Saturday, May 27, 2023

CRETAN COLLABORATORS


 

The other day I attended the commemoration of the Battle of Crete at the Shrine of Remembrance. In a solemn and poignant ceremony, members of the Australian and Greek armed forces and members of the community commemorated the immense sacrifice of the Cretans and their Allies during the Nazi invasion of that island. The Cretans not only put up a solid and unrelenting resistance to the Nazi occupiers. They also risked their lives to assist in the evacuation and concealment of stranded Allied soldiers, often paying a terrible collective price for their noble patriotism. Their heroism is the raw material from which legends are made and their descendants can rightfully be proud of their legacy.

Not all share that legacy however. Featured herein is a photograph from the German occupation of Crete. It is New Year’s Day 1944. The so-called "Governor of Crete", Ioannis Passadakis, is depicted departing the headquarters of the Nazi administration in Chania, after a reception was held in honour of the "representatives" of the Cretan people. The caption accompanying the unsettling image, first published in the collaborationist rag “Cretan Herald” is most instructive:

"A nice photograph from the official reception of the Greek authorities and representatives of Chaniot society, held in Chania on the occasion of the New Year, before the main Commander of the fortresses of Crete. The representative of the Commander of Fortress Crete bids farewell to Governor Passadakis and other officials at the entrance of the German Administration Building.”

The newspaper went on to report “Governor Passadakis’” speech at the New Year’s reception, on behalf of the Cretan populace. Its content is decidedly not what one would  expect from a Cretan. Instead we are treated to an oleaginous and obsequious, stomach churning array of verbosity, whereby Passadakis characterises the genocidal Nazi occupiers as  "valiant children of the great and powerful German Race",  whose victories  would apparently cause "the peoples of Europe, saved from the Bolshevik hordes by [the Nazi] struggle, will express their admiration and gratitude to Germany and to you, her brave children, and will raise you to the glorious position that you deserve..."

In contrast to the sacrifices being made in the mountains and villages of the islands by indomitable Cretans resolved not to rest until the invader was expelled from land, Passadakis in his speech was referencing another sacrifice, not that that of his people but that of his overlords and puppet-masters. "But their sacrifice,” he gushed, “will not be in vain. The great victory will be the reward of this sacrifice. The victory of Germany and with it the victory of Christianity and the Culture of Europe. The victory of light against darkness, against atheism, against Asiatic barbarity".

Not long before Passadakis gave his nauseating speech, the Nazis had committed the Viannos massacres, a mass extermination campaign against the civilian residents of around twenty villages located in the areas of Viannos and Ierapetra, with the human toll amounting to one of the deadliest massacres during the Axis occupation of Greece, second only to the massacre of Kalavryta. They would go on later than year in August, to burn the village of Anogeia, burning 6 elderly disabled women and executing another nine disabled villagers. Given the extent of their depravity, Passadakis appreciation of just how the Cretans saw their Nazi oppressors is noteworthy:

"The Cretan people did not know the Germans before the war, but during their stay here they began to regard them as people not only brave but also of honest character, as people with a good and deeply loving heart, who do not hate the population, but want its love and friendship….”

 

Passadakis was perhaps the most ardent German-loving collaborator during the Nazi occupation of Crete and bent over backwards to please his masters. Formerly surnamed Pachiadakis, changing his name only after being disowned by his family owing to his fascistic proclivities he was a lawyer educated in Germany, whence he derived his adoration of all things Germanic. In the twenties he stood as a People’s Party candidate for parliament for the seat of Heraklion and it is probable that his failure to carve a political career caused him to seek more opportunistic means of advancement. A fervent admirer of Nazi propaganda chief Goebbels, he regurgitated his drivel often and in acceptable enough form to be noticed by the collaborationist prime minister of Greece Tsolakoglou, who appointed him prefect of Heraklion, being promoted to Governor of Crete, a post he held also during the Quisling administrations of Logothetopoulos and Rallis.

