The Alexander Movie: How are Iranians and Greeks Portrayed?
by Dr. Kaveh Farrokh
[In this article we get an Iranian professor's take on the deceptive inaccuracies in Oliver Stone's recently released Alexander the Great "blockbuster." Dr. Kaveh Farrokh addresses five "serious errors" in the film, while giving the reader a scholarly introduction to the many-faceted and highly developed civilization of ancient Persia.]
Hollywood has just released one of the latest of its epic blockbusters: Alexander the Great. Directed by distinguished director Oliver Stone, the movie endeavors to recreate the events of the Hellenic conquests and the downfall of the first Persian Achaemenid Empire. It is important to note however, that simply because a movie is high budget, casts high profile Hollywood actors and is directed by top ranking directors, does not make it flawless.
Beyond the entertainment value of Oliver Stone's latest project, a number of serious errors do exist in the movie, many which may appear trivial. These "trivial" errors will nevertheless be of consequence to both Iranians and Greeks.
Ironically, it has been my Greek friends and colleagues who brought the flaws of Oliver Stone's "Alexander" picture to my attention. There are a total of five overall errors that will be listed and discussed below:
(1) The Battle of Gaugamela
Oliver Stone has relied on Professor Robin Lane Fox, one of the world's foremost experts in the area of Alexander and Hellenic Studies. His book (Alexander the Great. London: Penguin, 1986 and 1994) is a standard reference text in the area of Alexandrian Studies.
Despite excellent reviews of his book by critics and scholars, Dr. Fox does not understand the military of ancient Persia. A typographical shot of the battle of Gaugamela, shows the Greeks advancing in ordered and disciplined ranks. In contrast, the armies of Darius III are shown as little better than an amorphous mob. This is a false image of the Achaemenid army. The Achaemenids used drums and musical instruments to direct the marching tactics of their troops in battle. Second, the Achaemeneans used the decimal system, which was in fact, unknown to the Greeks of the period. Persian units were formed in legions of 10, 100 or 1000 or 10,000. A typical term was "Hezar-Patesh" (roughly equivalent to "leader of a thousand men").
In addition, the Persians had developed a sophisticated system of heraldry and their troops wore standard uniforms. The Greeks were certainly excellent fighters and were thoroughly organized, but this does not mean that the Persians were not. At the time, the Greeks were militarily superior with respect to armaments, tactics and military training.
This military imbalance changed with the coming of the Parthian and Sassanian cavalry. The Iranian Savaran (elite Cavalry) successfully halted and defeated many of the later Greek-Hoplite inspired Roman armies. Many Romans attempted to imitate Alexander and failed against Persia. These include Marcus Lucinius Crassus at Carrhae, Marc Antony at Tabriz (where he failed twice), Gordian III at Mesiche, Phillip the Arab near modern Syria, Valerian at Barbablissos, and Julian the Apostate in Mesopotamia. I personally doubt that Hollywood will recreate these spectacular Roman defeats as these will challenge contemporary western notions of the Alexandrian legacy. In addition, many Iranians today are unaware of the proud legacy of the Parthian and Sassanian Savaran.
Professor Fox's elementary grasp of Iranian militaria should not inspire much confidence with respect to accurate portrayals of Iranians in general. You may wish to read the following books by Professors Sekunda and Head who are experts on the uniforms, dress and equipment of the ancient Greeks and Achaemenid Persians.
N. Sekunda. The Persian Army: 560-330 BC. England. Osprey. "Men at Arms. Elite Series," 1992.
D. Head. The Achaemenid Persian Army. England: Montvert Publications, 1992.
There are many errors with the uniforms portrayed as "Persian." As you will see in these books, the colors and materials of Achaemenid Persians were invariably bright with a mix of shades of purple, Saffron, red dyes, shades of blue and green, mixed with darker browns (almost Burgundy) and black. These fashions and regalia were resuscitated during the Sassanian dynasty (226-651 AD). Only the Persian archers (and a few guards) are shown with some accuracy; the same cannot be said with respect to the other "Persians" of the movie set.
More puzzling is the "Arabesque" way in which ancient Persians are portrayed in this battle. I was shocked to see Arabian camel riders used to portray one of the vanguards of Darius III's attack on Alexander at the battle scene. Arabs were simply auxiliary units in the Achaemenean army at the time, and were not a major factor. Camel troops were never a major battle order in the armies of Persia. I also noticed that an infantry troop of the Achaemenid advance guard was speaking in Arabic. Persian is not related to Arabic; it is an Indo-European language akin to the languages of Europe and India.
This may be the usual Hollywood habit however of portraying Iranians as Arabs, a topic we will re-visit later in this commentary.
(2) Confusing Persia with Babylon
It is very interesting that Professor Fox does not refer to the Achaemenid capitals in Susa, Maracanda (Samarqand), Media or Persopolis. The destruction of Persopolis by Alexander is a major event - instead the movie shows Alexander entering the city of Babylon, implying that this was the administrative capital of Persia. Babylon was simply another satrapy of the empire; not its capital. Babylon had already been incorporated into the Persian Empire in 539 BC by Cyrus the Great (559-530 BC). Why is Persopolis and its destruction not mentioned? There was also the destruction of the three major Zoroastrian texts by Alexander - also not referred to in the movie.
A possible reason for this may be found in Professor Fox's interview with the distinguished journal Archeology Today ("Riding with Alexander"). Note the statement below, and how indicative it is of Professor Fox's lack of understanding of Classical Achaemenid Persia:
"We all understood that the separate "parts" of Oliver's drama must be "color-coded" and … which could not totally depart from audiences' expectations of Greek or Babylonian imagery"
Note the statement "Greek or Babylonian imagery." This statement implies that Persia had no real arts worth mentioning, and that Persia is simply an extension of Babylon or at best interchangeable.
As noted previously, Babylon was not a major power at the time of Alexander. Persian arts and architecture were an eclectic synthesis of indigenous (e.g Median, Elamite), Lydian, and Mesopotamian styles, including Babylonian. The city-palace of Persopolis is very distinct and cannot be crudely termed as Babylonian. It is, to put it mildly, shocking, that the treatment of Persian studies is addressed at such a shallow level by Professor Fox.
An important point must be made, especially with respect to the reason Alexander was so violent in his conquest of Persia. The Greeks were simply taking revenge for the earlier invasions of their country by Darius the Great and his son Xerxes. The Greeks paid a heavy price for their battle at Marathon (490 BC), Thermopylae (17th September, 480 BC), Athens (27th September, 480 BC), Salamis (29th September, 480 BC), and Plataea (479 BC). It is significant that when Xerxes burned Athens, he ordered the sacred statues of the Greek gods to be removed and brought to Persia. The Greeks revered their gods and this Persian act was a national insult to them. Most contemporary Iranians are not aware of these facts. This certainly is not an excuse for what happened at Alexander's time, but it does help put these events in perspective.
Although many Iranians demonize Alexander, the man did come to develop a great deal of respect for Persia. The more Alexander stayed in Persia, the more "Persian" he became, in manners and in dress. Alexander paid his respects at the tomb of Cyrus the Great and indeed saw himself as the heir of Cyrus. The Greeks so admired Cyrus the Great, that they saw his manner of government as a model. You may wish to read the Greek "Cyropedia" [by Xenophon]. If Aristotle made racist statements about the Persians (and this is shown in the movie), it must also be made clear that many Greeks also praised the Persians (see Xenophon or Plutarch in his discussion of the Parthian general Surena). A very positive aspect of the Alexander movie is that Alexander praises the "east" for its architecture and civilization. It is possible that Alexander was poisoned by some of his officers for becoming too "Persian".
(3) The Blondism of Alexander
A very serious concern of the Alexander movie is the promotion of the idea of the "Nordicism" of ancient Greece. Put simply, this is the thesis that ancient Greeks were not only predominantly blond, but "Nordic," in the manner of present-day Scandinavians and Northern Germans.
Nordicists have long argued, since the late 1700s, that the people of ancient and modern Greece are unrelated. Nordicism argues that the "ancient" Greeks were the "true" Greeks in contrast to the non-Nordic people of Greece today. This view is exemplified by the Austrian Hellenicist, Professor Fallmerayer, in the 1830s, who noted that "not a drop of pure Greek blood runs in the veins of modern Greeks…" To this day, Fallmerayer is recalled with bitterness and derision in Greece. It is worth noting that Fallmerayer never set foot in Greece in his entire lifetime. For further discussion on these issues you may wish to read Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Guide to Peoples of Europe, especially pages 207-216. Published in London by Times Books in 1994.
Fallmerayer's analysis of Greece is not entirely correct. While true that the Ottoman Turks ruled Greece for 400 years and that previous Byzantine rulers (e.g. Emperor Nikopherous) had to import colonists from present day south Italy to help repopulate parts of Greece ravaged by wars, many of these "Italian" colonists were themselves ancient Greek, settled in regions such as Calabria and Southern France since the times of Darius the Great and earlier. In any event, there has always been a strong and predominant Greek element in areas such as the Peloponnesos. ... This leads to a very crucial question: why have no Greek actors been selected to portray classical Greeks such as Alexander, Hephaestion, Ptolemy I, Olympias, King Phillip II, Cassander[,]Antiginous[, and Darius III, who was played by Israeli actor, Raz Degan]?
If one were to use Classical Greek works of art (vases and statues specifically) as a standard for prototypical Greek physical appearance, one can then easily find a plethora of modern Greek actors and actresses today who can portray ancient Greeks. It is interesting as to why Oliver Stone did not select Hollywood actors of Greek descent or from mainland Greece.
Oliver Stone goes further however. Colin Farrell, a dark haired Irish actor, who plays Alexander, is portrayed literally, as a bleached blond. The notion of Alexander being Flaxen-haired or blond is itself a matter of considerable doubt if not strong dispute. As noted by my friend George Tsonis, a Greek-Canadian and a scholar of Greek, Roman and Persian history, the Greek word for Alexander's complexion is Xanthenein (fair). This description simply marks Alexander's complexion as being fairer than the other Greeks of his time. Yes, he was relatively fair, but not necessarily flaxen-blond in the Nordicist sense. From the Tufts University Lexicon Xanthenein is roughly translated as fair or a yellowish-brown color. A related term, Xanthizo, can also be to "make yellow" or "brown." No wonder there is confusion!
Plutarch, whom most western scholars rely on for their references, does not actually describe Alexander's hair color, only his complexion. This is a quote from Aelian (Varia Historae, 12.14) on the hair; below is the Anglicized Greek ... and the English translation below that:
"Alexandron de ton Filippou apragmonos oraion legousi genesthai' tin men gar komin anasesyrthai afto, xanthin de einai'"
"Alexander the son of Philip is reported to have possessed a natural beauty: his hair was wavy and fair."...
A very non-Nordic portrayal of Alexander is evident in the Pompeii Mosaic. It is agreed by a majority of scholars that the painting is a faithful rendition of an original Hellenistic painting of the 3rd century BC. As you will witness in the painting below, this Hellenic-Roman version of Alexander is very different from the contemporary Hollywood fantasy interpretation (see photo below):
As you see in the photo, this is a very different Alexander than what many western scholars and Hollywood would have us believe.
This painting appears to refutes the notion of Alexander being blond. Nevertheless, a number of western scholars remain determined to push forward an image of Alexander that may be false. There are scholars who are actually convinced that the Pompeii mosaic is proof of Alexander's Nordic blondness! Even in allowing for poor reproductions, the mosaic clearly shows a 'brown' haired person with a Mediterranean or modern Iranian profile. Many Greek and Iranian people today have auburn-brown hair, which can appear to be somewhat "blond" in sunlight.
The point from the Greek perspective however, is not simply whether Alexander was blond or not. After all, the Dorian Greeks were blond as a rule, just as the original Persians and Mede settlers of ancient Iran were as well. The issue is that of using the notion of blondness to project a specifically non-Greek Nordic west European image. Irrespective of whether Alexander was blond or not, he represented the culture of ancient Greece, which is not necessarily the same as that of modern Western Europe (1).
Ancient Greece and Rome, as we will note again further below, were Mediterranean empires, very different from the inhabitants of interior and northern Europe. The peoples of western and eastern Europe were very different from the Classical Greeks in culture, language and temperament. To obtain an introduction to the history of the northern Europeans, you may wish to read Celts and the Classical World by D. Rankin. . London: Routledge, 1996.The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation by A. Ferrill. Thames & Hudson, 1986 (2).
The "Europeans" adopted a great deal of their civilization and identity from the Greeks and the Romans. Even the name "Europe" is derived from the ancient Greek term Evropi. It may not be an exaggeration to state the following: with their adoption of Greco-Roman culture, west European scholars in particular, have essentially affected a "Nordic makeover" of the ancient Greeks and Romans. As Western culture has adopted the mantle of ancient Greece, it has also adopted Alexander as its own son; to the point that Alexander and ancient Greece are viewed as identical with ancient Western Europe and Scandinavia (3).
The Nordicising of favorite historical figures does not end with Alexander. Jesus Christ, is frequently portrayed as a slightly built, tall blonde Nordic man. Jesus or Jeshua, was a Jew from West Asia who spoke Aramaic. It is now acknowledged by a number of researchers that much of what we accept as the "appearance" of Jesus is not altogether accurate. Jesus would most likely have resembled a modern Fertile Crescent Arab or Jew from places such as Jerusalem, Amman, Hebron, Damascus or Basra. Scientists have recently reconstructed the image of Christ as he would have most likely appeared in his lifetime in ancient Palestine and Judea (see photo below):
[This reconstruction] is very different from the icons we are used to seeing in the churches and Christian art of Northwestern Europe. How many images have you seen in North American or Western European churches that show the Aramaic Christ? It would seem that, like Alexander, the "real image" of Jesus has shifted in accordance with politics, ideology, dogma and popular culture over the centuries. Interestingly, many cultures across the world today interpret Jesus' physical appearance in accordance with their own anthropomorphic image. ...
It appears that Hollywood has successfully associated a certain physical appearance with modernity, progress, success and rationalism. By implication, that which is not of that "certain look" is in danger of being associated with all that is the antithesis of that. With this logic, historical reality is bent to fit a manufactured reality: a fantasy.
(4) Greek or Macedonian?
This movie contains a number of concerns to Greeks in particular, such as Macedonia being "different" from the rest of Greece, a very contested issue in the Balkans these days. Although not generally reported, the government of Greece, which had originally supported the Alexander picture, withdrew its funding and support for Oliver Stone's project. ... There was to have been co-operation between Stone and the Greek government, but this was apparently changed when the details of the script became known.
To be honest, I was left confused as to whether the Macedonians were Greek or not. This may be an attempt to placate those who view Macedonia as "different" from Greece, not unlike those who try to argue that Kurds and Azerbaijanis are not Iranians. The Greeks, like the Iranians today, are now confronted with having to defend their historical heritage against those who have territorial claims against their nation. The Oliver Stone picture, in my opinion, does not clearly define Macedonians as Greeks.
In addition to these concerns, many Greeks are offended by the bisexual portrayal of Alexander. It is also rumored that many Greek associations may have plans to sue Oliver Stone. Again, ancient Greek terminology and its translations by western scholars may have played a role in the "bisexual" interpretation of Alexander. We have already seen how the term Xanthenein has been stretched to paint a "Scandinavian" Alexander.
(5) The Portrayal of Roxanna and the Perpetuation of the "Hollywood Persian"
My wife Parnian and I, as Iranians, found the portrayal of Roxanna insulting. This portrayal has been defined by the aforementioned Professor Fox, whose has already been noted for his shallow understanding of Persian arts and architecture. Professor Fox's portrayal of Roxanna also indicates that he has very little knowledge of Iran's anthropological history.
The portrayal of ancient Iranians is outright comical, if not insulting. The inaccurate Hollywood portrayal of Iranians is exemplified by the selection of Rosario Dawson, ... a very talented, beautiful and intelligent black actress, to star as Roxanna, an ancient Iranian queen from Soghdia-Bactria. Roxanna was not black, anymore than Alexander was Scandinavian. Having Rosario Dawson portrayed as Roxanna makes as much sense as having Lucy Liu, an Asian-American, portraying Queen Victoria of Great Britain.
The term Roxanna is derived from Old Iranian Rokh-shwan or "face (Ruksh) - fair skinned-shiny (shwan)." Roxanna was related to a North Iranian tribe known later as the Sarmatians, the remnants who survive in the Caucasus and Russia as the Ossetians (ancient Alans or Ard-Alans).
Roman sources such as Pliny repeatedly describe ancient North Iranian peoples such as the Alans and Seres as "…flaxen (blond)-haired blue eyed nomads…" (see P. Wilcox. Rome's Enemies (3): "Parthian and Sassanid Persians." London: Osprey Publishing, 1986; p.19). Rosario Dawson does not fit the description of an ancient Iranian woman, especially from Northern Iranian stock. The Ossetians of today, descendants of ancient Northern Iranians, predominantly resemble northern Iranians and Europeans and speak an archaic Iranian language (like the Avesta of the Zoroastrians). Blondism is very common among these descendants of ancient North Iranians in cities such as Beslan and Vladikafkaz. It can be argued that Roxanna was a brunette, however, she was of Northern Iranian stock, which would still make her very different from actress Rosario Dawson.
There are plenty of talented actresses of Iranian descent in North America alone that would well fit the historical Roxanna. Oliver Stone could have just as easily selected an Iranian actress, however he relied on the historical "expertise" of Professor Fox. The question that can be addressed to Professor Fox is this: what makes Rosario Dawson so representative of Iranian women and Roxanna in particular? Is the Professor aware of the anthropology and history of ancient Iran as it was in 333 BC?
More puzzling is the design of Roxanna's costume in the movie. Note the photo showing the marriage of Alexander to Roxanna. Roxanna appears to wear a Burka-like veil constructed of strips of metallic mesh in which the face is partly hidden. ... The headgear is partly correct if we base the costume on the Saka Paradraya Iranian speaking tribes of the present-day Ukraine (8-4th centuries BC). The decorations on the headgear are simply wrong and Iranian queens did not wear face masks of any type. For a discussion of the Saka Paradrya, known in the west as Scythians, consult E.V. Cernenko. The Scythians 700-300 BC. London: Osprey Publishing, 1989.
