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We Greeks have a reputation for being insufferable nationalists, most of whom genuinely believe that Greek culture is superior to that of other nations and peoples. We were even anointed the most culturally chauvinistic Europeans in a recent Pew survey. At the risk of confirming that stereotype, I shall blame it on… foreigners, with their immoderate praise of Greek culture and their superficial reading of their own silly surveys.
On 28 May, 1979, the occasion of Greece’s accession to the European Economic Community, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then president of France delivered a speech in Athens and declared: “Europe without Greece would not be Europe… We are all, in our language and thought processes, children of Greek civilisation…” Today, he concluded, “Europe is rediscovering Europe.”
A century or so earlier, the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote that “the safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”. Not to be outdone in philhellenism, commenting in 1941 on the Greek resistance to the Italian and German invaders, Winston Churchill famously added: “Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks.”
Surely any people showered with such lavish praise by influential foreigners would be forgiven for taking a certain pride in their culture. For Greeks used to hearing folks like Giscard d’Estaing insist that Greece is Europe, and vice versa, telling a pollster that they do not believe their culture to be superior would be tantamount to questioning the superiority of European civilisation. In fact, from a Greek’s perspective, it is the equivalent of asking the French, German, Spanish or Dutch to respond, with a yes or no answer, to the silly question: “Is European civilisation better or worse than other civilisations?” In this sense, modern Greeks are neither more nor less culturally chauvinist than Europeans who celebrate European civilisation as if the horrors of European colonialism had never happened.
But ask us Greeks about modern Greek culture and you will get a very different response. Sure enough, we have our fair share of looney ultra-nationalists, some of whom believe that Darwinism applies to every human except the Greeks, who stem from some divine extra-terrestrial gene. Yet the vast majority of my countrymen and women think very little of our contemporary culture, ways and behaviours. The past decade, especially since our wholesale bankruptcy, has left us reeling, insecure and verging on self-loathing.
Yes, we still appreciate the glowing successes of Greeks who left Greece in search of a better life elsewhere. Yes, we celebrate the odd athletic victory and we appreciate the beauty of Greece’s land, sea and environment. Yes, we maintain some pride in uniquely Greek concepts like philotimia — a penchant for acting in a dignified way simply for the hell of it. But at the same time, we fear that these qualities, natural and spiritual, have been diluted terribly in recent decades; partly because we neglected and cannibalised them (our monstrous investment in tourism, for example), and partly because of a European Union that helped us lose our way.
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SubscribeThe treatment of Greece should have been the scandal that exposed the implacable heartlessness of the EU to even its most ardent admirers. But Euro-enthusiasts seem to have chosen to remain blind to it, as their faith in the institution could not survive a truthful account of how a member state was deliberately sacrificed to cover the bad bets of (mainly French & German) bankers.
My Greek friends laugh – through gritted teeth – every time any media outlet describes what we had in this country as ‘Austerity’.
Look at what real austerity is, as imposed on the people of Greece, and then compare it to what we experienced here. That ‘Vicious Tory austerity’ – by which they mean those merciless and savage cuts that saw public spending wantonly slashed from £610 billion in 2015 to only £870 billion pre-covid.
In return for “helping” Greece, Brussels dictated an austerity regime that insisted on –
> Removing almost all existing employment protection laws – which allowed companies to fire staff without cause and drop their wages as they saw fit. (Imagine that here in the UK, if you can)
> ACTUAL pay cuts for public sector workers of 30% (as compared to capping pay increases to 1% in the UK) whilst at the same time lowering tax thresholds so that these people would still have to pay taxes at similar levels having just had their salaries cut by 30%!
> Cutting the minimum wage by almost a quarter. (As opposed to not increasing it as much as people would like here)
> Cutting 150 000 public sector jobs
> Genuine and deep cuts to both Health and Education spending – (as opposed to the UK which has continued to increase spending on both – yet this is described as ‘savage cuts’ by the press)
> Raising the retirement age, repeatedly
> Cutting pensions at the same time as announcing large tax increases on pensioners. (Whilst we in the UK complained about losing the triple-lock)
> Repeated tax rises that hurt the poorest the most, like VAT
> the State taking control of publicly owned companies with no choice or proper restitution for shareholders.
Try to imagine any of those things actually happening in the UK. You can’t, it would be unthinkable.
10 years of Brussels-inflicted (and it was Brussels inflicted) austerity saw the total Greek economy shrink by more than 25%. Read that again: more than a 25% drop in GDP.
More than half a million young skilled Greeks left their homeland. How many will return? Who knows? But in the meantime the brightest, boldest and best of a generation left the country because their life-chances were so damaged by austerity, imposed on them by a foreign power.
They would be the people to rebuild the economy, they would be the entrepreneurs, the future business leaders.
Anyone who can look at the ruin of Greece – imposed by the ECB (and wrongly attributed to the IMF) – and think they’re out of austerity, either doesn’t understand the situation or is so rose-tintedly optimistic that they’d probably describe the Parthenon as a ‘bit of a fixer-upper’.
Forget “timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” – look to Greece’s example and beware anyone from Brussels seemingly bearing gifts.
‘More than half a million young skilled Greeks left their homeland’
Yes, one of them, a doctor, recently knocked over and smashed the glass of a frame containing a Johan Cruyff poster at my place. So that’s another 25 pounds the Greeks owe.
At least you actually saw a doctor!
It was the dire treatment of Greece by the EU that made me vote to leave.
Yeah ??? Which number do you hold in the queue at Dover ?
Thank you for interesting synopsis of the tyranny of Brussels.
However it is a bit of a Curate’s Egg and perhaps the UK could adopt some of more sensible diktats.
For example slashing Public Sector Workers/Civil Servants pay by 30% would be a fine start, as would slashing their ‘gold plated, index linked pensions’, and reducing the overall numbers by at least 150,000. Then we might truly say: “Usque ad mortem bibendum”.
Paddy, having lived in various countries throughout my life, like your Greek friends, I have long said, the UK has no idea what real austerity is, it is built up by the media as a stick with which to beat the Conservative party. Living in Spain I remember talking to a sobbing young man who was earning 800 euros per month, this barely covered his costs and all he had was his small home in the countryside. The home was burned down in a wildfire and he had never been able to afford anything like insurance so he lost everything. He now had to rent, but with that and tax he had no money to eat and no help as he had never earned enough to qualify for long-term help. He could see no way out. In Spain the euro had overnight doubled prices and almost immediately threw a whole swathe of people into poverty.
And yet Yanis supports the concept of the EU. Why does such a clever person fail to understand that it is, inherently, by the very nature of the organisation and nationalist human natures, inevitable that the larger EU countries will exploit the smaller countries.
“And yet Yanis supports the concept of the EU. Why does such a clever person fail to understand that it is, inherently, by the very nature of the organisation and nationalist human natures, inevitable that the larger EU countries will exploit the smaller countries.”
Being intelligent does not make one right. Many fascists and communists were brilliant but this didn’t stop them from supporting atrocities.
Yiannis supports the EU because he’s a communist in Marxist sense (as opposed to the Chinese sense of CCP or Stalinist sense). Yiannis is a collectivist. He does not have a Greek identity in anything but name. Like similar Marxists he will always define his culture and identity by the larger leftist collective. Greece is “nationalism” in his worldview (as is the UK et al). Whereas EU is “human rights”. If there was an attempt to later form a global Marxist government, Yiannis would jump ship from European identity much like he does Hellenism. .
If aliens showed up and argued for the earth to be part of a Marxist commonwealth Yiannis would support that to show how is not “racist’ and not “ethno-centric”, Yiannis identity is communism. It’s not Greek, It’s not European, It’s not even human.
What a lot of hot air!!! your comment does not even warrant an answer because you are ignorant!!!
