XPost: soc.culture.greek   
   From: xor@hermetix.org   
      
   	Nationalism and intolerance among Greek intellectuals   
   	   
   	“How can we explain the absence of intellectuals, the silence of the   
   thinkers, the desertion of the scholars. Is it fear, ignorance, or   
   indifference? Don’t you have anything to say to these people whom   
   populists and chauvinists are dragging by the tips of their noses?”   
   (Dimou, from the poem 1992 AD, 1993:28-9).   
   	   
   In order to understand modern Greece, one should stop viewing it as a   
   Western European country and consider it instead as a Central and   
   Eastern European one, not only for geographical reasons but also because   
   of historical and cultural ones. Thus, the role of the intelligentsia in   
   Greece is much more comparable to the one in Serbia or in Croatia than   
   to the one in France or in Great Britain. The common characteristics of   
   these non-Western intelligentsias have been well summarized by Djilas   
   (1993:92):   
   	   
   Greek nationalism, indeed, has also the two distinguishing traits of   
   Serbian nationalism which makes national ideology a bitter one (Djilas,   
   1993:93):   
      
   	To this day, this traditional militant approach to Greek history   
   stresses the continuity through the ages, with anti-Slavic and   
   anti-Bulgarian connotations (Liakos, 1993: 10) leading to the belief   
   that (Karakasidou, 1993:8-9 & 18):   
   	   
   	“Greeks have always maintained a superior civilization in the Balkans,   
   (...) the dominant ethnological, historical, and political position of   
   the overwhelming majority of Greek scholars who identify ethnicity with   
   nationality. (...) This academic racism delegitimizes these ‘other’   
   social or ethnic groups, denying or negating their cultural and   
   historical validity.”   
   	   
   	The Macedonians are one of these groups whose existence has been denied   
   by the overwhelming majority of Greek intellectuals (Karakasidou, 1993:9   
   & 18; Elefantis, 1993:37), who have also defined what can be said and   
   what cannot on these matters, a line that the prosecutor and the courts   
   consider it a duty to define (Liakos, 1993:11). Thus, in the 1990’s   
   (Manitakis, 1993:65-8):   
   ETC.   
      
   Conclusion Griks are full of shit.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)