THE ALBANIAN LANGUAGE ALMOST BECAME OFFICIAL IN GREECE - Part 02

English today speak English because today English is the “common” language people use “Internationally” to communicate with one another. A century or so ago, French was the common language. A long, long time ago Koine was the International language used around the Mediterranean. “How can you suggest that Greece adopted Koine because it was the lingua franca? Ok – so what were they speaking before that? Or are you implying that there was no such thing as a Greek element and that it was completely fabricated to somehow ‘usurp’ the glory of the ancient Hellenes?” Yes, check your history and you will find out that Greece indeed adopted the Koine language as the official State language. Then it tried to clean it up but eventually failed, ending up with the bastardized language full of foreign words that you speak today. “My apologies to the Slavic Macedonian people (from the 6th century AD) if they find these opinions offensive.” How easily you call the “Slavo-Arvanito-Turko-Vlachs” “Greek” yet you can’t muster the courage to call the Macedonian people Macedonian, by the name they chose to call themselves! “My objective here is NOT to create tension between the Slav-Macedonian and Greek people but rather to highlight the problem that exists within the F.Y.R.O. M and its institutions.” As I mentioned before the southern “gentleman” from the United States did not use the term “nigger” to create “tension” between the white and black people, he simply used that term (racial, demeaning, derogatory and hurtful to the Black people) because it was familiar to him. But his “good” intentions brought no solace to the people referred to by that word; it simply brought back memories of pain and humiliation! “As long as F.Y.R.O.M insists on hijacking the 3000 year old Macedonian identity for their 64 year old state, previously known as southern Serbia, and home to every kind of Balkan ethnicity, then we too will continue to respond to your eloquently delivered propaganda.” First, if you want to address me you need to learn to address me as an equal. Second, the country you are referring to has a name. It is called the “Republic of Macedonia”. Third, that small country prides itself as being a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural state which means it recognizes and respects the rights of all of its minorities. This, unfortunately, I cannot say about Greece. Fourth, the Republic of Macedonia, which I consider one-third of my country, is not all of Macedonia. The part of Macedonia where I come from, which amounts to half of my Macedonia, today is occupied by Greece. One hundred or so years ago it was occupied by the Ottoman Empire for nearly six-

hundred years. But I believe the time will come when Macedonians will unite and rise and will make Macedonia whole again. You can call this a “pipe dream” but it is my “pipe dream”! Macedonians came very close after World War II in achieving that dream and if we could do that then, I am sure one day we can and will do it again. “With respect for your views and your struggle for identity Truly, I hope that one day you are called ‘Nova Macedonia’. I believe in your rights and your right to have an identity that defines you historically and geographically, but I disagree with your subversive propaganda.” I appreciate and thank you for respecting my views and yes we will call our county “Nova Macedonia” when all of Macedonia is again united and governed by Macedonians and Greece calls itself “Arvanito-Vlachia”. As to why I am doing this; I mean taking “puck-shots” at Greece and the Greeks. There is a purpose in my madness. We the Macedonians born in Greece, having lived under Greek oppressive rule for almost one hundred years, have had enough of the way we have been and are still being treated by the Greeks. And, as is evident by this e-mail alone, even the best of Greeks with “good intentions” still manage to unwittingly abuse and insult us! To teach them what it feels like to be Macedonian, we sometimes need to put them in our place. So, if fair is fair, then, until things change for the better in Greece, we will treat Greeks with the same respect they show for us!

Essay 10 - Greek by Politics

Here is the situation. Before nationalism reached the Balkans and before Philhellenism gripped Western Europe, the Balkans were occupied by the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The people who were under the Ottoman Empire were identified primarily by their religions which were predominantly Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. Underneath its religion each group was also identified by its language and social class. Greece, before it became a country for the first time in 1829, was predominantly populated, as indicated in the previous essays, by people, the majority of whom identified themselves as Albanians (Shipari), Vlachs (Vlahi) and Macedonians (Makedontsi). The terms Greek and Bulgar during this religion dominated period were references, not ethnic identities, referring to the “classes” of people who belonged to the merchant and peasant classes respectively. When nationalism was first introduced in the Balkans by the Western Europeans, in order to make sense of things according to their own understanding, they began to classify the people who were Christian Orthodox as “Greek”, hence the term “Greek Orthodox”. Everyone who belonged to the Christian Orthodox religion, even the Russians, became known as “Greeks”. When Russia protested, the westerners decided to re-classify the people by using “class” as an identity factor and to call the merchant class “Greek” and the peasant class “Bulgar”. There was a brief period in time when westerners were calling the people in Macedonia, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania, “Greeks” and “Bulgars”. Internally however, just before Greece became a country for the first time in 1829, the people in the southern Ottoman occupied part of the Balkans (where Greece is today) began to self-identify. They recognized that by language, customs and traditions they were either the same or different than others and in fact used terms like Macedonians, Albanians, Vlachs, etc to identify themselves and the others around them. While a lot of these people were “re-engineered” and were happy to fit the mold of the newly created Balkan states, many remained “die hard” and refused to accept their new imposed identity. Call them “antiquated” “stupid” and “stubborn” but these are the people who preferred to stay true to themselves with regards to who they were. Many of these people are Macedonians not because they want to be Macedonians but because that is what they are; a proud people with a long history and a worthwhile past, a past where their ancestors bled and slaved to build their country in order for them to inherit and pass it on to their descendants.