The EU is not perfect but it has worked exceptionally well for what it was intended for…. to try to prevent endless wars between European states so we can focus on trade rather than conflict.
Unfortunately that’s not enough for far left fanatics like Yannis. Under the guise of supporting for difference communists like Yannis seek to erase difference. They seek sameness. Being a collectivist Yiannis would prefer to turn the EU into a nation rather than treaty organization….a Union of European Socialist Republics…. a UESR to replace the USSR.
Speaking as a former liberal and now independent… extreme left fanatics like Yiannis don’t support diversity as they claim. it’s framing. What diversity and multiculturalism represents to the extreme left is just a stepping stone to their obsession with sameness.
That’s why they oppose national sovereignty. That’s why they frame mass violation of borders as ‘human rights”. That’s why Yiannis would frame any unit of culture or even person as “Greek”. That;s why they would slander anyone disagrees as “racist”. The “tolerant” extreme left render ethnonyms meaningless. A word that can mean anything means nothing. In other words.. the extreme left engage in a subtle form of ethnic cleansing but frame it as “human rights”.
This of course does not excuse the far right. Fanatics like Golden Donkeys have no place in democratic discourse. Ancient Greeks recommended moderation. That is clearly something nearly fascists like Golden Dawn or communists Yiannis could care less about. Not only is Yiannis not “Greek”.. he is anti-Greek while ridiculously framing himself as Greek.
More RUBBISH!!! While I agree with your comments about the far left, your take on Yiannis is totally wrong! There has never been a more patriotic Greek politician since the ancient days of Athens who was trying to free Greece from the bankruptcy imposed by the corporate Cabal and that is the reason he was forced to “resign”. On the other hand, the EU is an extreme far left establishment masquerading as “democracy” and a puppet to the West corporate interests. Look at what they have done to most of the “weak” member countries and the population of the whole EU! It’s a bloody mess! Ah! never mind!! You wouldn’t understand!!
“ACTUAL pay cuts for public sector workers of 30%” and “Cutting 150 000 public sector jobs”:
These sound like two of the best ideas I have heard in a long time. This group undeservedly thrived during COVID, and in many cases were unburdened even by any requirement to actually go into an office and do some useful work. The huge over-hang of public debt that most countries emerged with from the lock-down could best be born if all of society had to bear it. That is not a comment specifically applicable to Greece – it could be applied to most Western economies.
Greece could have just defaulted on their debts, left the EU, and taken control of their currency. The reason they didn’t do this is because they needed to borrow MORE money from the EU. They couldn’t get by on just the billions they already borrowed and spent. And don’t forget the majority of Greeks thought paying taxes was for suckers. So they just didn’t do it.
“we managed within our modest means, living and breathing paradigms of parsimony.”
Sounds like my grandparents. Certainly not ‘the way we live now’. Australians are now, personally, more in debt than the Greeks, or just about anyone else. We didn’t need the EU to help us, we’ve done it all by ourselves.
Sounds like the UK before the Blair creature….and how we loved the free money
I’ve read his book called “Adults in the room” about his negotiations for the Greek Bailout and I cannot understand why he urged the UK to stay in the EU and after reading this article I’m even more confused.
Also there was a time when it was said that after Greece’s bailout that its debt was so large that it would never pay it off and would be a ball and chain for ever. But more recently I’ve seen the odd article which seemed to say that they are all now hunky dory and on track. I’d be interested to know what the current situation is.
If I recall, his own experiences with the EU detailed in that book had made him defeatist, and he thought (not unreasonably) that attempting to leave would just lead to chaos and EU punishment. Once the result was in, I remember he was a proponent of the “Norway for now” path, i.e. kicking all the hard decisions into the long grass until the British government got its act together (if ever).
As for the Greek financial situation, I don’t know exact details, but the ECB etc. consolidated power and tightened things up across the board in the years after the 2015 crisis, so that any nation that even slightly spooks the markets gets a hard slap – see the 2018 Italian budget crisis for an example. That lasted only until the ECB itself abandoned all sense of composure to fund the covid panic.
Steve, console yourself with the thought that you are still less confused than Varoufakis is.
I don’t think Greece is ‘on track’ towards anything regarding the debt. I watched an interview with Varoufakis recently in which he said the debt had only grown since 2010. It might have stopped growing now, but like all these debts none of it will ever be paid down.
I didn’t read Adults In The Room but I have read one or two of his other books. I consider him to be one of the better economists/commentators around at the moment, and a decent person.
Particularly interesting is his suggestion – which I first saw expressed in a discussion with the uselessly complacent Gillian Tett – that a capitalism that can only be sustained by the ever greater printing of money by central banks is no longer capitalism.
This is so tragic. But the forces that reduced your country are in action on a global scale.
“…. who celebrate European civilisation as if the horrors of European colonialism had never happened”.
Just could not avoid the old left wing trope. So precisely what horrors of European colonialism are worse than anything any on else did?
Tell me what horrors are worse than the one that the European did?
‘The Great Leap Forward’ by the vaunted CCP.
Unfortunately some Brits are going down the road of Marxist. Neo-Marxist Varoufakis being treated as a serious academic is proof of that.
Vespasian’s conquest of the Isle of Wight perhaps?
No wonder the Greeks feel ashamed of the humiliation imposed on them by the European Union. They could recover their national pride by leaving the EU and devaluing their currency with a restored, free-floating drachma that would boost their tourism industry.
“However, to enter Europe we had to lower our trade barriers and, later, to dismantle all capital controls. Immediately, a tsunami of imports, money and loans left northern Europe for Greece. Not that we resisted it, hungry as we were for the material trappings of modernity. Before we knew it, our factories were shut (and converted into warehouses for the imported washing machines and fridges that were once manufactured here)…”
Sounds similar to what happened to the UK when we joined
The economic crucifixion of Greece should have torn away any illusions people held about the benign nature of the EU project. If we had joined the Euro, we would have been in a bigger fix than we are now. On another note, while in Greece, I was struck by the stoicism and dignity of most people. Perhaps it was resignation to their diminished lot.
If there is any European country that is a show case for the benefits of EU membership then Greece isn’t it!
It is not a silly question, “Is European civilisation better or worse than other civilisations?” The naysayers and self-hating liberal élites who decry European civilisation hate the question because it might just reveal the truth: that European civilisation might actually be superior to other current and historic versions and is therefore fighting for.
That is not to say it is without faults; far from it. But to quote Kenan Malik, “..that while Europe was responsible for the enslavement of blacks, nevertheless within European culture lay also the political and moral ideas with which to shatter the bonds of enslavement.” (The Quest for a Moral Compass. London, 2014 p.270). If our civilisation has a redeeming feature, despite all the horrors we have inflicted on the world, it is that capacity for change.
So, no, with respect, Yanis, I do not think it a silly question.
“…while Europe was responsible for the enslavement of blacks…” No, the ‘Elite’ were… Along with the elite of the Middle East and Africa itself… Same sort who are now responsible for all the other nonsense and horrifying authoritarianism overshadowing us today…
Appreciate you were simply quoting, but this simple truth is what needs hollering every time it comes up whenever, wherever
Thank you, you are quite right. My Irish great, great grandfather died age 35, during the Irish Famine; he had nothing to do with slavery and suffered from the same élite indifference: the absentee landlords of Ireland were the same landowning class who owned slave plantations.
You touch on a great point. Slavery had been around for thousands of years. Historically speaking it wasn’t limited to any particular demographic or to any country.. Yet people in Europe are supposed to feel some sort of special collectively guilt over slavery that ended nearly two centuries ago?
Same story with fascism. Only a portion of Europe was fascist. And even for that portion, its been over 75 years since axis forces were defeated. Virtually everyone responsible for fascism during WW2 is dead. Yet again some try to guilt trip Europeans as being collectively responsible.
