I got a sudden spike in hits on my homepage: Jadde — Starting off — the Mission, and was wondering why, when I received the longest comment that I’ve gotten on this blog since I started it in 2012 (I think….).  In three successive missives.

It’s from a certain “Giannis” (whom I applaud on the transliteration but who should consider making the second “i” an “e”) who had an extended and not unintelligent critique of the Jadde’s and mine (NikoBako’s) general assumptions and ideological direction.  I looked up a website that was attached to his comments and found this:

Stormfront.org and some screenshots of their homepage:

The truth is “hate” to those who hate the truth!

We are a community of racial realists and idealists. Black, Hispanic, Asian and Jewish Nationalists openly support their racial interests, with American taxpayers even required to support the Jewish ethnostate of Israel. We are White Nationalists who support true diversity and a homeland for all peoples, including ours. We are the voice of the new, embattled White minority!

(For those who don’t know who David Duke is, here’s the Wiki-page opening description:

David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American neo-Nazi, anti-semitic conspiracy theorist, far-right politician, convicted felon, and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke is a Holocaust denier, and espouses conspiracy theories about Jewish control of academia, the press, and the financial system.^[3][4] Duke has been described by the Anti-Defamation League as “perhaps America’s most well-known racist and anti-Semite”.^{[5]  )}

Now, what do you do to a commentary like this?  Because it’s extensive, well-educated, literate and completely wacked.  No joke.  I remember Adam Gopnik’s article in the New Yorker back in the 90s where he wrote a piece about reading the Ken Starr report on Clinton and his major constitutional crime of getting a blow job in the Oval Office, that it was like (a total paraphrase):

“…reading an extended passage from an early Gothic, eighteenth-century novel, where a most articulate writer goes on and on in a treatise about an egregious evil that needs to be vanquished, until you slowly realize that it’s the writer himself who is insane.”

Gianni himself is clearly not insane.  Which makes him all the more unsettling to have to deal with.  I mean, he goes as Brennus Dux Gallorum on-line, but that might just be a cool fantasy of his like my Rome-Gladiator-Russell Crowe obsession (“Rome is the Light.”)  I’m posting his three comments to me today, so that readers all have a chance to go through them if they’re interested.

I can’t possibly take them on as a whole, so over the next few weeks I’ll be posting responses to separate passages of his.  In any event, it’s gratifying to know that the right kind of people disagree with you.

Ready?  Here we go!

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One:

I think that “Heretic” views like this one of this blogger, usually come from the combination of generalizations (for example, “my father’s experience in a specific region in a specific period (epirus of early 20th century) is generalized to all of modern Greece etc) as well as misconceptions, distortions and misinterpretations of historical entities, facts etc. The greatest distortion (which is not a “lie”, i mean the author of the blog is not
aware of his “mistake”) is where and with whom he associates Byzantine empire: Byzantine empire, is technically perceived by him as an Asian/West Asian entity like ottoman empire or Arabic states are, for a combination of two reasons: Its geographical location into the same area that Ottomans built their empire later, and the fact that it was not Roman-Catholic.

Geography is just geography, USA is built on the same lands that native Americans once used to live, but it hardly has anything to do with native Americans. Europe, as it is perceived technically after 7th century, is a combination of the three criteria
that Paul Vallery mentioned: Christianity, Roman law and Greko-Roman heritage. From this aspect yes, there were great differences between Charlemagne’s empire/its succesors and Byzantines, but in the end, what was Byzantine empire if not the Christian Roman empire, and what was Charlemagne’s Europe if not another Christian Roman succesor?
The basic criteria of Paul Valery that i talked about before. Yes Orthodox differ from Catholics, and Catholics differ from Lutherans. But in the end, all of them are equally Christian, and distant from muslims.

Were the Ottomans and Arabs “Christian Roman succesors”? The answer is JUST NO, and no further details are needed about that. As for the rest that he says, it has to do with personal experiences of the author, which sometimes are regional rather than “panhellenic”, and it’s no coincidence that 9 our of 10 examples here on how Greeks are supposed to belong to a supposed zone from Balkans to south Asia, are examples of Greeks who either lived in Northern regions near Balkans and Turkey and wasted time under ottomans until late 1913 and from early 15th century or Anatolian Greeks or even Romani Greek people. The majority of Greeks, who come from regions with deep and long contacts with Southwest and sometimes central Europe, like Southern Greeks or Greek islanders are almost ignored.

I have met Greek-Americans who according to themselves “partied better” with Irish, or with African Americans. The only sure is that both my personal experience, and if i am not mistaken according to what polls have shown, Americans of South Italian and
Portuguese ancestry are those who interact with Greek Americans more than anyone else. Not Turks (who aren’t even numerous in America, to start with, so the way the author had so many experiences with Balkan and Turkish people is a mystery) not Balkan-Americans. In my family i have not even one (Greek) American person married or related to any Turkish or Balkan American, I rather have relatives married to Italians,Irish and in one case ulster Scot American, and interactions are not limited to marriage of course.

Add to this the fact that Americans of Arabic and Turkish descent were far closer to Americans of any ancestry (from Black to Scandinavian and of course Greeks included) than their original countrymen are to people from other countries
in the world (because of Americanization of middle easterners in America, it’s obvious), and you can see how distortions are created. In Fact, Greeks in Smyrna and even in Istanbul who are stereotyped as more “oriental influenced” than other Greeks, had more reactions and intermarriages with other European communities of these cities than with Turks.