Once you have consulted Professor's Cernenko's book, it will be evident how flawed the costume design is, not to mention the colors. None of the reconstructions by Professor Gorelik, which Cernenko has consulted, show any type of face masks for ancient Iranian women. Ancient Iranian women, who were found in military, religious and political leadership roles, simply did not wear such attire during courtship, marriage or everyday duties.
It is not clear why Professor Fox has chosen a Burka-like face mask for Roxanna at Alexander's wedding. Variants of this face mask are present in Afghanistan today, mainly the result of former Taliban rule and very conservative Pashtoon tribal society, which very strongly identifies itself with the culture of ancient Arabia. Even more interesting is the "Arabian Nights" portrayal of an Achaemenid harem. Harems certainly existed in Persia and the later Roman and Byzantine courts, however the specifically "Arabian" appearance accorded to the Achaemenids is simply consistent with the Hollywood tradition of portraying Iranians as Arabs.
Interestingly, the movie portrays the "Persians" with Arabian styles of music and dance. This portrayal is not based on factual information; it is a Hollywood portrayal. From the scant evidence that exists, we do know that one of the Persian styles of dance strongly resembled the dances of the Kurds of today; a style also seen in western Turkey, Greece and the Balkans today. As for music, we have no notes or scales from that period, and "Arab music" as we know it today simply did not exist at that time; it is a much later creation. Arabian music can trace its beginnings to the Bedouin tribes of Arabia - it later borrowing heavily of Sassanian and Greek scales (after the 7th century AD).
These errors are enough to question the historical accuracy of the Alexander picture. It seems that when it comes to Iranians and their identity, history is easily "re-written" for the benefit of popular entertainment. As Professor Fox has duly noted in an interview with Archeology Today (http://www.archaeology.org/online/interviews/fox.html), the movie "could not totally depart from audiences' expectations." The "audience" undoubtedly has "expectations" as to what Iranians "should" look like.
Given Professor Fox's rudimentary knowledge of Persia's anthropology, you may wish to refer to:
J.P. Mallory. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archeology and Myth. London: Thames & Hudson, 1989. Read pages: 9-23, 48-56, 78, 266-272.
An excellent article by Dr. Oric Basirov is posted as well:
http://home.btconnect.com/CAIS/Religions/iranian/Zarathushtrian/Oric.Basirov/origin_of_the_iranians.htm
For color reconstructions of ancient Iranians see:
P. Wilcox. Rome's Enemies (3): "Parthians and Sassanid Persians." London: Osprey Publishing, 1986.
T. Newark. The Barbarians. London: Concord Publications Company, 1998. See Page 7 (the Saka - ancestors of today's Lurs and Seistanis) and 30 (ancestors of the Ard-Alan).
Iran today is very much a genetic tapestry that includes blondism in Northern and Western Iran (e.g. Parsabad, or Talysh), as well as among Iranian peoples such as Lurs, Azeris, Mazandaranis, Kurds and Boyer-Ahmadis. Iran is also home to Arabians in Khuzistan and the Persian Gulf coast, Asiatic Turcomens in the Northeast, as well as the Baluchis near Pakistan, who have a strong Dravidian admixture. You may wish to read the very thorough and precise compendium of Iranian peoples today by:
F. Hole (Editor). The Archaeology of Western Iran: Settlement and Society from Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest (Smithsonian Series in Archaeological Inquiry). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987.
W. B. Fisher (Editor). The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 1, "The Land of Iran." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
These books (especially the Cambridge History of Iran series) will provide a more informed and less misleading analysis of Iran's anthropological history than that offered by Professor Fox.
As seen in this commentary, Hollywood portrayals of Iranians are in stark contrast to reality. Until the Arabian arrivals in the 7th century AD, the majority of Iranians would have looked no different from the Greeks or Romans. Greek and Roman references to classical Iranians do not refer to them as different in the "physical" sense; differences lay mainly in manner of government, philosophy and to a lesser extent, mythology. The Azadan nobility of the Parthian and Sassanian Savaran (elite cavalry), more than 500 years later than Alexander, are described by Peter Wilcox as "…very similar to the Celts…strikingly similar to Northwest Europeans…" (p.6). There are still many short stories in Southern Italy today which accurately portray the temperament and appearance of the Persians as they would have appeared in antiquity (4).
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Notes
1) Despite the powerful historical revisionism of a number of mainly northwest European historians such as Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) or the aforementioned Fallmerayer, the Greco-Roman world and Persia have profoundly influenced each other in areas such as architecture, the arts and crafts, the sciences and medicine, mythology, military and engineering technologies. While true that one can find a number of anti-Persian references in Greco-Roman sources, these were in the context of wars that broke out between these powers. A perfect example of this is how the movie explicitly shows Aristotle deriding the Persians as inferior to the Greeks. Modern Greeks place this in context and see Aristotle as expressing the political climate of his day. Iranians are very well liked and respected in Greece and are seen as the heirs of a great civilization. Alexander himself came to greatly appreciate the Iranians and their culture. It is a shame that the movie did not show Alexander as paying homage to the tomb of Cyrus the Great.
2) As noted previously, Greco-Roman historians who were prepared to acknowledge and highly praise the Persians (e.g. Xenophon, Plutarch, etc.). Today's popular culture, education systems and movie entertainment industries in particular, seem to be providing a very selective and distorted view of Persia with respect to antiquity. Many are simply not aware (or wish not be aware) of Persia's importance and status in antiquity let alone her major contributions to world civilization.
3) Ancient Greeks, Romans and Persians had much more in common with each other than with the relatively unsophisticated Celtic and Germanic peoples who were roaming the Northern European forests. For an incisive discussion of these little discussed topics consult:
N. Spatari. Calabria, L'enigma Delle Arti Asittite: Nella Calabria Ultramediterranea. Italy: MUSABA, 2003. As far as I know, this book has still not be translated from Italian to English. Still an excellent read, especially with the illustrations.
P. Kriwaczek. In Search of Zarathustra: The First prophet and the Ideas that Changed the World. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002.
4) I look forward to the day when we will see blockbuster movies of Shapur I (241-272) who defeated three Roman emperors in his lifetime and destroyed a third of Rome's armies. Even more dramatic would be to see movies made of the life and times of figures such as Zarathustra, Aryaman, Shahrbaraz, Mani, Mazdak, Babak, Abu Ali Sina or Omar Khayyam.
Greco Report 01/2005
Showing posts with label Greco Report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greco Report. Show all posts
September 05, 2011
Kitsos on Greek-American "Leaders."
Kitsos on Greek-American "Leaders."
I had been following the events in the United States having to do with the enthronement and subsequent removal of the former Archbishop of America, Spyridon. Although many of the articles and much of the commentary disagreed as to certain particulars, all were in agreement on one thing: Spyridon was thought to be 'too Greek' for our Greek-American brothers and sisters. How could this be? For years I'd been under the impression that our compatriots in the New World were the creme de la creme of Hellenism. That we, here in the "Old Country," were not half as patriotic as they. That we could learn much from emulating their unique blend of acquired Anglo-Saxon organizational skills mixed with our inborn Hellenic intelligence and virtues. What an unbeatable combination! Or, at least that's what I thought till this matter concerning the former Archbishop came along.
I must admit to you that I was amazed and disgusted. Of course, you may be thinking that I am over-reacting. That my dismay and disillusionment are merely the symptoms of an old man yearning for a world that existed only in his imagination. No! Emphatically no! I pride myself on being a pragmatist, quite aware of the foibles and shortcomings of our Race. We Hellenes are arguably the most self-destructive, opinionated, power-hungry, fractious, egomaniacal individualists on this planet. Agreed! We've been bemoaning the existence of these traits in our DNA for millenniums. What is happening over there in America, though, is, I think, different. The difference being that as bad and as divided as we always were (and are), there were certain ideas and causes that we could all rally to. Certain dangers that we would confront together. Dangers, like the absolute necessity of making sure that Hellas survived in the powder-keg neighborhood that God, in his inscrutable wisdom, saw fit to locate us; causes, such as making sure that, wherever we found ourselves on this planet, our children would be taught the language, tradition and religion of their forebears; and ideas, such as what a singular and absolutely wonderful thing it is to be a Hellene: the bearer in one's genes of the unique, culture-creating miracle that we have bequeathed, by the grace of God, to humanity. All of these things, it seems, don't seem to count for much in Greek-America. I began to wonder if perhaps these people would be the first and only Hellenes in our long history to "drop the shield." I was fascinated by this question, and so I decided to put it to the one man whose opinions weigh more with me than any other; my friend, and manager of my country estate in Boeotia, Kitsos.
It was late fall. The sound of hunters firing their shotguns could be heard off in the distance. There was a penetrating chill in the air and I had a huge olive-wood log ablaze in the fireplace. I was looking forward to an interesting chat with my friend, and when he finally arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see him looking as sprightly as ever, even though he had been supervising the annual picking of olives in my ancestral groves and had put in a long day. Kitsos is a man who I would guess is in his late 50s to early 60s (he won't say exactly), though you would never know it by looking at him. He is an exceptionally vigorous man, both physically and mentally, and I've always enjoyed watching him use his body in hard physical labor and, even more, his mind, as he wrestles with the conundrums and questions I am in the habit of putting to him. A wide-ranging autodidact, there does not seem to be a book that he has not delved into. And, like a diver in a sea of ignorance, his life has been a persistent search for the pearls of knowledge and wisdom overlooked by lesser men..
"Tell me, afentiko" [boss], he said as he came into my den, "will you be here until after we finish the gathering, or will you be leaving for Athens before that?"
"I will be leaving well before, Kitsos. Why?"
"Some of the villagers are organizing a boar hunt in Epirus after we bring in the olives, and I thought you would want to take part as you have done in the past," he answered.
"I shall have to regretfully decline, my friend. Business matters in the capital make it necessary that I be there, much as I will miss the thrill of the chase with my fellow villagers."
"Too bad," he replied, as I poured out a glass of my homemade, red brusko, for which he has an especial affinity. (Though I must make it very clear that I have never seen him tipsy or in the least bit affected by wine, or anything else for that matter. He is the very paradigm of equability.)
"Take a seat by the fire, Kitsos, and let me tell you about a matter that has been on my mind" I said. When he had seated himself, I sat down as well and continued. "It's this business with the former Archbishop of America, you see. It has me puzzled."
"Puzzled, how?" he asked.
Well, you've been to America, and I have never ventured beyond the borders of our fatherland. We've spoken before about how unusual these Greek-Americans are, but this thing with the Archbishop is truly amazing. I want you to explain to me, my dear friend, how it is possible for our Hellenic brothers and sisters to think that someone is unworthy to serve as their spiritual leader because he is too Greek. Now I know that sounds impossible, Kitsos, but I've read commentary written by representatives of every shade of the religious and political spectrum, and they all agree on one thing: Spyridon was deemed to be too Greek for our Greek-American compatriots. Can this be possible, my friend?"
"Before you amazed yourself into disbelief, afentiko, you should have paid more attention to what is happening here, to our mother, Hellas, where the imported diseases of cynical nihilism and self-serving, infantile narcissism are taking root among us so effectively. Perhaps then you would not be so amazed."
I was taken aback by his reply. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Why, the very causes that spelled the Archbishop's removal have begun their work of destruction here as well," he answered. "We've spoken before about the blight that has infected our land ever since the foreign influences undermining our culture began to predominate. Well, where do you think these things originated?"
"But," I hastily replied, "we have not yet reached that level of self-hatred that would compel us to remove one of our leading lights because he was 'too Greek'! Admit that much, Kitsos."
"I admit that much, though it gives me no joy to do so, because what has happened to our Greek-American brothers and sisters is beginning to happen here as well, and I see no visible signs of a reactionary movement of any significance to counter this evil," he said. [This was true when this was written, it is no longer true now (2003). ed.]
"Well then, my friend, you must explain to me just what it is that has happened to these Greek-Americans so that I can better understand what you tell me is happening here, don't you think?" I replied.
"An interesting topic of conversation, afentiko, but one that needs a certain qualification, considering that we are to investigate the Greek side of what is actually a phenomenon that is unfolding, to a greater or lesser degree, all over the developed world," he said.
"And what might this qualification be?" I answered.
"Simply this: We must keep in mind that what we are probing is not new. It has occurred in the past wherever conditions developed that allowed the pampering and spoiling of children, where there existed an ethos of arrogance brought on by cultural, racial, intellectual, or military feelings of superiority, and where the institutions set up to enforce the natural law had been rendered impotent or ridiculous: All of these factors exist in America today. Our qualification has to do with our own peculiar history, however. With the fact that we Greeks have always been prone to exceed the limits of greatness or evil that characterize most of humanity. We generally overdo what we set our minds upon. As proof of this one need only remember that though Socrates is considered to have been the greatest teacher of morality in history, he had as two of his many pupils Alcibiades; a self-absorbed traitor to his city who could arrogantly desecrate the statues of a god, and Critias; who became part of a tyrant gang that arbitrarily put innocent metics and citizens to death in order to confiscate their property."
"But what does all of this mean, Kitsos, I don't understand." I said.
"It means, afentiko, that the very impulses of our nature that compelled us to love, serve and be loyal to our Church, Family and Country in the past, will now -- when the institutional dams break, as they did in Athens during and after the Peloponnesian war -- compel us to exceed all others in destroying, ridiculing and undermining these very institutions. Our history proves this to be the case. I tell you this because I would like you to keep it in mind as we investigate the Greek-Americans who were most ardently opposed to everything the former Archbishop of America, Spyridon, stood for."
"I promise to do so," I said.
"First of all," Kitsos continued, "you should know that most of these men -- the self-proclaimed 'leaders' of the various Greek-American organizations who were vehemently opposed to Spyridon -- are university trained professionals in their 40s and 50s. They are, in other words, the products of a system of tutelage dominated by cultural change-agents who use their teaching positions to create a cadre of influential adherents who will go along with the ideology being promulgated in order to advance their prestige and careers. They are the direct inheritors, and, in the case of the older ones, the active participants of the purposely directed social upheavals that took place in America in the 1960s and 70s: upheavals designed to bring the Old, Eurocentric America to its knees.
"The need to bring the Old America to its knees was based on a careful assessment by the power elites as to the most efficient means by which a universal marketplace might be created: a world-wide economic entity ruled by those whose ideological faction would be at the top of the heap at the end of the day. For this reason, the anti-Christian, atheistic U.N. was created, to be the all-knowing, all-powerful dispenser and protector of 'human rights' in its role as our Planetary Government; NATO followed, designed to be the future Police Force and enforcer of U.N. policies; UNESCO of course, which would be the world's Department of Education; and now we see agitation for an International Court of Justice, to be the global Supreme Court. That was the model, and America, the prime instigator and major beneficiary once that model was successfully imposed, had to begin the process of creating the new economic man to fit this model.. This meant that -- since a global market would require the cultivation of customers of every conceivable kind, color, and religion throughout the world -- any trace of bias or privilege enjoyed by white, Euro-Americans had to be obliterated. America would be the shining beacon of an ideology centered upon the idea that the black man's dollar, just as the homosexual's, the Hmong tribesman's, and the radical feminist's, was just as green as the white man's. An ideology that would be promulgated world-wide by an America determined to rule over a global marketplace of conditioned and docile consumers, and ready, through its control of NATO, to impose its will anywhere on the planet. And it would do this by using the excuse of making sure that all nations respected a concept that America, in reality, cared little about: 'human rights'; just as the ancient Athenian Empire became a tyranny while forcibly ensuring that 'Democracy' flourished among its neighbors and allies, whether they wanted it or not."
"Aren't you straying far a field, Kitsos?" I queried.
"You will see where I am going in a minute, afentiko," he replied. "It will make more sense to you when I tell you that this new 'human rights' ideology of diversity and equality -- being imposed for the economic benefit of the elites and their second echelon corps of political, technocratic, and academic flunkies -- was perfectly suited to the personalities of our Greek-American 'leaders.' But in order for you to understand why, I must let you get to know them better. I must give you some background as to the way they were raised, and the prevailing ethos of the period during which their identities were formed. It will not surprise you when I say that our 'leaders' are a little brighter than the population as a whole. In spite of this, however, they have an almost identical mentality. It is almost as if they were all cloned from a prototype, so identically do they think and behave. As I mentioned before, most of them went through their formative period, the period of their 'social imprinting,' during the 60s and the 70s, and the younger ones who missed that turbulent time, were schooled and raised in an America where those that had not missed it held many positions of influence and authority, and were thus able to have an effect.
"It was during this period that American values and standards were turned upside down; instigated by those factions seeking to bring about the onset of the new order mentioned above. Everything old had to be scrapped because 'old' and 'traditional' usually meant 'white' which was made out to be synonymous with racism, sexism, and homophobia; these things had to go! Our Greek-American 'leaders' were raised in this milieu. They were also part of the first TV generation: The first generation to be exposed more to the artificial social interactions constructed by TV script writers, than to the natural, social situations and interactions of the real world. The first generation to be completely socialized by TV before defense mechanisms could be put into place against this sort of collectivist brainwashing. They were also a generation raised by the precepts and philosophy of such intellectual lightweights as Dr. Spock. A generation where permissiveness ruled, they were raised without the benefit of corrective punishment, and with a minimum of discipline. For this reason, they've been referred to as the 'me' generation.
"Now, our ancestors learned how to raise children over thousands of generations of trial and error. They realized that, in order to survive, certain institutions had to be kept strong so that the destructive and egotistical natures of their young would be prevented from harming the community. We Greeks, being more egotistical and, as a result, potentially more destructive, made sure that the institutions of Family, Church, School and State were especially strong and respected. There was no other way, considering that Hellas has always been surrounded by hordes of enemies hell-bent on her annihilation. With such strong institutions, the Greek family could afford to coddle and spoil its children. In fact, they did so even more because they knew that one day that child would come face to face with the cruel reality of an unforgiving and hostile world. Imagine then the kind of chaos that ensues when you bring this kind of a Greek mother -- you know the type, the kind we often see chasing her child down the street of our village, spoon in hand, while yelling after him, 'ela yioka mou, na fas to avgoulaki sou' [come darling, and eat your egg for mommy.] -- to America, where the institutions that would prevent 'yioka' from doing great harm no longer exist."
