Sweden: Riots over closure of mosque

Jihad Watch ^ | December 18 2008

[knighthawk]

Islam-list

If people want on or off this list, please let me know.

[eleni121]

30% of the rioters in Athens and really throughout Greece in the past 2 weeks were Muslims...everything is in place for the coming anarchy.

One way to prevent this era of violence is doing “something” to the Saudis.

[apro]

'Since Dec. 6, when Greek police shot and killed a 15-year-old boy, Athens, Thessaloniki and other Greek cities have been consumed by apparently unstoppable, violent demonstrations. Unlike the French riots of 2005, which were mostly led by disaffected immigrants, the participants in these Greek riots appear to be middle-class university students.

They weren't smashing up shops in impoverished suburbs, either: These self-styled anarchists are based in a bohemian neighborhood of central Athens called Exarchia, and at a nearby university campus whose unused buildings cannot, according to a rather extraordinary Greek law, be entered by the police.

One Greek political scientist, Stathis Kalyvas, argues brilliantly that they are facilitated by Greece's unique political culture: In the years since the overthrow of military rule, the Greek political class has come to treat civil disobedience, even violent and destructive civil disobedience, as "almost always justified, if not glorified." Rioting is a "fun and low-risk activity, almost a rite of passage"; the anarchist subculture that thrives in central Athens is "abetted, and in some instances endorsed" by Greece's left-wing parties and mainstream newspapers.

And yet -- even if Greece is unserious, even if anarchist subculture has uniquely deep roots in Athens, even if Greek corruption and youth unemployment are unusually high -- it's a mistake to dismiss these riots as peripheral. If nothing else, they show what can happen to a highly developed, post-ideological society whose organized politics no longer interest large groups of people. One sympathizer says the rioters can be divided into three groups: communists, anarchists and "younger people who like to think that they are anarchists but they don't know what they stand for. They are the ones who have been looting. . . . They feel the only way to make themselves heard is to do these things."

Another describes the anarchist world of Exarchia, approvingly, as "a parallel society with parallel values and parallel ideas." Yet another told a reporter that the tiny shops near the university deserved to be looted because they represent "the corporate machine."
Washington Post~Venting in Athens

Most of the rioters in Greece are ethnic Greeks from well off families. The kid that was killed two weeks ago went to one of the most expensive and prestigious private schools in Greece. And just last week more evidence that these punks are ethnic Greeks with well connected families: just last Thursday another 16 year old 'yute' was wounded who is the son of a leftist union official, his father is a leading official in the Greek Teachers Federation who backed the latest demonstrations in Athens.