In other words, human rights language is being manipulated globally to smear people as “racist” or “nationalist” to try to shut down criticism. If you disagree you oppose “human rights’.. .rather than oppose the views of some self-righteous knucklehead manipulatively framing their politics as “human rights”
The “human rights” industry has become an unaccountable priest class. I submit not only are some that claim to support “human rights” racist themselves but sometimes it’s even a smokescreen for extreme nationalism.
Human rights has become a very lucrative industry. Cherie Blair,Amal Clooney et al it keeps them in knickers. And the other day on my local radio some human rights activist babe was chuntering on and I realised on decoding her words,she or her group were getting some sort of grant or support from the local authority for their “work”.
I thank my lucky stars that I was born into European civilization, even if it is on the other side of the pond. An easy way to evaluate European civilization is to answer three questions. If you live in a country that is European in outlook (I include citizens of the Americas in this category) would you, if you had the opportunity, move to an African, Middle Eastern, or Asian country with its own civilization? Conversely, if you live in an African, Middle Eastern or Asian country outside European civilization would you move to a country that is part of European civilization, if given the opportunity? Finally, if everyone got the chance to re-sort themselves, which regions of the world do you think would grow the most?
Actually, other blacks are responsible for the enslavement of blacks: the main profiteers from the Atlantic slave trade (and Saharan slave trade, but more about that later) were the Kings of Benin. The Portuguese did not sail down the coast of Africa looking for slave, but for trade (and a route around the slave-taking and slave-buying Muslim world to the Orient, but when they found the main goods for sale on the coast of West Africa were human beings, they got a papal blessing to join in the trade. That blessing was given because it was considered that taking Africans as slaves was just retribution for the taking of Europeans as slaves by the Ottoman Empire, especially its North African provinces (the first foreign was we Americans fought was against slave-taking pirates from the Barbary Coast, all of whom as good Sunnis were in theory at least subjects of the Caliph, that is the Ottoman Sultan). Hardly just, since the slaves the Europeans bought were victims of the same slave system that was taking Europeans as a slaves further north, rather than being Moors, Berbers or Arabs, but this nicety was lost on the pope at the time.
Horrible though the Atlantic slave trade was, if you were an enslaved African, you were probably better off being sent across the seas to the New World than across the desert to Libya, Egypt, the Levant, Asia Minor or the Balkans. The death rate in the transit was lower and when you got there, your master would probably let you have a family (yes, sometimes cruelly broken up, but…) rather than being made a eunuch or worked to death in a mine (or if you were a woman used as a sex-slave to some bey or kadi, or maybe the Sultan himself).
Yes, Europe joined in, but Europe’s distinctive contribution was abolitionism. The first person to declare slavery qua slavery was an indefeasible evil was St. John Chrysostom, but the idea didn’t catch on until Wilberforce and his generation managed to persuade the British Empire to invest blood and treasure in suppressing the slave trade world wide.
Someone,a historian on the radio pointed out that there are thousands of descendants of black slaves in America but none at all in the Middle East or the whole Ottoman world. And it’s because the ones who went to America got to keep their bits and even have sex while EVERY slave entrant to the nasty,evil,vicious exploitative Muslim Ottoman Empire,both black and WHITE underwent castration and no exceptions,and no nonsense about it.
Thats why the Sultans Palace Guard,the Janissaries were so fearsomely mean and nasty. Even the Sultan was afraid of them.
Because the people of the Balkans were so poor they had NO MONEY AT ALL every year they had to pay tax to their MUSLIM overlords,a harvest of their children instead. Each village had to provide 12 boys and 12 girls.
How heartbreaking was that. Knowing your loved son was going to be castrated and your loved daughter become a sex slave.
No,the Muslim world of North Africa,Arabia and all those other nasty places was “responsible” for the West African slave trade in black people. Men,women and children. Later the Ottoman Empire took this trade to industrial levels. In 15something English Sea captain John Hawkins sailed along the coast of Africa “discovering” it,as we do,and he stumbled on this trade in people. He bought a few to sell on and realised this could be lucrative and thus the British opted into the trade in black African humans that was all set up and well established and had been in operation for at least 2,000 years. The trade routes across the Sahara were ancient and the reason why the city of Timbuktu was in the middle of “nowhere”. The British set up a chain of coastal forts as the interior was too nasty and deathly to go into,and local greedy black African Kings full of cupidity brought them regular batches of their fellow Africans captured in or after local battles that was the way they lived. Can I point out that we,the Brits legally ended slavery in 1831,in law at least but the Muslim country of Turkey legally ended slavery in 1929. So why do we have to beat ourselves up.
When Varoufakis says “We Greeks”… he is speaking for himself as a non-Greek with Greek citizenship not for ethnic Greeks. Speaking as an ethnic Greek, I do not consider Varoufakis part of the same ethnic group as ethnic Greeks.
Varoufakis is bizarrely trying to co-opt the ethnonym Greek to describe his clearly non-Greek identity Unlike actual Greeks, Varoufakis does not see himself related to ancient Greeks nor does he care an iota about ancient Hellenism. His sense of identify, people and culture effectively his Marxism ideology. Unfortunately as a collectivist he, unethically, tries to lump ethnic Greeks as sharing his non-Greek identity when we don’t.
There are different contexts of term “Greek: being used in used in Greece much like there is of “English” and “Scottish’ in the UK.. There are Greeks in the citizenship sense. These Greeks are minorities that can be from anywhere else in the world (e..g Greek Freak). Then there are Greeks that are ethnically related to ancient Greeks and care culturally about ancient Hellenism.
In most nations in the world today there is dispute between an ethnic context of a national name and citizenship context. Unfortunately a portion of ethnic minorities try to erase the majority local ethnic group by claiming there is only citizenship context that exists. They’ll smear them as ‘racist’ for making distinction between ethnic space and citizenship definition. Typically such minorities flip-flop on their own ideological arguments when it comes to their own ethnic identities which the claim as “real. The same sorts typically aligned themselves with the extreme left (like Varoufakis) within the nations they live as minorities but the flip-flop into supporting the conservatives in what they see as their “real” homelands.
This definition dispute is not limited to the term “Greek” in Greece but English as well. Scottish. Irish. German, Swedish, French. And so on.
Far leftist like Varoufakis belong to a leftist school of thought that claim all modern nationalities are artificial constructions (see Gellner). In a sense he’s right. Modern nations are by definition modern. And of course there is no such thing as pure races or pure cultures.
The problem with Marxist cultists like Varoufakis is they take things to extreme by “deconstructing” the people’s of the world into nothing to show how they are antinationalists and antiracist. Under the veneer of tolerance for diversity what they are actually tying to do is erase everyone’s identity’s so we can all be absorbed into their Marxist cult. They are like islamic extremists that seek global domination. They don’t understand not everyone wants to lose their distinctiveness to join their Marxist borg collective.
Heraclitus is famed we never step into the same river twice. This does not mean there is no river. In the case of Greece, Greeks are the river that is Hellenism much like peoples in other countries in the world have their own histories despite being impure. Those that disrespect Greek identity are typically racist hypocrites that have far less in common with their claimed roots then we do.
And then there are Greeks who along with their ancestors have lived in Greece and spoken Greek for centuries, but whose ancestors arrived in medieval times when everyone in that part of the world called themselves “Romans” (romaoi if you spoke Greek, romanoi if you spoke Latin). They may not any more claim on classical Greek antiquity than do Europeans in general, but in as much as modern Greek culture is really East Roman, rather then Hellenic, being part of the civilization grounded in Orthodox Christianty, ancestors from wherever who settled in what is now Greece, adopted Greek as a language and Orthodoxy as a faith and suffered through the oppression of the Turkocratia give one as good a claim to Greekness as anything.