"I'm beginning to get the idea, Kitsos," I said.
"But there's more, afentiko, In America, such parents were told that the old ways of raising children were outdated. That in the modern world of the welfare state, day-care centers, 'sensitized' fathers, working mothers, and MTV permissiveness was not so bad. And that those who insisted upon trying to instill the old-fashioned values of discipline, self-reliance, obedience, respect and courage were nothing more than anachronistic throwbacks to be ridiculed and ignored. So that many of the in-born destructive traits, common to all humanity, and heretofore discouraged and punished, were, in the 60s and 70s, encouraged and brought to the fore. One sees the consequences of this kind of upbringing throughout America today, and some of our Greek-American 'leaders' in the organizations we are discussing show the consequences a little more strongly, a little more clearly than most other members of the 'me' generation because, as I said before, we Greeks tend to overdo whatever we put our minds to doing.
"At this point, I think I should make it very clear that I am talking here about the inner circle of the ruling presidiums of these organizations, or, in some cases, individuals who operate on their own because they have wealth to go along with their egos. Let us refer to such 'leaders' by their own self-flattering term of 'progressives.' Most Greek-Americans, like most other people, have no real ideology of any kind; they simply parrot whatever ideas are fashionable at the moment. When the fashions change, their ideas change instantly, like a weather-vane in the wind. They are not the 'leaders' we are discussing. Unfortunately, there are enough of these 'leaders' among our people in America to cause some very serious problems, and I think that I should try to explain just why their minds work the way they do so that you will see why I said that this new collectivist ideology of diversity and equality was 'perfectly suited' to their personalities."
"Yes, please do," I said.
"First, at the core of the 'progressive' personality is an excessive degree of egoism, which in the more advanced cases develops into narcissism. This excessive egoism is an infantile characteristic, which is to say, it's a normal characteristic in infants, but in the case of healthy growth, it recedes as the individual develops and matures. A permissive upbringing retards the normal process of maturing. A second important element in the 'progressive' personality, an element closely related to the egoism, is resentment, coupled with envy. That is why you will see, should you choose to do the research, that most collectivist, 'progressive' ideologies are based on resentment. The 'progressive' finds very distasteful the notion that some people are brighter than he is, better looking, more industrious, more righteous or moral, more cultured, more artistic, more capable, or more successful. And he regards these people who are 'better' than he is -- and because of being 'better,' more powerful -- as a threat, as an irksome constraint. This envy and resentment is in a way a carry-over into adult life of the sort of resentment that a spoiled, self-indulgent child might feel toward a parent who won't let him do exactly what he wants to do: a parent who won't let him eat all of the koulourakia in the jar, who won't let him tie Papoo up as he sleeps in his rocking chair. It may express itself in infancy in the form of a tantrum, in adulthood it is expressed as a strong attraction to the ideology of egalitarianism; to the idea that no one is better than anyone else.
"I think that I can illustrate the connection between the pathology of an adult 'progressive' egalitarianism, and an infantile resentment to parental restraint, by telling you about a popular refrain on the campuses of America's colleges and universities back in the 60s and 70s. The refrain was 'kill your parents.' Of course, in most cases this incitement to parenticide was symbolic. What it meant was: 'get rid of every restraint, everything that keeps you from spending all of your time doing exactly what you feel like doing.' In one of the most popular books on campus at the time, a book titled Do it, by Jerry Rubin, a leader in the Youth International Party, or the Yippies for short, the incitement is almost literal. Rubin wrote: 'When we start playing with our private parts, our parents say "don't do that." The mother commits a crime against the child when she says "don't do that.' " Elsewhere in the book, Rubin is describing how he and his followers were kicked out of the Newport Folk Festival for distributing pornographic literature to the crowd, a good portion of which depicted young children: a sample of what the leaflets were all about can be gleaned by considering the following: 'F**k the first nun you see.' This advice was accompanied by a very graphic illustration of just how to go about executing it. Most of Rubin's book is a non-stop effort to build resentment among the more infantile segment of his collegiate readers, with long recitations about the crimes their parents, schools, and society have committed against them by restraining them in one way or another: It is a call to revolution against anything smacking of authority or hierarchy. On the last page, Rubin writes: '[In our New World] there will be no more jails, courts, or police....There will be no such crime as stealing because everything will be free....People will farm in the morning, make music in the afternoon and f**k wherever and whenever they want to.' This was the kind of poison being dispensed in the America of the 60s and 70s, and it was in just such an environment that our self-anointed 'leaders' were raised. These are the people who went on to take positions of responsibility in the business world, the professions, politics (one of them even became president), education, journalism and even religion."
"A wholly frightening situation," I blurted.
"So you see, afentiko," Kitsos continued, "when someone like Spyridon came along: someone antithetical to every single one of the myths being propagated today; someone who proudly declared his love for Greece, and his intention to speak out in defense of her interests; someone who would be the head of a male-dominated, tradition-bound, politically incorrect, hierarchical structure; someone who looked as if he might actually begin to impose our Orthodox dogma and language upon our 'leaders' and their coddled and bossy offspring, who, like their parents, have never ever heard the word 'no' in their lives; someone who intended to 'clean house' and rid the Church of its costly 'dead weight,' its unproductive employees, and of its self-aggrandizing, ego-tripping opportunists, you can just imagine the hysterical squeals and shrieks of rage these totally indoctrinated, historically challenged, self-absorbed and self-hating 'Greek-American leaders' must have emitted in that barbaric tongue of theirs."
"Yes, dear friend, I can imagine it," I replied. "And I can now, after hearing all of this, understand what motivates these people to do the things they do. I am also now even more fearful concerning the fate of our poor Hellas, because, not being totally devoid of my senses, I, too, have noticed the self-same, horrific trends happening here as well. For instance, did you know that our civil-service bus drivers are no longer allowed to display icons of our saints, nor of Jesus or the Theotokos in their buses any longer? It seems that some of our esteemed citizens -- who seem to act an awful lot like these 'progressives' you've been telling me about -- complained that, since they were not of the Christian Faith, their sensibilities were violated, and so they demanded and got the government to order the removal of these 'offensive' objects. This has happened in our parliament as well, where the icon of Christ was removed because it was deemed 'offensive' to our Muslim and other non-Christian parliamentarians. And what about this UNESCO you spoke of?" I went on. "Did you know that they've sent a committee to go through every one of the text books used in our schools, in order to remove any 'hostile' mention of the Turks or other 'minorities' found therein? Did you know these things, Kitsos?"
"Yes," he answered, as unperturbedly as ever, "I'm quite aware of these and other warlike acts being committed against Hellenism and Orthodoxy at the behest of our home-grown 'leaders,' who get their marching orders from Brussels and beyond. But now I think it is time for me to get back into the groves. I've got a team of men working late all through the picking season so that we can finish in time for us to go on that boar hunt."
"Yes, of course," I said. "Why don't you come back after work and have dinner with me tonight? I can smell one of Kira Kitsena's delicious rabbit stifados [hunter's stew] cooking in the kitchen."
"No thanks, afentiko," he replied with a twinkle in his eye, "I'll get to enjoy her stifado at home, later tonight. After which I will head for the neighboring village, where I've been challenged to a match in the Kafenio by their best chess player. Why don't your come and watch? It should be interesting to see me beat the poor soul."
"I might just do that, Kitsos," I said, as I rose to show him out.
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For more on the dangers these "leaders" pose to Hellenism and Orthodoxy, see Kitsos Speaks to Greek-Americans.
For a detailed description of the elitist power structure setting the agenda being followed so blindly by our "progressive" Greek-American "leaders," as well as by the vast majority of state and media sedated Americans, read Kitsos on the Rising Tide of Color.
Editorial comment
Whenever the ruling elite in any society wish to justify their illegal and/or immoral actions, there are always a plethora of "scholars" ready and willing to write their apologetics or polemics for them. Should one wish to read more on the fabrication of lies and distortions being churned out by American "intellectuals" to explain away the murderous role that America and her NATO stooges have assumed in order to advance their agenda of a single, global marketplace, a good place to start would be to click on to Thucydides and anything under The Big Picture.
For a very influential book, that has given a "scientific" underpinning, and lots of morally bankrupt, pedantic justification for the imperialistic and hegemonic designs concocted by the rascals in Washington and Brussels, see The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, by Samuel P. Huntington. Simon & Schuster. New York. 1996. Huntington has been described as a "Leftist 'scholar' ... in the pay of Nelson Rockefeller." Also, "Huntington's work is extensively cited by such as Daniel Lazare," who is "...arguably the nation's most forthright enemy of the U.S. Constitution." (The New American. 8 Nov.1999. p.8).
If your stomach can stand it, Jerry Rubin's book of filth and excrement was published by ( are you ready for this?) Simon and Schuster!!!: New York; 1970. Unbelievable, but true. In this book, you can see the narcissistic and degenerate mind of a nihilistic turd at work. A turd, however, who was able to get this litany of crazed obscenities and childlike, onanistic and scatological daydreams published by one of America's most prestigious publishing houses. Not only that, but it went into 5 printings. Kind of makes one wonder. Right? But then again, think about who controls the publishing industry nowadays.
Karl Marx is obviously the inspiration for Rubin's quote mentioned above. Here it is in all of its glorious entirety, and please keep in mind that this quote is actually quite mild compared to the rest of the book:
At community meetings all over the land, Bob Dylan
will replace the National Anthem.
There will be no more jails, courts or police.
The White House will become a crash pad for anybody
without a place to stay in Washington.
The world will become one big commune with free
food and housing, everything shared.
All watches and clocks will be destroyed.
Barbers will go to rehabilitation camps where they will
grow their hair long.
There will be no such crime as "stealing" because
everything will be free.
The Pentagon will be replaced by an LSD experimental
farm.
There will be no more schools or churches because the
entire world will become one church and school.
People will farm in the morning, make music in the
afternoon, and f**k wherever and whenever they want to.
Now, before you write these declarations off as nothing more than the fantasies of a post-pubescent, intellectual midget, perhaps you should read the quote by Karl Marx below. Keep in mind that this kind of mental masturbation was and is believed in by half the world, if not by more than half. Makes you wonder about the state of mind and political acumen of our fellow man, doesn't it? But then again, Bill Clinton was elected twice wasn't he? And in our own "Land of Myth and Magic," didn't we elect, over and over again, those arch-destroyers of everything they put their hands to, Andreas Papandreou, and Konstantinos Karamanlis? What does that say for "Democracy," dear friend? But, no more of this, the quote by Marx follows:
In communist society, where no one has one exclusive
sphere of activity but each can become accomplished
in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one
thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the
morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever
becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic.
Collected Works of Karl Marx, Vol. V. p. 275.
How this bit of masturbatory fantasizing would apply in today's hi-tech world can be seen from our own updated version:
In communist society, where no one has one exclusive
sphere of activity but each can become accomplished
in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one
thing today and another tomorrow, to be a computer
analyst in the morning, perform brain surgery in the
afternoon, be a financial advisor in the evening, teach a class
after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming
a computer analyst, brain surgeon, financial advisor, or
professor.
di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee......
"Johnneeee!!!! how many times have I told you not to do that while reading Das Kapital in the bathroom?"
Greco Report l999
I had been following the events in the United States having to do with the enthronement and subsequent removal of the former Archbishop of America, Spyridon. Although many of the articles and much of the commentary disagreed as to certain particulars, all were in agreement on one thing: Spyridon was thought to be 'too Greek' for our Greek-American brothers and sisters. How could this be? For years I'd been under the impression that our compatriots in the New World were the creme de la creme of Hellenism. That we, here in the "Old Country," were not half as patriotic as they. That we could learn much from emulating their unique blend of acquired Anglo-Saxon organizational skills mixed with our inborn Hellenic intelligence and virtues. What an unbeatable combination! Or, at least that's what I thought till this matter concerning the former Archbishop came along.
I must admit to you that I was amazed and disgusted. Of course, you may be thinking that I am over-reacting. That my dismay and disillusionment are merely the symptoms of an old man yearning for a world that existed only in his imagination. No! Emphatically no! I pride myself on being a pragmatist, quite aware of the foibles and shortcomings of our Race. We Hellenes are arguably the most self-destructive, opinionated, power-hungry, fractious, egomaniacal individualists on this planet. Agreed! We've been bemoaning the existence of these traits in our DNA for millenniums. What is happening over there in America, though, is, I think, different. The difference being that as bad and as divided as we always were (and are), there were certain ideas and causes that we could all rally to. Certain dangers that we would confront together. Dangers, like the absolute necessity of making sure that Hellas survived in the powder-keg neighborhood that God, in his inscrutable wisdom, saw fit to locate us; causes, such as making sure that, wherever we found ourselves on this planet, our children would be taught the language, tradition and religion of their forebears; and ideas, such as what a singular and absolutely wonderful thing it is to be a Hellene: the bearer in one's genes of the unique, culture-creating miracle that we have bequeathed, by the grace of God, to humanity. All of these things, it seems, don't seem to count for much in Greek-America. I began to wonder if perhaps these people would be the first and only Hellenes in our long history to "drop the shield." I was fascinated by this question, and so I decided to put it to the one man whose opinions weigh more with me than any other; my friend, and manager of my country estate in Boeotia, Kitsos.
It was late fall. The sound of hunters firing their shotguns could be heard off in the distance. There was a penetrating chill in the air and I had a huge olive-wood log ablaze in the fireplace. I was looking forward to an interesting chat with my friend, and when he finally arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see him looking as sprightly as ever, even though he had been supervising the annual picking of olives in my ancestral groves and had put in a long day. Kitsos is a man who I would guess is in his late 50s to early 60s (he won't say exactly), though you would never know it by looking at him. He is an exceptionally vigorous man, both physically and mentally, and I've always enjoyed watching him use his body in hard physical labor and, even more, his mind, as he wrestles with the conundrums and questions I am in the habit of putting to him. A wide-ranging autodidact, there does not seem to be a book that he has not delved into. And, like a diver in a sea of ignorance, his life has been a persistent search for the pearls of knowledge and wisdom overlooked by lesser men..
"Tell me, afentiko" [boss], he said as he came into my den, "will you be here until after we finish the gathering, or will you be leaving for Athens before that?"
"I will be leaving well before, Kitsos. Why?"
"Some of the villagers are organizing a boar hunt in Epirus after we bring in the olives, and I thought you would want to take part as you have done in the past," he answered.
"I shall have to regretfully decline, my friend. Business matters in the capital make it necessary that I be there, much as I will miss the thrill of the chase with my fellow villagers."
"Too bad," he replied, as I poured out a glass of my homemade, red brusko, for which he has an especial affinity. (Though I must make it very clear that I have never seen him tipsy or in the least bit affected by wine, or anything else for that matter. He is the very paradigm of equability.)
"Take a seat by the fire, Kitsos, and let me tell you about a matter that has been on my mind" I said. When he had seated himself, I sat down as well and continued. "It's this business with the former Archbishop of America, you see. It has me puzzled."
"Puzzled, how?" he asked.
Well, you've been to America, and I have never ventured beyond the borders of our fatherland. We've spoken before about how unusual these Greek-Americans are, but this thing with the Archbishop is truly amazing. I want you to explain to me, my dear friend, how it is possible for our Hellenic brothers and sisters to think that someone is unworthy to serve as their spiritual leader because he is too Greek. Now I know that sounds impossible, Kitsos, but I've read commentary written by representatives of every shade of the religious and political spectrum, and they all agree on one thing: Spyridon was deemed to be too Greek for our Greek-American compatriots. Can this be possible, my friend?"
"Before you amazed yourself into disbelief, afentiko, you should have paid more attention to what is happening here, to our mother, Hellas, where the imported diseases of cynical nihilism and self-serving, infantile narcissism are taking root among us so effectively. Perhaps then you would not be so amazed."
I was taken aback by his reply. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Why, the very causes that spelled the Archbishop's removal have begun their work of destruction here as well," he answered. "We've spoken before about the blight that has infected our land ever since the foreign influences undermining our culture began to predominate. Well, where do you think these things originated?"
"But," I hastily replied, "we have not yet reached that level of self-hatred that would compel us to remove one of our leading lights because he was 'too Greek'! Admit that much, Kitsos."
"I admit that much, though it gives me no joy to do so, because what has happened to our Greek-American brothers and sisters is beginning to happen here as well, and I see no visible signs of a reactionary movement of any significance to counter this evil," he said. [This was true when this was written, it is no longer true now (2003). ed.]
"Well then, my friend, you must explain to me just what it is that has happened to these Greek-Americans so that I can better understand what you tell me is happening here, don't you think?" I replied.
"An interesting topic of conversation, afentiko, but one that needs a certain qualification, considering that we are to investigate the Greek side of what is actually a phenomenon that is unfolding, to a greater or lesser degree, all over the developed world," he said.
"And what might this qualification be?" I answered.
"Simply this: We must keep in mind that what we are probing is not new. It has occurred in the past wherever conditions developed that allowed the pampering and spoiling of children, where there existed an ethos of arrogance brought on by cultural, racial, intellectual, or military feelings of superiority, and where the institutions set up to enforce the natural law had been rendered impotent or ridiculous: All of these factors exist in America today. Our qualification has to do with our own peculiar history, however. With the fact that we Greeks have always been prone to exceed the limits of greatness or evil that characterize most of humanity. We generally overdo what we set our minds upon. As proof of this one need only remember that though Socrates is considered to have been the greatest teacher of morality in history, he had as two of his many pupils Alcibiades; a self-absorbed traitor to his city who could arrogantly desecrate the statues of a god, and Critias; who became part of a tyrant gang that arbitrarily put innocent metics and citizens to death in order to confiscate their property."
"But what does all of this mean, Kitsos, I don't understand." I said.
