George W. Bush sent democracy to the Arab world dangling from the nose of a Tomahawk missile back in 2003. No wonder that the man in the street was not seduced by this poisoned gift. That some kind of open system succeeded the Baathist regime in Mesopotamia is neither here nor there, because this openness was bought at the price of vicious sectarian strife, brutal terrorism and civilian carnage. Yes, there were elections and the populace was excited to participate in the ritual; but for the American occupation this was just a sideshow and a mere gesture that they could not avoid, given their mendacious rhetoric. But democracy was not the point of the exercise, neither for the invaders nor for the various tribal and religious groupings jockeying for power. For the former it was strategic and economic control, given the fact that their former protege, i.e. Saddam, outgrew the role allotted to him as a bulwark against Iran. For the latter it was settling scores and mutual annihilation. The Arab world at large was not at all inspired by developments on the banks of the Tigris, as Rumsfeld and co. claimed (and maybe believed) it would be. This is not the kind of democracy that the Arab masses had in mind, i.e. a morsel of meat tossed at caged animals from the end of the occupier's bayonet. It would, thus, be an outrageous blunder to interpret the current revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt (and the ones brewing in Algeria, Morocco and maybe Syrian and Jordan) as a vindication of Bush's "crusade".
In fact the masses in North Africa have been fighting for their own kind of democracy for a very long time now, and always the West was adamantly opposed to these aspirations of theirs. At first the people were seduced by Nasserite national socialism and the third worldism of the Algerian FNL. But soon those fantasies mutated into the ruthless despotism of the new "revolutionary" elites, which pocketed the immense riches of their countries leaving their societies in ever deeper misery. The Algerian and Egyptian generals then changed tack and aligned themselves with Western interests in the area, posing as allies against "extremism". But domestic and cross-border extremism was precisely the result of their failure to create free and just societies at home. Whereas the West, blindly following a "security" imperative which is self-defeating when it goes counter to popular aspirations in the areas concerned, dug itself deeper and deeper in the hole of propping up tyrants that made a mockery of social justice and human rights. It thus ensured he abiding suspicion and even hostility of local grass roots democrats who endured repression and even torture under the Western umbrella.
The miracle of the current Tunisian and the Egyptian revolutions, thus, is the astonishing ideological and political maturity of the masses that have taken possession of the streets. Their demands are clear, simple and not in the least tinged by extremist undertones. This is their great, irresistible strength. All they want is a genuinely democratic order which will heed the aspirations of the brutalized underclass. They also crave the support of western peoples and governments in their struggle, so that they may eventually establish a truly equal partnership with them -instead of the despicable sponsorship of their tormentors that has gone under the name of "alliance" so far. If they succeed, this will constitute a mighty triumph of the best ideals of western civilization in the Middle East, of the very same ideals mocked and traduced by the short-sighted policies of raw military and economic power of western governments in the area.
And what of the Islamists? Have they just melted away? Certainly not. But as of this writing, they seem to have realized that the masses have not been demonstrating for an Islamist theocracy in the place of Mubarak's pharaonic (what an apt appellation!) rule. In Tunisia Gannouchi, the leader of Ennadha who just returned to the country, has been quite explicit in his rejection of the "integrist" agenda. His sincerity can only be tested in the open democratic arena. But I suspect that his democratic conversion is indeed making a virtue of the new cultural necessity. The young generation of internet savvy students and professionals that brought down the tyrant have actually tasted the fruits of unfettered freedom in cyberspace, and hence cannot be docile playthings in some project of demagogic mysticism. The social and cultural basis of Islamism seems to have been drastically eroded in wide areas. This was not the case in Algeria in 1992, when the brief democratic interlude that would indeed have brought the Islamists to power was stopped by the murderous onslaught of the generals applauded by the west. But if the Islamists had been allowed to assume power democratically, chances are that they would not have been able to establish a totalitarian theocracy, and in any case by now their power would have been equally undermined and superseded by the cultural development of Algerian society. Democracy may indeed throw up uncomfortable and even dangerous outcomes on occasion. But all in all it is preferable that its dynamic should be allowed to play itself out, for there is a high probability that it is self-correcting. But of course Algeria has oil and this was not allowed to happen. Islamism may still be the ruling hallucination in the barbaric wastelands of Waziristan, but it cannot appeal, I believe, to educated and historically conscious societies like Egypt, where the chief grievance is that the West is not true to its own ideals which these oppressed people actually uphold. This has also been demonstrated In Iran, of all places. The same open-minded, educated, yes even in the best sense westernized, youth (the great majority of society) almost brought down the regime of the Ayatollahs in 2009. They have a good chance of founding functioning democracies in North Africa -unless frustrated (God forbid) by some blind western reflex of discovering terrorists under every bed.