Here then lies the problem; who exactly qualifies to be called “Greek”? According to Greek claims, up until recently a person could not have been a Greek unless they were born a Greek. In fact the Greek government, in the early 1980’s, passed a law designed to repatriate all Greeks born in Greece who were exiled from Greece and who were considered to be Greeks by birth. But wait a minute, hasn’t Greece been boasting that since 1928 Greece has been populated by Greeks and only Greeks in accordance with its 1928 census where it claims the population living in Greece is 98% pure Greek and 2% Muslim Greek? So who did they intend to exclude when they passed the “Greek by birth” repatriation law? If everyone in Greece is Greek then why have such a law? Everyone should have been allowed to return because, according to their own claims, everyone in Greece is Greek. If people were born in Greece after 1928 they should all be Greek, right? Wrong! While Greece, on one hand, was saying “everyone in Greece is Greek” it was exiling people born in Greece after 1928 because they were not Greek! A person is Greek or a person is not Greek, which is it? You can’t have both! Perhaps there is a misunderstanding. When we call a person a “Greek”, are we thinking of the same thing as the Greek government when it is calling a person a “Greek”? Greece, over the years has imported many people, and I mean many and all kinds of people. All of these people were not born in Greece and obviously many were not Greeks by any definition, unless of course you call Christian Turks, Armenians, Russians, etc., “Greeks”? If a person can be a “Greek” without being born in Greece, or without being born a Greek and if a person is not a “Greek” even though he or she was born in Greece, as per the repatriation law, and in spite the 1928 statistics (98 % pure Greeks and 2% Muslim Greeks) then what exactly is a Greek? Take me for example. I was born in Greece, speak the Greek language, was baptized in the Greek Church, have an official Greek name, was educated in Greek school and came to Canada with a Greek passport, so am I a Greek? Before assuming that I am, I decided to ask a Greek “expert” on the subject. Surprisingly I found out that not only do I not qualify to be a “Greek”; but I don’t even come close! Well, I was offended so I protested by claiming that I have as much right to be a Greek as my relatives who are in the same circumstances as I am with whom I share great grandparents and yet they can be Greek! How come? Well, surprisingly, according to this so called “expert”, my relatives “are” Greeks but I am not and can never be!

So if I understand this correctly one does not need to be of Greek blood, to be born in Greece, speak the Greek language, be an Orthodox Christian, be educated in Greek school, have Greek great grandparents or any of the fundamental requirements of belonging to the “Greek identity” to be a Greek! So what exactly does one have to be or not be to qualify to be a Greek? I asked the so-called “expert”? The only answer I got was that “I did not qualify to be a Greek and never will”! And that was his final word! So now I am totally confused! There has to be “something” that distinguishes “Greeks” from “non-Greeks” because obviously there are Greeks out there and according to the last count, there were more that 10 million. So what exactly makes them “Greeks” and the rest of us “non-Greeks” even though we were born in Modern Greece after 1928? I had to find out! Perhaps it was colour or race? No, that couldn’t have been it either because just recently I heard a story of a Philippine girl born in Greece who was finding out that the Greeks would not only not accept her as a Greek but were taking measures to exile her. In fact nowadays there is loud talk of Greeks wanting to expel all “illegal immigrants” from their country, including their children who were born and grew up in Greece, the only place they can call home. This whole thing stumped me. I needed to find out more but how? So I turned to my own “Greek” relatives for answers. “Not that I want to be a Greek,” I said, “but given that we are related, what makes you ‘Greeks’ and me a ‘non-Greek’?” Outside of being called “stupid” for being so “stupid” to ask such a “stupid” question, my relatives, among other things, said, “You can’t be a Greek because you don’t agree with the ideas of being Greek. Besides, you constantly criticize the Greeks so naturally they don’t want you!” So I said, “What exactly do you mean by ‘ideas of being Greek’?” “If you want to be a Greek first you must keep your mouth shut about your identity and keep your stupid opinions about minorities, human rights and all that, to yourself. You must always speak Greek in public and maintain that you are a proud Greek with a Greek ancestry stretching back to the ancient Greeks! You must also do what you are told!” “Ah, now I understand! It’s like being a member of an exclusive club with strict rules which anyone can join provided they rigidly follow those rules? “ “Yes but not exactly! You need to look like a Greek and preferably be of the Orthodox faith unless of course you are rich, but then you must keep that information to yourself. New immigrants coming to

