Italy was defeated just 20 kilometers outside of Ioannina, the Greek army found a very good opportunity and advanced inside Albanian territory, hoping that the new equilibrium after the war would be good for them. It didn’t happen. But they had their strategies, long-term strategies.
So, on the map on the left are the aspirations about the exclusive economic zones as Greece imagines them, and on the right is how Turkey imagines them. We don’t know what the result will be, but we know for sure that in order for Greece to press for her scenario, they need weapons. They need guns. They need manpower. They need soldiers.
They say that Greece is a small state and nobody takes care of it. But here I have some photos of some ex-high-rank officers of the European Union that come from Greece. For example, the Commissioner of Immigration, Home Affairs and Citizenship for five years was Avramopoulos. He used to be the mayor of Athens and participated in the New Democracy party. And the guy on the top, Kostarakos, was for three years the chairman of the European Union Military Committee. What is this European Union Military Committee? It is the in-progress wannabe European Union Army.
So if Greece is small, if they ignore Greece, how is it that we have so many high-rank offices? Maybe there is a myth behind Greece being small. And maybe we, as revolutionaries, need to change the way we stand towards the Greek state, Greek interests, and the Greek military machine.
This plan—the Greek plan for the Southeast in the Mediterranean—of course, in order to be fulfilled, means that Greek bosses should answer to Turkey, should dominate the Southeast Mediterranean. And how should they do this? To encircle Turkey and not allow Turkey to express interest, by forming an alliance with Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel.
There has been a change in the past two years because of an approach between Turkey and Egypt, especially after the war in Palestine. But this was the main idea. This idea—to make alliances with Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel—was served after 2010, until now, for 14 years by all the governments of the Greek state.
For example, here is President Nicos Anastasiades of Cyprus, Al-Sisi, the dictator of Egypt, and the Prime Minister of Nea Demokratia of Greece in Cairo in 2014. In the next photo, you can see Alexis Tsipras, the first left prime minister in all of Europe in 2015. The interests of the Greek state—and of every state—don’t change like this. Even if the politicians that express each national capitalism change, the core politics will not change.
Another photo: Mr. Al-Sisi with Alexis Tsipras and Mr. Tsipras with Mr. Netanyahu. I can give you more new photos of our next prime minister or the former prime minister, since Netanyahu served six times as prime minister. Why I’m showing all these is because there was also another myth in Greece, that since we had the left government between 2015 and 2019, things were better. No, they were not less militaristic, they were not less nationalistic.
So, I want to tell you some things about how our schools are working. The second photo is connected with this. If you go to a Greek school, in every class—even now, 2024—there is an icon of Jesus Christ. Every morning, before schools start, we have a collective prayer in the yard of the schools. And three times a year, there are school parades organized by the state combined with army parades, tied to specific national commemoration days.
The second photo is from the first military school parade in Athens on March 25, 2015. It is the first parade after Syriza came to power. Do you believe that they abolished parades, prayers, or icons of Jesus Christ in schools? No, no, no.
The Greek state participated in coalitions that won three big wars: the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War. That means the Greek state is a lucky state in a way—it can see in long-term prospects what’s going to happen. And the Greek state has taken the right decisions for its own interests.
Now Greece is selling new services to their allies. They call themselves the last barrier before Muslim illegal migration invades Greece. They call themselves the last line of the civilized democratic Western world. And now that Turkey is not a good member of NATO, they call themselves the most reliable NATO partner in the region. They try to sell themselves in order to have as big profits as they can.
So Greece is also participating in the war against immigrants. Apart from the police, the army also participates. Between the soil borders of Greece and Turkey, there is a big fence—like the fence Orban constructed, or like the wall that the USA is constructing at the borders with Mexico.
The first photo is of a politician from the Social Democrats, dated 2011–2012. The second is of Prime Minister Samaras, a right-wing politician, again at this fence between Turkey and Greece, in 2015. Of course, Syriza, when it came to power, didn’t demolish it. Even though, if you participated in any anti-racist festival before Syriza came to power, you could see Syriza youth talking about the crime of borders, fences, and people in the border agency.