The same seems to be true of the Egyptian revolution so far. The Muslim Brotherhood is of course politically present. It has always been, despite the fifty-year repression it has endured -more precisely, just because of it. But it has thrown itself behind the broad and formless opposition movement that is not enunciating anything resembling the Brotherhood's ideals. Baradei, their chosen spokesman, is very far from being an Islamist. I was struck to read Robert Fisk's account of the Egyptian tumult in the Independent of London yesterday. He tells us that there was not a hint of either anti-Americanism or Islamist feeling in all the demonstrations he witnessed from Alexandria to Cairo on Saturday last -and this from the most severe critic of American policies in the Middle East. That said, it is conceivable that the more the stalemate lasts, with Mubarak clinging on by the tips of his fingers, and the western governments mouthing pious platitudes in order not to offend their trusted servant, a more extreme inclination might begin to take hold among the demonstrating crowds. Already on Sunday one could see homemade signs held up in Tahrir square sporting the tell-tale code words of Islamism, such as western "hypocrisy", as well as caricatures of Mubarak with the star of David on his forehead. Also some more beards have been appearing. But these things are at the moment negligible, and one hopes that they will not proliferate. It is clear that for this not to happen the "pharaoh" must go, and that the "orderly transition" that the State Department claims to want must involve a clean sweep of the old regime's personnel and repressive apparatus.
As for Israel, it ought to realize that a peace with Egypt is genuine and stable only if it is to be underwritten by a democratic regime clearly expressing the aspirations of the population. A private deal with a corrupt despot cannot be such. The democratic movement in Egypt has already shown such extraordinary signs of maturity that it is highly unlikely that it will elect to go back to a state of confrontation and war. Of course a democratic Egypt will be much stronger as a negotiator and/or partner, so that the extremist wing of the Israeli establishment will be in a much more difficult position in its attempt to impose its patently unfair diktat upon the Palestinians. If this causes unease among these circles, this can only be welcomed. One just hopes that American policy will not be once again hijacked by their reactionary stubbornness.
Long live the Egyptian democratic revolution.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Reading Constantine
Constantine Porphyrogenitus was not exactly what his self-given title implies, namely the generally acknowledged legal heir to the East Roman throne. That he was born "in the purple" is true, in the sense that he first saw the light of this world inside the "holy" palace of the Constantinopolitan emperors. But his mother was not the legal consort of the emperor Leo VI, and therefore as far as the other contenders for power were concerned the offspring of that union, whatever the venue of its generation, precisely lacked the requisite legitimacy. The sickly and intellectual boy, thus, made a point of attaching to his name the famous epithet, through which he has impressed his presence on the tablets of historical memory, in order to bolster a disputed status. He did eventually accede to highest office, but not before a protracted struggle with the faction of General Lecapenus whose issue nevertheless did manage to possess the coveted prize after Constantine's demise.
All this simply points out the tricky nature of the recording and transmission of what "exactly" occurred in the more or less distant past. It is also roughly on par with the political mode and mores -especially regarding imperial succession- of late Roman times, a rough and tumble of competing dynastic and military interests that very often degenerated into murderous violence (as, among numerous other examples, the accession and bloody regime of the tyrant Phocas and the deeds of the empress Irene that de-legitimized the eastern throne show). This ethos of political savagery survived, even predominated, into late medieval times in the Christian East as well as in the Christian West.
This needs to be stressed, because for a very long time cruelty, treachery, violation of filial bonds etc. were seen as somehow the monopoly of "Byzantine" society, thus implicitly absolving the western barbarian kingdoms founded upon the ruins of Roman institutions there of any political chicanery and misdeed. This is of course patently absurd and ridiculous. The Byzantines were merely more refined, subtle and duplicitous in their intrigue, as opposed to the raw brutality of the "Franks", simply because they saw themselves rightly as the inheritors and preservers of the Roman tradition which had been smashed to smithereens by the barbarian invasions elsewhere in Europe. One can see, if one so chooses, the Eastern Roman tradition as a long and tedious story of debauchery and degeneration (something that suited the theoretic purposes of someone like Montesquieu for instance) -and there are elements of that as part of the picture surely. But whether this is the whole and complete story is another question.
