‘Cuban Europe’? Greek and Iberian tiersmondisme in the ‘Long 1960s’

Abstract

This article addresses the ways in which the Third World emerged as a new referent in Greece and Spain in the ‘long 1960s'. It shows how ‘Thirdworldism’ emerged out of growing dissatisfaction with the Old Left’s defeatism and the ways in which, by way of the Cuban and Vietnamese example, radicals started to conceive their countries as US colonies. It also compares the ways in which Greek and Iberian Jacobins – some of whom came together in Paris after May ‘68 – formed a radical student diaspora. Examining the impact of extra-European anti-imperialist violence on the discourse and action of the most radical organizations that espoused the ‘armed struggle’ in both countries, the article shows that whereas Greek militants used violence only symbolically, their counterparts in Spain went all the way. The article finishes with the espousal of thirdworldist rhetoric by a new student generation in Greece leading to the mass uprising of November 1973, and a brief look at the afterlives of ETA and PAK, two of the most vocal exponents of this tendency, after the demise of the respective authoritarian regimes.

‘Communists are no Beasts’: European Solidarity Campaigns on Behalf of Democracy and Human Rights in Greece and East–West Détente in the 1960s and Early 1970s

“…100 Greek oppositionists overwhelmingly drew inspiration from the apparently more successful models of solidarity and revolution in the Third World. 101 Campaigns over Greece became -similar to those on behalf of Portugal and Spain -increasingly intertwined with and modelled upon those in the Third World. After the Prague Spring Papandreou's PAK and other Greek exile organisations in both the West and East appeared in public fora together with representatives of the South-Vietnamese National Liberation Front and the African National Congress (ANC), and were keen to profess their solidarity with national liberation movements across the Third World.…”

Allende in Athens: The Political and Cultural Impact of the Chilean 1970s in Greece during the Colonels' Dictatorship and the Metapolitefsi (1970–1981)

“…4). They passionately discussed and sought inspiration from Guevara's foco theory and the armed actions of guerrillas such as the Tupamaros (Kornetis, 2015;Palieraki, 2015). Participating in activism under authoritarianism and understandably convinced that a regime that 'came to power by the force of arms' would only leave 'by force of arms', anti-Junta activists had little, if any, interest in democratic experiences such as Allende's; instead, they engaged in 'dynamic resistance' -that is, armed activities against the dictatorship (Voglis, 2011;Voglis, 2022).…”

“…Anti‐dictatorial organisations included Trotskyists; Communists, who in 1968 split into pro‐Soviet and soon‐to‐be‐Euro‐communist factions; young centrists; and Andreas Papandreou's Panellinio Apeleutherotiko Kinima (PAK, Panhellenic Liberation Movement) (Benaki, Kokkola Collection, D. 4). They passionately discussed and sought inspiration from Guevara's foco theory and the armed actions of guerrillas such as the Tupamaros (Kornetis, 2015; Palieraki, 2015). Participating in activism under authoritarianism and understandably convinced that a regime that ‘came to power by the force of arms’ would only leave ‘by force of arms’, anti‐Junta activists had little, if any, interest in democratic experiences such as Allende's; instead, they engaged in ‘dynamic resistance’ – that is, armed activities against the dictatorship (Voglis, 2011; Voglis, 2022).…”

Circular movements: Migratory citizenships in anticolonial Athens

“…The city holds internationalist, Thirdworldist, and anticolonial struggles – albeit ones usually buried beneath the marble weight of national history. People resisted imperialisms imposed upon them in the form of dictatorship recounted at the top of this essay, propped up by U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, and placed their struggle into Mediterranean and global geographies of anticolonialism (Kornetis, 2015a, 2015b; Mack, 2023; Salem and Western, forthcoming; Western, 2021). The city hosted an “Anticolonial Conference of the Mediterranean” in 1957, and became the base of a “Permanent Committee for Anticolonial Struggle of the Mediterranean” in the same year (Kornetis, 2015a: 491; Stefanidis, 2016: 106–107).…”