Apart from the fence—monitoring and policing the borders of the outer borders of the European Union—Greece is selling another service. Greece has created many open-air prisons for immigrants. These prisons are used to filter the capable from the incapable, to send the incapable back, and the capable to participate in the production activities of the European industries.
This is a service that Greece sells. And when I say industry, please don’t imagine just car factories or those that produce refrigerators. Industry also includes agriculture. So much agriculture in Greece is based on the exploitation of immigrant workers. Industry also includes tourism, which requires a large immigrant labor force to be exploited by Greek bosses.
Komuna:
If I can just jump in one second, interesting fact here, that in 2012, the data that I read in one paper, about 27 percent of Greek GDP was the unregistered migrant labor in that year.
Markos:
Yes, of course. And if you make their life a living hell and you don’t recognize them as human beings, you expose them to more exploitation and of course to lower wages, without any kind of insurance or rights. What is really important is that these open-air prisons for immigrants were greatly multiplied after the war in Syria. So, between 2015 and 2016, more than 30 new open-air prisons for immigrants were built in Greece.
The Greek state called them “infrastructures of hospitality.” We cannot call them that. They are open-air prisons. For example, near our city is the detention center of Katsikas. These are photos from 2015. The territories where these centers were built are owned by the Greek army. So, the soil is under army control. That’s why in the second photo, you can see officers next to a member of Syriza who was the Vice Minister of Defense. The scenario of this photo is like something from North Korea. Do you believe that these immigrant girls would collect flowers to give to the Vice Minister? But the propaganda of the Greek state wanted to project that what they do for refugees is benevolent.
Why am I showing all these photos and focusing on the military approach to immigrants? Because we have to understand that war is not only about pulling the trigger. War also means producing weapons, loading bombs, feeding soldiers, organizing logistics and bureaucracy, constructing bases, supplying fuel, financing the army, and dealing with the impacts of war.
Greece may pretend it’s not participating in any war. But are you in a war if you send petroleum and gasoline for tanks and aircraft? According to our analysis, yes. If you organize joint holiday divisions for soldiers inside Greece, do you participate in war? If you sell guns and ammunition, are you in the war—even if you are not in Kharkiv or Gaza? I say yes.
If we expand the way we understand war and dig into the history of our states, we will find many crimes and many reasons not to serve them. The bottom right photo is of the development of the fence between Greece and Turkey. The woman among the uniformed people is the President of Greece. She went to the borders to film a video saying Greece is here to protect its borders and those of the EU.
She is seen as sympathetic. My grandmother watches her on TV and says so. But she is not just a person—she is an institution. All institutions of Greece—border police, army, government, police—exist to conduct wars: proxy wars, wars through fuel and ammunition, wars against migrants, and wars against the unprivileged and exploited inside the borders.
The top left photo shows the construction of the wall around the open-air prison of Katsikas. Now it has barbed wire, walls everywhere, fences, and fingerprint checks to enter or exit. They still call it an “infrastructure of hospitality.” If we don’t call them open-air prisons, our struggle against them is in vain. That’s why, in the beginning, I said we have to destroy the myths and icons every state creates about itself if we want to call ourselves revolutionaries.
So what should we do—especially now that some of our comrades, or ex-comrades, say we should take the side of the one defending itself or the side of the weak?
First, we must support politics that destroy national unity and reject patriotism. We must constantly bring to the surface that our societies are class societies of exploitation and oppression, and that the oppressed have nothing in common with the oppressors. We must reject war budgets and military preparations.
For example, I am not satisfied by the political activities against conscription in Greece. We don’t do enough. We must not participate in patriotic or militaristic institutions. For instance, in the past two years, the Greek Minister of War has been trying—very systematically—to copy the way the military finances research in American universities.
Six universities in Greece recently made a contract with the Greek Ministry of War and the Association of Ammunition and Gun Producers. They created a research cluster to produce Greek military technology. If we are in the university and these programs are coming from the army, from NATO, from the Ministry of Defense, we should reject them. If they call us to participate in a war, we should reject them. If there’s a concert with an artist we love, but it’s organized by the army—we shouldn’t go.
I propose that everyone who calls themselves anarchist or anti-authoritarian should read the texts about the conflict between anarchists before the First World War. There was a division between those who supported France against Germany and those who rejected all wars and organized for social revolution.
