Article: How Greece Became European

[Dejan]

Seeing more and more of these articles as this concoction crumbles

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...europe/397796/

"The troubled relationship between modern Greeks and their neighbors to the north and west—sometime admirers, sometime lenders, sometime detractors—helps explain today’s crisis."

[George S.]

Anation built on falsehoods and false hope is doomed to fail.Everything is rotten to the core.Real democracy doesn't really exist.Greece is a basket case.

[Philosopher]

Seeing more and more of these articles as this concoction crumbles



"The troubled relationship between modern Greeks and their neighbors to the north and west—sometime admirers, sometime lenders, sometime detractors—helps explain today’s crisis."

The article has a number of valid points, which even honest Greeks would concede, but it also applies those arguments to the Balkans in general.

This is not a new trope, nor has the United States been immune from writing off the people of the Balkan region of which Greece is a part as creatures of emotion rather than reason, probably not fit to run their own affairs. In a 1993 New York Review of Books essay, George Kennan, the grand old man of American diplomacy, wrote that little had changed between the Balkan Wars of the early 1910s and the present, and that “no particular country or group of countries” could subdue the Balkan region’s “excited peoples” or “hold them in order until they can calm down and begin to look at their problems in a more orderly way.”

Let us not forget that we also were a part of the Ottoman East and Macedonia is looked at even lower in the West than Greece.

Overall, articles such as this one are more damaging than constructive, as it ignores or omits a number of issues involved in the complex world of the Balkans.

[Philosopher]

The appeal of Greece to the West is two-fold. Historically, it is based on the alleged continuity between ancient Greece (more accurately, city-states) and geography. As the article highlighted, Europeans no longer seriously entertain a continuity between today's Greeks and the ancient Greeks, at least not in terms of intelligence. Even if it can be proven that a genetic continuity still exists, Western Europeans have little hope for modern Greece as a state or a people.

Which brings us to geography. Greece is a figurehead of sorts. Here is this country with scores and scores of islands It is attractive for tourism. It houses ancient relics and architecture. The land is connected to antiquity.

But its geography is of the utmost importance to Western interests.

If lands were reversed between Macedonia and Greece, and all things were to remain constant, modern Macedonia would be treated very differently. Yes, Macedonia's name may still be disputed, its ethnicity doubted and debated, but its geopolitical value would be fundamentally different.

Macedonia would garner serious respect and it is very doubtful that a small landlocked country like Greece could keep Macedonia out of the EU, even if no one in the EU believed that modern day Macedonians are Macedonians or have continuity with ancient Macedonia.

Greece's value would also greatly diminish. If Greece were a small landlocked country, it would not garner the recognition that it presently does.

The problem with Greece and Greeks is that they are not Western Europeans but they want to be part of this club. Western Europe wants the world to believe ancient Greece is the cradle of Western Civilization and the ancient Greeks were akin to modern day Western Europeans. This is hogwash.

[Dejan]

By looking at the recent formation and history of this nation, it forces researchers/readers to have a look at the nation's around it (also within it in our case). There you will find the truth of the history of this state. It helps our case, doesn't it?

[George S.]

you know when people are evasive and hide and their real prejudices and animosity shows.Did you know that the greeks resented being conquered by the Macedonians.Why would a like kindred people conquer themselves.?Macedondom to the greek one separate race,.language etc.I wopuld be the first to admit if we were the same people were not.All the greeks can do is hide the fact of the real Macedonians just like a stealing thieving gypsy.They are in denial and constant paranoia.