April 29, 1994     Published in: The Greek American, June 11-17, 1994

AN AMERICAN RESPONSE TO “EUROPE'S TROJAN HORSE: Profile-The Greeks”

By Professor Michael C. Geokas

 

The following is a response to the article "Europe's Trojan Horse: Profile on the Greeks" written anonymously and published by the Sunday Telegraph in England, March 27,1994.  Dr. Geokas was contacted by the Greek Consulate of San Francisco and asked to write a rebuttal on behalf of Greece.  A synopsis of the article follows.


Synopsis

 

In the Sunday Telegraph Article "Europe's Trojan Horse: Profile on the Greeks" the author maintains that Greeks are "paranoid" simpletons who suffer great delusions about their origin and history.  The author asks, "What connects them [Greeks] with the race that build the Parthenon?" The average Greek, a cabdriver, knows nothing of ancient Greek language and is consequently illiterate.  The only thing Greeks know to do well is cook souvlaki, according to the article.  The mystery author sites an 1830 study that found that "not a drop of pure Greek blood could be found in modern Greece and that Greeks are Slavs."

He or she goes on to say, "The desperation with which the Greeks claim a monopoly of a classical past, in which we all have a share, should be the clue: the Greeks today are a mixture of Slavs, Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Vlachs, Jews and Gypsies... They do not merely have Balkan food..  they have a Balkan mentality, a Balkan approach to politics."  The late culture minister's Melina Mercouri's funeral is likened to the Ayatollah Khomeini's in its expression of mourning.  And Greeks, who lie and steal from the European Union, "have found in the EU a new kind of decaying Ottoman empire."

The author concludes that, "Centuries of domination left their mark," implying that the Turkish occupation has destroyed Greek character and its right to its culture.



THE RESPONSE: TO THE EDITOR OF SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, LONDON

The definitive rebuttal to this racist polemic on the Greeks, by your anonymous correspondent, is coming to you not from Greece, but from America.  It is quite fitting that a factual point by point response, to the cheap concoction of insults to the Greek people, should come from the land of the free, the most vibrant multiracial society on earth, with its celebrated egalitarianism, its obsession with fairness, its proven respect for all cultures and its radical interpretation of democracy.  An article like this will never be published in America, because it will most certainly create a storm, from coast to coast and the writer and the editor of the newspaper, will be fired on the spot.  This is yellow journalism pure and simple.

According to your correspondent's racist views, America should be the most impure nation on earth, with 257 million people coming from a galaxy of races and ethnic origins, with intermarriages galore, with a cornucopia of religions, languages, traditions, cultures and historical backgrounds and probably....with not a drop of blood in most of our people's veins, coming from the Founding Fathers, who created the magnificent American Constitution.

This reminds me of Adolph Hitler's refusal to hand the Gold Medal to the Black Athlete, Jesse Owens, at the Olympic Games in Germany before the War, because of his ...racial inferiority.  Furthermore, America should be probably expelled from the UN, from NATO and other organizations, as an impure nation, with a pseudorelationship to its glorious colonial past, which ended after the Boston tea party.

Frankly, as an American academic, I am appalled and insulted by the arrogant racism and discriminatory accusations, against innocent people who have been an outpost of Europe and a bulwark of the West, for more than two millennia.  This polemical profile is apparently the product of a culturally and historically pseudointellectual, with the ossified mind-set of an unrepentant colonialist.  I can assure you that the false and slanderous views expressed in this profile, are anathema to all Americans. 

Please note the following:

History has already recognized Greece as the birthplace of Democracy and its people, as the inheritors of a cultural heritage of awesome proportions, that some other complex-ridden Europeans, have great difficulty in accepting as an incontrovertible historical fact.  The Greek civilization has been defined through the centuries, by common objective elements such as religion, language, history, customs and institutions, and by the intense subjective identification of its people.

With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, came the  despotic Ottoman occupation, for almost 400 years.  Amazingly, the Greek nation was reborn from the ashes and has been under parliamentary rule for 140, out of 170 odd years since independence, in sharp contrast to all of its neighbors. 

The Greeks have been part of the West all along, albeit with a special twist, due to:

a)      Their exotic, but magnificent language, which resembles none of the other European tongues, yet has provided a cornucopia of terminology in Medicine(68% of terms are of Greek derivation) and in other science disciplines.

b)      Their non-catholic and non-protestant branch of their church and

c)      Their geography, that makes them an outpost of Europe, adjacent to the World's most troublesome fault-line, between Western Europe and Islam.


GENETIC PURITY

To talk about a perfect genetic and biological continuity over 2,000 years is nonsense.  Furthermore, any demand about Greek blood and purity of the race, smacks of Nazi-Aryan racism.  However, the cultural connection of the Greeks of today to the people who built Parthenon is another matter. The solid connection is found in their civilization, and their basic character (argumentative, proud, articulate, fearless, very much political, individualistic, daring and quick on their feet), their spirit, their love of freedom, their adherence to principles and ideals, their love of education and family (98% of Greek children today are born within marriage-how many are there in England? or Sweden?), and the legendary endurance of Greek culture, among Greek immigrants overseas.