Not permitted by his Nazi controllers to hold any real power, Passadakis was nonetheless prized by them as a propagandist, often addressing the entire nation through Nazi radio in Athens. He called Hitler "a great and inspiring leader", and he did not neglect to send him telegrams of devotion every year on his birthday. The main goal of his policy, as he wrote in enthusiastic articles for the SS, was for Germany to win the war and for Greece to benefit from submission to Germany, which he wrote was  a divine imperative. Alternating between soft propaganda and ugly threats, he threatened the Cretan people after the Allied kidnapping of General Heinrich Kreipe with complete annihilation.

In this he was joined by other high ranking members of Cretan society such as Archmandrite Evgenios Psalidakis, Mayor of Heraklion M Pleuris and President of the Cretan Bar Association Emmanuel Melissidis, who co-wrote and signed the following proclamation, also published in the Cretan Herald:

"The undersigned, representing in this matter the opinion and feelings of the entire people of the Prefecture of Heraklion, bearing in mind the unknown disappearance of General Kripe, a) express our deep pain and indignation at this act b) believe that the Cretan people did not participate in these acts, and if they have, they must be the malicious elements who have recently engaged in murderous and predatory acts against peaceful people. creating friction between the people of Crete and the Occupation Forces and d) appeal to all Cretans as a matter of urgency for anyone who knows anything that could shed any light on the case of General Kreipe's disappearance to reveal this to the Greek or German Authorities, confident that in this way they provide a great service to our country and contribute to the prevention of great evil.”

A willing henchman in the dissemination of such propaganda was the proprietor of the Cretan Herald Petros Vavoglis, who placed his paper at the disposal of the Nazis. He died before the withdrawal of the Nazi forces from Crete, executed by resistance fighters in June 1944, only to have his own rag eulogise him as one who “fell on the ramparts of the national struggle.”

Passadakis was arrested after the war and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1945 for being a collaborator. In 1949, he was charged with providing the Nazis with 300 names of members of the Cretan resistance and thus contributing to their deaths but was acquitted of all charges.

Prison, where Passadakis eventually died, was perhaps the safest place for him. Other Cretan collaborators did not fare as well, especially those who were members Greek-speaking Sergeant Friedrich Schubert’s Jagdkommando Schubert, a paramilitary terrorist group affiliation to the Nazi Wermhacht. He commanded the infamous «Σουμπερίτες» an armed group of pro-Nazi Cretans mainly from the Tzoulias family in the village of Krousonas and used them in order to capture local resistance fighters and those who assisted them.

The Somarakis family in particular was responsible for the deaths of thirty-five resistance fighters, who they betrayed to Schubert. They were apprehended after the war and were tried as collaborationists in Herakleion. When the court pronounced sentence, it was not considered commensurate to the crime by the populace who broke into the courtroom and hacked them to pieces.

Another collaborator, Nikos Magiasis was responsible for the deaths of three hundred resistance fighters. Educated in Athens, he was originally in the resistance before he was captured and turned as an interpreter for the Nazis. He soon evolved into a sadistic killer. Capturing the nineteen year old Stavros Andreadakis from Sokara, he crucified him, cut off his legs and then ran over him with a tank. While awaiting trial in the Collaborationist Court after the war, the brother of another of his victims, the shepherd Mikhail Vrentzos from Anogeia, broke in and stabbed him to death.

Village lore abounds in Crete as to the just desserts meted out to collaborators and I remember having a conversation with the late Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis about the mantinades composed by the Cretans about their revenge killings, suggesting that the phenomenon was more widespread than is commonly thought. Whether from conviction, ambition, opportunism or local feud, Cretan collaborators compounded the fear and misery visited upon their compatriots by the inhuman Nazi occupation. The fact that the Cretan people managed to mount such an uncompromising resistance not only in the face of a sadistic and better equipped regular army while being betrayed by the traitors among them renders their achievement all the more significant.


DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 27 May 2023

Saturday, May 20, 2023

GENOCIDE RECOGNITION IN TASMANIA

To paraphrase a certain Marxist, a spectre is haunting Australia. The spectre of Genocide Recognition. South Australia was the first Australian state to officially recognise the genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. New South Wales, where a prominent and often vandalised monument to the Genocide exists, was the next to follow suit.

