Tormented by History: the case of Greece

[Epirot]

As I've promised to Onur and to all other members, I'm going to present some pages from the marvelous book of a collaborative work of Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos. For me, this is one of the greatest methodological study written ever. The authors are very objective because they cite always Greek sources of the first hand. I'd invite all members to be engaged in the following discussion.













Anyway, the above book contains other passages that need to be picked up!

[Epirot]

And the following extracts I got from the nick 'rex...' (Illyria forums):

[Epirot]

I ask for apologize if this has been posted even before:


Policy of England at the present crisis, with respect to Greece, The Morning Chronicle (London, England), Friday, November 2, 1821

Memorable quote: "they are at the present totally unfit for being raised into an independent nation".

[George S.]

sir george which part of greece are you living in.Or are you os/?You have a fine appreciation of what's gone on in greece in the past & present.

[Pelister]

This must be the latest attempt at 'balance'. I read this very carefully and it "appears" to be a more balanced account of contemporary 'Greece', but at the end of the day it pulls out all the usual nationalist garbage.

They talk about "Hellenic freedom" where nothing of the kind ever existed. There was no "Greek nation" before the battle of Navarino, and there is no evidence of "ethnic Greeks". The heritage is a bogus sham, but they don't tell us why. The Patriarch was imposed from the top down, it was never representative, and the suggestion that the New Greeks looked to the Orthodox Millet for its "identity" at the local level is complete bullshit. It never existed. It talks about the "minority populations" of the New Greece, suggesting that the "Greeks" made up the majority. It speaks of "Greeks" as though they comprised a separate identity from Others but there is no evidence of it - not in the government, not in the administration, not in the army, not in the villages.

[Ottoman]

Wise words, we all know Greece is an a genetically mixed country; and I say genetics because ethnicity and nationalism are something that the mind holds onto through nurture. A Greek who claims homogeneity has a lot to explain as his/her country has had it's borders lifted for thousands of years from the time of the Romans to the time of the Ottomans, but all their Balkan neighbors followed along with them. We must keep in mind the nationalism in the Balkan as with anywhere in the world isn't a physical or empirical entity, rather a subjectively qualitative one.

Only Greece????

Man take a good look around the world.

Brazil is a genetically mixed country
USA is a genetically mixed country
Turkey is a genetically mixed country
France is a genetically mixed country or do you really think that all those Black African soccer players are all French by blood???

There is no pure race on this planet.

[Risto the Great]

There is no pure race on this planet.

Some people even have dual identities.

[Risto the Great]

This "natural affinity" of Greece's earlier inhabitants for the Russians is peculiar. I think it would be safe to say the modern Greeks now would snigger at the "filthy Russian slavs". I wonder where this hatred of allthingsslavic came from. Could it be they learned to hate from the British and Germans?

[Epirot]

This "natural affinity" of Greece's earlier inhabitants for the Russians is peculiar. I think it would be safe to say the modern Greeks now would snigger at the "filthy Russian slavs". I wonder where this hatred of allthingsslavic came from. Could it be they learned to hate from the British and Germans?

The anti-Slavic stance of Greece is not surfaced in all cases, Risto. All what I want to say is that in Greece some politic and ecclesiastical authorities wave the flag of Orthodox brotherhood with Russia. But when it comes to deny the right of Macedonia to use its constitutional name (or to not recognize the existence of Macedonian minority within its territory), Greeks change their attitudes: now they celebrate fierce sentiments against everything Slavic. Everything become crystal-clear: the viewing of "enemies" is depended by the current political situation. I bet if Greeks will maintain good relations with Britons, they will wave the flag of Anti-Germans, referring to any potential invasion of Germany in Greece...

[Onur]

RTG, anti-slavic, anti-turkish, anti-russian stance of Greeks, all the confusion in Balkans, deeply rooted unending hatred among all the peoples and states of Balkans... These are very complicated issues and difficult to discuss in this forum format but i can write down some topics which might help to shed a light to this issue;

• Refining the petroleum has been discovered in the 19th century and everyone in developed world understood that the petroleum was going to be the energy source of the 20th century. Then after few decades, massive petroleum sources has been discovered in whole middle-east, which was the part of Ottoman empire at that time. So, it was obvious that whoever would get the control of these areas would get the control of the world energy market for the next century.

• Who might be the ones who can get the control of these places at that time? Russian empire, German empire, British empire. Russia already had full control of the sources in Khazar sea at that time cuz Azerbaijan was their vassal.

• Going back to early 19th century, Karl Marx proposed something, which would eventually be the motto of pan-slavism (i found the exact words of him in google);
  “Pan-Slavism is not only a goal for the unification of the Slav people but it is also a goal to destroy a thousand years of history in Europe. In the interest of this, we have to erase Turkey and half of Germany from the maps of Europe. When Pan-Slavism has reached this goal then the Slavs will begin to subjugate Europe. Europe has only two choices, to accept Pan-Slavism or to conquer Russia and eradicate the center of Pan-Slavism.”

• Bulgaria became vassals of Russia after 1878 and all the western states, especially the British empire was in great concern cuz it was a necessity for them to destroy Ottoman empire but then who would stop Russian advance and play the same role as Turks played for centuries??? the role of being the barrier against the Russia. And the WW-1 was approaching and they needed the barrier to stop Russian fleet to set sail on warm waters of mediterranean sea. Ofc Greece was the answer.

I think i already said this here more than year ago, but the major reason for the division of Macedonia and letting Greece to invade Aegean Macedonia was stopping Russians to reach mediterranean sea by using Bulgarians. As for the opposite, the very reason of Bulgarian attack on eastern Thrace and their aim to invade Istanbul in first Balkan war, was to create a pathway for Russians to reach mediterranean sea.

And highly possibly, the reason of so-called Greek civil war against the so-called communist Macedonians, was done because of similar reasons; to stop socialists and communists to have any influence in the Aegean Macedonia.

The move for the Aegean Macedonia in the Balkan war was belonged to the British but the one in Greek civil war perpetrated by USA at that time with Marshall plan

[Soldier of Macedon]

“Pan-Slavism is not only a goal for the unification of the Slav people but it is also a goal to destroy a thousand years of history in Europe. In the interest of this, we have to erase Turkey and half of Germany from the maps of Europe. When Pan-Slavism has reached this goal then the Slavs will begin to subjugate Europe. Europe has only two choices, to accept Pan-Slavism or to conquer Russia and eradicate the center of Pan-Slavism.”

A thousand years of history erased yet ignoring the history and continual presence of Slavic-speaking peoples in Europe? That's funny.

[Risto the Great]

They are radically different from actual Slavs.

Now if only we knew what "actual Slavs" are, we could all laugh together.

[Soldier of Macedon]

I'm laughing already.

[Risto the Great]

Laugh at the many Polish and Slovakian people who told me this. ;-)

Are they the real slavs?

[George S.]

Aparrently they could be the real slavs but it's a theory.I don't laugh too much as theories
could well be wrong.Sir george i heard that as well i didn't laugh.THe thing is they knew a lot of the macedonian history.LOng lost macedonians perhaps as it's a theory.