I, myself, have absolutely no claim to being Greek. Nonethless, my mother-in-law (Spartan on her mother’s side, Cretan on her father’s) tells me I’m Greek just because I converted to Orthodoxy. (If anyone asks me about my ethnicity, I tell them I’m a Varangian — all my ancestors were from Northwestern Europe.)
“And then there are Greeks who along with their ancestors have lived in Greece and spoken Greek for centuries, but whose ancestors arrived in medieval times”
And most have no clue as to what percentage of the genetic makeup modern Greek are. Most use pet ad-hoc analogies. They can’t be bothered to notice no ethnic group is pure but hold Greeks to a different standard to be “real” Greek.
“They may not any more claim on classical Greek antiquity than do Europeans in general, ”
We are the ones the preserve the Greek language, toponym, identity and culture themes in Greece while others ridiculously claim anti-hellenic slavs “macedonians”. If some Greek cititzen doesn’t care about ancient Hellenism that’s perfectly fine. Just don’t try to erase the ones that do.
“, have absolutely no claim to being Greek. Nonethless, my mother-in-law (Spartan on her mother’s side, Cretan on her father’s) tells me I’m Greek just because I converted to Orthodoxy”
I am not even a Christian. I don’t have a single non-Greek in my family as far back as I can trace my roots. I am not an iota less real Greek than someone in UK is Welsh or Scottish. Fortunately for modern Scots no one tries to ridiculously claim Sweden Republic of Scotland, its language “Scottish”, and its people “ethnic” Scottish.
“I am Varganian”
And I’m sure you are racially and culturally pure whereas Greeks are just deluded nationalists that fantasize we are real Greeks.
I would point out Jews allow conversion to Jewish vis-a-vis religious conversion. With Greeks though.. if we leave door open to voluntary assimilation we are deluded nationalists. And If we don’t allow a path to assimilate we are called racist. If we use Greek in citizenship context sense we are claimed not “real” Greeks too . We can’t win with genocidal antihellenic hypocrites whose goal is to erase the Greek people
“much as modern Greek culture is really East Roman, rather then Hellenic,”
This is ad-hoc analogizing nonsense. Despite using the term “Roman” middle age Roman, became Christians (like the rest of Europe), the primary education was Greek. Greek-speaking Romans of that era read books in Greek with ancient Greek history, philosophy, and culture in them. Virtually none of them could speak Latin because Greek was their native language. Its not rocket science to figure out Greeks of today have legitimate connection to ancient Greeks. Or at least not for those that aren’t antihellenic trolls.
How’s Diem25 going Yannis? That “pan-European, progressive movement that aims to democratise the EU before it disintegrates. Our bid to effect change is enshrined in our Green New Deal for Europe”? Which for me reads Lefty takeover of the EU… I’ve seen the payoff for myself in Barcelona thanks to your ‘great friend’ Ada Colau… Lots of aggressive Moroccans and Sub-Saharan’s and getting ever dirtier and ‘global’… yep a real Utopia – far, far better than the ordered, tidy proud Catalan capital I first knew 15 years ago… Go Yannis! Twerp
Yiannis anti-capitalist rants are classic communist cold war rhetoric. Actual progressives are moderates that are for a mix of capitalism and socialism. Yiannis is not a “progressive” unless one cares to redefine that term to mean Marxism like Yiannis does. (aka communism).
The essential problem – to which a relatively small and economically weak nation like Greece is particularly vulnerable – is the culture of consumerism: the manipulation of people and societies to measure their own value according to their ability to buy things they do not need. This is what has torn apart the moral and cultural foundation of Greek society. But it is a universal disease which is destroying us all – as societies and as individuals. Go to Turkey, Russia, China, India – everywhere it is the same: enormous shopping malls encouraging people to come and spend money to buy things they do not need, at the expense of the their inner peace, their health, and the natural world. Nowhere is there a government that tells us to buy less, to live with a ‘modest sufficiency’ as Éamon de Valera once urged on his people. Everywhere we are urged on to be greedy and self-indulgent and heedless of the truth. That is the heart of the problem.
I am not great fan of EU but as usual Varoufakis completely ignores Greece population responsibility for their predicament.
Just because someone offers you a loan you don’t have to take it.
I seriously doubt that there was serious industrial capacity in Greece before EU accession.
Greece is classic example of country living beyond its means.
How many Greeks were retiring on much better pensions than Brits in their early fifties?
Greece energy sector employed 5 times more people per head of population than Germany.
So any cuts in pay etc are just adjustments to reflect productivity of Greece economy.
Speaking as a Greek, I feel nothing but disgust for Varoufakis. This man is a Marxist polemist. Not a communist in the sense the Republicans in the US smear Obama, Varoufakis literally believes Karl Marx was right. Like most communists, he incompetently strawmans our modern day economies as “capitalist” when they are actually mixed economies.
Varoufakis was a minister of Syriza before Mera25. He was kicked out from it for irrationally opposing government cuts when even fellow Marxist pal Tsipras realized they were unavoidable. Formerly fringe parties like Golden Dawn and Syriza exploited the mistakes of our middle ground parties of spending us into the ground by making ridiculous promises to Greek voters they would role back cuts. Rather than profusely apologizing to foreign debt holders for stiffing them they shamelessly went on the offensive blaming capitalism, banks, Germans and others for our own mistakes.
Tsipras and Varoufakis manipulatively presented Syriza as “progressives” . Meanwhile Syriza leadership were on individual level virtually all self professed Marxists (aka.. a currently more hip word for communists) They sometimes frame themselves as “progressive” as a way to trick more moderate liberals and socialist into supporting communists.
Varofakis former boss and friend Tsipras was part of the KKE youth wing as a kid. His ministers were self-proclaimed Marxists. Before it merged with Syriza, Tsipras was leader of Synapsismos whose party platform was Euro-communism. Tsipras praises 50 year communist dictator Castro as a great leader. He named his own poor kid “Che” after communist terrorist Che Guevera.
The problem with far leftist fanatics like Varoufakis is he tries so hard to show how he against racism and nationalism he takes it to the absurd point he’s a sociopath to anyone with an actually Greek identity (i.e. as in related to ancient Hellenes). He slanders virtually every Greek that doesn’t share his views on Greek identity as “racist’, “far right’ or “fascist”… yet frames other groups with less in common with their claimed heritages as “minorities” and “human rights”. Not a principle in sight. Varoufakis has analogized himself out of Greek identity which he claims is “myth” (ignoring history, biology, cultural and language). The context of his “Greek” is not Greek. He’s like a Greek version of Shlomo Sands. This man’s real identity and culture is his Marxist cult.
To make matter worse, anti-Greek bigots that would never consider voting for communists in their own countries, exploit Varafakis antihellenic rheotric and identity crisis to claim modern Greeks are “real” Greek. While meanwhile most of these racist trolls have less in common with their claimed roots than Greeks do.
I love Greece beyond compare due to so many fabulous, serene peaceful holidays in the honoured company of so many charming, kind, selfless happy Greeks.. and so devoid of the new monied ghastliness of, for example ” St Toiletropez” where my family, unfortunately, has a house- however, not unlike Portugal, Greece seems to have been unable to build any form of substantial form of commerce or industry, bar its shipping magnate past.
ps my last, an absence of Brits, Dutch Germans and Belgians made Greece all the more desireable
I’m no expert on the Greek economy but it’s problems didn’t start when it joined the EU. It had the typically unstable currency of Club Med countries, and even today has a relaxed attitude to collecting taxes – e.g. Greek shipowners, and the classic “unfinished buildings” that are exempt from property taxes despite people living in them for years!
Surely the whole concept of ‘modern’ Greece is the ‘invention’ of Otto Friedrich Ludwig von Bayern & Co, and virtually nothing to do with the land of Pericles, Demosthenes etc?
Yes, my understanding is that the people who have populated Greece for hundreds of years are in no way connected to the ancient Greeks. I believe the new Greeks arrived from somewhere further east at some point. I have no idea what happened to the ancient Greeks. Perhaps they went on an Odyssey.