Greece from abroad need to prove they are Greeks before they can be accepted,” I was told. “And how do they do that?” I asked. “Well, they need to produce a document, perhaps a letter that says they are related to a Greek. Perhaps their grandmother from their mother’s side was Greek? And then have two people sign the document which verifies their claim to be true. They then present their paper to the Greek authorities. It’s that simple,” I was told. “So, why can’t I do that?” I asked. “Because in addition to the information received from the individual, they also do background checks. They have informants all over the world and before they do you the favour of turning you into a Greek, they first make sure you don’t work against them. And you ‘do’ work against them!” I was told. “So, let me see if I understand this correctly,” I said. “To be a Greek all you need to do is be of the Christian Orthodox faith and basically look like one? Is that correct?” “Yes, but you are forgetting the most important part about being a Greek and that is you must accept the idea that you are a Greek, born of Greeks and belonging to the Greek heritage with a long lineage stretching back the ancient Greeks,” they told me again! I was satisfied with the answers I received. I personally did not think it was “stupid” of me to ask the questions. At least I now had a basic understanding of what it meant to be a Greek but still I had at least one more question. Why would anyone want to abandon their real identity in favour of becoming a Greek? Again I turned to the same people and they did not disappoint me. “Well, for two reasons actually. First, for getting out of the mud and hellhole we were living in, you know the abuse, the exploitation, the lack of opportunity, etc. and second the possibilities and potential opened up to us as Greeks. Not only do we not have to worry about being abused, we now have choices in our lives. Our children can attend the best schools, we have access to good paying jobs, we can apply for government benefits and perks, we can even have ‘your’ lands if we want them, all we have to do is ask. In fact the possibilities are limitless!” I was told. “So again, if I understand this correctly, there are double the benefits of being a Greek as opposed to being a Macedonian in Greece. So why in God’s name do people still want to be Macedonians?” I asked. “Perhaps because they are ‘stupid’ like you?”, I was told. As the words “Perhaps because they are stupid like you?” kept ringing in my head like a loud church bell, it occurred to me “how

Greeks think”. Of course! Being “Greek” is much more than just belonging to an “identity”, it is also a privilege of belonging to an elite class of people who enjoy many more benefits than you and I. It also made me think of what my grandmother used to tell me about the Greeks when I was very young. Many years ago, when the subject of “Greeks” came up, my grandmother use to say “they are worse than the Turks, they are ‘pirates’, ‘thieves’ and ‘liars’. The Greeks my grandmother knew were merchants and traders who came to our village to buy and sell goods and make themselves rich from the blood and sweat of our people. Perhaps this is why the “Greeks” appealed and still appeal to so many Western Europeans? Personally I don’t care how Greeks make their living and why they need to be “Greeks” to do what they must do, but ever since they illegally acquired Macedonian territories in 1912, 1913 with the assistance of the European Great powers, they have made the Macedonian peoples’ lives a living hell, a practice that continues to this day! What boils my potatoes is that “knowing exactly who and what they are, these fake Greeks have the audacity to interfere in Macedonian affairs with lies and deception”. Knowing very well that their identity is totally fabricated, they have the nerve to call the Macedonian identity “artificially created by Tito”. Knowing that they have pirated Macedonian lands and the Macedonian peoples’ heritage they dare call the Macedonians thieves. Knowing that they illegally, by acts of war, invaded, occupied and partitioned Macedonia in 1912, 1913 with their partners the Serbians and Bulgarians, they dare call Macedonia Greek. How can Macedonia be Greek when the entire Greek identity is fake, artificially created in the 18th and 19th centuries by Western European Philhellenes, and did not exist before the 1800’s? Like a criminal on the loose, Greece will do whatever it wants to gain advantage over others. But what makes me wonder is how can the world tolerate such behaviour, particularly Western Europe who gave birth to this monstrous entity? Greece’s list of victims does not end with the Macedonians, Turks and other minorities driven to insanity inside Greece. Greece has managed to manipulate everyone in the world, particularly its most valuable benefactors who have poured countless amounts of money into it to make its life possible. So the big question here is, are they “stupid” like me or is there a greater “sinister” plan behind all this?

