PHOTO: Ευρωλιγούρης (pronounced: Evroligouris) or Ευρωλάγνος (pronounced: Evrolagnos)= the Western European wannabe, the one submissive to the futile EU dream which turned to be a nightmare leading to Greece's economic crisis!!!
A person in Quora.com with a Greek first and last name profusely congratulated someone Jacob from Finland who said that the Greeks are purely European when he answered the question "Are the greeks European or Middle Eastern?" I've seen a lot of greeks lately trying to deny the least involvement with the East in terms of culture, history, and...in terms of everything! Another complex of inferiority for our Byzantine past and the 400 years under the Turkish yoke!
Here is my answer:
No, it’s not well said at all! Jacob is a non-Greek who knows about Greece from the books, most of them recycling a narrative of the 18th and 19th-century historiography inspired by the Renaissance and European Enlightenment. Those European movements, including Neoclassicism, were very positive, indeed, and cultivated a climate of Phil-Hellenism, but unfortunately created a Western interpretation of our classical past, a European reception of it, which has many mistakes and it’s a utopia, a sin the movement of the Arcadians, a society of European Phil-Hellenes. We ended up even today learning about our culture through the lens of the Western European scholarship and also the American one, as it is evident in Greek universities and it’s so sad, including the theories on the Earasmic accent, the Indoeuropean languages, and so on. This foreign narrative of who our ancestors were ignores that we Greeks survived in the Middle Ages and existed in Byzantium, which was actually the Eastern Roman Empire and whose borders extended all the way to Persia. We called ourselves Romioi because the Western Eastern Empire was gone and lost to the destructive invasions by Germanic tribes. Byzantine is a 17th-century term. We didn't call ourselves Greek or rather Hellene because that was synonymous with the Greek pagan religion. The core of the Byzantine Empire was Hellenic in language and culture and dominated ever since by what we could call “Byzantine Greeks”, especially after the 8th century AD or even earlier, as there is a debate on the exact chronology. Constantinople, which is today Istanbul in today’s Turkey, was the capital and of course, all the core of power and administration was in the East. Back then, Athens had become nothing more than a small poor village. I’m an Athenian myself and I love Ancient Greece, don’t get me wrong, my specialty is in Ancient Greek history and archaeology, but we have to see the entire picture, the whole enchilada. Byzantine music is based on ancient Greek music but had cultural exchanges with Arabic and Persian music. The Byzantine Music contributed to today’s Turkish music through Petros Lambadarios the Peloponnesios (of the Peloponnese) who taught many Turks, unfortunately, about Byzantine Music and how to transliterate from Byzantine notation to Western notation, so the Turks could copy it and now say that we seal from their music, as they do the same thing with the greek food which they “baptize” Turkish by changing the names from Greek into Turkish! The Byzantine music led to the Demotika or modern greek folk songs, which are very melismatic just like Byzantine music and they are based on the eight tones/modes. The food, the music, the dances, all had the feeling and the smell of the exotic East but was a conglomeration of both Hellenic and also Western Eastern elements, a diachronic continuity that still characterizes us. Therefore, Greece is more than the cradle of Western civilization. It’s actually the cradle of many civilizations. You said it already pretty well by referring to Alexander the Great and his campaign to the East. We contributed to the West, but also to the East and to the Balkans, including the Slavs with the Cyrillic alphabet and Orthodox Christianity.
We neither belong to the West nor to the East! We should belong to ourselves, be united, and collaborate with everyone! Enough with the political eurocentric ideas of the international blood-sucking creditors and bankers and the Western European wannabes/ευρωλιγούρηδες! Aristotle in his politics wrote that the Easterns are intelligent and have created great civilizations but they are submissive to Oriental Despotism. The westerns are too emotional and barbaric and are not able of producing any civilization, he said. Obviously, they started producing civilization in the Middle Ages, when they were the “Barbarians” or rather the Goths, the Huns, the Visigoths, and the Ostrogoths took over the Western Roman Empire, including Rome and that’s how the classical ideas and culture was adopted by them and after they became Christians they build their sky-high and lavish Cathedral and their beautiful cities and became “civil-ized” (city-based). Charles the great, btw, was very anti-Greek and the one who contributed to the development of Catholicism and the anti-OPrthodox hatred which later on led to the great schism of 1054. So it’s not an accident the UNESCO museum of Europe starts with Charles the great and omits Ancient Greece and Byzantium. Greeks in the '10s, '20s, and ''30s were not even considered white by the Western Europeans and the Americans! They even created erroneous IQ tests and using them to prove that Eastern Europeans, including the Greeks, had low IQ and that modern Greeks have nothing to do with the ancient Greeks, which is a blatant lie! In 1918 Nebraska, there were riots against the greeks, and the stores' for the Anglo-Americans and German-Americans had signs saying “No rats! No Greeks!”. When did the Greeks become pro-western European? But of course, right before the during, and after the Greek War of Independence, being taught by Greek scholars who studied in Europe and set up the foundations of Modern greek Enlightenment! During and after this war that started 200 ago in 1821, the Great Forces of Europe were puppeteering the Greek warriors who were divided into the French, English, Russian, and Italian political parties and were often clashing together (Ioannis Koletis of the French political party imprisoned Theodore Kolokotronsi and son ). Let’s face it! The Great Forces helped us get free because of their own interests, not because they loved us! Same thing today! This obsession many Greeks have today to stick with EU brought us to the μνημόνια/meomoranda and the endless loans. All this vicious circle made us end up being Merkel's protectorate and having a prime minister whose first language is German and is nothing more but Germany’s puppet…
Rationale: No one will help us if we don’t help ourselves! No one will love us if we don’t love ourselves! Freemason Konstantinos Karamanlis Sn. said, “We belong to the West”! No, we should belong to ourselves! United we stand! Divided we fall!