As a conclusion, if people today, and to a lower degree back then, do not consider Greece as “less European” than they consider Sweden, instead of considering it anything like Arabic nations, this has to do with what people see, that Greeks live
like Europeans, act behave like Europeans, have European attitudes, that Greeks in the end are Europeans. The fact that Greeks were oppressed by Ottomans 200 years ago (it’s not me saying that, it was Greeks themselves, who revolted for almost
150 cases before the 1821’s revolution) will not make Greeks “non-European”, let alone modern Greeks. 200 years ago, we didn’t belong to a world “from Bosnia to Bengal”, we were OPPRESSED to join this world, and we revolted 150 times to join the world to which we felt closer to, the world to which you put Croatia, the “damned” Western world. Today, 200 years later, we clearly belong to this world, there is no common consiousness
with people from “parts of the world in question”. In the case of Greeks from South and the islands there was no common consciousness back then,
you can’t expect from people even from multi-ethnic Istanbul (greek community) or Salonica or Ioannina to have common consciousness with these countries today

not to mention that your thinking isn’t even Huntingtonian: Huntington never even thought of such a “zone” and putting Orthodox Christians among muslims, he rather separated Orthodox countries from Catholic and Protestant, (in constrast to most of Authors who consider orthodox Europeans as part of modern west)

As for Greece being Balkans or not, that’s something more complicated, and many authors give different answers and for different aspects

In my opinion, the answer which is closer to reality is that of encyclopedia Britanica: ” Greece, because its northern regions of Epirus and Macedonia are often considered parts of the Balkans, also appears on many lists of Balkan states, but it is arguably better characterized as primarily a Mediterranean country.” https://www.britannica.com/place/Balkans

We can not ignore Slavic invasions, neither the Ottoman rule in Greece, or the influences that these events left. But Equally we can’t ignore communism in Balkans vs capitalism in Greece most of 20th century, the medieval Frankish, Venetian etc influence in Greece, when most of Balkans (and northern Greece) were ruled by Balkan principalities, like Serbian and Bulgarian empire, the Bavarian and later Danish rule since early 1800’s at the same time that most of neighboring Balkan countries didn’t gain independence before 1912 etc and the influences that these events brought to Greece

Greece is not a pure balkan country, neither a pure “southwestern” European country, it’s a country intermediate to Christian countries of Balkan Europe and Southwest European countries. Some regions, especially northern regions, are closer to Balkans,
other regions closer to SouthWest. We can’t ignore Metsovo in Epirus and its architecture which is Ottoman and very similar to the equally Ottoman architecture of Berat, but we can’t also ignore Anapli (Nafplio) or Corfu and their Italian looking architecture. We can’t
ignore Dolmas, but we can’t ignore Pasticcio, or Strapatsada (from italian uovo strapatsate) or Makarounes. Nevertheless, it’s safe to say that today Christian countries of Balkans belong to the Western world, meanwhile muslim countries of Balkans or muslim minorities or even Romani minorities do not. This is something that I experience every day (in terms of Romani, as in my birthplace there’s no muslim minority, but only muslim immigrants)

Now let me make a guess: As you said, you are not a nationalist, i respect that, but tell us honestly, are you a non-nationalist because of being a “humanist” or because nationalism is an anti-imperial product of European enlightenment, which (enlightenment)
fully affected Greek society through education and arts, gave an end to Greek-Ottoman “co-existence”, an end to the ottoman empire itself and many other west asian entities and made Greece European?

In any case, enlightenment is part of Greek civilization, and we are not going to give up our heritage, as much as Spain has no reason to return to any “moorish” status

Sincerely yours
Giannis

Two:

And one more thing, this time about “And Greece, even more inextricably, means Turkey, the two being, as they are, ‘veined with one another,’ to paraphrase the beautiful words of Patricia Storace.”. You can’t accuse “nationalism” and enlightenment, as this is where the “interconnection” between these two countries come from, and let me explain what i mean:

I guess the “link” between Greece and Turkey, which makes the two countries “veined with one another” are the “Orthodox Greek speakers” of Turkey who, without enlightnement and the idea of “nation” which is a product of enlightenment, wouldn’t considered themselves the same nation as Greeks from, let’s say Peloponnese or Cyclades, they didn’t have so many things in common with them to do. In case that I wrongly guessed and the link between Greeks and Turks in your opinion is mainland Greeks themselves then i am sorry, but not only you are wrong, but, with all Turkish influences in mainland Greeks, mainland Greeks are less Ottoman influenced than people from other Southern Balkan countries, due to a smaller period of Ottoman rule in Greece (northern regions excluded) than Southern Balkans.

There is no other link between Greece and Turkey, than people who lived as east as Cappadokia and started thinking that they are the same nation with Orthodox Greek speakers of Greece only after enlightenment’s influence and the idea of nation this influence brought.

Three:

I can’t speak about rural life in 1912’s ottoman empire, including some of its parts which nowadays belong to Greece.

But in the kingdom of Greece, my great-grandparents got married at 28.

See also:  “Stormfront​ I​: Just so we know what we’re dealing with in Giannis and — probably — Kristos“, “Me and the Stormfront bros, III: Gianni calls me by my Albanian name“, “Me and the Stromfront bros, IV. A reader, my podruzhka M, from Novi Sad, says:“, “Me and the Stromfront bros, V. A reader, C. from Italy, says:“,   “Me and the Stormfront bros, post VI — A reader writes: nonsense born of fear“,  “Me and the Stormfront bros, VII: Kristos, how I’m wrong and Carly Simon: “I bet you think this song is about you…”“

The Valley of Dropoli, the pass up to the Pogoni plateau near Libochovo, and in the distance, the snowcapped peaks of Nemerčka, from the Monastery of the Taxiarches in Derviçani, Easter 2014

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Comment: nikobakos@gmail.com

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