As a Greek I’d like you to elaborate on that understanding to enlighten me maybe?
I thought so too, until I read about the very strong DNA connection between ancient and modern Greeks.
If that DNA ‘evidence’ is in anyway valid, which many seriously doubt, one has ask the question “ What (the hell) went wrong?
what happened? The fourth crusade happened, and then the Ottoman empire happened thats what. They have only been rebuilding themselves for relatively a very short time since the 1800’s. Have you even read the studies which the ‘evidence’ of you so easily dismiss? It is published on the national library of medicine of the US website so I highly recommend you read it before making such a comment – as well as maybe brushing up on your history of what the Greek people have been going through for the past few hundred years before questioning the current state they are in and somehow pointing to genetics and ignoring hundreds of years of occupation and brutal sackings – not to mention the more recent event of WWII which they were hardly given reparations for.
Tut tut what an intemperate response!
Perhaps it is you who should brush up your history?
As you must know, the Greeks//Hellenes were ‘destroyed’ centuries before the Fourth Crusade. The main culprit was the homicidal Macedonian pygmy, sometimes referred to as Alexander the Great. Both he and his equally homicidal father almost completely destroyed Classical Greece just as Demosthenes had warned. The wretched Diadochi continued the process, and such remnants as survived we snuffed out by radical Christianity some centuries later.
Incidentally what is this you crow of for Greece in WWII? Did we (UK) have to crush a Communist insurrection there?
Im guessing you are not at all aware of the existance of the byzantine / eastern roman empire and the role the greeks had in it. Stick to king henry the VIII and the battle of the hastings when talking about history as any reference you make to greek history is clearly misinformed and lacking.
What a fatuous reply!
Off course I’m aware of the incorrectly named ‘Byzantine Empire’, who isn’t?
However I rather share the opinion of Edward Gibbon who correctly described it as “tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery, whose narration was an ungrateful and melancholy task”.
Perhaps you think differently?
Incidentally do you ever use capital letters? Or are you, sadly, an American by any chance? Or even worse Greek?
So, you start by a comment that claimed the Greeks were “destroyed” rather than being incorporated into the Roman empire, and when the man pointed our your mistake, you used an outdated historical narrative by Gibbon to misdirect the point which clearly showed your initial error, followed by an insult..
I have to say that despite the fact that you may be expressing yourself in an articulate manner, your arguements are flawed and the insult just further degraded anything you had to say.
In defense of the poor fellow you tried to insult, I would have to agree the Greeks were not “destroyed” and played a significant role in the extremely successful surviving half of the Roman Empire, and that they did indeed, after the fall, suffer immensely to the Turks after suffering a pillage from the western crusades.
Your claims must be greatly insulting to any honorable Greek who may be reading, and makes me feel ashamed to see a fellow Brit speak so condescendingly to someone who you clearly insulted, who seems to have a clearer perspective of historical events than you, despite his poorer grammar and punctuation.
“Or are you, sadly, an American by any chance? Or even worse Greek?”
Hilarious. Every post you make about Greeks reveals your bigotry. What’s your ethnic background “charles”. Can you answer without lying?
“As you must know, the Greeks//Hellenes were ‘destroyed’ centuries before the Fourth Crusade. The main culprit was the homicidal Macedonian pygmy, sometimes referred to as Alexander the Great.”
My handle is King Henry the 8th.. .ergo I must be British.
As shameless racist nationalist trolls like you well know Ancient Macedonians founded the Hellenistic period where they spread the Greek language and culture. They also self-identified as Greeks. Alexander’s own father competed at three different Olympiads in the horserace.. at the time reserved for Greeks.
Greek hating liars like you that claim to speak for the past can’t even truthfully report the present truthfully. Amazing how those that claimed former Yugoslavians “mcaedonians”.. have developed selective vision problems as half of them now claim not to be Slavs but apparently antihellenic founders of the Hellenistic period.
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What a vulgar yet incoherent reply. You claim to be British? Then you must be one of the unfortunate products of our appalling State education system.
Read your Demosthenes to understand why the Athenians and other Hellenes regarded the Macedonians as complete barbarians.
This attitude meant ( with the sole exception of the King) that they were banned from all Panhellenic Festivals, such as the Olympics. The exemption was made in the mid fifth century for Alexander I (not the homicidal pygmy) on the grounds that he wasn’t really a Macedonian, as his ancestors originated from Argos!
A typical Greek compromise don’t you think?
Your quote mine of Demosthenes is a laughable misunderstanding of context. Demosthenes was using barbarian as an insult during time of conflict between Athens and Macedonia.
Your claim only kings were allowed at the Olympics is a lie. There is plenty of records of ancient Macedonians that weren’t kings competing at ancient Olympics dear.
I suggest rather than racist rhetoric toward Greeks and claiming to speak for the past… pay attention to the present. Half of the former Yugoslavians have turned into ancient macedonians right before your eyes. Amazing how antigreek trolls that claim to speak for the past are having problems reporting the present truthfully
Philips father competed at ancient Olympics as SELF-IDENTIFYING Hellene. He was recognized as a Hellen by other Greeks. Alexander’s mother was a SELF-IDENTIFYING Greek princess from the Epirus. Two Greek parents… yet magically according to anti-Greek trolls like you Alexander was not Greek. He was apparently an anti-hellenic slav from ancient Paeonia.
Amazing how those that lectured Greeks about self-determination flip-flop on their own alleged ethics when it comes to the self-determination of not only Greeks of today but even ancient Greeks themselves.
With over 20 years of reading on Macedonia history we aren’t even in the same league of knowledge on this issue you pretentious bigot.
You understood perfectly what I said you racist troll. Your evasion only further illustrates your dishonesty and bigotry towards Greeks
You claim to speak for ancient history. so what;;s with all the evasion over the former Yugoslavians little switch-a-roo of identity into antihellenic founders of the Hellenistic period?
You lecture on “vulgar”.. then keep using racist rhetoric towards Greeks.. What’s your claimed ethnic background “Charles”. Can you answer without lying? Lets see how well your alleged heritage stacks up against Greek troll.
Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Persians, Chinese and Japanese could be cited as examples of ethnic continuity, since, despite massive cultural changes over the centuries, certain key identifying components—name, language, customs, religious community and territorial association—were broadly maintained and reproduced for millennia. –
Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations, page 191, Anthony David Smith, Routledge, 1998
“As you must know, the Greeks//Hellenes were ‘destroyed’ centuries before the Fourth Crusade. The main culprit was the homicidal Macedonian pygmy, sometimes referred to as Alexander the Great”
Confirmed fake fact Charles. Whom were participating at the Olympics centuries later in 393 CE when Christian Latin Roman emperor Theodosius forcibly ended the Olympics? Former Yugoslavian nationalist extremists that today claim to be founders of the Hellenistic period?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Olympic_Games
” with the sole exception of the King) that they were banned from all Panhellenic Festivals, such as the Olympics. The exemption was made in the mid fifth century for Alexander I”
Surprise. Another confirmed fake fact from Charles. Before embarrassing yourself further perhaps consider reading books rather than just colouring them in?
https://www.helleniccomserve.com/olympicmacedonians.html
“Greeks have lived in Anatolia for millennia, especially along the Aegean coast. For a while, under Alexander, they dominated the land. And for all intents and purposes, the Byzantine Empire was Greek.[.] The first Ottoman census, of 1477, counted half of Constantinople’s population as Greek, and four-hundred years later, even after the Greek War of Independence, it was still 21 percent Greek”
-David Lowenthal, “The heritage crusade and the spoils of history. (1998)
“As you must know, the Greeks//Hellenes were ‘destroyed’:
Confirmed fake fact. Whom exactly was participating at ancient Greek-only Olympics hundreds of years later champ? You seem not to realize the Olympics lasted until AD 393 when Latin Christian Roman emperor forcibly ended them for being pagan..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Olympic_Games
And before embarrassing yourselves further you by spreading fake facts about ancient Macedonians not competing at the ancient Olympics, you might want to do your homework. Books are for reading not just colouring in the pretty pictures.
https://www.helleniccomserve.com/olympicmacedonians.html
“What (the hell) went wrong?”
