This paper offers a short overview of the civil unrest that marked December 2008 in Greece. It starts with a short detection exercise on the causes of the rioting and culminates in a more inclusive ascription of cause. It then deals with some recurring characteristics of youth protest politics in Greece by singling out and focusing on three interrelated nodal points: the legacy of Athens Polytechnic, school pupils’ mobilizations, and the anarchist movement. This way, a memetic explanation is advanced. The paper concludes by suggesting that our understanding of similar episodes, which are very likely to take in different national settings globally in light of the global economic crisis, has very much to gain by an appraisal of nation-specific legacies of popular resistance.