Golden Dawn: Greece and the Cold War by Evelyn P.
“People on the left tend to know little about 20th century Greece and the injection of a “Western European” imaginary into the Greek national body. From their transition from an occupied ethno-religious minority of the Ottoman Empire to a protectorate of European powers, Greeks faced one of the first immobilizing dilemmas of confronting a “choice” between West versus East, “modern” versus “backward”, when the West demanded the resuscitation of the spirit of their glorious ancestors that necessitated purging their culture of its oriental paraphernalia. The biopolitical regimes and strategies of power adopted after the Civil War of 1946-49 by the state (picking up where the Metaxas regime left off) sought to organize the national narrative into precisely this type of revanchist vista where the purity of Greek civilization and an invented (or imagined) organic and linear heritage had to be preserved and pursued under European and U.S. aegis. In some political discourses this imagery of a resuscitated Greekness translated into long-winded aspirations and justifications for the “emancipation” of Istanbul (a tug-of-war in Greek politics that persisted throughout the 20th century and terminated with an attempt by the Greek junta government to annex Cyprus, which was counteracted by the Turkish government’s occupation of northern Cyprus); in other discourses the need for the protection of Greek civilization from the constant threat of the communist “pest” and its attack on Greek Orthodox values. The history of pre-80s modern Greece is one of ethnic strife and genocide, displacement of Greek communities in Anatolia, the Caucasus, North Africa, Central Asia; the political instability of a post-colonial state marked by periodic coups (both before and after the emphýlios), as well as the ongoing struggle for the better part of the century between the British-imposed royalty, their comprador collaborators, and the Liberals, which played out in the arena of an erratic proxy republic.”
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