ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that, in avoiding the trap of environmental reductionism: the tendency to mechanistically infer violent protest from economic and political crisis. It claims that violent protest, though under certain circumstances likely, is far from inevitable or preordained as a mere reflection of the environment. Shedding light on the Greek case is important because it helps to gain crucial insights into the mechanisms and processes at work in all violent protest. The chapter begins with a concise chronology of the Greek December's drama. The advent of global crisis in the last decade of the twentieth century has brought along falling living standards, the progressive dismantling of the welfare state and increasing authoritarianism on the part of the state. On most occasions, the latter attempted to address the problem by de-politicizing struggles and by abandoning all prospects of undertaking militant action in favour of a cooperative model.