"It means, afentiko, that the very impulses of our nature that compelled us to love, serve and be loyal to our Church, Family and Country in the past, will now -- when the institutional dams break, as they did in Athens during and after the Peloponnesian war -- compel us to exceed all others in destroying, ridiculing and undermining these very institutions. Our history proves this to be the case. I tell you this because I would like you to keep it in mind as we investigate the Greek-Americans who were most ardently opposed to everything the former Archbishop of America, Spyridon, stood for."
"I promise to do so," I said.
"First of all," Kitsos continued, "you should know that most of these men -- the self-proclaimed 'leaders' of the various Greek-American organizations who were vehemently opposed to Spyridon -- are university trained professionals in their 40s and 50s. They are, in other words, the products of a system of tutelage dominated by cultural change-agents who use their teaching positions to create a cadre of influential adherents who will go along with the ideology being promulgated in order to advance their prestige and careers. They are the direct inheritors, and, in the case of the older ones, the active participants of the purposely directed social upheavals that took place in America in the 1960s and 70s: upheavals designed to bring the Old, Eurocentric America to its knees.
"The need to bring the Old America to its knees was based on a careful assessment by the power elites as to the most efficient means by which a universal marketplace might be created: a world-wide economic entity ruled by those whose ideological faction would be at the top of the heap at the end of the day. For this reason, the anti-Christian, atheistic U.N. was created, to be the all-knowing, all-powerful dispenser and protector of 'human rights' in its role as our Planetary Government; NATO followed, designed to be the future Police Force and enforcer of U.N. policies; UNESCO of course, which would be the world's Department of Education; and now we see agitation for an International Court of Justice, to be the global Supreme Court. That was the model, and America, the prime instigator and major beneficiary once that model was successfully imposed, had to begin the process of creating the new economic man to fit this model.. This meant that -- since a global market would require the cultivation of customers of every conceivable kind, color, and religion throughout the world -- any trace of bias or privilege enjoyed by white, Euro-Americans had to be obliterated. America would be the shining beacon of an ideology centered upon the idea that the black man's dollar, just as the homosexual's, the Hmong tribesman's, and the radical feminist's, was just as green as the white man's. An ideology that would be promulgated world-wide by an America determined to rule over a global marketplace of conditioned and docile consumers, and ready, through its control of NATO, to impose its will anywhere on the planet. And it would do this by using the excuse of making sure that all nations respected a concept that America, in reality, cared little about: 'human rights'; just as the ancient Athenian Empire became a tyranny while forcibly ensuring that 'Democracy' flourished among its neighbors and allies, whether they wanted it or not."
"Aren't you straying far a field, Kitsos?" I queried.
"You will see where I am going in a minute, afentiko," he replied. "It will make more sense to you when I tell you that this new 'human rights' ideology of diversity and equality -- being imposed for the economic benefit of the elites and their second echelon corps of political, technocratic, and academic flunkies -- was perfectly suited to the personalities of our Greek-American 'leaders.' But in order for you to understand why, I must let you get to know them better. I must give you some background as to the way they were raised, and the prevailing ethos of the period during which their identities were formed. It will not surprise you when I say that our 'leaders' are a little brighter than the population as a whole. In spite of this, however, they have an almost identical mentality. It is almost as if they were all cloned from a prototype, so identically do they think and behave. As I mentioned before, most of them went through their formative period, the period of their 'social imprinting,' during the 60s and the 70s, and the younger ones who missed that turbulent time, were schooled and raised in an America where those that had not missed it held many positions of influence and authority, and were thus able to have an effect.
"It was during this period that American values and standards were turned upside down; instigated by those factions seeking to bring about the onset of the new order mentioned above. Everything old had to be scrapped because 'old' and 'traditional' usually meant 'white' which was made out to be synonymous with racism, sexism, and homophobia; these things had to go! Our Greek-American 'leaders' were raised in this milieu. They were also part of the first TV generation: The first generation to be exposed more to the artificial social interactions constructed by TV script writers, than to the natural, social situations and interactions of the real world. The first generation to be completely socialized by TV before defense mechanisms could be put into place against this sort of collectivist brainwashing. They were also a generation raised by the precepts and philosophy of such intellectual lightweights as Dr. Spock. A generation where permissiveness ruled, they were raised without the benefit of corrective punishment, and with a minimum of discipline. For this reason, they've been referred to as the 'me' generation.
"Now, our ancestors learned how to raise children over thousands of generations of trial and error. They realized that, in order to survive, certain institutions had to be kept strong so that the destructive and egotistical natures of their young would be prevented from harming the community. We Greeks, being more egotistical and, as a result, potentially more destructive, made sure that the institutions of Family, Church, School and State were especially strong and respected. There was no other way, considering that Hellas has always been surrounded by hordes of enemies hell-bent on her annihilation. With such strong institutions, the Greek family could afford to coddle and spoil its children. In fact, they did so even more because they knew that one day that child would come face to face with the cruel reality of an unforgiving and hostile world. Imagine then the kind of chaos that ensues when you bring this kind of a Greek mother -- you know the type, the kind we often see chasing her child down the street of our village, spoon in hand, while yelling after him, 'ela yioka mou, na fas to avgoulaki sou' [come darling, and eat your egg for mommy.] -- to America, where the institutions that would prevent 'yioka' from doing great harm no longer exist."
"I'm beginning to get the idea, Kitsos," I said.
"But there's more, afentiko, In America, such parents were told that the old ways of raising children were outdated. That in the modern world of the welfare state, day-care centers, 'sensitized' fathers, working mothers, and MTV permissiveness was not so bad. And that those who insisted upon trying to instill the old-fashioned values of discipline, self-reliance, obedience, respect and courage were nothing more than anachronistic throwbacks to be ridiculed and ignored. So that many of the in-born destructive traits, common to all humanity, and heretofore discouraged and punished, were, in the 60s and 70s, encouraged and brought to the fore. One sees the consequences of this kind of upbringing throughout America today, and some of our Greek-American 'leaders' in the organizations we are discussing show the consequences a little more strongly, a little more clearly than most other members of the 'me' generation because, as I said before, we Greeks tend to overdo whatever we put our minds to doing.
"At this point, I think I should make it very clear that I am talking here about the inner circle of the ruling presidiums of these organizations, or, in some cases, individuals who operate on their own because they have wealth to go along with their egos. Let us refer to such 'leaders' by their own self-flattering term of 'progressives.' Most Greek-Americans, like most other people, have no real ideology of any kind; they simply parrot whatever ideas are fashionable at the moment. When the fashions change, their ideas change instantly, like a weather-vane in the wind. They are not the 'leaders' we are discussing. Unfortunately, there are enough of these 'leaders' among our people in America to cause some very serious problems, and I think that I should try to explain just why their minds work the way they do so that you will see why I said that this new collectivist ideology of diversity and equality was 'perfectly suited' to their personalities."
"Yes, please do," I said.
"First, at the core of the 'progressive' personality is an excessive degree of egoism, which in the more advanced cases develops into narcissism. This excessive egoism is an infantile characteristic, which is to say, it's a normal characteristic in infants, but in the case of healthy growth, it recedes as the individual develops and matures. A permissive upbringing retards the normal process of maturing. A second important element in the 'progressive' personality, an element closely related to the egoism, is resentment, coupled with envy. That is why you will see, should you choose to do the research, that most collectivist, 'progressive' ideologies are based on resentment. The 'progressive' finds very distasteful the notion that some people are brighter than he is, better looking, more industrious, more righteous or moral, more cultured, more artistic, more capable, or more successful. And he regards these people who are 'better' than he is -- and because of being 'better,' more powerful -- as a threat, as an irksome constraint. This envy and resentment is in a way a carry-over into adult life of the sort of resentment that a spoiled, self-indulgent child might feel toward a parent who won't let him do exactly what he wants to do: a parent who won't let him eat all of the koulourakia in the jar, who won't let him tie Papoo up as he sleeps in his rocking chair. It may express itself in infancy in the form of a tantrum, in adulthood it is expressed as a strong attraction to the ideology of egalitarianism; to the idea that no one is better than anyone else.
"I think that I can illustrate the connection between the pathology of an adult 'progressive' egalitarianism, and an infantile resentment to parental restraint, by telling you about a popular refrain on the campuses of America's colleges and universities back in the 60s and 70s. The refrain was 'kill your parents.' Of course, in most cases this incitement to parenticide was symbolic. What it meant was: 'get rid of every restraint, everything that keeps you from spending all of your time doing exactly what you feel like doing.' In one of the most popular books on campus at the time, a book titled Do it, by Jerry Rubin, a leader in the Youth International Party, or the Yippies for short, the incitement is almost literal. Rubin wrote: 'When we start playing with our private parts, our parents say "don't do that." The mother commits a crime against the child when she says "don't do that.' " Elsewhere in the book, Rubin is describing how he and his followers were kicked out of the Newport Folk Festival for distributing pornographic literature to the crowd, a good portion of which depicted young children: a sample of what the leaflets were all about can be gleaned by considering the following: 'F**k the first nun you see.' This advice was accompanied by a very graphic illustration of just how to go about executing it. Most of Rubin's book is a non-stop effort to build resentment among the more infantile segment of his collegiate readers, with long recitations about the crimes their parents, schools, and society have committed against them by restraining them in one way or another: It is a call to revolution against anything smacking of authority or hierarchy. On the last page, Rubin writes: '[In our New World] there will be no more jails, courts, or police....There will be no such crime as stealing because everything will be free....People will farm in the morning, make music in the afternoon and f**k wherever and whenever they want to.' This was the kind of poison being dispensed in the America of the 60s and 70s, and it was in just such an environment that our self-anointed 'leaders' were raised. These are the people who went on to take positions of responsibility in the business world, the professions, politics (one of them even became president), education, journalism and even religion."
"A wholly frightening situation," I blurted.
"So you see, afentiko," Kitsos continued, "when someone like Spyridon came along: someone antithetical to every single one of the myths being propagated today; someone who proudly declared his love for Greece, and his intention to speak out in defense of her interests; someone who would be the head of a male-dominated, tradition-bound, politically incorrect, hierarchical structure; someone who looked as if he might actually begin to impose our Orthodox dogma and language upon our 'leaders' and their coddled and bossy offspring, who, like their parents, have never ever heard the word 'no' in their lives; someone who intended to 'clean house' and rid the Church of its costly 'dead weight,' its unproductive employees, and of its self-aggrandizing, ego-tripping opportunists, you can just imagine the hysterical squeals and shrieks of rage these totally indoctrinated, historically challenged, self-absorbed and self-hating 'Greek-American leaders' must have emitted in that barbaric tongue of theirs."
"Yes, dear friend, I can imagine it," I replied. "And I can now, after hearing all of this, understand what motivates these people to do the things they do. I am also now even more fearful concerning the fate of our poor Hellas, because, not being totally devoid of my senses, I, too, have noticed the self-same, horrific trends happening here as well. For instance, did you know that our civil-service bus drivers are no longer allowed to display icons of our saints, nor of Jesus or the Theotokos in their buses any longer? It seems that some of our esteemed citizens -- who seem to act an awful lot like these 'progressives' you've been telling me about -- complained that, since they were not of the Christian Faith, their sensibilities were violated, and so they demanded and got the government to order the removal of these 'offensive' objects. This has happened in our parliament as well, where the icon of Christ was removed because it was deemed 'offensive' to our Muslim and other non-Christian parliamentarians. And what about this UNESCO you spoke of?" I went on. "Did you know that they've sent a committee to go through every one of the text books used in our schools, in order to remove any 'hostile' mention of the Turks or other 'minorities' found therein? Did you know these things, Kitsos?"
"Yes," he answered, as unperturbedly as ever, "I'm quite aware of these and other warlike acts being committed against Hellenism and Orthodoxy at the behest of our home-grown 'leaders,' who get their marching orders from Brussels and beyond. But now I think it is time for me to get back into the groves. I've got a team of men working late all through the picking season so that we can finish in time for us to go on that boar hunt."
"Yes, of course," I said. "Why don't you come back after work and have dinner with me tonight? I can smell one of Kira Kitsena's delicious rabbit stifados [hunter's stew] cooking in the kitchen."
"No thanks, afentiko," he replied with a twinkle in his eye, "I'll get to enjoy her stifado at home, later tonight. After which I will head for the neighboring village, where I've been challenged to a match in the Kafenio by their best chess player. Why don't your come and watch? It should be interesting to see me beat the poor soul."
"I might just do that, Kitsos," I said, as I rose to show him out.
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For more on the dangers these "leaders" pose to Hellenism and Orthodoxy, see Kitsos Speaks to Greek-Americans.
For a detailed description of the elitist power structure setting the agenda being followed so blindly by our "progressive" Greek-American "leaders," as well as by the vast majority of state and media sedated Americans, read Kitsos on the Rising Tide of Color.
Editorial comment
Whenever the ruling elite in any society wish to justify their illegal and/or immoral actions, there are always a plethora of "scholars" ready and willing to write their apologetics or polemics for them. Should one wish to read more on the fabrication of lies and distortions being churned out by American "intellectuals" to explain away the murderous role that America and her NATO stooges have assumed in order to advance their agenda of a single, global marketplace, a good place to start would be to click on to Thucydides and anything under The Big Picture.
For a very influential book, that has given a "scientific" underpinning, and lots of morally bankrupt, pedantic justification for the imperialistic and hegemonic designs concocted by the rascals in Washington and Brussels, see The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, by Samuel P. Huntington. Simon & Schuster. New York. 1996. Huntington has been described as a "Leftist 'scholar' ... in the pay of Nelson Rockefeller." Also, "Huntington's work is extensively cited by such as Daniel Lazare," who is "...arguably the nation's most forthright enemy of the U.S. Constitution." (The New American. 8 Nov.1999. p.8).
If your stomach can stand it, Jerry Rubin's book of filth and excrement was published by ( are you ready for this?) Simon and Schuster!!!: New York; 1970. Unbelievable, but true. In this book, you can see the narcissistic and degenerate mind of a nihilistic turd at work. A turd, however, who was able to get this litany of crazed obscenities and childlike, onanistic and scatological daydreams published by one of America's most prestigious publishing houses. Not only that, but it went into 5 printings. Kind of makes one wonder. Right? But then again, think about who controls the publishing industry nowadays.
Karl Marx is obviously the inspiration for Rubin's quote mentioned above. Here it is in all of its glorious entirety, and please keep in mind that this quote is actually quite mild compared to the rest of the book:
At community meetings all over the land, Bob Dylan
will replace the National Anthem.
There will be no more jails, courts or police.
The White House will become a crash pad for anybody
without a place to stay in Washington.
The world will become one big commune with free
food and housing, everything shared.
All watches and clocks will be destroyed.
Barbers will go to rehabilitation camps where they will
grow their hair long.
There will be no such crime as "stealing" because
everything will be free.
The Pentagon will be replaced by an LSD experimental
farm.
There will be no more schools or churches because the
entire world will become one church and school.
People will farm in the morning, make music in the
afternoon, and f**k wherever and whenever they want to.
Now, before you write these declarations off as nothing more than the fantasies of a post-pubescent, intellectual midget, perhaps you should read the quote by Karl Marx below. Keep in mind that this kind of mental masturbation was and is believed in by half the world, if not by more than half. Makes you wonder about the state of mind and political acumen of our fellow man, doesn't it? But then again, Bill Clinton was elected twice wasn't he? And in our own "Land of Myth and Magic," didn't we elect, over and over again, those arch-destroyers of everything they put their hands to, Andreas Papandreou, and Konstantinos Karamanlis? What does that say for "Democracy," dear friend? But, no more of this, the quote by Marx follows:
In communist society, where no one has one exclusive
sphere of activity but each can become accomplished
in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one
thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the
morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever
becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic.
Collected Works of Karl Marx, Vol. V. p. 275.
How this bit of masturbatory fantasizing would apply in today's hi-tech world can be seen from our own updated version:
In communist society, where no one has one exclusive
sphere of activity but each can become accomplished
in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one
thing today and another tomorrow, to be a computer
analyst in the morning, perform brain surgery in the
afternoon, be a financial advisor in the evening, teach a class
after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming
a computer analyst, brain surgeon, financial advisor, or
professor.
di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee, di, dee......
"Johnneeee!!!! how many times have I told you not to do that while reading Das Kapital in the bathroom?"
Greco Report l999
Communism and the Greek Civil War
A few words about The Black Book Of Communism before we begin the article. This long-awaited account of the "crimes, terrors, and repressions" of the destructive phenomenon known as Communism has been widely-known and read internationally since 1997.
That the book finally got published in the U.S. after much delay and difficulty is another story: A story that any reader of this website can easily understand since it is assumed that anyone reading TGR is aware of how "sensitive" the publishing and media cabal in America is to any criticism of the twin idiocies of Socialism and Communism. The reader will also not be astounded by the fact that, though this book made headlines in Europe, one would be hard-pressed to find even a back-page mention of it in American newspapers, literary journals, critical reviews, or on radio and television.
We hope to do an in-depth review of the book in the future. Until then, a few "dust-jacket" words -- intended to pique the reader's interest enough to entice him to read the book himself -- will have to suffice:
"This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the actual, practical accomplishments of Communism around the world: terror, torture, famine, mass deportations, and massacres. Astonishing in the sheer detail it amasses, the book is the first comprehensive attempt to catalogue and analyze the crimes of Communism over seventy years.
"The authors, all distinguished scholars based in Europe, document Communist crimes against humanity, but also crimes against national and universal culture, from Stalin's destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow, to Ceausescu's leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the wide-scale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Mao's Red Guards.
"As the death toll mounts -- as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on -- the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression. An extraordinary accounting, this book amply documents the unparalleled position and significance of Communism in the hierarchy of violence that is the history of the twentieth century."
"We didn't kill enough people." Communist guerrilla leader, Ares Velouchiotes, when queried as to why his EAM-ELLAS forces had been defeated.]