One could, alternatively, detect in the interminable series of conflicts and convulsions, foreign and domestic, that Constantine delineates, as well as in the rigid ceremonialism that he expounds, a certain touching cultural heroism, the desperate care to hold on to an intellectual and spiritual patrimony, eventually mediated through the Greek language, without which the world of nature and man would be demystified into utter senselessness. It is in this frame, I believe, that one must try to understand the infamous theological -and theocratic- obsession of the Byzantines. By anchoring their polity in God, by referring all worldly issues to the beyond, they were hoping to salvage the intelligible moral structure of existence in the face of an onslaught of raw physical power, of which the marauding Frankish knights were a most palpable manifestation.
By doing that, of course, they gradually lost their hold on their material reality, both in political and military terms. They were forced to forfeit the actual Imperium, which remained a mere idea in their minds and in their legal codes. This was, indeed, patently un-Roman, as the Enlightenment eagerly historians pointed out. But what the latter maybe disregarded was that Roman times were by the tenth century irrevocably superseded, and that the concurrent Western attempt to resurrect a "Holy Roman Empire" (of the Teutonic nation to boot!!!) was an equally, or even more blatantly, hopeless and reactionary project compared to the Byzantine rear-guard actions -even if one overlooks the beastliness also involved in the realization of the Western Christian mission (Charlemagne Christrianized those that survived his military butcheries, although as always this fact is not of itself enough to found an adequate historical judgment on his career). This account is not meant to absolve the Byzantines of any enormities that they may have committed. Their "Cesaropapism", for one, was certainly illiberal and opprerssive, whereas their theological penchant propelled the masses into a blind fanaticism. But religious intolerance and closed-mindedness was not the exclusive possession of the "Greeks". Medievalism in general was infused with this spirit, and it was only local social and political conditions that enabled western Christendom to emerge from that darkness -while simultaneously preserving the solid cultural achievements of that period.
For the rest, reading through Constantine's De administrando imperio one cannot but be struck by a couple of things that are not usually referred to in the analyses that bring out mainly the political significance of the text. To begin with it is impressive how deep and genuine is the religious faith that informs his admonitions and instructions to his son and presumed successor to the throne. This fact is often debunked and/or mocked by modern accounts of the medieval period, under the interpretative technique of "false consciousness". But what this overlooks is that what might be false consciousness for us, was indeed the truest kind for the historical epoch that adhered to it and in a manner that infused all aspects of its thought and practice. For instance, Constantine, in line with the tradition of chroniclers that he cites, considers the miracles of St. Andrew at Patras as literally true, in the same manner as the popular imagination of the times. That the men of that era may have violated occasionally, or even mostly, the precepts of their faith is neither here nor there, because this is a universal, diachronic trait of the human condition. What is of primary significance is the existential import of those axiological commitments even in the midst of their violation. And of this existential dimension of the faith there is ample and moving evidence in the emperor's writing.
His language is tinged with emotion and his style and diction deliberately imitates that of the Psalms. Quite noteworthy is his statement that he is not going to lay out his thoughts in the attic style of official scholars, but in the spoken language of everyday life. One could thus include the emperor among the champions of the demotic, something that would run counter to the sensibilities of our modern left for which ideological obsession is an end in itself even if it drastically violates both facts as well as historical awareness and judgment (which they do not cease invoking ad nauseam). The emperor's demotic is, as mentioned, shot through with ecclesiastical locutions but in a theological era one could expect no less. The spoken language is always the outcome of the cultural ethos of its times, all of whose multifaceted thrusts and tendencies exercise a formative influence. A demotic is never and can never be a uniform and one-dimensional practice, but is structured by layer upon layer of historical sediments and survivals. In contradistinction, what counts for demotic in today's Greece is only what is sanctioned by the dominant party-political interests of the moment, i.e. a lifeless abstraction deracinated from its historical soil and denuded of all aesthetic and semantic multivalence, ambiguity and suggestiveness. To be sure, these linguistic exertions of the emperor are dedicated to the defense and exaltation of (what else?) the imperial ideal itself, which is however not identified with the person of the reigning monarch but constitutes a supreme ideal to which he himself is simply a servant and executor -again, in harmony with popular perceptions of the matter. Indeed, this treatise could be seen as an exercise in the vein of the "mirrors" of christian princes. Except, that it is not merely an idealized exposition, but is also filled up with rich historical matter. It is this fusion, I believe, that renders it one of the master texts of medieval scholarship.