On 11 May 2023, the Premier of Tasmania Jeremy Rockliff stood before the Tasmanian House of Assembly and moved the following motion, one of the most extensive and comprehensive dealing with the Genocide, ever:

 

“That the House:—

 

(1) Joins the members of the Tasmanian Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Communities in honouring the memory of the approximately 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children and over 1 million Assyrians and Greeks who fell victims to the first genocide of the 20th century.

(2) Condemns the Genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks and all other acts of genocide committed during the 20th century, as the ultimate act of racial, religious and cultural intolerance.

(3) Recognises and honours the extraordinary humanitarian efforts of the then newly formed Commonwealth of Australia, including Tasmania, for the orphans and other survivors of the genocide, which set a proud tradition of international humanitarian efforts by our State.

(4) Further recognises the importance of remembering and learning from such dark chapters in human history, to ensure that such crimes against humanity are not allowed to be repeated.

(5) Further condemns and opposes all attempts to use the passage of time to deny or distort the historical truth of the Genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks and other acts of genocide committed in the 20th century.

(6) Acknowledges the 34 UN member states (including US, Canada, France, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland) that have recognised the Genocide.”

 

The Tasmanian House of Assembly unanimously passed the motion, meaning that the State of Tasmania is now the third Australian state to officially recognise the Genocide. The sensitive statements made to the House by politicians of all persuasions recognising the hurt and pain caused by the crime were inordinately moving.

 

There is something intensely poignant about this overt political act, that distinguishes it from the recognition process in the other two Australian states. This is because Tasmania is the state in which during what historians term the “Black War,” terrible massacres of  Aboriginal Tasmanians took place as colonists established cordons designed to remove Aboriginal Tasmanians from their homes and confine them to the Tasman Peninsula. The author of the term and the legal concept of genocide, Raphael Lemkin, considered Tasmania the site of one of the world's clear cases of genocide and writer, historian and art critic Robert Hughes has described the loss of Aboriginal Tasmanians as "the only true genocide in English colonial history".

 

As a result, in a land that has seen so much bloodshed, and with historians still disputing the exact nature of the fate of the Aboriginal Tasmanians, it takes a good deal of moral fibre, compassion and decency to appreciate the Genocide of peoples that took place a century ago, half a world away. While it is true that Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks have settled in Australia in large numbers, their communities within Tasmania are hardly numerous or electorally significant. Evidently, the Tasmanian House’s recognition of the Genocide has nothing to do with eliciting the ethnic vote and everything to do with acknowledging a historical wrong.

 

It could be argued that as Australian states have no powers in relation to foreign affairs, Tasmania’s recent recognition is of no practical effect. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recent scholarship has uncovered conclusive evidence of the manner in which the Genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire served as inspiration and a blueprint for the Nazis in the removal of unwanted minorities from their own country. The longer crimes of this nature go unrecognised, the more similar crimes do they enable. Consequently, as realpolitik ensured that the perpetrators of the Genocide not only remained unpunished but were instead rewarded by the successor regimes that also engaged in similar practices, with the World Powers either actively aiding, in the case of the Soviet Union or making pious noises without intervening, in the case of the West, we can draw a direct line of causation from the Genocide during Ottoman times, to the Genocidal policies of Kemal Ataturk, the 1933 genocide of Assyrians at Simele in Iraq, the 1955 anti-Greek pogrom of Constantinople, the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the 1988 Sumgait massacre of the Armenians by Azerbaijanis and the depredations of ISIS against Assyrians, Yezidis and Christians in general in Iraq and Syria in 2014. The more entities willing to condemn historical genocides, the harder it is for regimes to morally justify committing the same crimes again.

