Over a decade of underfunding crucial public services has left the country completely unprepared for the disasters brought by climate chaos

— On August 11, a wildfire broke out in the northeastern part of the Attica region, Greece. The fire quickly got out of hand and spread through settlements in the area, including even suburbs at the periphery of the capital city of Athens, leaving destruction and death in its path.

This is not the first such case. Summer after summer, we are witnessing such wildfires, while winters follow with destructive floods. And even though the age of climate change creates conditions that amplify the destructiveness of natural disasters, we observe how the neoliberal state, in this case the Greek one, appears incapable of preparing itself for this new reality. Despite the indications that these environmental cataclysms will continue with growing force, authorities choose to ignore the warnings and force experts to denounce the current preventive model in Greece regarding wildfires as “catastrophic”.

Over a decade of neoliberal authoritarianism has left the country completely unprepared for natural disasters. But as every other neoliberal state, the Greek one has chronically been underfunding crucial public services, except one – the police. It suffice to see the numbers: in the recent wildfire around 560 firefighters were sent to confront the blaze that spanned 8,594.2 hectares, while for the last commemoration of the 1973 Polytechnic Uprising in Athens over 6,000 police officers were deployed in the capital centre for the annual demonstration. Being one of the most heavily policed countries in Europe, Greece has hordes of repressive unites, and few of anything else. As a result, the Greek authorities were forced to deploy also some of its police equipment (such as a water cannon), of which it has abundance, at tackling the wildfire. It is indicative that during a wildfire couple of years ago a citizen said to a TV crew that amidst the blazing fires “the police and the journalists are more than the firefighters”.

This is by no chance since every hierarchical system, such as the State, boils down to, as Jacques Ranciere suggests, the police. And this essence of statecraft is only enhanced by the neoliberal dogma, which views repression as the supreme protector of private property and the capitalist market, while any other public service – as a wasteful.

This is what the Capital-Nation-State complex has in store for humanity’s future – while the world burns and chaos spreads, the elites will surround themselves with ever increasing repressive forces so that their authority is not challenged ’till the very end.

The only path that leads beyond that dystopian time to come is by replacing the State with an autonomous direct-democratic administration to face the ongoing social and environmental crises, by prioritising human lives and communities over profits and budgets. An alternative model that goes contrary to the logic of policing. And the manifestation of this path can be observed in the reaction of countless volunteers, but also of self-organised firefighting collectives amidst the last wildfire. Seeing that the establishment won’t do what is necessary to protect human lives and settlements, especially in an age of climate crisis that amplifies the destructiveness of natural disasters, people realise that it is up to their collective ability to organise the wellbeing of their communities. From such realisations one begins to question the supposed “necessity of the State” and its potential alternatives.

~ Yavor Tarinski