What’s with all the hyperbole of how horrible Greeks are? Greece is far from perfect but at most metrics it’s still manages to be better than global average you ranting antigreek bigot.
The DNA connection that I read about was that the Greeks have mostly Sub-Saharan DNA.
“he DNA connection that I read about was that the Greeks have mostly Sub-Saharan DNA.”
Former Yugoslavian crypo-fascists like you peddle this obvious racist nonsense to hide that you are not ancient macedonians as fanatics in your country now claim.
yawn.
“A six-year long DNA research of the Balkan peoples conducted by Skopje Forensics Medicine Institute has showed remarkable resemblance among them. ”
“The analysis of the data has showed that residents of Macedonia have the most similar DNA with Bulgarians and Serbs”
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2012&mm=01&dd=22&nav_id=78407
I have heard it said, in some of the most august Common Rooms in England, that the modern Greeks, are “Turks, pretending to be Italians “
When one gets onto the subject of Macedonia it becomes even more exciting.
And did you smash the speaker’s face in for being an ignorant and pretentious prat?
No. as the speaker as I recall was the late Professor Norman Stone.
In fact all present just laughed uproariously.
“For over 100 years, many hotly contested theories have circulated concerning the origin of the inhabitants of Bronze Age, Classical, and modern Greece, including the so-called ‘Coming of the Greeks’ in the late second millennium, the ‘Black Athena’ hypothesis of the Afroasiatic origins of Classical Greek civilization, and the notorious theory of the 19th century German historian Fallmerayer, who popularized the belief that the descendants of the ancient Greeks had vanished in early Medieval times.”
“While the new study does not resolve all the outstanding questions, it provides key answers. Importantly, the findings disprove the widely held theory that the Mycenaeans were a foreign population in the Aegean and were not related to the Minoans. The results also dispel the theory that modern Greeks did not descend from the Mycenaeans and later ancient Greek populations.”
phys.org/news/2017-08-civilizations-greece-revealing-stories-science.html
As former Yugoslavians turn into ancient macedonian right before your eyes, Racist Antihellenic trolls like you can’t even tell history in the present truthfully much less the past.
“The creation of the Macedonian nation, for almost half of a century, was done in a condition of single-party dictatorship. In those times, there was no difference between science and ideology, so the “Macedonian” historiography, unopposed by anybody, comfortably performed a selection of the historic material from which the “Macedonian” identity was created. There is nothing atypical here for the process of the creation of any modern nation, except when falsification from the type of substitution of the word “Bulgarian” with the word “Macedonian” were made.”
Denko Maleski, former Minister of foreign affairs of FYROM from 1991 to 1993
“Professor Norman Stone”
Same man that claimed the Turks didn’t commit genocide against Armenians. Starting to see a pattern here. Do you by any chance have any Turkish speaking relatives “Charles”
Bingo!
“Turks, pretending to be Italians “”
Given your obsession and repeated nonsense trying to decouple Greeks from ancient Greek history suggest you are a nationalist from the region “chartes:
“modern Greeks, are “Turks, pretending to be Italians “
The irony of your ridiculous claim is you have things backwards. Apostasy was a death sentence under the ottomans. Assimilation was one way from Greek to Turk. Modern Turks a mix of Greeks, along with many others that pretend they are the original Ottomans. (and DNA testing consistently shows this dear)
All it would take antigreek trolls like you just a few minutes of googling for credible peer reviewed academic sources for DNA studies comparing modern to ancient Greek DNA. You know actual population geneticists and archaeologists that have done the painstaking work of finding, extracting and sequencing ancient Greek DNA to do a comparative analysis. Of course genocidal Greek-haters like you can never be bothered.
“Present-day Greeks are genetically similar to 2,000 BCE Aegeans from Northern Greece”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421003706
“I have heard it said, in some of the most august Common Rooms in England, that the modern Greeks, are “Turks, pretending to be Italians “
Modern Greeks have far more in common with ancient Greeks than mystic David Cameron of the former French Possession of Britain has in common with the original British. Hypocrisy is a very convincing argument.
“Turkish DNA Project calls for boycott after Ancestry.com highlights many Greeks were Turkified”
https://greekcitytimes.com/2021/06/01/turkish-dna-project-greeks-turkified/
“Thousands of Turks Learn of Their Greek, Armenian Heritage with New Government Genealogy Database”
https://pappaspost.com/thousands-turks-learn-greek-armenian-heritage-new-government-genealogy-database/
“The Greeks really do have near-mythical origins, ancient DNA reveals.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/greeks-really-do-have-near-mythical-origins-ancient-dna-reveals
Oh dude, even though it’s true, don’t say that to a Greek. You may get killed.
VMRO supporters like you in Skopje are the ones that are behaving like violent lunatics. When you stop hiding most of you used to self-identify as ethnic Bulgarians and ridiculously pretending to be ancient Macedonians maybe we will take your lectures on history and ethics seriously.
What’ VMRO’s plan Naskova? Perpetually harass Greeks online with your racist rhetoric because we call your blatently obvoius lying about history and irredentism? Murder all your citizens that don’t want to be turned into ancient Macedonian? Rewrite the Greek writing on countless ancient Macedonian artifacts into the Bulgarian dialect Yugoslav communist propagandists modified and renamed “macedonian”? Kill all the Bulgarians that point out you used to call yourselves Bulgarians? Murder Macedonians, aka Greeks, that dispute VMRO;s claims that the founders of the Hellenistic period were antihellenic Slavs from anceint Paeonia?
“Yes, my understanding is that the people who have populated Greece for hundreds of years are in no way connected to the ancient Greeks.”
Racist garbage. Modern Greeks are culturally, linguistically and even biologically related to ancient Greeks. How much of each is question for specialists that provide consist models for difference not patronizing racists that use ridiculous ad-hoc analogies of “no way connected”.
Take for example modern Greek language. It has far far more in common with the Koine Greek spoken by ancient Macedonians than any modern British language has to do with the languages of the original Britons. The same is true about culture. Given where a significant chunk of western culture originates from what do modern Brits have in common culturally with the original brits that modern Greeks don’t have far more in common with ancient Greeks?
And as for biology.. all it would take is racist trolls that endlessly harass us over Greek history a few minutes to Google for peer reviewed academic sources for comparative studies of ancient Greek DNA. They would discover those that claim its a myth modern Greeks are related to ancient Greeks… are the ones peddling myths. To what degree there is genetic drift and admixture due to mostly back and forth regional assimilation is a question for population geneticists… not patronizing genocidal antihellenilc bigots.
I don’t know much about DNA evidence but the Ancient and Modern Greek languages are quite similar and “mutually intelligible” understates the similarity. Since Europe is now divided along linguistic lines the borders of Greece make sense, at least to me. The modern French are not all that genetically related to “nos ancêtres les Gaulois” either, nor the English to the Romano-Britons.
It’s practically an international sport these days to claim modern Greeks aren’t related to ancient Greeks. I try to keep an open mind about history and nationalist myths. I was brought up orthodox Christian but as as adult became an atheist. I’m also well aware we shifted from calling ourselves Romans to Greeks.
The problem with the Fallmerayer narrative is most of it that parrot it seem to have less in common with their claimed roots than Greeks do ancient Greeks but claim their roots as “real”. Gellner for Greeks. Smith’s primordalism for themselves. They also engage in ridiculous hyperbole that we have “nothing” in common with ancient Greeks. As you graciously pointed out our language has far more in common with ancient Greek than modern English does with what is today called old English much less common Brittonic of the original Brits. .