To be Greek is a state of mind that embraces Greece's glorious past and not a pure bloodline.  The Greeks are right in tenaciously adhering to their heritage, in a world where all races and peoples are striving for cultural identification and for maintaining their roots, in the midst of a powerful modernizing-homogenizing imperative.  The love for their cultural heritage is genuine and as Sophocles said in Antigone “Eros Anikate Machan” (love undefeated in battle).  This is what the anonymous correspondent is unable or unwilling to comprehend.  He or she simply does not get it.


SALONIKA


The territory north of Salonika, the civilization of Philip and  Alexander the Great, and the star of Vergina and other findings of Professor Andronikos, represent genuine and incontrovertible evidence of Greek civilization, which has been preserved intact, by nature itself, for more than two millennia.  The people of this region consider themselves to be Greeks.  This is no Paranoid Nationalism either, based on flimsy or circumstantial evidence.  One has to visit the Museum in Salonika, and the Dion and Vergina areas, to obtain the overwhelming visual impact, of the evidence at hand, that stares you in the face.  What is the proof of Englishness of the barren Falkland Islands, for which British blood was shed in modern times? Was that Paranoid Nationalism?


MELINA MERKOURI

Melina Merkouri was a gutsy lady and a brilliant actress much admired for her contributions, not only in Greece but also in America.  The comparison of the scene at her funeral, to that of the Ayatollah, is a cheap shot and the epitome of sexist expression and of gutter journalism, against a spirited champion of the rights of women everywhere.  Melina was right about the Elgin Marbles as well.  It should be said in one thousand languages: they belong to the Athens Museum and not to the British Museum in London.

Greece has not been ruthless in erasing all traces of ethnic diversity either.  This is the legacy of the cold war, with a hot war, of a Communist attempt for takeover, which the Greeks defeated fair and square, under the Truman doctrine.  The traces of ethnic diversity peoples, were self-eliminated by foolishly siding with the communists, in a manner similar to the Volga Germans, who sided with the advancing Nazis, later to face the wrath of the people.

The assertion that the town of Marathon was, in early last century almost completely Albanian, is ridiculous at best, and represents a figment of this type of political journalism, that masquerades as physical anthropology, which was nonexistent early last century anyway.  Furthermore, the statistical data shown are totally unreliable, and largely meaningless with today's standards.  The absurdity of this polemic intensifies on the subject of "cultural transmissions" to modern Greek cuisine and on the level of sophistication of Greek taxi drivers.

You should come to San Francisco or New York or Los Angeles, to taste our cuisine of a thousand origins and to converse with our taxi drivers.  They are from all races and ethnicities,  and they speak many tongues and they do not have a clue about American history or poetry. However they freeze at attention, with our national anthem, and we are proud of them.  They are Americans by choice and right.

I agree with the Greek Governments, for insisting that only highly trained Greek-born guides should take tours around ancient monuments.  How many Indians or Pakistanis or Greeks or Egyptians are allowed to serve, in key positions of culture or administration, in England, or France or Germany? Has there ever been a foreign-born, Lord mayor in London? or an official at the London museum? or at the Louvre national museum?


FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY

There are some events which illustrate the cultural connection between the people who built Parthenon and the Greeks of today: the famous answer of the Spartans at Thermopylae (μoλώv λαβέ-come and get them-meaning the weapons), was repeated to the fascist Ambassador by the Greek Prime Minister, by the OXI (NO), WHEN HE WAS HANDED THE ULTIMATUM DEMANDING THE SURRENDER OF THE GREEK ARMED FORCES, in the morning hours of October 28, 1940.  This took place under impossible odds, and invoked Winston Churchill's admiration.  It took 35 German divisions and a few precious weeks from Barbarossa, to subdue the Greeks, whose women fighters decimated the German paratroopers in Crete.  The Greeks also fought the Nazis during the dark days of the occupation.  True to their civilization and ideals, the Greeks have sided persistently with the Democracies in World War I and II, and fought at El Alamein under Monty, in Italy, and in Korea and defeated the communist upheaval, giving the West its first decisive victory in the cold war, which was quite fitting and highly symbolic, for the birthplace of Western Democracy.  This is the connection to the people who built the Parthenon and fought at Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis.  From ancient times, the Greeks do not follow the dictum...."if you cannot fight them, join them."  Instead, they die fighting, for Democracy and freedom. That's the connection.

Years ago Nikita Khrushchev made a cardinal error before the Greek national Elections, by saying: "If Greece continues its provocations as an instrument of NATO we will not hesitate to throw an atom bomb on the Acropolis!"  Promptly, the Greek communists lost the elections by a huge margin.  That's the connection.

The Greeks are gifted people, independent and individualistic, they love freedom and are conscious of their heritage. "Hellenismos" signifies the cultural heritage of the Greeks in Greece and those living in diaspora.  They are generous and proud people and they are honored to share their privilege but not the heritage, with all peoples of the world.  The heritage belongs to the Greeks.


