Ovi Magazine Issue #24: Nationalism - Published: 2013-01-31

Theme
Christos Mouzeviris
Nationalism semantics
I
often get very embarrassed by the
rise of nationalism in my home
country, Greece. Somehow, a bunch
of misguided airheads and the youths
that fell for their doctrine of hatred
believe that they are true Greeks and
they represent Hellenism or protect it from
the “corrosion” of immigration.
I feel so ashamed that the Greek nation
became synonymous with xenophobia,
neo-Nazism and far-right nationalism. In a
country that suffered so much by the Nazi
occupation and that had experienced mass
emigration to Europe, the Americas and
Australia, to have now groups of skinheads
beating up any immigrant they find is
disappointing.
How can they ever call upon the ancient
Greek ancestors of theirs, to justify their
brutality and ignorance? If they had ever read
the speech of Alexander the Great at Opis,
where he famously claimed that he does not
classify people according their decadence or
race but their virtue, I wonder why then they
think they honour his memory by beating
immigrants.
Have they ever understood the teachings
of many ancient Greek philosophers,
especially of the Stoic movement and
those of Zeno of Citium? They promoted
cosmopolitanism and believed that all people
are manifestations of the one universal spirit
and should live in brotherly love and readily
help one another.
So if the Greek mind has in the past given
birth to those ideas, how on Earth their
descendants believe that with their actions
are protecting and promoting Hellenism and
“Greekness?”
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