FEEDBACK: From Dr. Ernest Damianopoulos, Ph.D.

Dear Risto,

In one of your recent articles published on the “American Chronicle” you presented a detailed narrative of how the EU powers in the last century were so overwhelmingly unjust in their dealings with Macedonia and the Macedonia Question. Significantly, the take home point was, how could Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and even Albania with some great or even some minimal effort on their part were able to gain the support of the Great Powers and win their independence; whereas, the Macedonians with their 10 year long bloody revolt and insurgency (1903 -1912) could not obtain even a shred of support in their drive to autonomy and independence? How could these same Powers then allow and accept Macedonia’s partition when the Balkan powers carried out their military campaign on their own to drive the Ottomans out of the Balkans against clearly expressed Great Power interests in maintaining the status-quo? The cheap, shoddy and callous disregard of the Macedonians as people as well as their delegations to the post-war Peace conferences boggles the mind; in particular, how was Venizelos able to get not only Macedonia (Aegean part) but also Thrace when all he did was to give carte blanche to France and England to open a second front in Macedonia? Worse still, how about the population exchanges with Bulgaria (circa 1926) when the same "Bulgarophone" Macedonians who were claimed to be “Greeks” by Greece before 1912 had now suddenly become "Bulgarians" to be expelled; even after protesting to the Corfe Commission overseeing the exchange that they were "Macedonians" and not "Greeks" or "Bulgars?" The rage inside me is no less than the rage expressed in your own write-up but I would try a veneer of neutrality and objectivity in order to have a more palatable narrative. And, after all this in the last century and even now with the name issue, the Danish statesman, at the point of being honored by the Republic of Macedonia, is telling the Macedonian people to compromise on their name if they want their country to have chance on becoming a member of the EU Community. The solution to the “name issue” which is Macedonia’s only obstacle to EU membership does not lie in compromise but in dismantling the widely accepted Greek position by the Macedonians providing critical evidence meeting two necessary requirements: (1) The ancient Macedonians were not Greek (despite wholesale adoption of Greek culture); and, (2) the modern Macedonians are not Slavs or descendants of a mixture of Slavs and native Macedonians.

The evidence on the first requirement is provided by Badian (1967), Borza (1990) and by Green (1991). On the second requirement, Florin Curta's book (2001) "The Making of the Slavs" presents detailed archeological evidence that the so called Slav Tribes from North of the Danube came south but did not stay in the Balkans; rather, they went back to their home bases north of the Danube river. My book explicitly combines all this evidence to present the Macedonians as non-Slavs; but, unfortunately cannot be cited as it is not yet published. Next, I raise the question on behalf of all Aegean Macedonians. Where are the Macedonian statesmen of the Republic of Macedonia who could use this type of material and analysis to deliver a devastating effect on the Greek claims regarding the name 'Macedonia'; especially, now that Greece with its loss of integrity and pack of lies on the real nature of the economic deficit have been shown to be false as well as when their first applied to enter the EU community? Why are the Macedonians, on the other side of the border, so out of touch regarding these developments and do not seize this enormous opportune moment for a political offensive on the name issue? Finally, the Danish EU official should have been sent home immediately after his call for "compromise" on the name issue. Wasn't the pre-requisite agreement on stable borders in exchange for recognition enough of a ransom when claims to Aegean and Pirin Macedonia had to be given up? Why wasn't this enough; now we are being asked to compromise our identity as well? Enough!

PLEASE, NO COMPROMISE ON THE NAME!

Ernest N. Damianopoulos, Ph.D. Senior Research Scientist (Neuroscience) Research Service (151) VA Medical Center 800 Irving Avenue Syracuse, NY 13210 Phone: 315 425 4866 E-mail: damianopoulos@gmail.com

Essay 11 - Twenty Authors can't all be wrong!