Another element of the imperial script that ought to be stressed is its express declaration of cultural affinity between the Greek-speaking East Romans and Latin Christianity. This is a remarkable feature, the precludes any employment of this text for the purpose of bolstering the inane Greek nationalist and anti-western reading of Byzantine history that has prevailed in modern Greek education and the public mind -in increasingly crude and repulsive forms as we moved towards the end of the twentieth century. In his instruction to his son on how to contradict barbarian requests to marry into the East Roman imperial family, Constantine explains that intermarriage is permissible only in the case of the "Franks" with whom the Byzantines share a cultural ethos. Old Rome is considered the mother of the new one on the banks of the Bosporus. The Christian Church is still united under the primacy of the bishop of Rome, and this despite the severe rifts that have already transpired in previous centuries (such as the Anastasian schism occasioned by that emperor's Henotikon decree, as well as the iconoclastic controversy in which the Constantinopolitan throne was for a considerable period on the side of what was subsequently recognized as a heresy). Constantine's official statement, thus, is proof that the strong sense of Christian unity across linguistic borders in Europe was a constant in Byzantine cultural and political awareness, surviving acute political crises. In fact, the chief Byzantine complaint against the crusaders later on was going to be that they were in violation of that Christian and Roman unity and solidarity that the eastern empire still upheld. The present imperial text thus reinforces another notion that has disappeared from modern Greek education, and even scholarship I would venture to add, namely that one cannot understand Byzantium except as an integral part of European society and culture despite its unique and distinctive features (all particular European cultures have unique and distinctive features). This messianic understanding of a Greek Byzantium as the only genuine repository of cultural and spiritual values against an alien and decadent West may have been provoked by the anti-Byzantine bias of the 18th century. But this can no longer be an excuse for the persistence of this ideological delusion in modern Greek popular culture and official education, given that the West has long outgrown any shrill anti-Byzantinism. The hegemony of these nationalist fictions can only be explained by crude political and ideological manipulation -and also by utter ignorance of the Byzantine sources themselves.
I will not here comment on the most contentious parts of Porphyrogenitus' writings, namely ch. 49 and 50 of De administrando and the reference in the De Thematibus to the "theme" (or imperial district) of the Peloponnese during the early middle ages, upon which Fallmereyer's famous theories about the de-Hellenization of Greece were based. One reason is that these segments have been analyzed and interpreted to death over the years, and in a manner that strikes me as rather irrelevant today -namely, from a narrowly racial or ethnic point of view. I will only make this preliminary comment: that we usually attribute political bias to the opponents of Fallmereyer (such as Hopf and Paparrigopoulos) whereas in fact political concerns also infuse the Austrian's own arguments. If we abstract from political prejudices on both sides, we may come to see that there is a genuine issue of interpretation concerning the sources which does not allow for any iron-clad claim as to their historical import and meaning. But we may return to this later.
All this simply points out the tricky nature of the recording and transmission of what "exactly" occurred in the more or less distant past. It is also roughly on par with the political mode and mores -especially regarding imperial succession- of late Roman times, a rough and tumble of competing dynastic and military interests that very often degenerated into murderous violence (as, among numerous other examples, the accession and bloody regime of the tyrant Phocas and the deeds of the empress Irene that de-legitimized the eastern throne show). This ethos of political savagery survived, even predominated, into late medieval times in the Christian East as well as in the Christian West.
This needs to be stressed, because for a very long time cruelty, treachery, violation of filial bonds etc. were seen as somehow the monopoly of "Byzantine" society, thus implicitly absolving the western barbarian kingdoms founded upon the ruins of Roman institutions there of any political chicanery and misdeed. This is of course patently absurd and ridiculous. The Byzantines were merely more refined, subtle and duplicitous in their intrigue, as opposed to the raw brutality of the "Franks", simply because they saw themselves rightly as the inheritors and preservers of the Roman tradition which had been smashed to smithereens by the barbarian invasions elsewhere in Europe. One can see, if one so chooses, the Eastern Roman tradition as a long and tedious story of debauchery and degeneration (something that suited the theoretic purposes of someone like Montesquieu for instance) -and there are elements of that as part of the picture surely. But whether this is the whole and complete story is another question.