What follows has been excerpted from The Black Book Of Communism and has to do with the Greek Civil War
When the [second world] war ended, the Greek Communists were in a situation roughly similar to that of the Yugoslavs. On 2 November 1940, a few days after the Italian invasion of Greece, Nikos Zachariadis, the secretary of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), who had been in prison since 1936, sent out a call to arms:
"The Greek nation is now engaged in a war for its national liberation from the fascism of Mussolini ... Everyone must take his place, and everyone must fight." But on 7 December a manifesto from the underground Central Committee called into question this decision, and the KKE returned to the official line recommended by the Comintern, that of revolutionary defeatism. On 22 June 1941 came the spectacular U-turn: the KKE ordered its militants to organize "the struggle to defend the Soviet Union and the overthrow of the foreign fascist yoke."
The experience with clandestine activity had been crucial for the Communists. On 16 July 1941, like their counterparts in other countries, the Greek Communists formed a National Workers' Front for Liberation (Ergatiko Ethniko Apelevtherotiko Metopo, EEAM), an umbrella organization for three unions. On 27 September they established the EAM (Ethniko Apelevtherotiko Metopo), the Party's political arm. On 10 February 1942 they announced the creation of the People's Army for National Liberation (Ellinikos Laikos Apelevtherotikos [Stratos]), or ELAS. By May 1942 the first ELAS partisans were operating under the leadership of Ares Velouchiotes (Thanassis Klaras), an experienced militant who had signed a recantation in exchange for his freedom. From this point on, ELAS numbers continued to grow.
The ELAS was not the only military resistance movement. The National Greek Democratic Union (Ethnikos Demokratikos Syndesmos), or EDES, had been created by soldiers and republican civilians in September 1941. Another group of resistance fighters was formed by a retired colonel, Napoleon Zervas. A third organization, the National Social Liberation Movement (Ethniki Kai Koinoniki Apelevtherosis), or EKKA, came into being in October 1942 under Colonel Dimitri Psarros. All these organizations were constantly trying to recruit from one another.
But the success and strength of the ELAS made the Communists hopeful of imposing their leadership on all the armed resistance groups. They attacked the EDES partisans several times, as well as the EKKA, who were forced to suspend operations to regroup. In late 1942 Major G. Kostopoulos (a renegade from the EAM) and Colonel Stefanos Sáráfis formed a resistance unit in the heart of a zone that had been captured by the EAM in western Thessaly, at the foot of the Pindus Mountains. The ELAS surrounded them and massacred all those who did not escape or refused to enroll in their ranks. Taken prisoner, Sáráfis finally agreed to assume leadership of the ELAS units.
The presence of British officers who had come to help the Greek resistance was a cause of concern to the ELAS chiefs, who feared that the British would attempt to reinstate the monarchy. But there was a difference in viewpoint between the military branch, directed by Ares Velouchiotes, and the KKE itself. The latter, led by Giorgis Siantos, wished to follow the official line as laid down by Moscow, advocating a general antifascist coalition. The actions of the British were momentarily beneficial because in July 1943 their military mission convinced the three main protagonists to sign a pact. At that time the ELAS had some 18,000 men, the EDES 5,000, and the EKKA about 1000.
The Italian surrender on 8 September 1943 immediately modified the situation. A fratricidal war began when the Germans launched a violent offensive against the EDES. The guerrillas, forced to retreat, confronted several large ELAS battalions, which threatened to annihilate the EDES. The KKE leadership decided to abandon the EDES, hoping thus to check British policy. After four days of fighting, the partisans led by Zervas escaped encirclement.
This civil war within the main war was of great advantage to the Germans as they swept down upon the resistance units one by one. The Allies thus took the initiative to end the civil war. Fighting between the ELAS and the EDES stopped in February 1944, and an agreement was signed in Plaka. The agreement was short-lived; a few weeks later the ELAS attacked Colonel Psarros' EKKA troops. He was defeated after five days and taken prisoner. His officers were massacred; Psarros himself was beheaded.
The Communists' actions demoralized the resistance and discredited the EAM. In several regions, hatred for the EAM was so strong that a number of resistance fighters joined the security battalions set up by the Germans. The civil war did not end until the ELAS agreed to collaborate with the Greek government-in-exile in Cairo. In September 1944 six members of the EAM-ELAS became members of the government of national unity presided over by Georges Papandreou. On 2 September, as the Germans began to evacuate Greece, the ELAS sent its troops to conquer the Peloponnese, which had always eluded its control thanks to the security battalions. All captured towns and villages were "punished." In Meligala, 1,400 men, women, and children were massacred along with some 50 officers and noncommissioned officers from the security battalions.
Nothing now seemed to stand in the way of EAM-ELAS hegemony. But when Athens was liberated on 12 October it escaped the guerrillas' control because of the presence of British troops in Piraeus. The KKE leadership hesitated to undertake a trial of strength, unsure of whether it wanted a place in a coalition government. When the ELAS refused a government demand to demobilize, Iannis Zegvos, the Communist agriculture minister, demanded that all government units be disbanded too. On 4 December, ELAS patrols entered Athens, where they clashed with government forces. By the following day, almost the entire capital had fallen under the control of the 20,000-strong ELAS forces; but the British stood firm, awaiting reinforcements. On 18 December the ELAS again attacked EDES in Epirus and at the same time launched a bloody antiroyalist operation.
The offensive was contained, and in talks held in Varkiza the Communists resigned themselves to a peace accord under which they agreed to disarm. The accord was something of a sham, however, since large numbers of weapons and munitions remained carefully hidden. Ares Velouchiotes, one of the principal warlords, rejected the Varkiza conditions, rejoined the partisans with about one hundred men, and then crossed into Albania in the hope of continuing the armed struggle from there. Later, asked about the reasons for the defeat of the EAM-ELAS, Velouchiotes replied frankly: "We didn't kill enough people. The English were taking a major interest in that crossroads called Greece. If we had killed all their friends, they wouldn't have been able to land. Everyone described me as a killer -- that's the way we were. Revolutions succeed only when rivers run red with blood, and blood has to be spilled if what you are aiming for is the perfectibility of the human race." Velouchiotes died in combat in June 1945 in Thessaly, a few days after he was thrown out of the KKE. The defeat of the EAM-ELAS unleashed a wave of hatred against the Communists and their allies. Groups of militants were assassinated by paramilitary groups, and many others were imprisoned. Most of the leaders were deported to the islands.
Nikos Zachariadis, the secretary general of the KKE, had returned in May 1945 from Germany, where he had been deported to Dachau. His first declarations clearly announced KKE policy: "Either the EAM struggle for national liberation is finally rewarded with the establishment of a people's democracy in Greece, or we return to a similar but even more severe regime than the last fascist monarchist dictatorship." Greece, exhausted by the war, seemed to have little chance of enjoying peace at last. In October the Seventh Party Congress ratified Zachariadis' proposal. The first stage was to obtain the departure of the British troops. In January 1946 the U.S.S.R. demonstrated its interest in Greece by claiming at a United Nations Security Council meeting that the British presence constituted a danger to the country. On 12 February 1946, when defeat for the Communists in the coming elections seemed inevitable -- they were calling on their voters to abstain -- the KKE organized an uprising, with the help of the Yugoslav Communists.
In December 1945 the members of the KKE Central Committee had met with various Bulgarian and Yugoslav officers. The Greek Communists were assured that they could use Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia as bases. Fore more than three years their troops did so, retreating with their wounded into these countries and using them to regroup and build up supplies and munitions. These preparations took place a few months after the creation of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), the Moscow-dominated grouping of world Communist parties. It seems that the Greek Communist uprising was perfectly coordinated with the Soviet Union's new policies. On 30 March 1946 the KKE declared that a third civil war was under way. The first attacks by the Democratic Army (AD), which had been established on 28 October 1946 and was led by General Markos Vafiadis, followed the usual pattern: police stations were attacked, their occupants killed, and leading local figures executed. The KKE openly continued such actions throughout 1946.
In the first months of 1947 general Vafiades intensified his campaign, attacking dozens of villages and executing hundreds of peasants. The ranks of the AD were swollen by enforced recruitment. Villages that refused to cooperate suffered severe reprisals. One village in Macedonia was hit particularly hard: forty-eight houses were burned down, and twelve men, six women, and two babies were killed. After March 1947 municipal leaders were systematically eliminated, as were priests. By March the number of refugees reached 400,000. The policy of terror was met with counterterror, and militant left-wing Communists were killed in turn by right-wing extremists.
In June 1947, after a tour of Belgrade, Prague, and Moscow, Zachariadis announced the imminent formation of a "free" government. The Greek Communists seemed to believe that they could follow the same path taken by Tito a few years earlier. The government was officially created in December. The Yugoslavs provided nearly 10,000 volunteers recruited from their own army. Numerous reports from the UN Special Commission on the Balkans have established the great importance of this assistance to the Democratic Army. The break between Tito and Stalin in 1948 had direct consequences for the Greek Communists. Although Tito continued his aid until the autumn, he also began a retreat that ended with closure of the border. In the summer of 1948, while the Greek government forces were engaged in a massive offensive, the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha also closed his country's border. The Greek Communists became increasingly isolated, and dissent within the Party grew. The fighting continued until August 1949. Many of the combatants fled to Bulgaria and thence to other parts of Eastern Europe, settling particularly in Romania and the U.S.S.R. Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, received thousands of refugees, including 7,500 Communists. After this defeat, the KKE in exile suffered a number of purges, and as late as 1955 the conflicts between the pro-and anti- Zachariadis factions [were] still extremely fierce, so much so that at one point the Soviet army was forced to intervene, resulting in hundreds of casualties.
During the civil war of 1946-1948, Greek Communists kept records on all the children aged three to fourteen in all the areas they controlled. In March 1948 these children were gathered together in the border regions, and several thousand were taken into Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. The villagers tried to protect their children by hiding them in the woods. The Red Cross, despite the enormous obstacles placed in [its] path, managed to count 28,296. In the summer of 1948, when the Tito-Cominform rupture became apparent, 11,600 of the children in Yugoslavia were moved to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland, despite many protests from the Greek government. On 17 November 1948, the Third UN General assembly passed a resolution roundly condemning the removal of the Greek children. In November 1949 the General Assembly again demanded their return. These and all subsequent UN resolutions remained unanswered. The neighboring Communist regimes claimed that the children were being kept under conditions superior to those they would be experiencing at home, and that the deportation had been an humanitarian act.
In reality the enforced deportation of the children was carried out in appalling conditions. Starvation and epidemics were extremely common, and many of the children simply died. Kept together in "children's villages," they were subjected to courses in politics in addition to their normal education. At age thirteen they were forced into manual labor, carrying out arduous tasks such as land reclamation in the marshy Hartchag region of Hungary. The intention of the Communist leaders was to form a new generation of devoted militants, but their efforts ended in failure. One Greek called Constantinides died on the Hungarian side fighting the Soviet Union in 1956. Others managed to flee to West Germany.
From 1950 to 1952 only 684 children were permitted to return to Greece. By 1963, around 4000 children (some of them born in Communist countries) had been repatriated. In Poland, the Greek community numbered several thousand in the early 1980s. Some of them were members of Solidarity, and were imprisoned after the introduction of martial law in December 1981. In 1989, when democratization was well under way, several thousand Greeks still living in Poland began to return home.
The warm welcome extended to the defeated Greek Communists in the U.S.S.R. contrasted strangely with Stalin's annihilation of the Greek community that had lived in Russia for centuries. In 1917 the number of Greeks in the Soviet state was between 500,000 and 700,000, concentrated for the most part around the Caucasus and the Black Sea. By 1939 the number had fallen to 410,000, mainly because of "unnatural" deaths, not emigration; and there were a mere 177,000 remaining by 1960. After December 1937 the 285,000 Greeks living in the major towns were deported to the regions of Arkhangelsk, the Komi republic, and northeastern Siberia. Others were allowed to return to Greece. During this period A. Haïtas, a former secretary of the KKE, and the educator J. Jordanis died in [Stalinist] purges. In 1944, 10,000 Greeks from the Crimea, the remnants of what had been a flourishing Greek community there, were deported to Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan, on the pretext that they had adopted a pro-German stance during the war. On 30 June 1949, in a single night, 30,000 Greeks from Georgia were deported to Kazakhstan. In April 1950 the entire Greek population of Batumi suffered a similar fate.
Source. The Black Book Of Communism. by Stéphane Courtois, Nicholas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin. trans. by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer. H.U.P., Cambridge, MA. 1999. pp. 326 - 331.
Greek proverb
That the book finally got published in the U.S. after much delay and difficulty is another story: A story that any reader of this website can easily understand since it is assumed that anyone reading TGR is aware of how "sensitive" the publishing and media cabal in America is to any criticism of the twin idiocies of Socialism and Communism. The reader will also not be astounded by the fact that, though this book made headlines in Europe, one would be hard-pressed to find even a back-page mention of it in American newspapers, literary journals, critical reviews, or on radio and television.
We hope to do an in-depth review of the book in the future. Until then, a few "dust-jacket" words -- intended to pique the reader's interest enough to entice him to read the book himself -- will have to suffice:
"This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the actual, practical accomplishments of Communism around the world: terror, torture, famine, mass deportations, and massacres. Astonishing in the sheer detail it amasses, the book is the first comprehensive attempt to catalogue and analyze the crimes of Communism over seventy years.
"The authors, all distinguished scholars based in Europe, document Communist crimes against humanity, but also crimes against national and universal culture, from Stalin's destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow, to Ceausescu's leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the wide-scale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Mao's Red Guards.
"As the death toll mounts -- as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on -- the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression. An extraordinary accounting, this book amply documents the unparalleled position and significance of Communism in the hierarchy of violence that is the history of the twentieth century."
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["Beat them, Red Fighters, clobber them to death, if it is the last thing you do! Right away! This minute! Now! ... Slaughter them, Red Army Fighters, Stamp harder on the rising lids of their rancid coffins!" Isaac Babel, described by Cynthia Ozick in her book From Kafka to Babel as, "An acutely conscious Jew," propagandizing for the Bolshevik Revolution, and also cited by K. MacDonald in his book The Culture of Critique ... (2002, xxxvii).
"We didn't kill enough people." Communist guerrilla leader, Ares Velouchiotes, when queried as to why his EAM-ELLAS forces had been defeated.]
When the [second world] war ended, the Greek Communists were in a situation roughly similar to that of the Yugoslavs. On 2 November 1940, a few days after the Italian invasion of Greece, Nikos Zachariadis, the secretary of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), who had been in prison since 1936, sent out a call to arms:
"The Greek nation is now engaged in a war for its national liberation from the fascism of Mussolini ... Everyone must take his place, and everyone must fight." But on 7 December a manifesto from the underground Central Committee called into question this decision, and the KKE returned to the official line recommended by the Comintern, that of revolutionary defeatism. On 22 June 1941 came the spectacular U-turn: the KKE ordered its militants to organize "the struggle to defend the Soviet Union and the overthrow of the foreign fascist yoke."
The experience with clandestine activity had been crucial for the Communists. On 16 July 1941, like their counterparts in other countries, the Greek Communists formed a National Workers' Front for Liberation (Ergatiko Ethniko Apelevtherotiko Metopo, EEAM), an umbrella organization for three unions. On 27 September they established the EAM (Ethniko Apelevtherotiko Metopo), the Party's political arm. On 10 February 1942 they announced the creation of the People's Army for National Liberation (Ellinikos Laikos Apelevtherotikos [Stratos]), or ELAS. By May 1942 the first ELAS partisans were operating under the leadership of Ares Velouchiotes (Thanassis Klaras), an experienced militant who had signed a recantation in exchange for his freedom. From this point on, ELAS numbers continued to grow.
The ELAS was not the only military resistance movement. The National Greek Democratic Union (Ethnikos Demokratikos Syndesmos), or EDES, had been created by soldiers and republican civilians in September 1941. Another group of resistance fighters was formed by a retired colonel, Napoleon Zervas. A third organization, the National Social Liberation Movement (Ethniki Kai Koinoniki Apelevtherosis), or EKKA, came into being in October 1942 under Colonel Dimitri Psarros. All these organizations were constantly trying to recruit from one another.
But the success and strength of the ELAS made the Communists hopeful of imposing their leadership on all the armed resistance groups. They attacked the EDES partisans several times, as well as the EKKA, who were forced to suspend operations to regroup. In late 1942 Major G. Kostopoulos (a renegade from the EAM) and Colonel Stefanos Sáráfis formed a resistance unit in the heart of a zone that had been captured by the EAM in western Thessaly, at the foot of the Pindus Mountains. The ELAS surrounded them and massacred all those who did not escape or refused to enroll in their ranks. Taken prisoner, Sáráfis finally agreed to assume leadership of the ELAS units.
The presence of British officers who had come to help the Greek resistance was a cause of concern to the ELAS chiefs, who feared that the British would attempt to reinstate the monarchy. But there was a difference in viewpoint between the military branch, directed by Ares Velouchiotes, and the KKE itself. The latter, led by Giorgis Siantos, wished to follow the official line as laid down by Moscow, advocating a general antifascist coalition. The actions of the British were momentarily beneficial because in July 1943 their military mission convinced the three main protagonists to sign a pact. At that time the ELAS had some 18,000 men, the EDES 5,000, and the EKKA about 1000.
The Italian surrender on 8 September 1943 immediately modified the situation. A fratricidal war began when the Germans launched a violent offensive against the EDES. The guerrillas, forced to retreat, confronted several large ELAS battalions, which threatened to annihilate the EDES. The KKE leadership decided to abandon the EDES, hoping thus to check British policy. After four days of fighting, the partisans led by Zervas escaped encirclement.
This civil war within the main war was of great advantage to the Germans as they swept down upon the resistance units one by one. The Allies thus took the initiative to end the civil war. Fighting between the ELAS and the EDES stopped in February 1944, and an agreement was signed in Plaka. The agreement was short-lived; a few weeks later the ELAS attacked Colonel Psarros' EKKA troops. He was defeated after five days and taken prisoner. His officers were massacred; Psarros himself was beheaded.