 

It is also requires no great conceptual leap to consider that the condemnation of historical genocides such as that against Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, often referred to as “the first genocide of the twentieth century,” is a stepping stone to reconciliation with our First Peoples within Australia. Genocides may be locale specific, but their causes ultimately have similar roots: fear, intolerance, hatred, racism, discrimination, tyranny, and a dehumanizing public discourse that denies or aims to deny whole groups of people their dignity and their rights. When we condemn a specific genocide, we are then able by inference to condemn all of them, facilitating discussion and courses of action that can heal local wounds. The Armenian, Assyrian and Greek communities can thus be rightfully proud of their role as leaders in spearheading such reconciliation.

 

The principled positions of South Australia, New South Wales and now Tasmania mean that half of all Australian states formally recognise the enormity of the crime against humanity that was the Genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. This creates momentum for the formal recognition of the Genocide by the Federal Government. The key ingredients for such recognition are already in place. In 2011, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for Federal recognition of the Genocide and acknowledged the outpouring of Australian support for victims of the Armenian Genocide as the country’s first international humanitarian relief effort, going as far as referring to it as “one of the greatest crimes in modern history.” In May 2022, just prior to becoming Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese called upon the Ottoman Empire’s successor state to “come to terms with its history”. At the same time, Federal Leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt said: “The Greens have consistently called on the Australian government to recognise the… Genocide. We must not remain on the wrong side of history along with Turkey and other nations that refuse to acknowledge this horrific tragedy,” a sentiment echoed by Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam in November 2022.

 

The above notwithstanding and despite whatever pious noises leaders of Federal governments make while in opposition, no Federal Government to date has formally recognised the Genocide. Credible sources attribute this to a desire to maintain friendly relations with Turkey, who is a significant regional power that acts aggressively every time the issue is brought up. Yet as the recognition of the Genocide by France, Sweden, Austria and more recently the United States indicates, the recognition of historical wrongs is no impediment to the maintenance of friendly relations. Australia’s case is unique however, given the importance of the Gallipoli landings to its national narrative and the need to maintain access to the site for ceremonies, something that Turkey has in the past threatened to obstruct. Yet as Associate Professor Hans Lukas Kieser has pointed out, “can the Allies’ failed invasion of Gallipoli be honestly commemorated without remembering the… genocide?”

 

Our murdered ancestors will rest easier knowing that their plight was so heinous that it moved an entire assembly of politicians at the utter end of the world to acknowledge it. They did so, in the conviction that barbarities of this nature must never be committed by anyone ever again. And for this, we are profoundly grateful, resolved to continue our quest for the truth to be acknowledged at a Federal level.

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com


First published in NKEE on Saturday 20 May 2023

Saturday, May 13, 2023

THE OTHER VOICE

 


The Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians as the First Peoples of Australia and a formal acknowledgment of the manner in which their land was taken from them by the colonialists is long overdue, both as a means of providing healing but also so as to provide a true reflection of the history of this country and the basis upon which its current legal system was created.

The current proposal to create an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament does not constitute formal recognition of Australia’s First People in the Constitution however and indeed, an amendment of the Constitution’s preamble to provide a form of such recognition (“honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation's first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country”) was defeated at referendum in  1999. Instead, the current proposal seeks to enshrine within the Constitution, a federal advisory body to represent the views of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice or  “Voice” as it is currently termed would be tasked with advising the Federal Parliament and Government on matters which significantly affect Indigenous Australians. It is envisaged that delegates to the Voice will be chosen by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people based on the wishes of local communities and will not be appointed by the government of the day.

The initiative is an important one and it has been enthusiastically supported by prominent members and organisations of the Greek community, notably the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria. What has been overlooked up until now however, is that until relatively recently, the various Greek communities of Australia participated, for over a decade in another Voice, the Council of Greeks Abroad.

While there are significant differences between the Voice to Parliament proposal in Australia and the legislation for the Council of Greeks abroad, there are also some similarities in the broader goals and objectives of both initiatives.

One key similarity is that both initiatives are aimed at promoting the representation and participation of traditionally marginalized communities in the political process. The Voice to Parliament proposal seeks to establish a representative body for Indigenous Australians that can advise the federal parliament on issues affecting their communities. Similarly, the Council of Greeks abroad was conceived of as an advisory body to promote the interests of Greeks living abroad and to provide input to the Greek government on issues affecting the diaspora.