One could, alternatively, detect in the interminable series of conflicts and convulsions, foreign and domestic, that Constantine delineates, as well as in the rigid ceremonialism that he expounds, a certain touching cultural heroism, the desperate care to hold on to an intellectual and spiritual patrimony, eventually mediated through the Greek language, without which the world of nature and man would be demystified into utter senselessness. It is in this frame, I believe, that one must try to understand the infamous theological -and theocratic- obsession of the Byzantines. By anchoring their polity in God, by referring all worldly issues to the beyond, they were hoping to salvage the intelligible moral structure of existence in the face of an onslaught of raw physical power, of which the marauding Frankish knights were a most palpable manifestation.
By doing that, of course, they gradually lost their hold on their material reality, both in political and military terms. They were forced to forfeit the actual Imperium, which remained a mere idea in their minds and in their legal codes. This was, indeed, patently un-Roman, as the Enlightenment eagerly historians pointed out. But what the latter maybe disregarded was that Roman times were by the tenth century irrevocably superseded, and that the concurrent Western attempt to resurrect a "Holy Roman Empire" (of the Teutonic nation to boot!!!) was an equally, or even more blatantly, hopeless and reactionary project compared to the Byzantine rear-guard actions -even if one overlooks the beastliness also involved in the realization of the Western Christian mission (Charlemagne Christrianized those that survived his military butcheries, although as always this fact is not of itself enough to found an adequate historical judgment on his career). This account is not meant to absolve the Byzantines of any enormities that they may have committed. Their "Cesaropapism", for one, was certainly illiberal and opprerssive, whereas their theological penchant propelled the masses into a blind fanaticism. But religious intolerance and closed-mindedness was not the exclusive possession of the "Greeks". Medievalism in general was infused with this spirit, and it was only local social and political conditions that enabled western Christendom to emerge from that darkness -while simultaneously preserving the solid cultural achievements of that period.
For the rest, reading through Constantine's De administrando imperio one cannot but be struck by a couple of things that are not usually referred to in the analyses that bring out mainly the political significance of the text. To begin with it is impressive how deep and genuine is the religious faith that informs his admonitions and instructions to his son and presumed successor to the throne. This fact is often debunked and/or mocked by modern accounts of the medieval period, under the interpretative technique of "false consciousness". But what this overlooks is that what might be false consciousness for us, was indeed the truest kind for the historical epoch that adhered to it and in a manner that infused all aspects of its thought and practice. For instance, Constantine, in line with the tradition of chroniclers that he cites, considers the miracles of St. Andrew at Patras as literally true, in the same manner as the popular imagination of the times. That the men of that era may have violated occasionally, or even mostly, the precepts of their faith is neither here nor there, because this is a universal, diachronic trait of the human condition. What is of primary significance is the existential import of those axiological commitments even in the midst of their violation. And of this existential dimension of the faith there is ample and moving evidence in the emperor's writing.
His language is tinged with emotion and his style and diction deliberately imitates that of the Psalms. Quite noteworthy is his statement that he is not going to lay out his thoughts in the attic style of official scholars, but in the spoken language of everyday life. One could thus include the emperor among the champions of the demotic, something that would run counter to the sensibilities of our modern left for which ideological obsession is an end in itself even if it drastically violates both facts as well as historical awareness and judgment (which they do not cease invoking ad nauseam). The emperor's demotic is, as mentioned, shot through with ecclesiastical locutions but in a theological era one could expect no less. The spoken language is always the outcome of the cultural ethos of its times, all of whose multifaceted thrusts and tendencies exercise a formative influence. A demotic is never and can never be a uniform and one-dimensional practice, but is structured by layer upon layer of historical sediments and survivals. In contradistinction, what counts for demotic in today's Greece is only what is sanctioned by the dominant party-political interests of the moment, i.e. a lifeless abstraction deracinated from its historical soil and denuded of all aesthetic and semantic multivalence, ambiguity and suggestiveness. To be sure, these linguistic exertions of the emperor are dedicated to the defense and exaltation of (what else?) the imperial ideal itself, which is however not identified with the person of the reigning monarch but constitutes a supreme ideal to which he himself is simply a servant and executor -again, in harmony with popular perceptions of the matter. Indeed, this treatise could be seen as an exercise in the vein of the "mirrors" of christian princes. Except, that it is not merely an idealized exposition, but is also filled up with rich historical matter. It is this fusion, I believe, that renders it one of the master texts of medieval scholarship.