The Communists' actions demoralized the resistance and discredited the EAM. In several regions, hatred for the EAM was so strong that a number of resistance fighters joined the security battalions set up by the Germans. The civil war did not end until the ELAS agreed to collaborate with the Greek government-in-exile in Cairo. In September 1944 six members of the EAM-ELAS became members of the government of national unity presided over by Georges Papandreou. On 2 September, as the Germans began to evacuate Greece, the ELAS sent its troops to conquer the Peloponnese, which had always eluded its control thanks to the security battalions. All captured towns and villages were "punished." In Meligala, 1,400 men, women, and children were massacred along with some 50 officers and noncommissioned officers from the security battalions.
Nothing now seemed to stand in the way of EAM-ELAS hegemony. But when Athens was liberated on 12 October it escaped the guerrillas' control because of the presence of British troops in Piraeus. The KKE leadership hesitated to undertake a trial of strength, unsure of whether it wanted a place in a coalition government. When the ELAS refused a government demand to demobilize, Iannis Zegvos, the Communist agriculture minister, demanded that all government units be disbanded too. On 4 December, ELAS patrols entered Athens, where they clashed with government forces. By the following day, almost the entire capital had fallen under the control of the 20,000-strong ELAS forces; but the British stood firm, awaiting reinforcements. On 18 December the ELAS again attacked EDES in Epirus and at the same time launched a bloody antiroyalist operation.
The offensive was contained, and in talks held in Varkiza the Communists resigned themselves to a peace accord under which they agreed to disarm. The accord was something of a sham, however, since large numbers of weapons and munitions remained carefully hidden. Ares Velouchiotes, one of the principal warlords, rejected the Varkiza conditions, rejoined the partisans with about one hundred men, and then crossed into Albania in the hope of continuing the armed struggle from there. Later, asked about the reasons for the defeat of the EAM-ELAS, Velouchiotes replied frankly: "We didn't kill enough people. The English were taking a major interest in that crossroads called Greece. If we had killed all their friends, they wouldn't have been able to land. Everyone described me as a killer -- that's the way we were. Revolutions succeed only when rivers run red with blood, and blood has to be spilled if what you are aiming for is the perfectibility of the human race." Velouchiotes died in combat in June 1945 in Thessaly, a few days after he was thrown out of the KKE. The defeat of the EAM-ELAS unleashed a wave of hatred against the Communists and their allies. Groups of militants were assassinated by paramilitary groups, and many others were imprisoned. Most of the leaders were deported to the islands.
Nikos Zachariadis, the secretary general of the KKE, had returned in May 1945 from Germany, where he had been deported to Dachau. His first declarations clearly announced KKE policy: "Either the EAM struggle for national liberation is finally rewarded with the establishment of a people's democracy in Greece, or we return to a similar but even more severe regime than the last fascist monarchist dictatorship." Greece, exhausted by the war, seemed to have little chance of enjoying peace at last. In October the Seventh Party Congress ratified Zachariadis' proposal. The first stage was to obtain the departure of the British troops. In January 1946 the U.S.S.R. demonstrated its interest in Greece by claiming at a United Nations Security Council meeting that the British presence constituted a danger to the country. On 12 February 1946, when defeat for the Communists in the coming elections seemed inevitable -- they were calling on their voters to abstain -- the KKE organized an uprising, with the help of the Yugoslav Communists.
In December 1945 the members of the KKE Central Committee had met with various Bulgarian and Yugoslav officers. The Greek Communists were assured that they could use Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia as bases. Fore more than three years their troops did so, retreating with their wounded into these countries and using them to regroup and build up supplies and munitions. These preparations took place a few months after the creation of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), the Moscow-dominated grouping of world Communist parties. It seems that the Greek Communist uprising was perfectly coordinated with the Soviet Union's new policies. On 30 March 1946 the KKE declared that a third civil war was under way. The first attacks by the Democratic Army (AD), which had been established on 28 October 1946 and was led by General Markos Vafiadis, followed the usual pattern: police stations were attacked, their occupants killed, and leading local figures executed. The KKE openly continued such actions throughout 1946.
In the first months of 1947 general Vafiades intensified his campaign, attacking dozens of villages and executing hundreds of peasants. The ranks of the AD were swollen by enforced recruitment. Villages that refused to cooperate suffered severe reprisals. One village in Macedonia was hit particularly hard: forty-eight houses were burned down, and twelve men, six women, and two babies were killed. After March 1947 municipal leaders were systematically eliminated, as were priests. By March the number of refugees reached 400,000. The policy of terror was met with counterterror, and militant left-wing Communists were killed in turn by right-wing extremists.
In June 1947, after a tour of Belgrade, Prague, and Moscow, Zachariadis announced the imminent formation of a "free" government. The Greek Communists seemed to believe that they could follow the same path taken by Tito a few years earlier. The government was officially created in December. The Yugoslavs provided nearly 10,000 volunteers recruited from their own army. Numerous reports from the UN Special Commission on the Balkans have established the great importance of this assistance to the Democratic Army. The break between Tito and Stalin in 1948 had direct consequences for the Greek Communists. Although Tito continued his aid until the autumn, he also began a retreat that ended with closure of the border. In the summer of 1948, while the Greek government forces were engaged in a massive offensive, the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha also closed his country's border. The Greek Communists became increasingly isolated, and dissent within the Party grew. The fighting continued until August 1949. Many of the combatants fled to Bulgaria and thence to other parts of Eastern Europe, settling particularly in Romania and the U.S.S.R. Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, received thousands of refugees, including 7,500 Communists. After this defeat, the KKE in exile suffered a number of purges, and as late as 1955 the conflicts between the pro-and anti- Zachariadis factions [were] still extremely fierce, so much so that at one point the Soviet army was forced to intervene, resulting in hundreds of casualties.
During the civil war of 1946-1948, Greek Communists kept records on all the children aged three to fourteen in all the areas they controlled. In March 1948 these children were gathered together in the border regions, and several thousand were taken into Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. The villagers tried to protect their children by hiding them in the woods. The Red Cross, despite the enormous obstacles placed in [its] path, managed to count 28,296. In the summer of 1948, when the Tito-Cominform rupture became apparent, 11,600 of the children in Yugoslavia were moved to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland, despite many protests from the Greek government. On 17 November 1948, the Third UN General assembly passed a resolution roundly condemning the removal of the Greek children. In November 1949 the General Assembly again demanded their return. These and all subsequent UN resolutions remained unanswered. The neighboring Communist regimes claimed that the children were being kept under conditions superior to those they would be experiencing at home, and that the deportation had been an humanitarian act.
In reality the enforced deportation of the children was carried out in appalling conditions. Starvation and epidemics were extremely common, and many of the children simply died. Kept together in "children's villages," they were subjected to courses in politics in addition to their normal education. At age thirteen they were forced into manual labor, carrying out arduous tasks such as land reclamation in the marshy Hartchag region of Hungary. The intention of the Communist leaders was to form a new generation of devoted militants, but their efforts ended in failure. One Greek called Constantinides died on the Hungarian side fighting the Soviet Union in 1956. Others managed to flee to West Germany.
From 1950 to 1952 only 684 children were permitted to return to Greece. By 1963, around 4000 children (some of them born in Communist countries) had been repatriated. In Poland, the Greek community numbered several thousand in the early 1980s. Some of them were members of Solidarity, and were imprisoned after the introduction of martial law in December 1981. In 1989, when democratization was well under way, several thousand Greeks still living in Poland began to return home.
The warm welcome extended to the defeated Greek Communists in the U.S.S.R. contrasted strangely with Stalin's annihilation of the Greek community that had lived in Russia for centuries. In 1917 the number of Greeks in the Soviet state was between 500,000 and 700,000, concentrated for the most part around the Caucasus and the Black Sea. By 1939 the number had fallen to 410,000, mainly because of "unnatural" deaths, not emigration; and there were a mere 177,000 remaining by 1960. After December 1937 the 285,000 Greeks living in the major towns were deported to the regions of Arkhangelsk, the Komi republic, and northeastern Siberia. Others were allowed to return to Greece. During this period A. Haïtas, a former secretary of the KKE, and the educator J. Jordanis died in [Stalinist] purges. In 1944, 10,000 Greeks from the Crimea, the remnants of what had been a flourishing Greek community there, were deported to Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan, on the pretext that they had adopted a pro-German stance during the war. On 30 June 1949, in a single night, 30,000 Greeks from Georgia were deported to Kazakhstan. In April 1950 the entire Greek population of Batumi suffered a similar fate.
Source. The Black Book Of Communism. by Stéphane Courtois, Nicholas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin. trans. by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer. H.U.P., Cambridge, MA. 1999. pp. 326 - 331.
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Editorial comment
A man meets a fellow villager on the road and sees that one of his eyes has been put out. Curious, he asks: "Neighbor, what has happened to your eye?" The neighbor replies: "My brother put it out." At which point the first man says: "Ah, that explains why the wound is so deep."
Greek proverb
(Greco Report - 10/2002)
Athletics According to the Ancient Greeks
Athletics According to the Ancient Greeks
by Dr. Themis Goulionis
What must be said at the outset is that the ancient ideal of organized athletics -- that is, to compete honorably against honored opponents in a spirit of friendship and camaraderie -- has remained a goal to be attained ever since these events were first initiated by the Greeks around the 3rd millennium B.C. This ideal will remain the same so long as humanity continues to seek excellence and to strive for to kalon. The finest expression of this ideal was to be found in the Olympic Games (sic) of ancient Greece.
Nowadays, a lot is heard about the sad state of athletic competition. Even the modern-day Olympics -- considered sacred by the ancients -- have been tainted by over-commercialization, doping problems, and other scandals. All of these things, however, have nothing to do with the ideals the Greeks strove so hard to realize when they competed in the Olympics they gave to the world. Such violations were to be expected once the Olympics were internationalized (something that would not have met with the approval of the Greeks). Similar problems occurred when they were held outside of Greece for the first time in 88 B.C., at the behest of the Roman general Sulla (c.138-78 B.C.) in Rome. Sulla wanted to move the grandeur of Olympia to the Colosseum by bringing Greek athletes to Rome to be confronted by man-eating animals and blood-crazed gladiators. The result, of course, was disappointing to say the least, and this farcical but bloody event has been referred to ever since as the "Non-Olympiad," and was considered by the ancients as never to have happened. .
Nothing of this sort was tried again until the year 1900 A.D., when the Olympics were held outside of Greece for the first time in the modern era. The result again was as expected: totally unacceptable. From the very first day the Olympics were confused with the notion of "games": In fact, they were even given the inappropriate title of "Olympic Games." The unfortunate result of this unacceptable action was that all non-Greeks (and, sadly, too many Greeks) were left with the impression that an "athlete" [contestant] and a "player" [of games] were one and the same thing. Moreover, three totally foreign concepts -- represented by three foreign (Latin!!) words -- were added: citius, altius, fortius, which mean "higher," "faster," "stronger." As a result, the modern-day, frenzied quest for "championship" began: something that is officially (and piously) denied, but is frantically lusted after. This charge can quickly be verified by the universally (though indirectly) applied pressure on athletes for new "world records," in the pursuit of which androgens and other chemical substances are routinely used.
Such things were completely shunned in ancient Greece. In fact, to avoid what would have then been considered gross violations of the Olympic Spirit, each Olympiad would see javelins of differing lengths, discuses of different weights, and race tracks of varying distances! This meant that the competitors [agonistes] would not be thinking of besting the "record holder" of the event in which they were competing (and who might have even been dead by then), but would, instead, be seeking a victory over their opponents under conditions that were applicable at that time and for that event.
So we now witness the modern, tragi-comic fiasco of national authorities of sporting events making strong statements against the use of chemical substances, while at the same time creating an atmosphere where, in order to achieve the "world records" they crave so desperately, such substances are knowingly tolerated. This is the situation that exists in all of the nations of the world, and no one seems to be the least bit ashamed! On top of this all-too-disgraceful outrage, an International Olympic Committee was put in place in order to monitor and manage these things, but its headquarters are not even located in the country that gave birth to and nurtured the concept of organized athletics generally, and the Olympics in particular, in the first place.
Characteristic of the contempt in which the Hellenic-inspired athletic ideal of the Olympics is held, is the fact that in ancient Olympia the judges (Ellinodikes) of the agones [contests] were elected by lottery for a term of one year, and not one -- in the 1277 years of which we have knowledge -- was ever accused of a violation. Today, these self-anointed "protectors" of the Olympic Ideal have decided that they should serve for life, and, more than that, that they should be known as ... "The Immortals" [!!]. And as far as their respectability is concerned, let us not, at this time, go into the many scandals that have arisen around this "august body," without any one of them feeling the least bit of pressure to resign, nor can anyone from the outside do anything about it since they are "Immortals" and serve for life. These fools then, having no clue as to what Hellenism is all about, and being totally unaware of the sacred and awesome responsibility they hold in their hands, went so far, in their abysmal ignorance, of having the Colosseum of Rome inscribed on the medals that were given at the Australian Olympics! The idea that a medal, upon which is inscribed a monument dedicated to the spilling of innocent blood, would be the very worst thing that one could give to a winner at the Olympics, seems never to have occurred to these "immortal" nitwits, and heralds a return to the barbarity of general Sulla in 88 B.C.
In conclusion, the Olympias agones, to the ancient Greeks, was not an "ideal" in the sense of today's meaning of the word. It was the biggest (among many others) festival of athletics enjoyed by Greeks from all over the world, but still, it was only a festival. The "Ideal" was athleticism itself, not the festival, per se. This unique Hellenic creation was considered, during the zenith of its observance, equal to the ideals of Knowledge and Art, with which it formed the triumvirate that constituted the paideia of a properly educated individual: that is, gentlemanly competition, dignity, honesty, vigor, and perseverance. In short, to encourage that singular characteristic which exists in the souls of all young people, everywhere, virtue [areté]. Today, unfortunately, since we've separated Athletics from Paideia, we have instituted what, in the final analysis, must properly be referred to as "games." This is what we have done to our modern-day "Olympics." They are more properly seen as "bread and circus" spectacles, financial transactions, marketing tools, public relations events, or even as biotechnological challenges, but by no stretch of the imagination are they what the common ancestors of us all, the ancient Greeks, would approve of were they here to see them. By doing this, we wound once more the spirit of Hellenism, which is the inheritance bequeathed to all of us. The vital question being: Do we have sense enough to know the difference? And knowing the difference, are we wise enough to keep it?
Source Elliniki Agogi. Sept. '01. pp. 70-75.(Emphasis not in original was added. Translation by TGR staff is ©)
Editorial comment
Just a few among the many citations from ancient sources having to do with the Olympic Agónes, which, though it is by no means certain, are generally thought to have taken place at the first full moon after the summer solstice.
Tigranes [a Persian military officer] ..., when he heard that the prize was not money but a crown [of olive], could not hold his peace, but cried, "[Good god], Mardonius, what manner of men are these that you have brought us to fight withal? 'tis not for money they contend but for glory of achievement." Herodotus, Book VIII. 26
.
Greek athletes competed as individuals, not on national teams as they do nowadays. This struggle (agón) for excellence through competitive sports, was tied to the Greek ideal of manly virtue (areté). Those who achieved excellence, whether in athletics, public or military service, or in such fields as rhetoric, poesy, or philosophy, won permanent (not fleeting) glory. Their deeds were sung by the rhapsodists (such as Homer, Archilochus, Pindar, Hesiod, et al) down through the ages.
Do you think, fellow citizens, that any man would ever have been willing to train for the pancratium [no-holds-barred wrestling] or any other of the harder contests in the Olympic [agónes] ... if the crown were given, not to the best man, but to the man who had successfully intrigued for it? No man would ever have been willing. But as it is, because the reward is rare ... and because of the competition and the honor, and the undying fame that victory brings, men are willing to risk their bodies, and at the cost of the most severe discipline to carry the struggle [agón] to the end. Aeschines, Contra Ctesiphon,179
Naturally, being human beings, there were of course those who did not live up to the standards expected of them. One of these was "Sotades, [who] at the 99th Festival was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans."
Pausanias, Book VI. Ellis II. xviii. 6.
Athletes who did not live up to this code of excellence were fined. The money collected was used to make bronze statues of Zeus, and these statues were used to line the road leading to the stadium. The statues were used as warning notices for they were inscribed with the names of the offenders, and let contestants know what to expect should they be caught cheating. These statues were known as Zánes (figures of Zeus), and besides having warnings inscribed upon them, they also reminded the athletes "that an Olympic victory is to be won, not by money, but by swiftness of foot and strength of body." Pausanias. Book V. Ellis I. xxi.4.
Such were the standards of a people who were competing honorably in athletics, enjoying wonderful plays in their theaters, creating unparalleled architecture and science, and debating great ideas (which, for the most part, would be incomprehensible to the masses today) under democratic institutions that have yet to be rivaled. It is for this reason that there exists, and have always existed, malevolent culture-destroyers who despise these qualities, because they bespeak a breed of man who cannot be manipulated and controlled for their own self-serving purposes.
Only a return to the virtues of Hellenism will prevent humanity from falling into the dark abyss created by its absence.
(Greco Report - 01/2002)
May 30, 2009
MTV's Scatological Swinishness
MTV's Scatological Swinishness
The swinishness of the art and entertainment mavens who are the purveyors of what passes for "culture" these days was much in evidence in California on 21 January 2001during the taping of a pilot for a new MTV program called Dude, This Sucks. The studio was filled with mostly White, teenaged girls who had come to watch the show. What they got instead was a deluge of excrement sprayed on them by a pair of "Shower Rangers." Yes, dear reader, these trendy little air-headed girls -- whose parents are obviously too demoralized, intimidated, or brain-dead to keep their kids from going to a "show" with such a title and in such a place -- had their bodies sprayed with the same kind of material that MTV pollutes the minds of children with every day. But first a little scatological background information.