Of course what becomes apparent from the outset is that it is the dominant, ruling class, that is those espousing the culture of the agents of colonisation and violent occupation who purport to “grant” the Indigenous Australians a “Voice,” thus defining and fashioning the terms by which such representation will take place in order for it to be deemed legitimate in their eyes, rather than submitting to the will of the Indigenous Australians themselves as to the terms according to which they wish to be heard. As such, it could be argued that the “Voice,” is merely one more manifestation of the ruling classes’ ontopathology, wherein the colonised are co-opted, by a “grant” of rights over those whose sovereignty was abrogated, to legitimise the violent occupation of this continent.

In similar vein but in mirror image, rather than seek, let alone adhere, to the wishes of the diasporan Greek communities as to the manner in which they seek to be organised and heard, the Greek government imposed a structure of its own upon diverse communities that are citizens of other countries and thus far removed from Greece’s jurisdiction. It could thus be argued that by imposing structures upon these diasporan Greeks, rather than consulting with them, the Greek government is re-enacting the same acts of political and economic aggression that caused those Greeks or their ancestors to leave their homelands in the first place.

Considering however, that the above aside, both initiatives formally recognize the importance of acknowledging and addressing historical injustices and inequalities faced by the communities they represent, one cannot but support them in principle. The Voice to Parliament proposal is part of a broader effort to address the historical injustices and ongoing challenges faced by Indigenous Australians, while the Council of Greeks abroad aimed to promote the rights and interests of a diaspora that has historically faced discrimination and marginalization.

Regardless, the Council of Greeks Abroad failed dismally despite its lofty aims for a number of reasons. Its delegates were supposed to be drawn from the Church, which in Australia at least, declined to participate, and like the “Voice,” via democratic procedures from community organisations. A flurry of Federations were hastily formed, for the Greek government did not recognise legally registered regional brotherhoods as eligible participants in the Council, granting franchises only to “Federations,” of these. Comprised of a membership that in most cases by no means was representative of their region or of the broader community, these “Federations” largely controlled by the same people for decades, mostly lacked the qualifications to understand let alone provide any advice with regard to issues pertaining to Greeks Abroad. Nonetheless, these were the only delegates acceptable to the Greek government.

Further, the premise of recognition set out by the Greek government  with regard to the Greeks of Australia and elsewhere as being comprised largely of federations organised on the basis of their region of origin in Greece was compromised by the fact that within Australia, the culture and operation of regional Greek organisations is largely the same and by focusing on irrelevant differences in place of origin, the vital diversity of diasporan Greeks in relation to education, class, professions, interests, culture, language and contact with Greece itself, was totally ignored.

Such delegates as attended the various Council of Greeks Abroad conferences in Thessaloniki, bizarrely appointed the capital of diasporan Hellenism, instead of a place within the diaspora, derisively termed «τζάμπα τουρίστες» by those who were not selected, rather than being armed with reports and submissions containing data obtained after extensive consultation with their non-existent or disinterested members, simply attended because the Greek government paid for their ticket to Greece, and instead of lobbying for issues pertaining to the diaspora, utilised the occasion as an opportunity to take photos with Greek politicians, seek cash injections for their organisations or, as I did, when I was a youth delegate, lobby for change in government policy on “national” issues and external affairs, something which was not envisaged or condoned by the Greek government when setting up the organisation.

It should be noted that subsequent ministerial decrees regarding the Council’s structure granted the Greek government freedom to invite ‘noteworthy’ individuals and other organisations, thus circumventing the electoral process altogether and undermining the Council’s pretensions to democratic franchise and broad-based representation. Nonetheless, although there existed hand picked appointments to youth, business, women and diasporic politician networks, these were effectively neutralised, because apart from the bi-annual deliberations of the Council’s World Conferences, there never existed any workable framework for participating groups to submit advice to the Greek government. That advice was never sought by the Greek government and when various groups did attempt to make recommendations or ask questions, usually of parliament, these were largely met with silence or fobbed off with rhetoric.