Another element of the imperial script that ought to be stressed is its express declaration of cultural affinity between the Greek-speaking East Romans and Latin Christianity. This is a remarkable feature, the precludes any employment of this text for the purpose of bolstering the inane Greek nationalist and anti-western reading of Byzantine history that has prevailed in modern Greek education and the public mind -in increasingly crude and repulsive forms as we moved towards the end of the twentieth century. In his instruction to his son on how to contradict barbarian requests to marry into the East Roman imperial family, Constantine explains that intermarriage is permissible only in the case of the "Franks" with whom the Byzantines share a cultural ethos. Old Rome is considered the mother of the new one on the banks of the Bosporus. The Christian Church is still united under the primacy of the bishop of Rome, and this despite the severe rifts that have already transpired in previous centuries (such as the Anastasian schism occasioned by that emperor's Henotikon decree, as well as the iconoclastic controversy in which the Constantinopolitan throne was for a considerable period on the side of what was subsequently recognized as a heresy). Constantine's official statement, thus, is proof that the strong sense of Christian unity across linguistic borders in Europe was a constant in Byzantine cultural and political awareness, surviving acute political crises. In fact, the chief Byzantine complaint against the crusaders later on was going to be that they were in violation of that Christian and Roman unity and solidarity that the eastern empire still upheld. The present imperial text thus reinforces another notion that has disappeared from modern Greek education, and even scholarship I would venture to add, namely that one cannot understand Byzantium except as an integral part of European society and culture despite its unique and distinctive features (all particular European cultures have unique and distinctive features). This messianic understanding of a Greek Byzantium as the only genuine repository of cultural and spiritual values against an alien and decadent West may have been provoked by the anti-Byzantine bias of the 18th century. But this can no longer be an excuse for the persistence of this ideological delusion in modern Greek popular culture and official education, given that the West has long outgrown any shrill anti-Byzantinism. The hegemony of these nationalist fictions can only be explained by crude political and ideological manipulation -and also by utter ignorance of the Byzantine sources themselves.
I will not here comment on the most contentious parts of Porphyrogenitus' writings, namely ch. 49 and 50 of De administrando and the reference in the De Thematibus to the "theme" (or imperial district) of the Peloponnese during the early middle ages, upon which Fallmereyer's famous theories about the de-Hellenization of Greece were based. One reason is that these segments have been analyzed and interpreted to death over the years, and in a manner that strikes me as rather irrelevant today -namely, from a narrowly racial or ethnic point of view. I will only make this preliminary comment: that we usually attribute political bias to the opponents of Fallmereyer (such as Hopf and Paparrigopoulos) whereas in fact political concerns also infuse the Austrian's own arguments. If we abstract from political prejudices on both sides, we may come to see that there is a genuine issue of interpretation concerning the sources which does not allow for any iron-clad claim as to their historical import and meaning. But we may return to this later.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
A worthless church and its worthless enemies
Under its present head the church of Greece has in the main been able to regain some of the dignity that it had forfeited under the leadership of its last primate (1998-2008). During those years it had been taken over by an extreme nationalist faction, which construed Orthodox Christianity, and Christianity in general, as the exclusive preserve of the Greek "race". As a result it placed itself at the vanguard of the nationalist explosion that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia, as the God-appointed savior of a national identity supposedly under assault from all points of the compass. Its discourse became a hate-filled rant against the Slav Macedonians, the Turks and, of course, the West, all of them in its eyes colluding in a vast conspiracy to wipe out the unique and chosen tribe of the modern Greeks.
I still cringe as I recall the sight of the previous archbishop verbally attacking the frail and terminally ill Pope Woytyla, who had gone to his headquarters for a courtesy call during his visit to the country in May, 2001. His lecture was mean-spirited and outright rude as he piled on the abuse concerning the perfidy of the Crusaders in 1204 (!), events moreover about which the Polish bishop of Rome had just apologized.
After that Prelate's death the Synod seemed to collect themselves by choosing the present archbishop, an honorable and spiritual person who pointedly eschewed the unsavory demagogy of his predecessor and concentrated on pastoral and humanitarian work. But, of course, the opposing faction had merely beaten a tactical retreat. It is now headed by the metropolitan of Thessalonica, who in his regular Sunday sermons (broadcast live to the nation) keeps on beating the drums of that well-honed intolerance, attacking the usual "enemies" with the same old vehemence and presuming to chide the government for their foreign policy.
Taking advantage of the present archbishop's mild disposition they also rammed through the Synod a "declaration to the people" bemoaning the current "subjugation" of the country to the foreigners, meaning the agreement with the IMF and the EU that led to the bail-out of the country in the face of its economic collapse. It is a cleverly crafted document meant to appeal to the broadest spectrum of political opinion from the extreme Stalinist left to the extreme nationalist right (the latter currently including the main opposition party under its present outrageously stupid and irresponsible leadership).