And its not just language. When you speak a language you can also read works written in that language and thus pass on culture and education.. There is a myth about Greek culture that is sometimes pushed among a segment of academics when they narrate he Renaissance, Enlightment, and Romantic nationalism. They’ll claim Greek culture was rediscovered. That’s a half truth. Although true much was oppressed by Christian fundamentalists starting around the 4th century CE, Greek culture and language never completely left Greece itself. Despite Greeks calling themselves Romans, and the multi-ethnic nature of the eastern Roman empire (similar to Holy Roman) there is an unbroken chain of native Greek-speakers discussing ancient Greek works from present to antiquity. (with some calling them their ancestors)
To what degree there is genetic relationship between ancient and modern Greeks is a question for qualified population geneticists not antinationalist Marxist polemists like Varoufakis who has no clue as someone from the humanities. And certainly not any foreign nationalists that lecture Greeks about how we have “nothing’ in common..
Nearly everyone that absurdly claims we have “nothing” in common with ancient Greeks and claims to speak for history.. patronizingly pretends they don’t notice the former Yugoslavians recent identity switch from Slavs into ancient Macedonians. When someone lies to you in the present their claims about alleged history become moot.
That’s why I’ve come to interpret claim of “nothing in common with ancient Greeks” as racism and nationalism. Extreme leftists like Varoufakis on the other hand have chosen to take a blind eye to these sort of rational inconsistencies. He’s too fixated on his Marxist ideology to notice.
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You lost this argument – not because of your facts, but because of the sheer nastiness of your tone.
On the contrary… that would would be antihellenic trolls that say exactly nothing while pretending they stand on high moral ground. Really not that hard to notice the former Yugoslavians switch of identity into antihellenic founders of the hellenistic period. They are about as “ethnic” Macedonians and ‘Macedonia”… as the western France is “ethnic” English and England. Those that claim them Macedonians either don’t know the history of the region or are antihellenic liars. The Greek writing on ancient Macedonian artefacts isn’t going anywhere for hot air narratives.
The nastiness is of Greek haters that try to whitewash the former Yugoslavians switch of identity from Slav into ancient Macedonian.. and how they use that to promote irredentism against Greece. It’s an implicit attempt to erase the very identity of Greeks… aka a subtle attempt at genocide.
Skopje’s foreign apologists hide behind communist “Greeks” like Varoufakis precisely because he doesn’t have a Greek identity in anything but name. It’s like using Shlomo Sands to speak for Jews. Virtually none of those that praise Varoufakis would vote for the extreme of a shameless communist like him in their own country.
Varoufakis smears any Greek right of Che Guevarra as an “ultra nationalist” and “far right”. He’s Marxist Don Quixote that’s still fighting the cold war. There are no pure capitalist states. Unless we are taking North Korea, the entire world is filled with varying degrees of mixed economies including so-called “communist” China.
The 95 percent of Greeks that still do care about ancient Hellenism are smeared as “nationalists” Those that harass us over our identity hold us to a different standards than they hold themselves. They manipulatively frame their bigotry as “human rights”.
The correct answer… yes Greeks were right to oppose recognition after all. They did abuse the name to promote irredentism. We apologize for harassing Greeks on this name issue. We are sorry for recognizing them as “Macedonians”. We will condemn their peddling of fake history and irredentism rather than pretending not to notice.
Greeks are to blame for making a mess of their government finances. It’s in large part due to to the polemics of anarchist and far leftists that terrorize Greek streets every time we tried to make a cut in social services (the fanatics that “Greeks’ like communist Varoufakis adores). I am not a blind nationalist that blames foreigners for the mistakes of Greece. When populist far leftist fanatics like Varoufakis and Tsipras were in power and unfairly ranting at Germans, banks, IMF, etc.. I was not blaming foreigners. I was telling off “Greeks’ like Varoufakis. Rather than profusely apologizing for our mistakes to foreign creditors far leftist fanatics were unfairly blaming them for our own mistakes. It was an inversion of ethics.
However Greeks are not to blame for the actions of foreigners. Those that recognized as “Macedonians” have no excuses left. They well know antihellenic slavs aren’t founders for the Hellenistic period. They can well see large segment of their population abusing the name to promote what they call “United Macedonia” (even post-Prespa). Take ownership for your own mistake of bizarrely recognizing them as “Macedonians”. Stop unfairly blaming Greeks.
Thanks for that observation!
This ‘buffoon’ has produced over 25 ridiculous, if slightly incoherent posts, that only serve to illustrate the absurdity of contemporary Greek nationalism.
No doubt ‘Johnny Turk’ will soon sort them out, as he always did.
You being someone that writes “Or are you, sadly, an American by any chance? Or even worse Greek?”
.. has zero moral credibility.
Buffoons are the pretentious bigots that claim to speak for history then can’t report the present truthfully. Evaders that downplay former Yugoslavian nationalist extremists switch of identity from Slavs into apparently antihellenic founders of the Hellenistic period.
“No doubt ‘Johnny Turk’ will soon sort them out, as he always did”
Ah. Support for Turkish nationalist extremists to attack Greece to murder Greeks. I’m sure it’s also a coincidence you take a blind eye to Turkey’s military overflights of Greek islands and violations of UNCLOS in the Aegean..
Surely I believe by your racist rhetoric towards Greeks you are against nationalism. You obviously are not a shameless extreme nationalist bs artist manipulating human rights lingo. What’s your ethnic background again “Charles”? I’ve asked a few times but you keep evading.
I ask again.. what is your ethnic background Charles? Can you answer without lying or evading again?
Rather than encouraging contemporary Turkish ultra nationalists to murder Greeks, why not encourage them to investigate their actual ethnic roots?
“DNA-based tests shake Turks’ beliefs in their “Turkishness”https://ahvalnews.com/turks/dna-based-tests-shake-turks-beliefs-their-turkishness
Amazing how Greek are not “real” Greeks… but Turks are “real” Turks. What exact methodology are you using to try to ethnic cleanse Greeks “Charles”? Certainly not language, culture, DNA and self-determination.
“The genetic structure of the Turkish population reveals high levels of variation and admixture”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2026076118
You should have saved your critique of nastiness for “Charles'” that has not only said several racist comments on this thread.. but offered a veiled threat of extreme Turkish nationalists to “sort out” Greeks (aka mass murder us). Greek have every right to be angry as nearly eveyrone that lectures us about identity have less in common with their claimed roots than we do. Then throw in all the evaders that try to whitewash the former Yugoslavians identity change into ancient Macedonians.
Lets flip this around a bit. How would the Brits react if western France start suddenly claiming to be Republic of England, ethnic English, and their language English… while insisting the England in the UK belongs to them? While claiming the modern Brits were persecuting the “ethnic” English minoritiy it the “divided” region of England. Wouldn’t Brits feel hostility towards such bizarre and dangerous behavior? Wouldn’t they also feel a sense of hostility towards those that recognized them then evade over the behavior? Wouldn’t they feel even more hostility as they tried to rob English in England of their identity while looking the other way as “ethnic” English of the Republic of England claimed English history as their own?
Greeks do not object to Macedonia USA. Or Athens USA. Or any numbers of places names in the world with Greek names. What we object to is those that manipulate names to promote irredentism against Greece and to try to erase our very identity. .
Cololialism isn’t? Mirrors per gold, fridges per debt, etc.
Among the worst bits of this is that the factories turned into warehouses contain washing machines and ovens made in… Turkey.
It sounds like Greece needs more fertile refugees from non-Christian countries to drive down labor and hence other costs..
