University asylum is, legally and symbolically, the attempt to prevent the submission of universities to state power, especially authoritarian state power. The type of state power that the Kyriakos Mitsotakis government uses is raw, unapologetic and unaccountable, aiming to silence any dissenting voice. This explains the statement of a minister with well-known far-right sympathies that law enforcement necessarily contains “elements of coercion”. In other words, police brutality and oppression, which come as no surprise.

Mitsotakis’s New Democracy government returns with a vengeance after four and a half years of a Syriza government that had disturbed the exclusivity of power by the right and far-right in Greece. Kyriakos is the son of Konstadinos Mitsotakes, Greek Prime Minister between 1990 and 1993. The rest of the family who are all involved in the family business, are part of a circle of power which has been implicated in a series of scandals over embezzlement, mismanagement of public resources, tax evasion and more, which brought Greece to the financial cliff-edge and “invited” the lending agreements with the EU in 2010.

Ironically – some might say tragically – it is the same dynasty, now with extra strength after the incorporation of the far right, that is today in a position not only to continue the neoliberal agenda that had devastating effects for the country, but also to implement a social policy fit for any authoritarian society. The case is unfortunately far from unique, rather similar to the trajectory of many European societies, including the authoritarian shift in both the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom and the Republican Party in the USA.

Authoritarianism begins with education

Their authoritarian vision starts with education, an education promoted by the Minister of Education Niki Kerameos, based on religiosity, nationalism and hatred towards anyone different. The younger generation is their target: the elimination of any dissenting sentiment their aim. Through “education” or through coercion they are determined to reach their aim, indifferent to the casualties that only by pure luck we have not yet started counting. If this sounds like an exaggeration I will only mention the vicious attacks by riot police on Iakovos Koumis and Stamatina Kannelopoulou at the November 17 demonstration in 1980, which led to their deaths. The violent behaviour of the police has regularly occurred around the November 17 anniversary in the years since then.

The authoritarian vision of the new government last week (as the commemoration of November 17 approached) had been put into practice on other occasions this month: a club was raided by police in a popular area of Athens and reportedly 300 revellers were ordered to kneel on the floor with their hands on their heads for hours while being searched. Although the police alleged it was a drug control exercise, the insignificant amounts found suggest otherwise. Members of the right-wing government also participated in a pork-barbecue in front of a refugee camp, hoping to intimidate the Muslim community. And cases of sexual harassment against female passers-by by police forces at Exarcheia have been reported by another member of parliament. The list goes on…