Another sign of the resurgence of these tendencies, obviously with an eye to the succession of the present primate who is very old, was also the recent anti-Semitic outburst of the bishop of Piraeus which made international headlines. That worthy priest provided extra theoretic depth to the inanities about "foreign occupation" by claiming that the real cause of the economic collapse of the country was the machinations of the Jewish bankers of New York acting at the behest of international Zionism which he equated to a satanic sect. He also opined that international Jewry were in cahoots with Hitler providing him with financial support in a conspiracy to force the Jews of Europe to migrate to Palestine and there to found their new "empire".
These despicable statements were, luckily, condemned by the government and other political leaders here, as well as by Orthodox hierarchs abroad, most notably the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America. But they were not condemned by the Athens Synod; and -if I am to venture a guess- a reliable public opinion survey would find that they do represent a sizable chunk of the population.
I am merely describing these events and I do not want to analyze them further, except for saying that they show the decayed spiritual and institutional condition of the Greek Church and by no means reflect upon the Orthodox Church in its world-wide expanse.
What I would like to discuss, however, at some greater length is the general political response to these ecclesiastical missteps. A time-honored feature of modern Greek public life is that as against one extreme position there crystallizes an antithetical extremism, which is equally denuded of good sense and democratic propriety. This deleterious reflex was also exhibited in this case. A clamor arose, especially from certain circles of the radical left, to the effect that the church is not a legitimate institution at all and that as a result it has no say whatsoever in matters of social significance. This was couched in terms of the separation of church and state, a demand that is undoubtedly justified and overdue. But underneath this constitutionalist talk (which is often insincere since its exponents are quite ready to flout the constitution outright in circumstances that they deem ideologically appropriate) there hides a dogmatism which is just as totalitarian in its thrust as the theocratic nationalism it claims to oppose.
The covert point is that religion as such is a redundant feature of public life, simply because a certain kind of "materialist" ideology is supposed to have "proven" that it is "false consciousness". The adjudicators, needless to say, of what is and what is not "true consciousness" are the self-appointed intellectual elites whose own ideology must be taken as self-evidently true on their say-so. This smugness is coupled with ignorance of the historical role of religion in western society, and the theoretical debates surrounding it, as well as ignorance of the role of the church in Greek society in particular.
One does not need to buy into the "Greco-Christian" cant of the ecclesiastical extremists to acknowledge the fact that through the centuries the social function of the church was to provide, for lack of others, a cultural and institutional frame for the very existence of the Greek-speaking community. This had good as well as bad consequences, but it cannot simply be ignored on the basis of some ideological absolutism. It is highly instructive to remember, for instance, that members of the church were at the forefront of the Greek enlightenment in the 18th century. No more can be said about that in this connection. But it bears repeating that whatever the misdeeds of the ecclesiastical hierarchy then and now, here and elsewhere, this fact (as the great Korais himself noted) is not enough cause to erase the significance of the religious sentiment in human life in general, or the social contribution of the historical churches in the life of various nations (such as the Greek, Polish or Irish to name but a few). What is needed first and foremost is conscientious immersion in the historical record freed, to the extent possible, from ideological blind-sights and prejudgments. But, as is usually the case, those most stridently invoking history for cheap populist gain, whether from the left or right, are those most criminally inept in historical awareness.
So, as much as one must oppose the asinine political interventions of racist priests, we still do need a religious institution with a voice in social matters and trends, even if we might not like what they have to say. It is up to the thoughtful members of the church themselves to steer their institution away from the ingrained tendencies of nationalist demagogy -and such voices have indeed been heard. But it is also up to the secular democrats to avoid the blind alley of an opposite, but equally repulsive, intolerance, which denies the right to speak to anyone who happens to diverge from the ideological obsessions of certain self-admiring factions.
I still cringe as I recall the sight of the previous archbishop verbally attacking the frail and terminally ill Pope Woytyla, who had gone to his headquarters for a courtesy call during his visit to the country in May, 2001. His lecture was mean-spirited and outright rude as he piled on the abuse concerning the perfidy of the Crusaders in 1204 (!), events moreover about which the Polish bishop of Rome had just apologized.
After that Prelate's death the Synod seemed to collect themselves by choosing the present archbishop, an honorable and spiritual person who pointedly eschewed the unsavory demagogy of his predecessor and concentrated on pastoral and humanitarian work. But, of course, the opposing faction had merely beaten a tactical retreat. It is now headed by the metropolitan of Thessalonica, who in his regular Sunday sermons (broadcast live to the nation) keeps on beating the drums of that well-honed intolerance, attacking the usual "enemies" with the same old vehemence and presuming to chide the government for their foreign policy.