GREEK AMERICANS

The strong cultural connection of the Greeks of today with the builders of Parthenon, is also validated by the achievements of Americans of Greek ancestry.  Census data in this country have shown, that they are among the best-educated people in America, with College, M.Sc., Ph.D., M.D. and other degrees.  In politics they have been highly successful, despite their small total numbers.  This and their legendary success in dominating the Merchant Marine business in the world's oceans, cannot be attributed to chance alone.  That's the connection.

However the most preposterous statement and the most insulting to Americans, as a racist view reminiscent of the claims of racial purity by the Nazis (who called the Russians subhuman Asiatic types), is that the Greeks of today are a mixture of Slavs, Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Vlachs, Jews and Gypsies.  This is the epitome of arrogance and betrays historical and demographic illiteracy.  As an American I find this statement repulsive, but quite understandable nevertheless, because of its author's mind-set.

Modern Demography and anthropology were non-existent in the 1830's and Fallmereyer's studies of Slav migrations and his pronouncements are meaningless with today's standards.  Only someone who has an ax to grind, would consider such flimsy evidence, as the gospel of truth in this day and age, of great sophistication in scientific inquiry.  The fact is that, the Greeks spread Orthodoxy to Slavic peoples. Religion is the only similarity between them.  All other objective elements, language, history, customs, and traditions and subjective self-identification are all completely different.  The claim of Greeks being an admixture of Turks, Bulgarians, Vlachs, Gypsies, Greeks Jews and Albanians is an enormous exaggeration, unproven by modern demographic and anthropological studies.

Of course, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change and civilizations blend and overlap. What is remarkable about the Greeks is their passionate adherence to their cultural heritage, and it is absurd to classify them as an admixture of many races, mainly I suspect, because of their unique and exotic language and their non-catholic and non-protestant religion and because they live in an area, where sharp demographic changes have occurred in the past.


THE PARANOIA FACTOR

The so-called "paranoia factor" is most probably due to the geopolitical and geocultural ignorance of your correspondent.  For 1300 years wars and frictions have occurred along the West's fault-line with Islam.  As an outpost society, with no kin nations around, in an area notorious for upheaval and volatility of national borders, and being under constant pressure from Islam, the Greeks are justified, to be cautious and to be looking over their shoulder.

The Greeks live in a bad neighborhood.  The end of the cold war and the shifting economic interests of the big nations, justify the attitude of the Greek people.  The notion of a Balkan mentality and Balkan approach to politics, is a lot of hot air, in view of the known slyness of states, and the unsentimental and cold-blooded nature of what they do, as they pick their way through chaos.  After the fundamental insults against the Greek people the anonymous correspondent attacks them and their democratically elected leader and his policies towards the EC, about the integrated Mediterranean Programme, and American bases in Greece.  Then comes the "corrupt scheme of the Acheloos Dam Project", the extinction of the poor Dalmatian Pelican, the abusive letters from Brussels, the ruination imparted by the Athens Metro, and the graft and criminality engendered by EC cash, all due to a Greek perception of a decaying Ottoman Empire-like EC.  This is the clue of this correspondent's mind-set.  These allegations sound like "dirty EC linen washed in public," and are offered unilaterally, without proof or justification.  In America we say: what is the other side of the story?

Finally, to demonstrate the absurdity and folly, of such racist and irresponsible journalism, I wish to mention Europe's notorious little problem into the 21st Century: its looming Demographic disaster, due to low fertility and negative population growth for many European countries.  At 2025, its  population is projected to be only 524 million, whereas the  countries of the Middle East (with 264 million in 1993), are projected to have at 2025,between 490 to 576 million, most probably surpassing Europe.

 

The poor water resources of that region and other factors, might generate a huge surge of migration towards Europe, with Greece at the eye of the storm.  This is a sobering possibility indeed and should generate concern and long-term planning by the EC.  Yellow journalism of this type, against the Greek people, is deplorable and counterproductive and should be rejected out of hand, as undermining European unity.  Furthermore, Greece with its traditionally excellent relations with the countries of the Middle East (except Turkey),can serve as a bridge, between an aging and sophisticated Europe and a robust and developing Middle East.

 

RESOLUTION: I hereby request the following from the Editor of Sunday Telegraph:

 

  1. That this response be published in the Sunday Telegraph.
  2. That a letter of apology be send to Mr. Andreas Papandreou.
  3. That the name of the anonymous writer of the Profile on the Greeks be revealed.

 

 

Michael C. Geokas, M.D., Ph.D. (McGill)
Emeritus Professor of Medicine
and Biological Chemistry, UC, Davis
School of Medicine

 

CC: Greek Ambassador in London
Rector, Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Greece
Rector, University of Athens, Greece
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece
Louka T. Katseli, Senior Economic Advisor to Mr. Papandreou
The Prime Minister Mr. Andreas Papandreou
Mr. Gerasimos Arsenis, Defense Minister of Greece


Douglas Hurd, British Foreign Secretary*
Mr. John Major, British Prime Minister**
British Ambassador to Washington D.C.
British Ambassador to Greece***


Note: */**/***/ Letters were received from all these British officials.  The most apologetic, was the letter from the British Ambassador in Athens.