Writings from a Greek Prison. Tasos Theofilou

       About Dipli

      Dipli [ΔΙΠΛΗ] is a Common Notions imprint on social cannibalism. Funds raised go to political prisoners.

      ΔΙΠΛΗ [DIPLI (/dip’li/): literally, double. The double telephone line is the way prisoners from different prisons communicate. Two to five prisoners from different prisons call the same telephone number at a pre-arranged time. The owner of that telephone number, living outside prison, connects them together.

      Social cannibalism describes a situation in which people, individually or in small groups, oppress and exploit others in their immediate social environment and within the limits of their daily action. The most powerful ones attack the weakest with quotidian manifestations of domination, authority or influence. Social cannibalism is the lowest level of individualism in an increasingly fragmented society. It does not manifest immediately and completely but develops incrementally. Social cannibalism is the zero point of counter-revolution from below (through hierarchies, divisions, manipulations) just as war is the zero point of counter-revolution from above (through repression, recuperation, and mediation).

      The term came into use with anarchists in Greece following the robbery and murder of Manolis Kantaris in Athens in November 2011. Golden Dawn, an ultranationalist, far-right political formation in Greece, exploited that incident to organize a pogrom against immigrants that led to the killing of Alim Abdul Manan on December 5, 2011. Social cannibalism has since come to signify a contradiction in which people who generally denounce violence accept it against those separated from themselves when executed by those connected to them. It also represents a pattern in which parts of the proletariat face off against one another by turning oppression of oneself into stigmatization of the other. Finally, social cannibalism embodies the political context of the European Union/European Central Bank/International Money Fund memoranda, in which the Greek Debt Crisis/Eurozone Crisis is homogenized according to nationality and then differently moralized, internalized into guilt of one’s worth as a person through the relationship between self and other, and shared representations of action, emotions, and the body.

      To publish on social cannibalism is to account for both the previous cycles of struggle in Greece and the global capitalist restructuring today.

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       dipli.espivblogs.net

       Table of Contents

       Preface

       by Ben Morea

       Editors’ Note

       Open Letter on the Commencement of the Trial at the Court of Appeal

       November 2, 2016

       Statement on the Appeal Lodged Against the Acquittal Decision at the Court of Appeal

       April 4, 2018

       Translator’s Note

       32 Steps, or Correspondence from the House of the Dead

       Prolegomena

       Stories of uprisings

       Stories of Albania

       Stories of crimes that never made the headlines

       10/11/2012

       Greek prison dictionary

       Appendix

       About Tasos Theofilou