Amazingly after all that has been said about the artificial identity of the Modern Greeks, there are still Greeks out there who accuse me of “lying” for pointing out the obvious. There are still Greeks out there who insist that all these authors from whom I take quotes for my essays are “simply crackpots” who have something against Greece or perhaps are jealous of the “glorious Greek heritage”, as I am often accused of being! In this essay I will present the reader with testimonies from twenty different authors, all westerners and all in a mission to HELP the Modern Greeks justify their artificiality who in telling their story have inadvertently confessed to the Modern Greek falsehood. If you think telling the truth is wrong and an awful thing to do when exposing your Greek falsehood then perhaps you can explain to me how you justify denying the Macedonians their identity generation after generation. Macedonians have been denied their ethnic identity, culture, language and heritage by Greeks since Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria acquired Macedonian lands by wars in 1912, 1913. For my accusers, which is more wrong, to live a lie and deny others their true heritage or to tell the truth about you? There is no denying that the Modern Greek nation is an artificial creation created by Western Philhellenes from the Slav, Vlach and Albanian immigrants who over the centuries came to live on those lands after the so-called “Ancient Greeks” disappeared. To put an end to the notion that this is somehow a conspiracy to “rob” the Modern Greek nation of its heritage, in this essay I will present quotes from twenty different authors who basically say that; Modern Greeks are NOT the descendants of the so-called “Ancient Greeks” of 2,500 years ago but rather the descendants of the more recently arrived Slav, Vlach and Albanian immigrants. (1) Now let us start with Edward Blaquiere, Esq. in his book “The Greek Revolution; its Origin and Progress”, on page 21 we read “Tyranny and want had driven some families, whose origin, like that of nearly all the peasants, who inhabit proper Greece, was Albanian, to take refuge on these desolate crags [the islands Hydra, Spezzia and Ipsara], where they built villages, and sought a precarious existence by fishing.” (2) In the book “Greece and the Balkans Identities, Perceptions and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment” edited by Dimitris Tziovas on page 5 we read “In southern Albania many Orthodox Albanians and Vlachs were Hellenized during the 18th and 19th centuries.” On page 6 we read “It should be stressed, however, that the

Greeks as an ethnic community during this period included many Grecophone or Hellenized Vlachs, Serbs, or Orthodox Albanians.” And on page 75 we read “For Kodrikas, and many others, it was language that determined who was a ‘Greek’ for it constituted the ‘national existence’ of the nation. But for the Phanariot Theodoros Negris, Serbs and Bulgarians were as true Greeks as any other Christian”. (3) In J. P. Mahaffy’s book “Greek Pictures” on pages 20 and 21 we read “In the middle ages, these Albanian mountaineers have brought both war like spirit, bright costume, and beauty of person, to refresh the Hellenic race. There are still, even in Attica, districts where Albanian is the common language; there are Albanian names famous in Greek annals, especially in the Great War of Independence (1821-31), and even among the sailors of Hydra, so famed for their commercial enterprise and their deeds of war, the chief families were Albanian in origin.” (4) Surprisingly even Nicholas G. L. Hammond the greatest Philhellene historian and author has admitted that the Modern Greeks are not what they seem. Nicholas G. L. Hammond in his book “Migrations and Invasions in Greece and Adjacent Areas” on page 57 writes “It was during this period [1206 to 1260] that the flow of immigrants from the western area began. It became a flood in the fourteenth century. They went as mercenaries, raiders and migrants. The great majority of them were speakers of Albanian, but others joined the movement. Whatever their language they were described by the Greek and Latin writers as ‘Albanoi’ or ‘Albanitai’ or ‘Albanenses’ and the reason of this collective term can only be that they entered the Byzantine world through the district which the Byzantines knew as “Albanon’. Thus the Vlach speaking Malakasii who invaded Thessaly in 1334 were described as ‘Albanoi’ by Cantacuzenus 1.474 no less than the evidently Albanian-speaking ‘Albanensium gens’ which raided Thessaly in 1325. The southern movement of the tribes was on a very large scale. It was also rapid because towns and cities were bypassed (Dyrrachium for instance being captured c. 1368). It had two main effects. It took possession of Epirus Nova, the area inland of the coastal strip from Dyrrachium to Valona; and it sent streams of migrants into most parts of the Greek peninsula and some of the Aegean islands”. On page 59 of Hammond’s book we read “But the Albanian raids continued and Acarnea was laid to waste. In 1341 the Emperor attached the offending Albanians ‘around Pogoniane and Libisda’ (Lidisda), i.e. in the central part of northern Epirus; and then in 1355 he campaigned from Thessaly as far as the Aetolia and Arcanania and was killed in action (Cantacuzenus 3.319). These campaigns did not stop the flood.