It seems that there are quite a number of rather influential Americans who feel warm and cozy about fecal matter. Take the case of Allen Ginsberg; a man obsessed with his anus. In his later years, he loved to talk about all of the uses he had put it to during his miserable lifetime. He also bragged proudly about the many "young boys" he had slept with, and of the numberless soldiers, sailors, and motorcycle enthusiasts who had penetrated his rear end through the years. In fact he even wrote "poetry" about how great it felt having some dude's hot sperm shooting into his mouth or his anus. Ginsberg also had a thing about vomit and his mother. In his "poetry" he tells us about his mom's bowel movements. We get to read about how she vomits all over the bathroom floor while naked, and how, after stretching her old, fat and wrinkled body out on a bed, he wonders whether she wants him to have sex with her. In other words, Ginsberg is to literature what the stuff that sticks to your shoes when you walk through a dog kennel is to your brand new wall to wall carpeting. So naturally, in brainwashed and 'sensitized' America, this debauched degenerate's "poetry" is taught in all of the schools, his "poems" are to be found in all of America's libraries, and there is even a university which houses the "Ginsberg papers." God protect post-1960's America!
Speaking of "debauched degenerates," how about Freud? Think about all of the ink he used up writing about excrement and how ones turds could be shaped into penises by the poor, innocent, little children whose naïve parents were bamboozled into bringing them to this quintessential charlatan and professional culture-destroyer for "treatment." "You see," he undoubtedly told them, assuming an air of unassailable authority, "little Rudolph is playing with his ka-ka because he wants to mold it into a penis so he can have sex with his mommy." And the dummies actually listened to this crap, and paid the exorbitant fees this unethical mind-manipulator charged. It was Freud who wrote: "Defecation affords the first occasion on which the child must decide between a narcissistic and an object-loving attitude. He either parts obediently with his feces, sacrificing them to his love, or else he retains them for the purposes of auto-erotic satisfaction." Did you get that, dear reader? Perhaps you would like to read it again, just to make sure you weren't hallucinating. This was also the man who wrote dozens of letters to his colleague and fellow professional-huckster, Dr. Robert Fliess, insisting that "the size of a woman's vagina is directly related to the size of her nose," and that "[it] is well-known that gastric pains occur especially often in those who masturbate."
Such reprehensible creatures can only gain prominence in societies where Helleno-Christian values and norms have been marginalized or are not taught at all, thereby producing the kind of self-destructive "tolerance to (deviant) diversity" we see all around us today.
Continuing now with our excremental cavalcade, we come to Dr. John Rosen. This exemplar of psychoanalytical quackery also had a frenzied fecal fixation. Naturally, in "tolerant" America, this walking abomination went unchallenged for many years by his equally quackish colleagues in that tightly-knit and incestuous profession of calamity howlers. Not that Dr. Rosen was exceptional, mind you. According to former psychoanalyst, Dr. J .M. Masson (who left the "profession" in disgust, and is now living normally), who wrote: "I am convinced that Rosen was no exception, no aberration. This is therapy." And just what kind of "unexceptional" activity did Dr. Rosen engage in with his dimwitted female patients, stupid and gullible enough to seek treatment through this form of medical mendacity? Why, he would make them suck and lick his anus as part of their "treatment," that's what. And what would our good Dr. Rosen (a rabid disciple of Freud's, by the way) be telling his female patients as they were sucking away? Why he would instruct them to orally "take in as much of his feces as [they] could," and that "this is what it's all about, this is when a baby is at peace, when it is sucking." Remember now, according to Dr. Masson -- who was involved in the "profession" for many years -- this behavior is "no aberration." In other words, this is therapy in America, where there are millions of dumbed-down mooches for such creatures to prey upon. And what did his perturbed and puerile peers in the profession of pestilential puling have to say about Dr. Rosen? Here's a typical evaluation of this man's work by one of his colleagues, a Dr. Paul Federn, who wrote: "Rosen's findings are also another proof of the truth of Freud's tenets. ... I pay my tribute to Dr. Rosen that, as a psychiatrist, he has incorporated Freud's work into his own mind..."
There are, of course, members of the art of malevolent mental-manipulation whose consciences force them to spill the beans once in a while. One of these is the aforementioned Dr. Masson. Another is Dr. H. J. Eysenck, who, after many long years in the "profession," wrote: "There appears to be an inverse correlation between recovery and psychotherapy; the more psychotherapy, the smaller the recovery rate."
Have you figured out yet, dear reader, just what it is that all of these individuals have in common? Yes, that's right, they are all connoisseurs of crap! Just like the head honchos of the TV programming your children are addicted to. One question before we continue with our foray into the minds of professional feces-fetishists and corporate coprophiliacs. If some stranger were to knock on your door and ask you if it were okay for him to come into your home and talk to your children for 3 to 6 hours a day, would you let him? Of course not! Yet this is exactly what happens in most American homes where the tube is turned on and watched by children for about that number of hours daily. Don't you think it is necessary that you know just what kind of depraved and satanic perverts and sodomites are behind the programming your children are watching? Don't you realize that your children's minds are being inundated with a bombardment of music and imagery that is nothing more than a culture-destroying excremental effluence emanating from the tube, just the way the bodies of those girls in California were inundated with real excrement? But more about that incident later.
We recall an article pertinent to our subject which was published a couple of years ago in the British journal, New Statesman & Society, and will try to relate as much of it as we can by memory. Now Britain and the U.S. are actually "sliding toward Gomorrah" at about the same rate of speed, so what follows could have happened -- and, in fact, is happening -- in America as well. The two protagonists in the story go by the names of Gilbert and George, though we've been told that their real names are Sydney and Jacob, and that they come from New York City. The article is actually a bit of "art" criticism about an exhibition held at the well-known South London Gallery, and is titled "Fecal Fulminations." The sub-title is "Gilbert and George's Naked Excrement Pictured as Art." (The reader is kindly requested to mentally substitute the appropriate word starting with "s" wherever the term "excrement" appears. We decided not to reproduce the actual language used in the article.)
The text went something like this: "This exhibition of naked excrement is a collection of huge photos of Gilbert and George's excrement molded and sculptured into varying patterns and subjects. The neo-Victorian building that housed the exhibit could have been the chapel of a Gothic church, with its stained glass windows and vaulted arches. In the case of this exhibit, however, the walls were not hung with medieval tapestries, but with with floor to ceiling pictures of the artists' [!] excrement. Flying excrement, cruciform excrement, penile excrement [remember Freud?], and huge photos of Gilbert and George, bent over, gripping their ankles, and exposing their naked anuses to the viewers."
There are even Biblical references in the catalog for this "art" exhibit. We are told by Gilbert and George that we are "no more than dust or excrement, and came into this world naked." The article goes on to say: "In this work, Gilbert holds George like the body of Christ brought down from the cross in an excremental pietá. Elsewhere, the artists [!] gather at the foot of the cross, like the lamenters in a painting by El Greco, only this time the cross is made of their own excrement."
One of the "cultural" granddaddies of these two turds (who are, however, able to get their filth exhibited in a prestigious art gallery) is, of course, none other than good old Sigmund Freud. Among the innumerable scatological references in his work we find the following: "The anal phase is arrested and pre-genital. The excrement is synonymous with the penis, a means of procreation. Defecation becomes the child's most valuable gift, to be given or withheld."
Compare that, dear reader, to an Homeric Hymn; to a Theogony by Hesiod; to an Ode by Pindar; to one of Plato's dialogues; to a play by Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides; to a poem by Archilochus, Simonides, or Sappho; to one of Aristotle's lectures; to the intellectual genius of Hypatia; to the philosophy and science of an Archimedes, Eratosthenes, or Aristarchus; to the civilizing greatness of an Alexander; to the celestial beauty of an Orthodox liturgy; to the magical wonder of a Byzantine chant; to anything said or written by Samuel Johnson; to a novel by Feodor Dostoevsky; or to an aria by Puccini. Until the day comes when the world's young are more familiar with such names and expressions of true art as these -- rather than to the kind of fecal-smelling scum we've been talking about -- Western Civilization will continue its diabolical slide into swinishness.
And of course, we mustn't forget the record industry. We learned recently that a Harvey Weinstock is the president of the music [!] company that released this gem by a Black rapper group called 2 Live Crew:
Suck my dick ... and make it puke
Lick my ass up and down
Lick it till your tongue turn doo-doo brown.
We are told that these "lyrics" (it actually hurts to use this beautiful Greek word in association with this puke) are rather tame compared to some of the even smuttier stuff that America's kids are listening to. Not to be outdone in the general slide toward swinishness, and thanks to our neo-Hellene "grekili" and the political prostitutes who've been ordained to rule us, this audio-gonorrhea is now infecting the minds, hearts, and psyches of our precious Greek children as well. Ach, if only a world could be created where the ruthlessly criminal purveyors of this poison could be legally tried, found guilty, and condemned to suffer the punishment they deserve. We wonder just how many millions of ordinary people -- people whose children's lives have been destroyed by drugs, alcohol, homosexuality, AIDS, and all of the other pathologies these perverted vermin are knowingly encouraging -- would eagerly volunteer to serve as jurists at such trials.
Speaking of "purveyors of poison," we must not exclude the likes of media boss, Michael Eisner, who took the venerable Disney Corporation of the late Walt Disney and turned it into a cultural sewer. Remember the films Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Fantasia, and the Disney Hour on television? All of that disappeared after Eisner and his crew took over the company. Nowadays, through such Disney-owned corporations as The Walt Disney Picture Group, headed by Joe Roth, and Miramax Films, run by the Weinstein brothers, we get such raunchy and swinish productions as The Crying Game, Kids, and Priest. We dare any decent and normal reader of these words to view these septic-tank obscenities and not be deeply offended, insulted, and enraged. Yet, these movies continue to be produced and patronized.
Then, of course, we have such pillars of social responsibility as Gerald Levin, the boss of Time Warner, HBO, and Warner Music. Levin's holdings include feature film production companies such as Warner Brothers, Castle Rock, and New Line Cinema. He also lays claim to being the largest magazine publisher in America under Time Warner's publishing division, headed by his editor-in-chief, Norman Pearlstine. The temptation is almost irresistible to continue this catalog of media-manipulators and culture-annihilators; to talk, for instance, about such media bosses as Sam Newhouse or Edgar Bronfman, Jr., and the enormous power they've accumulated: power they are using to bring America to her knees. But their sordid and satanic stories must be held in abeyance for another time. We must get back to the subject of this article, which is about how much such people seem to be obsessed with excrement!
Which brings us to MTV's head honcho, Sumner Redstone (born Murray Rothstein). The size of this media maven's holdings is enormous, and includes such giant corporations as Viacom and Paramount Pictures. But the most important battering ram with which he is attempting to break down the walls of the West's Helleno-Christian heritage is MTV. This is the cultural criminal who gave America's children such role model productions as Beavis and Butthead, and is currently the biggest purveyor of race-mixing trash to White teenagers and sub-teens in America and most of Europe. MTV intrusively batters down the doors of over 210 million homes in over 70 countries, and is the most dominant cultural influence on White teenagers on the planet. (What in God's name does this say about these idiot Americans who've allowed this man -- a high-ranking member of a cabal of nihilists who obviously despise everything White, everything Christian, and everything decent -- to acquire such power? Can one be blamed for holding such bleating sheep in contempt? Do they deserve the unique and wonderful nation they were given by their Founding Fathers?)
It was to Redstone's MTV studios that a group of White teenaged girls came on the 21st of January 2001 to watch the taping of a pilot for a new MTV program titled Dude, This Sucks. A studio lackey told them to stand at a certain place on the stage where two performers, called the "Shower Rangers," were to do their act. The girls were never told just what kind of a performance it would be or why they were to stand at that particular part of the stage. The "Shower Rangers" soon came out wearing Boy Scout uniforms. They then turned their backs to the camera and to the teenaged girls, dropped their pants, bent over, and let loose with a shower of semi-liquid feces which spattered the unsuspecting girls from head to foot. They had, it seemed, dosed themselves with a laxative before the "performance."
To the kind of feces-obsessed slime we've been talking about, this kind of thing is obviously extremely funny. As for Sumner Redstone, we've been told he is a "control freak," and has his finger on practically everything that goes on, so he must have known what was in store for these young girls. But even if he didn't, such an event could only take place in an environment where the lower-echelon flunkies knew that it was in accord with the thinking and spirit of the higher-ups. Let's try to guess just how their sick and twisted minds must have considered this whole situation: 1) These are mostly young, blonde Shikses (naïve Gentile girls), and as such beneath contempt, so let's crap all over them. 2) The "Shower Rangers" dressed as Boy Scouts tells us what Redstone and company think of that organization, which has a mostly White and Christian membership. 3) Think about the title of the pilot, Dude, This Sucks. This is the language of street Blacks; the language Redstone and company want our White, Christian teenagers to become familiar and comfortable with. Just look at the way so many White kids dress nowadays, with the turned-back caps, baggy pants, oversized sneakers, tattoos, dreadlocks, and earrings, and you can see how successful these people have been in their efforts to undermine and destroy America by corrupting her young.
As it turns out, two of the girls who were sprayed and crapped upon were not amused, and neither were their parents. In early April of 2001, they filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court charging MTV with "infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and battery." Somehow, though, this doesn't seem enough for what the culture destroyers like Redstone are doing every day to undermine and degrade White, Helleno-Christian civilization. The American courts, having come under the pernicious influence of such cosseted mediocrities as Allan Dershowitz and Johnny Cochran, have degenerated into the willing or unwilling enforcers of politically correct fascism, and no longer seem able to serve the interests of the vast majority of White Americans. Only large, peaceful, non-violent, mass demonstrations by Americans who've "had enough" may be able to stem or even reverse this diabolical slide into swinishness that the Redstones, the Gilbert & George's, the Rosen's, the Freuds, the Ginsberg's, and their kind, have foisted upon America and, through America, the world.
In a related piece titled "World Bank Funds MTV Depravity" in The New American (13 Jan.'03. p.7.), we read the following: "Going to MTV for help on preaching responsible sexual attitudes to young people is akin to going to Louis Farrakhan or the Aryan Nations for help on promoting tolerance and racial harmony. Yet that is what the World Bank has done once again. On December 1st, MTV aired "Staying Alive 4," the fourth in its World AIDS Day documentaries that began in 1998. 'Staying Alive will inform young people about the virus, promote safe lifestyle choices, provide information about local organizations and mobilize youth to overcome the stigma and discrimination surrounding HIV/AIDS and to fight for an end to the spread of HIV/AIDS,' proclaims an MTV promotional.
"Instead, in keeping with the MTV gospel of promiscuity and hypocrisy, the program promotes 'responsible' fornication and sodomy. Arguably, MTV and its imitator channels already share some of the blame for the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, by incessantly bombarding their youthful audiences with sexually charged and pornographic images and messages. Nevertheless, the World Bank is lavishing your tax dollars on this project. Other tax-supported sponsors of MTV's 'Staying Alive' are USAID and UNAIDS.
"MTV, [the] broadcast king of the rude, crude, nude, and lewd, plumbed new depths of degeneracy recently with the release in October 2002 of Jackass, a movie giving new meaning to the term 'top grossing film.' 'The R-rated hit, starring Johnny Knoxville, is reportedly causing audiences to be sick in their stomachs.' A Scripps Howard News Service report on Jackass stated on November 1st:
'In the movie, based on the MTV series, a man uses a toilet [to defecate] in the middle of the hardware store.'
'There are other [such] incidents [and] such reactions were not unexpected. During early screenings, a few preview audience members got sick,' said Knoxville. 'At the premiere screening of the film in Hollywood, [vomit] bags were attached to the back of every seat in anticipation. In his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., there were three confirmed reports of vomiting during a showing a week ago.' The MTV 'star' was pleased. 'We had people puke in the previews, and it's good to see that it is carrying over to the general audience,' Johnny Knoxville reportedly said. According to news reports, Knoxville 'considers the reactions to Jackass to be a compliment.' " (Emphasis added.)
Editor's Note
Have you noticed, dear reader, the common thread that is introduced whenever these creatures are pitching their poison to the boobs, even in those areas of human endeavor considered inviolate and sacred? Once this kind of scum gets involved, have you noticed what kind of a stench from what kind of putrid material seems always to assail your nostrils? Did you get that? Whenever they acquire power, prestige, or influence, their minds automatically go to sh.t! When they program "entertainment" for our children, sh.t is automatically on the agenda. Sh.t and us; us and Sh.t! Has it penetrated, finally, just what these people think of you, your spouse, your kids, your parents, your world, your civilization, your religion...??? SH.T!!! that's what!!!.
An horrendous development
With a fanfare one would expect only for the Second Coming, the "Grekili" channel, Tempo TV, in the spring of 2002, began announcing that it would be offering MTV programming in Greece starting in mid-summer. The harm this will do to the traditionally tightly-knit Greek family can easily be imagined. We can now look for an increase in drug use, race mixing, homosexuality, AIDS, divorce, pre-teen, teen, and post-teen promiscuity, child molestation, alcohol abuse, sub-culture dress codes, and lots of gyrating genital organs and naked rumps of all colors and sizes to invade the sanctity of the Greek home.
IT IS BEYOND THE COMPREHENSION OF THE STAFF OF THIS WEBSITE AS TO WHY THE PURVEYORS OF THIS TOXIC VISUAL EXCREMENT ARE NOT MADE TO PAY FOR THE SUFFERING AND DEATHS OF THE INNOCENT CHILDREN THEY CORRUPT BY THIS HATEFUL, OBSCENE, AND DESTRUCTIVE PROGRAMMING.
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien/ As to be hated needs but to be seen.
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face/We first endure, then pity, then embrace."
Alexander Pope.
"At 4:30 p.m. on 30 March 2002, Israeli military forces took over Palestinian TV stations when they occupied Ramallah in the West Bank, immediately shutting them down. What followed was a little more unusual. Shortly after occupying the Al-Watan TV station, the Israeli forces began broadcasting pornography over its transmitter. Eventually, according to a report from The Advertiser, an Australian newspaper, the Israelis expanded their cultural offensive against the Palestinian people by broadcasting pornography over two other Palestinian stations, the Ammwaj and Al-Sharaq channels. ...
"[The Israelis] knew that a blind opponent is no opponent at all, and because they knew -- as the ancient Greeks knew -- that lust makes a man blind ... Israel's use of pornography in their battle against the Palestinians isn't so inexplicable."
