Greece without columns: The making of the modern Greeks

by David Holden

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0397007795
• ISBN13: 9780397007790
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: Lippincott
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 3.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Holden cuts to the bone

Holden does a marvelous job of exposing the vast gap between what Westerners think Greece is (the cradle of democracy, blah, blah, blah) and what it is in actuality -- a patriarchal, anti-Western society, if not exactly in the mold of its Arab and Turkish neighbors, close enough for discomfort. Greece is not about Hellenism; it is about living in the dreamworld of the "Megali Idea" in which the Greeks will recover all former Greek Byzantine islands as well as the Byzantine city of Constantinople, lost in 1453 to the Ottoman Muslim empire -- due to the "perfidious West's" failure to come to their aid and to their own constant in-fighting and regicide. HOWEVER, Greeks are never to blame for their self-imposed miseries and political failures -- it's always a conspiracy of foreigners; in other words, they think like Arabs. Both Greeks and Arabs find common cause in hating the Turks for the latter's murderous dominance during the glory days of the Ottoman empire. Understanding politics in the Middle East is all about knowing which ethnic groups hate which ethnic groups and why. America, which pours all its energy into denying ethnic, religious, and racial differences, can't begin to fathom the mindset of the Middle East, where for thousands of years ethnic and religious wars have been waged using wholesale slaughter and scorched earth policies. (That having been said, the illusion of waging a "war for liberation" in Iraq in 2001 is giving the US a rude awakening). Holden has the key to the passions and jealousies and hatreds fueling Greece and Turkey and presents ample proof for his observations.