Albanians were serving as mercenaries in the Peloponnesus c. 1350, and they and their families were given land there to cultivate. Other bands of Albanians and Vlachs invaded the Catalan principality of Boetia and Attica, and a great many Albanians settled there as peasant-farmers in 1368 and later years. The penetration of the Greek mainland which we have described occurred during the hundreds or more years after 1325.” Then on page 61 we read “Once in possession of northwestern Greece, the Albanians opened the way for other immigrants. Offshoots of Vlachs and Albanians entered Boetia, Attica and Euboea…” (5) Keith R. Legg’s book “Politics in Modern Greece” on page 48 we read “As early as the 18th century, these areas were described as ‘hotbeds of chronic insurgency’. There were few Muslims here; the inhabitants, largely of Albanian stock, were only imperfectly assimilated into the Greek nation…” Then on page 86 we read “At the time if independence, the range of local dialects was significant; a substantial portion of the population spoke Albanian”. (6) In the “International Encyclopedia a Compendium of Human Knowledge” edited by Richard Gleason Greene on page 201 we read “Overrun by the Vandals and Goths it [Morea, today’s Peloponnesus] became a prey, in the second half of the 8th c. to bands of Slavic invaders, who found it wasted by war and pestilence. Gradually however these barbarians were subdued and Grecianized by the Byzantine emperors. Nevertheless, the numerous names of places, rivers, etc, in the Morea of Slavic origin prove how firmly they had rooted themselves, and that the Moreotes are anything but pure Greeks.” (7) In the book “Races of Europe a Sociological Study” by William Z. Ripley Ph.D., published in 1910 on page 408 we read “Since the Christian era, as we have said, a successive downpour from the north into Greece has ensued. In the 6th century came the Avars and Slavs, bringing death and disaster. A more potent and lasting influence upon the country was probably produced by the slower and more peaceful infiltration of the Slavs into Thessaly and Epirus from the end of the seventh century onward. A result of this is that Slavic names to-day occur all over the Peloponnesus in the open country where settlements were readily to be made. The most important immigration of all is that of the Albanians, who, from the 13th century until the advent of the Turks, incessantly overrun the land.” (8) In the book “Greece in the 20th Century” edited by Theodore A. Kouloumbis on page 24 we read “Primary school children were taught, in the 1880’s, that ‘Greeks [are] our kinsmen, of common descent,

speaking the language we speak and professing the religion we profess’, but this definition, it seems, was reserved for small children who could not possibly understand the intricate arguments of their parents on the question of Greek identity. What was essentially to understand at a tender age was that Modern Greeks descended from the Ancient Greeks. Grown up children, however, must have been no less confused than adults on the criteria for defining modern Greek identity. Did the Greeks constitute a race apart from the Albanians, the Slavs and the Vlachs? Yes and no. High school students were told that the ‘other races’, i.e. the Slavs, the Albanians and the Vlachs, ‘having being Hellenized with the years in terms of mores and customs, are now being assimilated into the Greeks”. (9) In Alfred P. Schultz’s book “Race or Mongrel” on page 92 we read “From the foregoing it is evident that but very little Hellenic blood is left in Greece, and that little is so thoroughly vitiated that its disappearance is but a question of time. No race inhabits Greece. The ‘Greeks’ are descendants of races so different that their crossing can never produce anything else than human mongrels. Their ancestors were Greeks, Hellenized Asiatics and Byzantine Greeks (i.e. Hamitic-Semetic-Greek-Egyptian-Negroid mongrels), Slavs, Sicilians, Spaniards, Huns, Bulgarians, Walloons, Franks and Albanians.” (10) In the book “Sailing from Byzantium” by Colin Wells on page 183 we read “This revival also allowed the Byzantines to decolonize the Greek mainland. The success of that effort would prove crucial to the survival of Greek culture in future centuries, after the other lands had fallen away. Having overrun nearly all of the Greek mainland, the cities, and the islands, by the tenth century the Slavs in Greece had been converted to Orthodox Christianity and thoroughly Hellenized. Today the only evidence of the Slav’s arrival is the presence of Slavic place names, some five-hundred or so of them, scattered charmingly throughout the Greek countryside.” (11) In Alexandra Halkias’s book “The Empty Cradle of Democracy” on page 59 we read “Through the end of the revolution in 1830, Greeks, including most of the 19th century nationalists, seemed to have had a vague but firm sense of continuity from ancient to modern Greece, though this was not articulated in racial terms, but on a basis of a common language, history and consciousness. In effect, at this time, who ever called themselves a Greek was a Greek. It is because of this that many Greek-speaking Albanians, Slavs, Rumanians and Vlachs were easily assimilated and indeed became important players in Greek patriotism at the time (Dakin 1972, 8).” (12) In the book “Turkey in Europe” by Sir Charles Eliot on page 267 we read “Constantinople and all of continental Greece were for