Taking advantage of the present archbishop's mild disposition they also rammed through the Synod a "declaration to the people" bemoaning the current "subjugation" of the country to the foreigners, meaning the agreement with the IMF and the EU that led to the bail-out of the country in the face of its economic collapse. It is a cleverly crafted document meant to appeal to the broadest spectrum of political opinion from the extreme Stalinist left to the extreme nationalist right (the latter currently including the main opposition party under its present outrageously stupid and irresponsible leadership).
Another sign of the resurgence of these tendencies, obviously with an eye to the succession of the present primate who is very old, was also the recent anti-Semitic outburst of the bishop of Piraeus which made international headlines. That worthy priest provided extra theoretic depth to the inanities about "foreign occupation" by claiming that the real cause of the economic collapse of the country was the machinations of the Jewish bankers of New York acting at the behest of international Zionism which he equated to a satanic sect. He also opined that international Jewry were in cahoots with Hitler providing him with financial support in a conspiracy to force the Jews of Europe to migrate to Palestine and there to found their new "empire".
These despicable statements were, luckily, condemned by the government and other political leaders here, as well as by Orthodox hierarchs abroad, most notably the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America. But they were not condemned by the Athens Synod; and -if I am to venture a guess- a reliable public opinion survey would find that they do represent a sizable chunk of the population.
I am merely describing these events and I do not want to analyze them further, except for saying that they show the decayed spiritual and institutional condition of the Greek Church and by no means reflect upon the Orthodox Church in its world-wide expanse.
What I would like to discuss, however, at some greater length is the general political response to these ecclesiastical missteps. A time-honored feature of modern Greek public life is that as against one extreme position there crystallizes an antithetical extremism, which is equally denuded of good sense and democratic propriety. This deleterious reflex was also exhibited in this case. A clamor arose, especially from certain circles of the radical left, to the effect that the church is not a legitimate institution at all and that as a result it has no say whatsoever in matters of social significance. This was couched in terms of the separation of church and state, a demand that is undoubtedly justified and overdue. But underneath this constitutionalist talk (which is often insincere since its exponents are quite ready to flout the constitution outright in circumstances that they deem ideologically appropriate) there hides a dogmatism which is just as totalitarian in its thrust as the theocratic nationalism it claims to oppose.
The covert point is that religion as such is a redundant feature of public life, simply because a certain kind of "materialist" ideology is supposed to have "proven" that it is "false consciousness". The adjudicators, needless to say, of what is and what is not "true consciousness" are the self-appointed intellectual elites whose own ideology must be taken as self-evidently true on their say-so. This smugness is coupled with ignorance of the historical role of religion in western society, and the theoretical debates surrounding it, as well as ignorance of the role of the church in Greek society in particular.
One does not need to buy into the "Greco-Christian" cant of the ecclesiastical extremists to acknowledge the fact that through the centuries the social function of the church was to provide, for lack of others, a cultural and institutional frame for the very existence of the Greek-speaking community. This had good as well as bad consequences, but it cannot simply be ignored on the basis of some ideological absolutism. It is highly instructive to remember, for instance, that members of the church were at the forefront of the Greek enlightenment in the 18th century. No more can be said about that in this connection. But it bears repeating that whatever the misdeeds of the ecclesiastical hierarchy then and now, here and elsewhere, this fact (as the great Korais himself noted) is not enough cause to erase the significance of the religious sentiment in human life in general, or the social contribution of the historical churches in the life of various nations (such as the Greek, Polish or Irish to name but a few). What is needed first and foremost is conscientious immersion in the historical record freed, to the extent possible, from ideological blind-sights and prejudgments. But, as is usually the case, those most stridently invoking history for cheap populist gain, whether from the left or right, are those most criminally inept in historical awareness.
So, as much as one must oppose the asinine political interventions of racist priests, we still do need a religious institution with a voice in social matters and trends, even if we might not like what they have to say. It is up to the thoughtful members of the church themselves to steer their institution away from the ingrained tendencies of nationalist demagogy -and such voices have indeed been heard. But it is also up to the secular democrats to avoid the blind alley of an opposite, but equally repulsive, intolerance, which denies the right to speak to anyone who happens to diverge from the ideological obsessions of certain self-admiring factions.
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