While advocates aspire to have the Indigenous Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution, Greeks of the diaspora can point to Article 108(2) of the Greek Constitution as constitutional recognition of the Council of Greeks Abroad, that article stating: “Law shall specify matters relating to the organisation, operation and competences of the Council of Hellenes Abroad, whose mission is the expression of all communities of Hellenes across the world.” However, the relevant legislation setting out the functions of the Council, passed in 2016, was repealed by the passage of article 479 of 4781/2021, and from that date on, although mention of the Council still remains within the Constitution, the Council has effectively been dissolved, in keeping with Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Terence Quick commenting in 2018 that while the Council needs to be re-created, its name needs to be changed because its title is “a word our Diaspora hears and freaks out.”

Greece and Australia are worlds apart, in political culture, governance, social responsibility and implementation of legislation. However, the fate of the Council of Greeks Abroad, whose aims were lofty and laudable, and which, during the brief times it was permitted to operate smoothly, was able, at least in Australia under the leadership of Costas Vertzayias and George Angelopoulos, to make some remarkable achievements, can serve as a cautionary tale as to what can happen, despite Constitutional recognition, to institutions when not enough work is undertaken to understand the needs of the communities they supposedly give a voice to, when adequate care is not taken to ensure they are truly representative and independent, when the political will does not exist to take such recommendations as an advisory council may make seriously and when not enough political goodwill exists to ensure that such institutions are not degraded or subverted to suit ephemeral political agendas.

The constitutional recognition of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament deserves our unswerving support. However, it can only ever truly be effective and fulfil the aspirations of those who will be represented by it, as well as the progressive elements of Australian society, if it is underpinned by an extensive and functional legislative framework. As the ultimate demise of the still constitutionally recognised Council of Greeks Abroad indicates, the devil is still very much in the detail.


DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com


First published in NKEE on Saturday 13 May 2023

 


Saturday, May 06, 2023

SOTERIOLOGY


 

The reader finds the diatribist this week outside Westminster Abbey, seeking admittance to the coronation of King Charles. The various misleading rumours that have gone more viral than an email sent by the President of the Panimian Federation of Upper Craigieburn by carrier pigeon have caused me to resort to print in order to provide much needed clarification.

Hence, it is my sad duty to inform the general populace that the news broken last week on social media about an announcement by the Albanese government to the effect that it was sending GOCMV president Bill Papastergiadis and myself as part of the delegation to the coronation of Charles III is only partially correct.

It is thus completely untrue that I have been tasked by the CFMEU with the responsibility of teaching Charles Byzantine chant, while the august president will be teaching Camilla Greek in the pre-match changing rooms, although the fact that Camilla has not yet entered the Abbey and the president is nowhere to be seen is starting to become cause for concern.

Similarly, rumours that the President has swapped my musical notation for the traditional Byzantine chant of acclamation «Άξιος» (Axios) with the soccer chant «Δε θα γίνεις Έλληνας ποτέΚάρολε» are purely apocryphal, leading us to believe that those who propagate these fallacies truly do constitute the Axios of Evil.

Nay brethren, my presence before the doors of the Abbey can be ascribed to other deep dark and nefarious purposes all of which relate to the salvation of the motherland and us, its diasporic offshoot. My masters, to my initial question: “Can Greece be saved?” made sure to efface those verses from Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold,” which stated:

"A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;

An hour may lay it in the dust; and when

Can man its shatter'd splendour renovate,

Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?"

 

Then again, Lord  yron was what in polite parlance is deemed an έκφυλοςsomeone who literally exists outside a gender and thus is a fitting role model for today.

 

According to prophecy of Agathangelos, from which Lord Byron liberally borrowed, the saviour of the ethnos will be of the «ξανθόν γένος» that is, the blonde race. Originally, my masters were convinced that this was Putin, but now point to the fate of the Greeks of Mariupol but more so those of Limassol as evidence of their gullibility in this regard. It is only after my timid suggestion that the blonde race referenced by the prophet is actually the entire Nordic race, which has been known for its blondeness ever since the terrestrial manifestation of Abba, that they have begun to consider other possibilities.

