“We don’t want to police university spaces. However, the ‘anti-national’ and ‘anti-social’ elements deserve to be thrown out, who make such spaces a battleground for political gains,” said a democratically elected leader in Greece’s National Assembly, while reasoning out the necessary intrusion of state forces into the country’s academic spaces. The debate was however rooted in the historical context wherein a military junta once stormed an eminent academic institution, purportedly an anarchist hub, which was resisting its undemocratic policies aimed at privatising the education system in the country.
To suppress the student uprising, the dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, decided to install a tank inside the campus, to instil fear among the disgruntled students. Finally, on one night, under the dark, an armed tank was brought inside, crushing the gates of the campus and killing dozens.
The Right Resembles Everywhere
This debate, which ensued in Greece’s Assembly last year to overturn the ‘National Asylum law,’ that had for decades prohibited the state forces from entering into the universities across the country, currently echoes everywhere along with the prominence of far-right parties across the globe. The recent episodes of violence, unleashed on the students across Indian Universities, operated with the same logic as we know about 1973 Greece. History bears witness to the fact that the centre-right forces have exhibited their propensity to delegitimise public intellectuals and disregard critical thought in order to establish a new normal that is hostile to any dissenting voice.
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