I especially recommend the texts of Malatesta and Emma Goldman—particularly her essay “Preparedness: The Road to Universal Slaughter.” These writings offer strong arguments against our ex-comrades who now believe it’s acceptable to fight under national armies and flags.
Komuna:
Yeah, the reason why we became animated is because we were thinking of what to read for our group this Saturday, and we selected this Emma Goldman text. So, you just confirmed it’s a good text.
Markos:
So, if you want to ask anything?
Komuna:
Actually, before opening the floor, maybe you can tell us a bit about the resistance to militarization and about conscientious objectors such as yourself? What are the reasons—beyond the obvious ones—and what has been your experience? How does the state respond to people like you?
Markos:
This is a struggle that is not going well in Greece, largely because of the dominance of leftist ideas. Many people avoid the army by pretending to be mentally ill. I totally respect that, but it’s not my path. I would not use the label that society applies to people it calls crazy to excuse myself. I chose to stand up and state openly the reasons for my objection.
It’s a bizarre situation. As kids, our mothers tell us not to fight at school, to solve problems with words, and that peace is important. Then suddenly, at 18, everyone expects you to pick up a gun and learn to kill. It’s the same mother who once sang peace songs to you now telling you it’s your duty to serve.
There are not many total conscientious objectors in Greece. I use the term “total objector” deliberately, because there are others—mostly from the internationalist or alternative left—who declare themselves conscientious objectors but still accept doing a form of social service. However, this social service is essentially punitive: it’s longer than the regular military service, it may be 200 kilometers from your home, and you receive the same meager pay as a soldier—eight euros per month.
There are very few anarchists or anti-authoritarians who have publicly and collectively refused conscription. Some who did eventually gave up, even people I loved and respected in my city. Unfortunately, that’s the reality.
When we made our stand in 2011, we did it collectively. We were four people, and we made a public declaration that we would not participate in the army for class reasons. We were not pacifists or non-violent hippies. We said it is our class duty not to serve our class enemies. We cannot offer our thoughts, skills, hearts, or bodies to serve those who oppress us.
Since the army is the number one mechanism through which bosses maintain control, refusing to serve was the only logical stance. Remember, when police can’t handle an insurrection, it’s the army that gets called.
We published texts, held events, and prepared people for the state’s retaliation. The state responds harshly. If you object, you lose your passport and cannot leave the country. You cannot work in the public sector. You get a 6,000 euro administrative fine and are prosecuted in a military court—even though you’ve never been in the army.
The state doesn’t treat this as a one-time event. If it calls you again and you refuse, the penalties start over. I’ve received the 6,000 euro fine three times. With interest at 1% per month, I now owe 33,000 euros—which I refuse to pay. My bank accounts are blocked. If my income exceeds a threshold, it can be seized. I’ve already been prosecuted twice and am likely to face trial a third time.
Until now, the Greek penal code allowed these penalties to be suspended. But with the current legal changes, there’s no guarantee we won’t face prison time. The Greek state knows that anarchists are often better at organizing defense in prison than launching proactive struggles on the outside.
Many objectors have surrendered due to the financial pressure. Confiscated property, blocked accounts, and digital tracking have made everyday life difficult. I’m disappointed by this, but it has happened.
Komuna:
Thank you, Markos. I’ll now open the floor to anyone who has questions or comments.
Member of Public in Komuna:
Maybe I can add something about the context in Kosovo. Just to shout so you can hear. You mentioned that in Greece the military advertises a lot. In Kosovo, the army is now being promoted through posters in schools and universities. And soon, it seems a territorial defense class will be added to high school curricula. So yes, we’re also becoming increasingly militarized through the education system here.
Markos:
Yeah, but in Greece it’s not exactly advertising. It’s a part of the schools, of the schedule. There can be, for example, one excursion of the school in a military camp. Because we are all being raised up so as to go to the army. And the only way not to go to the army when you are 18 is when you get a free period for studying, four or six years.
