The Boston Globe, November 15, 2024
The specter of authoritarian rule stalks the United States. How its citizens respond will determine their future and the future of the world. But what should that response be?
Donald Trump has promised to arrest his opponents, turn the military against the “enemy from within,” and launch mass deportations. He praised Adolf Hitler’s generals, mused about how a former member of Congress might feel when guns are “trained on her face,” and said he wouldn’t mind if journalists were shot. These statements have prompted historians as well as some of Trump’s former advisers to call him a fascist. As he prepares to take office, the specter of authoritarian rule stalks the nation.
How Americans respond will determine their future and the future of the world. But what should that response be?
One answer lies in a small enclave of Athens called Exarchia, where I’ve lived for seven years researching peoples’ uprisings. Roughly the size of New York’s East Village, Exarchia has been an antifascist bastion since the 1970s and an exemplar of how fighting authoritarianism can animate a community.
Generations of antifascists built Exarchia, including fighters who resisted the Nazis during World War II and self-organized brigades who fought home-grown and foreign fascists during the Greek Civil War. Decades later, people enraged by the government killing of dozens of protesters and bystanders at Polytechnic University in Athens in 1973 helped topple the US-backed dictatorship. In 2008, anarchists took to the streets again after a police officer murdered a 15-year-old, sparking protests throughout the nation, evicting the police from Exarchia and establishing a new measure of autonomy.
If you’re imagining a neighborhood filled with thugs wearing black balaclavas, think again. From Exarchia’s Strefi Hill, a park maintained by residents, one can watch children playing basketball and people walking dogs and having rap battles, the Acropolis and gleaming sea visible in the distance. Balconies are filled with climbing jasmine and gardens. The buildings themselves form an enormous interconnected mural of graffiti tags and abstract and figurative paintings. Bitter orange trees line the streets, blooming white in spring.