E. Michel Jones (Editor, Culture Wars magazine)
The swinishness of the art and entertainment mavens who are the purveyors of what passes for "culture" these days was much in evidence in California on 21 January 2001during the taping of a pilot for a new MTV program called Dude, This Sucks. The studio was filled with mostly White, teenaged girls who had come to watch the show. What they got instead was a deluge of excrement sprayed on them by a pair of "Shower Rangers." Yes, dear reader, these trendy little air-headed girls -- whose parents are obviously too demoralized, intimidated, or brain-dead to keep their kids from going to a "show" with such a title and in such a place -- had their bodies sprayed with the same kind of material that MTV pollutes the minds of children with every day. But first a little scatological background information.
It seems that there are quite a number of rather influential Americans who feel warm and cozy about fecal matter. Take the case of Allen Ginsberg; a man obsessed with his anus. In his later years, he loved to talk about all of the uses he had put it to during his miserable lifetime. He also bragged proudly about the many "young boys" he had slept with, and of the numberless soldiers, sailors, and motorcycle enthusiasts who had penetrated his rear end through the years. In fact he even wrote "poetry" about how great it felt having some dude's hot sperm shooting into his mouth or his anus. Ginsberg also had a thing about vomit and his mother. In his "poetry" he tells us about his mom's bowel movements. We get to read about how she vomits all over the bathroom floor while naked, and how, after stretching her old, fat and wrinkled body out on a bed, he wonders whether she wants him to have sex with her. In other words, Ginsberg is to literature what the stuff that sticks to your shoes when you walk through a dog kennel is to your brand new wall to wall carpeting. So naturally, in brainwashed and 'sensitized' America, this debauched degenerate's "poetry" is taught in all of the schools, his "poems" are to be found in all of America's libraries, and there is even a university which houses the "Ginsberg papers." God protect post-1960's America!
Speaking of "debauched degenerates," how about Freud? Think about all of the ink he used up writing about excrement and how ones turds could be shaped into penises by the poor, innocent, little children whose naïve parents were bamboozled into bringing them to this quintessential charlatan and professional culture-destroyer for "treatment." "You see," he undoubtedly told them, assuming an air of unassailable authority, "little Rudolph is playing with his ka-ka because he wants to mold it into a penis so he can have sex with his mommy." And the dummies actually listened to this crap, and paid the exorbitant fees this unethical mind-manipulator charged. It was Freud who wrote: "Defecation affords the first occasion on which the child must decide between a narcissistic and an object-loving attitude. He either parts obediently with his feces, sacrificing them to his love, or else he retains them for the purposes of auto-erotic satisfaction." Did you get that, dear reader? Perhaps you would like to read it again, just to make sure you weren't hallucinating. This was also the man who wrote dozens of letters to his colleague and fellow professional-huckster, Dr. Robert Fliess, insisting that "the size of a woman's vagina is directly related to the size of her nose," and that "[it] is well-known that gastric pains occur especially often in those who masturbate."
Such reprehensible creatures can only gain prominence in societies where Helleno-Christian values and norms have been marginalized or are not taught at all, thereby producing the kind of self-destructive "tolerance to (deviant) diversity" we see all around us today.
Continuing now with our excremental cavalcade, we come to Dr. John Rosen. This exemplar of psychoanalytical quackery also had a frenzied fecal fixation. Naturally, in "tolerant" America, this walking abomination went unchallenged for many years by his equally quackish colleagues in that tightly-knit and incestuous profession of calamity howlers. Not that Dr. Rosen was exceptional, mind you. According to former psychoanalyst, Dr. J .M. Masson (who left the "profession" in disgust, and is now living normally), who wrote: "I am convinced that Rosen was no exception, no aberration. This is therapy." And just what kind of "unexceptional" activity did Dr. Rosen engage in with his dimwitted female patients, stupid and gullible enough to seek treatment through this form of medical mendacity? Why, he would make them suck and lick his anus as part of their "treatment," that's what. And what would our good Dr. Rosen (a rabid disciple of Freud's, by the way) be telling his female patients as they were sucking away? Why he would instruct them to orally "take in as much of his feces as [they] could," and that "this is what it's all about, this is when a baby is at peace, when it is sucking." Remember now, according to Dr. Masson -- who was involved in the "profession" for many years -- this behavior is "no aberration." In other words, this is therapy in America, where there are millions of dumbed-down mooches for such creatures to prey upon. And what did his perturbed and puerile peers in the profession of pestilential puling have to say about Dr. Rosen? Here's a typical evaluation of this man's work by one of his colleagues, a Dr. Paul Federn, who wrote: "Rosen's findings are also another proof of the truth of Freud's tenets. ... I pay my tribute to Dr. Rosen that, as a psychiatrist, he has incorporated Freud's work into his own mind..."
There are, of course, members of the art of malevolent mental-manipulation whose consciences force them to spill the beans once in a while. One of these is the aforementioned Dr. Masson. Another is Dr. H. J. Eysenck, who, after many long years in the "profession," wrote: "There appears to be an inverse correlation between recovery and psychotherapy; the more psychotherapy, the smaller the recovery rate."
Have you figured out yet, dear reader, just what it is that all of these individuals have in common? Yes, that's right, they are all connoisseurs of crap! Just like the head honchos of the TV programming your children are addicted to. One question before we continue with our foray into the minds of professional feces-fetishists and corporate coprophiliacs. If some stranger were to knock on your door and ask you if it were okay for him to come into your home and talk to your children for 3 to 6 hours a day, would you let him? Of course not! Yet this is exactly what happens in most American homes where the tube is turned on and watched by children for about that number of hours daily. Don't you think it is necessary that you know just what kind of depraved and satanic perverts and sodomites are behind the programming your children are watching? Don't you realize that your children's minds are being inundated with a bombardment of music and imagery that is nothing more than a culture-destroying excremental effluence emanating from the tube, just the way the bodies of those girls in California were inundated with real excrement? But more about that incident later.
We recall an article pertinent to our subject which was published a couple of years ago in the British journal, New Statesman & Society, and will try to relate as much of it as we can by memory. Now Britain and the U.S. are actually "sliding toward Gomorrah" at about the same rate of speed, so what follows could have happened -- and, in fact, is happening -- in America as well. The two protagonists in the story go by the names of Gilbert and George, though we've been told that their real names are Sydney and Jacob, and that they come from New York City. The article is actually a bit of "art" criticism about an exhibition held at the well-known South London Gallery, and is titled "Fecal Fulminations." The sub-title is "Gilbert and George's Naked Excrement Pictured as Art." (The reader is kindly requested to mentally substitute the appropriate word starting with "s" wherever the term "excrement" appears. We decided not to reproduce the actual language used in the article.)
The text went something like this: "This exhibition of naked excrement is a collection of huge photos of Gilbert and George's excrement molded and sculptured into varying patterns and subjects. The neo-Victorian building that housed the exhibit could have been the chapel of a Gothic church, with its stained glass windows and vaulted arches. In the case of this exhibit, however, the walls were not hung with medieval tapestries, but with with floor to ceiling pictures of the artists' [!] excrement. Flying excrement, cruciform excrement, penile excrement [remember Freud?], and huge photos of Gilbert and George, bent over, gripping their ankles, and exposing their naked anuses to the viewers."
There are even Biblical references in the catalog for this "art" exhibit. We are told by Gilbert and George that we are "no more than dust or excrement, and came into this world naked." The article goes on to say: "In this work, Gilbert holds George like the body of Christ brought down from the cross in an excremental pietá. Elsewhere, the artists [!] gather at the foot of the cross, like the lamenters in a painting by El Greco, only this time the cross is made of their own excrement."
One of the "cultural" granddaddies of these two turds (who are, however, able to get their filth exhibited in a prestigious art gallery) is, of course, none other than good old Sigmund Freud. Among the innumerable scatological references in his work we find the following: "The anal phase is arrested and pre-genital. The excrement is synonymous with the penis, a means of procreation. Defecation becomes the child's most valuable gift, to be given or withheld."
Compare that, dear reader, to an Homeric Hymn; to a Theogony by Hesiod; to an Ode by Pindar; to one of Plato's dialogues; to a play by Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides; to a poem by Archilochus, Simonides, or Sappho; to one of Aristotle's lectures; to the intellectual genius of Hypatia; to the philosophy and science of an Archimedes, Eratosthenes, or Aristarchus; to the civilizing greatness of an Alexander; to the celestial beauty of an Orthodox liturgy; to the magical wonder of a Byzantine chant; to anything said or written by Samuel Johnson; to a novel by Feodor Dostoevsky; or to an aria by Puccini. Until the day comes when the world's young are more familiar with such names and expressions of true art as these -- rather than to the kind of fecal-smelling scum we've been talking about -- Western Civilization will continue its diabolical slide into swinishness.
And of course, we mustn't forget the record industry. We learned recently that a Harvey Weinstock is the president of the music [!] company that released this gem by a Black rapper group called 2 Live Crew:
Suck my dick ... and make it puke
Lick my ass up and down
Lick it till your tongue turn doo-doo brown.
We are told that these "lyrics" (it actually hurts to use this beautiful Greek word in association with this puke) are rather tame compared to some of the even smuttier stuff that America's kids are listening to. Not to be outdone in the general slide toward swinishness, and thanks to our neo-Hellene "grekili" and the political prostitutes who've been ordained to rule us, this audio-gonorrhea is now infecting the minds, hearts, and psyches of our precious Greek children as well. Ach, if only a world could be created where the ruthlessly criminal purveyors of this poison could be legally tried, found guilty, and condemned to suffer the punishment they deserve. We wonder just how many millions of ordinary people -- people whose children's lives have been destroyed by drugs, alcohol, homosexuality, AIDS, and all of the other pathologies these perverted vermin are knowingly encouraging -- would eagerly volunteer to serve as jurists at such trials.
Speaking of "purveyors of poison," we must not exclude the likes of media boss, Michael Eisner, who took the venerable Disney Corporation of the late Walt Disney and turned it into a cultural sewer. Remember the films Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Fantasia, and the Disney Hour on television? All of that disappeared after Eisner and his crew took over the company. Nowadays, through such Disney-owned corporations as The Walt Disney Picture Group, headed by Joe Roth, and Miramax Films, run by the Weinstein brothers, we get such raunchy and swinish productions as The Crying Game, Kids, and Priest. We dare any decent and normal reader of these words to view these septic-tank obscenities and not be deeply offended, insulted, and enraged. Yet, these movies continue to be produced and patronized.
Then, of course, we have such pillars of social responsibility as Gerald Levin, the boss of Time Warner, HBO, and Warner Music. Levin's holdings include feature film production companies such as Warner Brothers, Castle Rock, and New Line Cinema. He also lays claim to being the largest magazine publisher in America under Time Warner's publishing division, headed by his editor-in-chief, Norman Pearlstine. The temptation is almost irresistible to continue this catalog of media-manipulators and culture-annihilators; to talk, for instance, about such media bosses as Sam Newhouse or Edgar Bronfman, Jr., and the enormous power they've accumulated: power they are using to bring America to her knees. But their sordid and satanic stories must be held in abeyance for another time. We must get back to the subject of this article, which is about how much such people seem to be obsessed with excrement!
Which brings us to MTV's head honcho, Sumner Redstone (born Murray Rothstein). The size of this media maven's holdings is enormous, and includes such giant corporations as Viacom and Paramount Pictures. But the most important battering ram with which he is attempting to break down the walls of the West's Helleno-Christian heritage is MTV. This is the cultural criminal who gave America's children such role model productions as Beavis and Butthead, and is currently the biggest purveyor of race-mixing trash to White teenagers and sub-teens in America and most of Europe. MTV intrusively batters down the doors of over 210 million homes in over 70 countries, and is the most dominant cultural influence on White teenagers on the planet. (What in God's name does this say about these idiot Americans who've allowed this man -- a high-ranking member of a cabal of nihilists who obviously despise everything White, everything Christian, and everything decent -- to acquire such power? Can one be blamed for holding such bleating sheep in contempt? Do they deserve the unique and wonderful nation they were given by their Founding Fathers?)
It was to Redstone's MTV studios that a group of White teenaged girls came on the 21st of January 2001 to watch the taping of a pilot for a new MTV program titled Dude, This Sucks. A studio lackey told them to stand at a certain place on the stage where two performers, called the "Shower Rangers," were to do their act. The girls were never told just what kind of a performance it would be or why they were to stand at that particular part of the stage. The "Shower Rangers" soon came out wearing Boy Scout uniforms. They then turned their backs to the camera and to the teenaged girls, dropped their pants, bent over, and let loose with a shower of semi-liquid feces which spattered the unsuspecting girls from head to foot. They had, it seemed, dosed themselves with a laxative before the "performance."
To the kind of feces-obsessed slime we've been talking about, this kind of thing is obviously extremely funny. As for Sumner Redstone, we've been told he is a "control freak," and has his finger on practically everything that goes on, so he must have known what was in store for these young girls. But even if he didn't, such an event could only take place in an environment where the lower-echelon flunkies knew that it was in accord with the thinking and spirit of the higher-ups. Let's try to guess just how their sick and twisted minds must have considered this whole situation: 1) These are mostly young, blonde Shikses (naïve Gentile girls), and as such beneath contempt, so let's crap all over them. 2) The "Shower Rangers" dressed as Boy Scouts tells us what Redstone and company think of that organization, which has a mostly White and Christian membership. 3) Think about the title of the pilot, Dude, This Sucks. This is the language of street Blacks; the language Redstone and company want our White, Christian teenagers to become familiar and comfortable with. Just look at the way so many White kids dress nowadays, with the turned-back caps, baggy pants, oversized sneakers, tattoos, dreadlocks, and earrings, and you can see how successful these people have been in their efforts to undermine and destroy America by corrupting her young.
As it turns out, two of the girls who were sprayed and crapped upon were not amused, and neither were their parents. In early April of 2001, they filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court charging MTV with "infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and battery." Somehow, though, this doesn't seem enough for what the culture destroyers like Redstone are doing every day to undermine and degrade White, Helleno-Christian civilization. The American courts, having come under the pernicious influence of such cosseted mediocrities as Allan Dershowitz and Johnny Cochran, have degenerated into the willing or unwilling enforcers of politically correct fascism, and no longer seem able to serve the interests of the vast majority of White Americans. Only large, peaceful, non-violent, mass demonstrations by Americans who've "had enough" may be able to stem or even reverse this diabolical slide into swinishness that the Redstones, the Gilbert & George's, the Rosen's, the Freuds, the Ginsberg's, and their kind, have foisted upon America and, through America, the world.
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In a related piece titled "World Bank Funds MTV Depravity" in The New American (13 Jan.'03. p.7.), we read the following: "Going to MTV for help on preaching responsible sexual attitudes to young people is akin to going to Louis Farrakhan or the Aryan Nations for help on promoting tolerance and racial harmony. Yet that is what the World Bank has done once again. On December 1st, MTV aired "Staying Alive 4," the fourth in its World AIDS Day documentaries that began in 1998. 'Staying Alive will inform young people about the virus, promote safe lifestyle choices, provide information about local organizations and mobilize youth to overcome the stigma and discrimination surrounding HIV/AIDS and to fight for an end to the spread of HIV/AIDS,' proclaims an MTV promotional.
"Instead, in keeping with the MTV gospel of promiscuity and hypocrisy, the program promotes 'responsible' fornication and sodomy. Arguably, MTV and its imitator channels already share some of the blame for the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, by incessantly bombarding their youthful audiences with sexually charged and pornographic images and messages. Nevertheless, the World Bank is lavishing your tax dollars on this project. Other tax-supported sponsors of MTV's 'Staying Alive' are USAID and UNAIDS.
"MTV, [the] broadcast king of the rude, crude, nude, and lewd, plumbed new depths of degeneracy recently with the release in October 2002 of Jackass, a movie giving new meaning to the term 'top grossing film.' 'The R-rated hit, starring Johnny Knoxville, is reportedly causing audiences to be sick in their stomachs.' A Scripps Howard News Service report on Jackass stated on November 1st:
'In the movie, based on the MTV series, a man uses a toilet [to defecate] in the middle of the hardware store.'
'There are other [such] incidents [and] such reactions were not unexpected. During early screenings, a few preview audience members got sick,' said Knoxville. 'At the premiere screening of the film in Hollywood, [vomit] bags were attached to the back of every seat in anticipation. In his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., there were three confirmed reports of vomiting during a showing a week ago.' The MTV 'star' was pleased. 'We had people puke in the previews, and it's good to see that it is carrying over to the general audience,' Johnny Knoxville reportedly said. According to news reports, Knoxville 'considers the reactions to Jackass to be a compliment.' " (Emphasis added.)
Editor's Note
Have you noticed, dear reader, the common thread that is introduced whenever these creatures are pitching their poison to the boobs, even in those areas of human endeavor considered inviolate and sacred? Once this kind of scum gets involved, have you noticed what kind of a stench from what kind of putrid material seems always to assail your nostrils? Did you get that? Whenever they acquire power, prestige, or influence, their minds automatically go to sh.t! When they program "entertainment" for our children, sh.t is automatically on the agenda. Sh.t and us; us and Sh.t! Has it penetrated, finally, just what these people think of you, your spouse, your kids, your parents, your world, your civilization, your religion...??? SH.T!!! that's what!!!.
An horrendous development
With a fanfare one would expect only for the Second Coming, the "Grekili" channel, Tempo TV, in the spring of 2002, began announcing that it would be offering MTV programming in Greece starting in mid-summer. The harm this will do to the traditionally tightly-knit Greek family can easily be imagined. We can now look for an increase in drug use, race mixing, homosexuality, AIDS, divorce, pre-teen, teen, and post-teen promiscuity, child molestation, alcohol abuse, sub-culture dress codes, and lots of gyrating genital organs and naked rumps of all colors and sizes to invade the sanctity of the Greek home.
IT IS BEYOND THE COMPREHENSION OF THE STAFF OF THIS WEBSITE AS TO WHY THE PURVEYORS OF THIS TOXIC VISUAL EXCREMENT ARE NOT MADE TO PAY FOR THE SUFFERING AND DEATHS OF THE INNOCENT CHILDREN THEY CORRUPT BY THIS HATEFUL, OBSCENE, AND DESTRUCTIVE PROGRAMMING.
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