Political Organizing in the 21st Century

Written by Yavor Tarinski

« Concern with the problem of organization has meaning only for people convinced that they can and must struggle together (hence, by organizing) and who do not, from the very beginning, assume their own defeat is inevitable. »

~ Cornelius Castoriadis

Huge demonstration in Athens to protest new environmental legislation

By Yavor Tarinski

Greek authorities use COVID-19 lockdown to crack down on self-managed Vio.Me factory

By Yavor Tarinski

While the Greek people are placed under quarantine due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Greek authorities continue their agenda against the social movements in the country. The state has found the perfect timing to conduct its new attack on the self-managed Vio.Me. factory in Thessaloniki: early this morning, accompanied by two squads of riot police, employees of the state-owned electric company have cut off the power to the factory.

The anti-NGO discourse in Greece and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

By Yavor Tarinski

These days in Greece an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory has successfully infiltrated the public discourse. Officials of the right-wing New Democracy government, as well as by journalists of major media outlets, express suspicion regarding the role of NGOs in the movement of refugees.

Overpopulation Scaremongering and Ecofascism

By Yavor Tarinski

The “population problem” has a Phoenix-like existence: it rises from

the ashes at least every generation and sometimes every decade or so.

Murray Bookchin[1]

The Interconnectedness of Ecology and Democracy: Towards a strategy “from below”

By Yavor Tarinski

[I]t is one thing to establish international treatises, national laws, and environmental ministries and agencies; it is quite another to effect the concrete changes in attitudes, practices and institutions necessary to resolve the ecological crisis.

-Dimitrios Roussopoulos[1]

Direct democracy and the passion for political participation

Yavor Tarinski is an independent researcher and activist whose publications and talks center on the possibilities of direct democracy and commoning practices as an alternative to the current social imaginary. He is the author of Direct Democracy: Context, Society, Individuality (Durty Books Publishing House, 2019). He is a member of the editorial team of the Greek political journal Aftoleksi, bibliographer at Agora International and member of the administrative board of TRISE. In the past he has co-founded “Adelante” — the first social center in Bulgaria as well as the first Bulgarian Social Forum.

Narrow Anti-Imperialism as Ideological Cover for Authoritarianism

By Yavor Tarinski

It is absolutely necessary to rebuild an intellectual and political foundation for criticism and seeking change in the world, but metropolitan anti-imperialism is totally unfit for this job. It has absorbed subordinating imperialistic tendencies, and it is fraught with eurocentrism and void of any true democratic content.

-Yassin al-Haj Saleh[1]

SYRIZA’s “long march through the institutions” comes to an end?

By Yavor Tarinski

On July 7th the SYRIZA party (Coalition of the Radical Left) lost the Greek national elections to the conservative New Democracy with a bitter 8% difference, allowing the latter to form a self-reliance government (something which had not happen since the beginning of the crisis in 2008).

On why nuclear energy is incompatible with direct democracy

By Yavor Tarinski