But the EU helped you change the Macedonia’s name, and is supporting your dream to genocide the Macedonians. You lost your “real thing”, but you can rejoice knowing that EU have given you the power and the means to destroy a neighboring nation and country. Soon, we’re going to be erased as a nation and our country will become a Bulgarian colony, thanks to the great EU, the great fascist you, the fascist Bulgars and the Macedonian corrupt puppet government. How real that’ll be for you? How powerful and Greek you’ll feel then? Soon you’ll be able to again put on your chitons, and walk around with your heads up, feeling omnipotent just like the children of Zeus should feel. But don’t forget to thank the greedy Eu for that, they too fought like Greeks to help you erase the Macedonian nation.
Keep talking Naskova. The more you talk, the more you prove Greeks were right to object to recognition of the former Yugoslav region of Vardar as “Macedonia”. The very fact so many evade as Crypo-facsist VMRO fascists like you bizarrely try to narrate yourselves into ancient Macedonia and use that to promote irredentism against Greece,… the more they prove their racism towards Greeks.
“After WWII in Macedonia the past was systematically falsified to conceal the fact that many prominent ‘Macedonians’ had supposed themselves to be Bulgarians, and generations of students were taught the pseudo-history of the Macedonian nation. The mass media and education were the key to this process of national acculturation, speaking to people in a language that they came to regard as their Macedonian mother tongue, even if it was perfectly understood in Sofia”
“The history of the construction of a Macedonian national identity does not begin with Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. or with Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century A.D. as Macedonian nationalist historians often claim”
“Krste Misirkov, who had clearly developed a strong sense of his own personal national identity as a Macedonian and who outspokenly and unambiguously called for Macedonian linguistic and national separatism, acknowledged that a Macedonian national identity was a relatively recent historical development.”
“The political and military leaders of the Slavs of Macedonia at the turn of the century seem not to have heard Misirkov’s call for a separate Macedonian national identity; they continued to identify themselves in a national sense as Bulgarians rather than Macedonians.”
– Loring Danforth, “The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World”, Princeton Univ Press, December 1995
So what? You’re going to copy and paste an out of context excerpt and that will excuse the genocide of the Macedonians? I’ve spent my whole life being harassed and bullied by Greek and Bulgar fascists telling me who I am and who am I not, gathering around me like horse flies, even when I was a young girls, grown up fascist men, harassing me whenever I’ve dared to say that I’m Macedonian. And now when EU showed up the harassment turned into a full blown genocide, with EU being used as a blackmail tool. It has been over twenty years of agony for every Macedonian. And now you think that your excerpt will justify all that, and the current genocide of the Macedonian people?
“bullied by Greek and Bulgar fascists telling me who I am and who am I not”
Isn’t that what you just tried to do to Greeks by trying to ridiculously claim Greeks are “sub-saharan”? Isn’t that what you try to do by trying to rewrite history by claiming self-identifying Greeks and Bulgarians into “Macedonians”?
Tell VMRO’s crypto-fascist pity propaganda to all the Greek hating liars that try to downplay you obvious frauds recent change of identity from Slavs into anti-Hellenic founders of the Hellenistic period. They lack the integrity to admit they made a mistake. Maybe they will continue to believe all your shameless lying.
” current genocide of the Macedonian people?
Which former Yugoslavian fanatics like you support by trying to steal the identity of Macedonians…aka Greeks. Greek writing on ancient Macedonian artefacts isn’t going anywhere for your lies Herr Gobbels.
Dear shamless fanatic, during WW2 what you today claim as “ethnic” Macedonians… still self-identifying as Bulgarian. “Macedonians”. They welcomed Bulgarian Axis forces as liberators (see IMRO leader Ivan Mihalov). Post WW2 Yugoslav communist propagandists wiped out Bulgarian identity in Vardar Yugoslavia and renamed you purely “Macedonians” as a method to prevent Bulgarian irredentism..
“In the 1990s,Macedonians speak a language codified in 1946,spoken by less than two million people, and with a very slender literature. They are members of an Orthodox Church whose authority was established by a socialist political regime in 1968.They are heirs to a 1903 revolution that until the 1940s was described by almost all sources as being Bulgarian”
Negating peoples’ ethnicity and their right to self determination is fascist. Whether you do it with copying and pasting texts that you found on the internet, or name calling, or harassing, or killing. Just put on your chiton, draw a big swastika on it, take a selfie and see yourself for who you are, the great greek of the 21 century. The myth has turn it a fascist farce.
“Negating peoples’ ethnicity and their right to self determination is fascist.”
Which is exactly what former Yugoslavian nationalist extremists like you are trying to do by bizarrely trying to steal Greek and Bulgarian history to turn it into “macedonian”
Crypto-fascists like you have been manipulating human rights language for years to promote extreme nationalism. Rather than lying about your history and ridiculously claiming to be ancient Macedonians, why not instead face up to the fact most of you used to self-identify as Bulgarians?
Yes. I know former Yugoslavian fascists like you a problem with facts. Sorry in “offends” crypto-nazis like you when others point out countless third party academics that say most of you used to self-identify as Bulgarians prior to Tito and company.
” During the 20th century, Slavo-Macedonian national feeling has shifted. At the beginning of the 20th century, Slavic patriots in Macedonia felt a strong attachment to Macedonia as a multi-ethnic homeland… Most of these Macedonian Slavs also saw themselves as Bulgarians. By the middle of the 20th century, however Macedonian patriots began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive. Regional Macedonian nationalism had become ethnic Macedonian nationalism… This transformation shows that the content of collective loyalties can shift.
SDSM are moderates in Skopje. While you slander Greece as “fascist” your second most popular party today VMRO, is named in honour of fascist terrorist organization that supported Axis forces during WW2.. because back then most of you still self-identified as ethnic BULGARIAN “Macedonians”.
For years VMRO officially claimed tat you were not related to ancient Macedonians and that it was just a petty dispute over name. That changed after widespread recognition and election of thug Gruevski. Now VMRO claim they are not to be Slavs but ancient Macedonians. They claim to speak for ancient history, but curiously hide that most of you used to self-identify as ethnic Bulgarians “Macedonians’ prior to Yugoslav communists.
And along with fake history, VMRO promote what they call “United Macedonia”.. which they claim includes 1/5 of Greece.
Then shameless nationalist fanatics like you have the audacity to smear Greeks as “fascist” for calling our your lying, irredentism and racism? Look in the mirror if you want to see the fascist Naskova. Greeks and Bulgarians are not responsible for your lying about history and irredentism. Fanatics like you are.
“the obviously plagiarized historical argument of the Macedonian nationalists for a separate Macedonian ethnicity could be supported only by linguistic reality, and that worked against them until the 1940s. Until a modern Macedonian literary language was mandated by the communist-led partisan movement from Macedonia in 1944, most outside observers and linguists agreed with the Bulgarians in considering the vernacular spoken by the Macedonian Slavs as a western dialect of Bulgarian”.
“Negating peoples’ ethnicity and their right to self determination is fascist.”
Then maybe you should stop trying to erase the identity of Greeks and Bulgarians by bizarrely trying to steal our historians and reframe them as “Macedonians”. Maybe you should stop using fake history to promote irredentism against Greece and Bulgaria while manipulating human rights to hide the extreme nationalism going on in Skopje.
“Macedonia’ was also an attempt at a multicultural society. Here the fragments are just about holding together, although the cement that binds them is an unreliable mixture of propaganda and myth. The ‘Macedonian’ language has been created, some rather misty history involving Tsar Samuel, probably a Bulgarian, and Alexander the Great, almost certainly a Greek, has been invented, and the name Macedonia has been adopted. Do we destroy these myths or live with them? Apparently these radical Slavic factions decided to live with their myths and lies”
“Those who live in Skopje and say that that is Macedon and Alexander’s homeland are as ignorant and outrageous as if someone was to say that Oxford University was really in Belarus and Oxford was Minsk”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OYx-29Z3xE