centuries ruled and occupied by the Romans, and during many subsequent centuries invaded and colonized by Slavs. The crusades and the Latin conquest brought a large influx of western Europeans, commonly called Franks; and, in later times, extensive Albanian settlements were made in Greek districts. Clearly, the modern Greek must be of very mixed blood.” (13) In the book “History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century” by G. P. Gooch on pages 490 and 491 we read “General interest was first aroused by a controversy as to the racial derivation of the modern Greeks. The war of independence had won the sympathy of Europe; and it was a rude shock both to Greece and to her champions when Fallmerayer announced that her inhabitants were virtually Slavs. The race of Hellenes, he declares in his ‘History of Morea’ was rooted out and Athens was unoccupied from the sixth to the tenth century. Only its literature and a few ruins survived to tell that the Greek people have ever existed. What the Slavs had begun the Albanians have completed. Scholars had been so busy with the Ancient Greeks that they had never inquired as to what happened to them. Leake had discovered a great number of Slavonic place names but he had drawn no conclusions. ‘I now lay the foundation of a new view of Greek history and of the whole peninsula’. He recalls the invasions of the Huns, the Bulgars and the Slavs, and the second volume shows the Morea flooded by Albanian colonists and finally conquered by the Turks.” (14) In the “Phrenological Journal and Magazine of Moral Science for the Year 1843” Vol. XVI on page 246 we read “Next to them in this respect are the modern Greeks, who, for the most part, are of Sclavonian origin, and, where they are not purely Sclavonian, are a cross-breed in which the Sclavonian enters very largely.” (15) In Rennell Rodd’s book “The Customs and Lore of Modern Greece” on page 17 we read “In the last year of the 15th century and the opening of the 16th, when the Morea was again the battle-field of Turks and Venetians, the occupants of the plains of Argos and of portions of Attica were practically exterminated, and Albanian colonists began to re-occupy the ruined lands.” (16) In the book “In Greek Waters a Story of the Grecian War of Independence (1821-1827)” by G. A. Henty published in 1893 on page 40 we read “With them [the modern Greeks] it would be a resurrection, accomplished, no doubt, after vast pains and many troubles, the more so since the Greeks are a composite people among who the descendants of the veritable Greeks of old are in a great minority. The majority are of Albanian and Suliot blood, races which even the Romans found untamable.”

(17) In the “Popular Science Monthly” Volume LXXV, July to December 1919, edited by J. Mckeen Cattell on page 591 we read “The modern Greeks are largely of Slavic origin. They are not the descendants of the ancient Greeks. That noble race greatly mixed with barbarian blood during the middle ages, was completely destroyed in the course of the frequent uprisings against Turkish rule. Slavic immigrants gradually peopled the country.” (18) In William St. Clair’s book “That Greece Might Still be Free” on page 91 we read “The Albanians, some of whom were Christian and some Muslim, were torn by this dilemma, and when the need for decision became inescapable, they divided by religion and not by race. The Roman Catholic Greeks, who lived in the islands which had been under Venetian or Genoese rule, regarded themselves as a separate community. The Albanians of Hydra and Spetsae, many of whom could not even speak Greek, regarded themselves as Greek because their allegiance was to the Orthodox Church.” (19) In the 1910 “The Encyclopedia Britannica”, eleventh edition, on page 465 we read “…in 1725 the Ottomans with a large and well disciplined army set themselves to recover the Morea, the Venetians were left without support from the Greeks. The peninsula was rapidly recaptured and by the peace of Passarowits (1718) again became a Turkish dependency. The gaps left about this time by the Greek population were largely made up by an immigration from Albania.” (20) In the book “Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1770-1945)”, Volume II, edited by Balasz Trencsenyi and Michal Kopecek, on page 141 we read “It is funny but also sad, to see a social gathering of different Greeks, but is to say Chiots, Cretans, Albanians, Byzantines, Orientals, Ionian islanders and others, where upon the one mixes in Turkish words, the other Italian ones, the other Albanian ones, and in the same gathering, while they are all Greek, they cannot understand each other without the use of a translation or an explanation of each word as it is uttered, with the gathering thus turning into a Babel.”

