PACO, ISSN: 2035-6609 - Copyright © 2024 - University of Salento, SIBA: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it PArtecipazione e COnflitto http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco ISSN: 1972-7623 (print version) ISSN: 2035-6609 (electronic version) PACO, Issue 17(1) 2024: 132-148 DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v17i1p132 Published 15 March, 2024 RESEARCH ARTICLE Antifascist Mediation: Practices of Affirmative Biopolitics in Lesbos, Greece Salim Nabi Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry ABSTRACT: The practices of antifascists in Lesbos, Greece have highlighted, on the one hand, the biopolitical practices of the humanitarian sector and authorities and, on the other hand, they have shown the potentiality for an “affirmative” biopolitics. The different biopolitical orientations operational in Lesbos came clearly to the fore in the two cases of the Occupation of Sapphous Square and the Occupation of SYRIZA offices in Mytilene, Lesbos in autumn of 2017. The two cases additionally showed that mediation, too, is biopolitical, and therefore subject to the same bi-directionality insofar that both the humanitarian sector and the antifascists acted as mediators, albeit serving different political objectives. Furthermore, these practices in Lesbos allow us to understand biopolitics as bi-directional insofar that on the ground in Lesbos, which we also find in theoretical reflections, attempts have been made to disentangle life from the apparatuses that control, manage, and even exterminate life. KEYWORDS: Affirmative-biopolitics, Antifascists, Biopolitics from Below, Lesbos, Mediation CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: nabis4@uni.coventry.ac.uk 1. Introduction In June 2022 a conference took place at the University of the Aegean in Mytilene, Lesbos. 1 While at the conference researchers and scholars addressed the many “facets” of mediation in the “humanitarian field”, the presentations on the situation and practices of mediation in Lesbos failed to account for the practices of a particular part of the wider antifascist movement on the island, namely the antifascists from Binio, a long-term 1 The emphasis on protection in this paper is not only due to the title of this conference, but more so, because the discourses of the humanitarian sector have been around the protection of refuge-seekers’ lives, with which they justified their actions and/or inactions. Work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non commercial- Share alike 3.0 Italian License