[ALBSA-Info] Article by T. Michas on Balkan Issues

[Agron Alibali]

Greekworks.com: Antiamericansim of Communists and Christians [T. Mihas, 1-11-01]


www.greekworks.comNovember 5, 2001 Strange Bedfellows: The Anti-American Alliance of Communists andChristians in GreeceBy TAKIS MICHASNovember 1, 2001No sooner had the major fires been extinguished from what was left of theWorld Trade Center towers in New York last month than the followers of theGreek communist party were out in full force in the streets of Athensprotesting against "the US murderers" and "the terrorist Bush." They did sobecause, according to the Communist Party of Greece, the September 11attacks were the result of US global policies.The view that the September 11 attacks were not a ruthless act committed bycold-blooded murderers was also echoed in statements made by ArchbishopChristodoulos, primate of the Orthodox church in Greece. In a sermondelivered a few days after the tragic events, he interpreted these terroristacts as a consequence of the inequality and injustice prevailing in theworld.The similarity of the views expressed by the Orthodox church of Greece andthe communist party (KKE) concerning the attack against the WTC was one moresign of the gradual ideological convergence of the two organizations.Indeed, the rapprochement between the party and the Church constitutes oneof the most remarkable political developments in Greece during the lastdecade. This ideological convergence encompasses issues such asglobalization and the nature of the capitalist system, but above all itcenters on the common dislike both groups feel for the West, and especiallythe United States.The event that acted as a catalyst in bringing about this rapprochement waswithout a doubt the war in the former Yugoslavia. Throughout the 1990s, bothorganizations passionately supported Slobodan Milosevic's policies in Bosniaand later Kosovo, while at the same time very strongly opposing NATO and USinterference in the region.The Greek communist party was one of the most vocal opponents of NATO'sactions during both the Bosnia and Kosovo wars, allegedly because theyviolated Serbian sovereignty and aimed to undermine Milosevic. The partyalso played a prominent role in organizing mass rallies and open-airconcerts and meetings in which US-led "aggression" against Yugoslavia wasdenounced in the strongest terms. One of the party's most noteworthy actionsin this respect was the creation in November 2000 of a Balkan Anti-NATOCenter in Thessaloniki whose aim was to coordinate anti-NATO activities inthe region. The party was also one of Milosevic's staunchest supporters,and, in January 2001, when Milosevic's other political friends in Greecebegan to distance themselves from him, its general secretary, AlekaPapariga, visited him in Belgrade to show her party's solidarity.Equally strong was the identification of the Greek Orthodox church withMilosevic's policies. For almost a decade, the Greek church provided theideological legitimacy for war crimes in Bosnia. The Church even invitedRadovan Karadzic, who has been indicted by the international tribunal at theHague for war crimes, to visit Athens in the summer of 1993 to be honored ata rally in Piraeus. During the war in Bosnia, Greek Orthodox prieststraveled regularly to the ravaged country to provide spiritual succor to theBosnian Serb army in Sarajevo, Zvornik, and other areas.Moreover, during the war in Kosovo, the US and its president were frequentlydenounced by Christodoulos and other Church dignitaries as "Demon" or"Satan," and New York City as "the Whore of Babylon." The archbishop saw theWestern intervention in Kosovo as an attempt to eliminate Orthodoxy fromevery corner of Europe. The NATO attacks were thus, according to this lineof argument, motivated by hatred against Orthodoxy and had as their aim theelimination of Orthodox religious monuments in the region!If the love affair between Greek communists and the Orthodox church startedwith the war in the former Yugoslavia, it certainly did not end there. Onthe contrary, it extended to other issues. This was stressed by the Greekarchbishop when, in an interview to the Sunday Vima early this year, he saidthat he finds the Communist Party of Greece's geopolitical views on issuessuch as globalization, Kosovo, and US foreign policy, to be much closer tothose of his Church than those of many other political parties.At the same time, Archbishop Christodoulos has increasingly adoptedleft-wing concepts and the vocabulary of the left. In one of his mostnoteworthy speeches recently, he compared the US to Nazi Germany. In January2000, during a speech to a fundamentalist group, he said that he wasfrightened by the expression, "new world order," to describe the dominant USrole in the world