So, what more can I say? Twenty authors can’t all be wrong!

Essay 12 - Modern Greece according to David Holden

Many Macedonians for years believed that the Greek identity was “solid” and some warned me “not to mess” with it because it was as solid as they come! That is until I read statements such as this “To me, philhellenism is a love affair with a dream which envisions ‘Greece’ and the ‘Greeks’ not as an actual place or as real people but as symbols of some imagined perfection.” (Page 12, “Greece without Columns” by David Holden). This is an author who has great respect for Greece and for the Greeks, so why is he saying this?

In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, after Greece acquired Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, Crete, Thrace and the Dodecanese Islands and after it exchanged populations with Bulgaria and Turkey, it declared itself “ethnically pure” and “homogeneous” consisting exclusively of “Greeks”. In fact it boasted to the word that only “pure Greeks” lived in Greece; a population consisting of 98% pure Greeks and 2% Muslim Greeks. David Holden, at the time his book “Greece Without Columns the making of the Modern Greeks” was published in 1972, was a chief foreign correspondent of the London Sunday Times. His career as a journalist has included long experience in the Arab world which qualifies him to assess Eastern strains in Greek life and attitudes without Western preconceptions. Holden spent enough time in Greece to discover that, as he put it, “a great screen of mutual misunderstanding seems to hang between Greece and the western world” which he thought to explain why modern Greece is the way it is. He says he is a friend of the Greeks but he is not a “Philhellene” because to him, as he puts it, “philhellenism is a love affair with a dream which envisions ‘Greece’ and the ‘Greeks’ not as an actual place or real people but as a symbol of some imagined perfection” which he himself had never experienced. Holden’s knowledge of Greece stems from two decades of watching, studying and visiting Greece. The result is a provocative and at times astonishing revelation, to say the least, which is sure to be controversial as well as illuminating. As per Holden’s own words, his book is “not at all about the Greece which countless volumes have been put before us and which the tourist advertisements nowadays continue to sell to us as a land of marvelous temples and antique memories of perfection.” The Greece Holden knows is the real Greece without any illusions. Let us now see what Holden has to say on the question of “What is Modern Greece and who are the Modern Greeks?”

“Further back still, beyond the War of Independence when the modern nation-state of Greece came into being for the first time, the whole concept of Greece as a geographical entity begins to blur before our eyes, so many and various were its shapes and meanings.” (p 22) What do you suppose Holden means? He means Greece before its independence was a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural region. He also means that a Greek state never existed before 1821. “But if geography can offer us no stable idea of Greece, what can? Not race, certainly; for whatever the Greeks may once have been, when Homer and Agamemnon lived and cloud-gathering Zeus leaped from his Cretan birthplace upon the ancient world, they can hardly have had much blood-relationship with the Greeks of the peninsula we know today. Serbs and Bulgars, Romans, Franks and Venetians, Turks, Albanians, Germans and Italians in one invasion after another have made the modern Greeks a decidedly mongrel race.” (p 23) Here he says that a Greek cannot be determined by his Greek ethnic identity because the type of Greek defined after 1821 never existed before. The modern Greek is a product of all the people that walked over or settled on those lands over the centuries including the Albanians, Vlachs, Turks and Macedonians. “Not politics either; for in spite of the tenacious western legend about Greece as the birthplace and natural home of democracy, the political record of the Greek is one of singular instability and confusion in which, throughout history, the poles of anarchy and despotism have played roughly equal parts, and a decently modulated freedom has very rarely appeared.” (p 23) Greece may boast that it is the cradle of democracy but in reality it has practiced everything but democracy! Even though Greece is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural state, there is no room for diversity or for minorities. Greece is an expert in “cultural genocide” and in suppression of diversity. Even today Greece refuses to recognize the remnants of those people who it suppressed and who fought tooth and nail to preserve their true identity. “Not religion; for while Byzantium was Christian, ancient Hellas was pagan; and although the Eastern Orthodox Church has closely associated with the Greeks for the last sixteen centuries it has never been their exclusive possession.” (p 23) The only reason modern Greeks claim that the Orthodox Church is a “Greek possession” is because the Constantinople Patriarchate used the International Koine language which Greece high jacked and today claims as its own. “Not even language will quite do, for although it brings us a good deal nearer than the others to some overall coherence in the forms of