But now that we are participating in wars—Greece is participating in wars—the past months the Ministry of War has announced many, many new programs that they are organizing. And they are organizing the reform of the military service. And as they say, in the next 24 months, they will open up the option for women if they want to join voluntarily. And they will open up an option for every year retraining. For example, if you want to go for two weeks on a voluntary base to be retrained. So it’s like the system of Israel, where every year for one month, every reservist goes to the army again.
But of course, if they announce it as a voluntary base and we don’t fight against this, it will be standardized. I have to tell you that during the COVID period, they expanded the military service from 10 months to 12. And nothing happened. Just like this—next day, plus two months.
Komuna:
Yeah. If I can maybe just add about the context of Kosovo, you know we have talked about this in previous BABs (Balkan Anarchist Bookfairs). In the Balkans, there is always this vicious circle. Because you kind of argue that, yeah, I get armed because of my first neighbor, and the neighbor gets armed because the other one gets armed, right?
In the context of Kosovo, I mean, for everybody here, the war is quite fresh. When you mention war, people say, “Yes, of course, we have to defend ourselves against Serbia.” And now, when this thing happened in the north of Kosovo like a year ago, everybody started having this collective memory of war. People were even panic buying to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
So for a lot of people here, it’s not just normal; it’s necessary to say that we need to have a strong state and therefore a strong army, because you have a strong and aggressive neighbor. And people remember the war of 25 years ago.
It becomes a vicious circle because Serbia uses the same narrative against Kosovo for the north. And the best part of all of this is that you’re going to have the U.S., France, and Turkey selling arms to all sides. Kosovo still cannot have its own proper army, but they’re working on it. They already bought drones that they cannot fly, but they are training on them. They have a military that is constantly being trained in all scenarios. And they argue that Serbia has forward military bases in standby to incur back into Kosovo.
So for them, it’s like, of course, we’re going to arm ourselves. What we are seeing now, especially with the last government—also a social democratic government—is that they raised spending on the military. But they are also introducing military into education, creating this overall idea of protection against the neighbor.
At the same time, Albania has its own NATO base for NATO airplanes. Kosovo has 4,500 NATO troops present in three or four bases around Kosovo. Kosovo and Albania are also at the forefront of migration management or migration governance. For example, people deported from Denmark will serve in Kosovo prisons. Italy has a base in Albania.
We see a move toward militarization in our society—a general consensus. Patriotism and nationalism are always present here. But now they are capitalizing on it, trying to normalize the idea of the army. This government even included in their election promise and program to reintroduce mandatory military service. Of course, they can’t do it because it’s expensive, but they’re still pushing the idea.
Instead, they’re introducing the idea of the army throughout society. If you ask people whether the army should be mandatory, most say yes. But I doubt that anybody of army age would actually say, “Let’s go to the army.”
What we’re faced with is the challenge of creating a discourse that the army doesn’t mean protection. It’s really hard when society still feels the trauma of war. It’s important to connect militarization to capital—because the army cannot exist without the state, and the state cannot exist without capital. It’s part of the same beast.
So when we try to oppose militarization—as we have started this month—we talk a lot about how to approach this. We know it’s sensitive. Saying this out loud can get you labeled as pro-Serbian. But if we argue on the basis of how capital and the state function—and relate it to the same vicious circles in Serbia—maybe we can establish some footing in society.
But it’s really difficult to even frame the issue. We’re trying to find the best way to explain why the army is a problem.
Markos:
First of all, I’ve sent you the English version of our core text in the anti-militarist group we have in Ioannina. It exposes all the reasons why we object to the army in a political and collective way. Maybe you’ll like it.
What I want to say about what you added is that, in reality, nationalists on one side don’t hate nationalists on the other. They can’t exist without each other. The warlords in Greece need Turkish nationalism to push for more guns—and vice versa. These people are collaborating—on our backs, over our dead bodies.
The majority of them won’t die in any war. They won’t be in the lower ranks. They won’t be the casualties. Who’s going to die? The poor, those with nothing in common with the bosses who send them to fight.
Many people who share no common interests with our rulers are slowly persuaded over many years to participate. What we can do is never stop the slow, ongoing struggle to fight this reality.
Komuna:
You told us you’re short on time, but thank you for finding the time for this discussion.
Markos:
Thank you as well.