because, as he put it, the Nazis had used the same term.In the same speech, he accused former president Bill Clinton of beingresponsible for the mass slaughter of innocents, saying that he had blood onhis hands. His comparison of the US with Nazi Germany was made more explicita few days later when, during a sermon in Thessaloniki, he called Clinton aninsidious fascist. The archbishop's comments, of course, provoked strongprotests by the US ambassador to Athens, Nicholas Burns.The convergence of the Church's positions with those of the communists maynot simply be an opportunistic alliance reflecting a specific politicalconjuncture. Some very influential thinkers in the Church have recentlyargued that Orthodoxy represents the only true form of communism. Includedin their ranks is Father George Metallinos, a theology professor at theUniversity of Athens and frequent guest on television talk shows. Accordingto this view, the persecution by the Bolsheviks of the Orthodox church inRussia was not an attempt to impose a secular order by violent means.Rather, it was an attempt by the German kaiser's "agent," Vladimir Lenin, toimpose false communism on the country by destroying the true communism ofthe Orthodox church.However, one of the most important elements fueling the Greek church'sstrong anti-Western posture - and thus indirectly its ideologicalrapprochement with the equally anti-Western communist party - has been theappearance of a group of influential Neo-Orthodox thinkers who have revivedand brought into focus the antagonism that existed between the Orthodox Eastand the Latin West during the Middle Ages. What these thinkers have done isto recast traditional religious conflicts in the contemporary idiom of worldpolitics and to use them as the basis for advocating policy positions whoseultimate aim is the total separation of Greece from the West.According to the Neo-Orthodox, Greece has nothing to gain from its contactswith the West. For them, just as for Muslim fundamentalists, the West isinferior, corrupt, and dominated by extreme political amoralism. Moreover,the West continues to perpetuate the legacy of hatred for the Orthodoxchurch that started with the Great Schism and the filioque dispute, andculminated in the sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204.Thus, according to this view, Western hatred is primarily directed towardthe Greeks, not only because of their religious beliefs but also becauseGreeks are the "inheritors" of the Byzantine empire. The West, particularlythe United States, has been trying continuously to undermine Greek interestsby helping Greece's enemies, including Turkey, the former Yugoslav republicof Macedonia, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Albanians. Greece has beensubjected to the ultimate degradation of having to rely on the West for itscontinued existence by pleading for Western protection against the Turks.All the misfortunes that have befallen Greeks during their recent history -from the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922 to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in1974, and the resulting division of the island - have thus been duepresumably to Greece's failed attempt to imitate the West. The Greeks'decline will not end, therefore, until they recognize their superiority asmembers of the Orthodox church.More recently, in a column in Kathimerini, the newspaper of record for Greekconservatives, one of the more distinguished members of the movement,Professor Christos Gianaras, condoned the terrorist attacks againstWashington and New York, and compared them to similar acts committed by theGreek fighters of the War of Independence of 1821! It is also of interest tonote that, in some instances, relations between the communist party andOrthodoxy are not restricted to ideology but also extend to politics. Thus,one prominent member of the Neo-Orthodox movement, Kostas Zouraris, wasincluded in the list of parliamentary candidates that the Greek communistparty filed in the last elections.According to both the Neo-Orthodox and the communist party, the rot inGreece will stop only when Greeks substitute the "servility" thatcharacterizes their relationship with the West with the spirit of resistanceagainst the latter's immoral barbarism. Herein lies Greece's path tosalvation and moral rejuvenation. That day, unfortunately, may come muchsooner than they think - with consequences, however, that no one can predictat the moment.Takis Michas writes for the Greek daily Eleftherotypia and is a frequentcontributor to the Wall Street Journal Europe. His book, The UnholyAlliance: Greece and Milosevic's Serbia during the 1990s, will be publishednext year by Texas A&M University Press.



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