The call went out on Sunday afternoon. “Hi guys, this is an important message about Greece,” wrote an activist named Francesca in a text message to 40 people, including members of Spain’s Indignado movement and the leftist coalition party Barcelona en Comú.
“These guys meeting now in the Eurogroup, they all have twitter handles, they deserve to be told by the world to do a deal with Tsipras and stop trying to overthrow him,” she added.
Shortly after, the hashtag #ThisIsACoup was born in Barcelona. It quickly shot to the top of trending lists around the world, including Germany and Greece, sparking a social media backlash against Germany and its finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, over the draconian list of demands being forced on the Greek government in return for a third bailout.
The hashtag was first attributed to a physics teacher in Barcelona, who clarified on Monday that it was a collective campaign.
Those behind it have published a declaration, explaining their motivations. “#ThisIsACoup may have started in Barcelona, but it resonated around the world because it expressed a common sense of impotence of citizens in the face of globalised financial powers,” they wrote.
“We decided to support Francesca’s call to launch an online campaign to support the democratic will of the Greek people in the face of extortion by the Eurogroup in its negotiations with Syriza,” the statement continued. “The scandalous Eurogroup proposals yesterday made last night the ideal moment to create a hashtag to express and, above all, coordinate, our outrage at the extortion the Greek government and its people were being subject to.”
The hashtag was a nod to the Egyptian hashtag #NotACoup, that trended in 2013. “We’ve learned how to mobilise online from our counterparts of the Arab Spring and from our own experiences of occupying the squares of Spain.”
The tweet became a trending topic in Spain after it was included a tweet from the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau. “Greece wants to be in Europe, wants to pay its debt and negotiate. But it also wants respect, democracy and human rights. I’m with Greece. #ThisIsACoup,” she wrote.