Late September in Athens, and the air is still warm. Tourists roam the area around the Acropolis. There are bumbags and expensive sandals. Manicured fingers point towards shop windows. Along the Acropolis walkway, an old man plays “Zorba’s Dance” on a lute. Twenty minutes away, in Exarchia, things look different. Three giant dumpsters are on fire in the middle of the road. A line of at least 10 helmeted police stand in full riot gear, equipped with fire extinguishers, truncheons and shields. I walk cautiously past them and hear the clamour of smashing glass and shouting from a nearby street. An acrid odour fills the air. My eyes start to smart, and a harsh prickling creeps into my throat. Tear gas.
Exarchia, a neighbourhood known as a centre of leftwing activism in Athens, has links to anti-far-right groups dating back to at least the 1890s and is sometimes referred to as the “birthplace of Antifa”. In 1973, a student uprising at the Athens Polytechnic helped overturn the ruling military dictatorship. During Greece’s decade of economic convulsions after 2008, the square became a frequent site of protest. And following the influx of nearly a million migrants to the country in 2015, tens of thousands of refugees made homes in squats around the area.