 

We know for instance that the saviour of Greece cannot actually reside within its bounds. Illuminatus and Grammar nazi Adamantios Korais hinted as much when, learning thay Greek governor Ioannis Kapodistrias had been assassinated by the detestable Mavromichalis clan, he wrote that the murderers had saved:

"the trangressor against Hellenic laws from a punishment more just than death: expulsion in disgrace from Hellas."

Then again, we have the same Korais to that for introducing the word πολιτισμός into the Greek language, to denote civilization, our word being a calque of the original. As a consequence of Korais’ linguistic interventions, the word has also come to denote culture: a term that has its origins in the Latin term for cultivation or growing things and literally translates as καλλιέργεια.  Thus a cultured man can be referred to as πολιτισμένος or καλλιεργημένος with the emphasis in the first instance on social behaviour and in the latter, on learning. Evidently, our saviour can thus not be a Greek politician.

 

If Homer is anyone to go by, and though the saviour may not be sitting in Greek parliament, this does not preclude him (my masters exclude the possibility that the saviour can identify with any other gender) from having the tendency to say one thing and mean another. In the Homeric epics, Homer refers to the language of the gods. It becomes apparent that there is a διωνυμία where men have one word for something and the gods call it something else.

For example, in the Iliad he tells us that the river called Skamandros by mortals is called Xanthos by the gods. Similarly, in the Odyssey, Homer tells us that the name in the gods’ language for the plant Hermes gives Odysseus as protection against Circe is known as “moly” while the Symplegades Rocks are known in the gods’ language as “Planktai.”

 

In like fashion, it does not follow necessarily that the saviour will even speak Greek and if he does, this will not inevitably lead to harmony.  According to ancient Greek myth, men had lived without law under the rule of Zeus and spoke one language, gifted to them by the god and goddess of ingenuity, Philarios and Philarion. It was the god Hermes who after the deliberations of an Olympian policy committee brought in diversity of speech and along with it separation into nations, ensuring that discord ensued. Zeus then resigned his position, surrendering it to the first king of men, Phoroneus. According to Pausanias, Phoroneus "was the first to gather the people together into a community; for they had up to then been living as scattered and lonesome families." We have come a long way since then, but we are still in the need of salvation. Whether that be in terms of time or money, remains to be discovered.

 

Could the saviour actually have already walked among us in the form of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain? After all, he was of Nordic stock and it was he who provided the guarantee to Greece that Britain would come to her defence in the event of an attack by Nazi Germany. This would probably explain why when in 1939 the British PM Neville Chamberlain returned from the Munich Conference bearing the "scrap of paper" which promised "peace in our time," he received from Greece, a rapturous request for a piece of his umbrella, to be used as a relic in an icon, replicas in painted plywood of which are still sold by enterprising expatriates in Monastiraki of Oakleigh to the present day.

 

My masters also originally sought not to discount American dancer, artist, poet, craftsman, and philosopher Raymond Duncan, who was wont to parade among the unsuspecting populace in Grecian garb, a pursuit he found invigorating. In this endeavour he was ably assisted by his wife Penelope, the sister of Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos, known in the Greek poetic underworld as “the Sicilian,” and feared accordingly. Considering however that Duncan's ultimate goal was a "complete technique of living" which, by synthesizing work, the arts, and physical movement, would result in the further development of man and not specifically the Greek variety of the species, he has to be crossed off the short-list.

 

After a good deal of deliberation, my masters have finally swung to my point of view. The only true saviour of the Greek people who is genteel, an exile, with a connection to Greece, of Nordic stock can be the son of Philip of Greece and hence King Charles, whose predilection for consorting with clerics of the Orthodox variety is well known. Even more well known is his penchant for consorting with Cretans and his participation in the busting of Cretan dance moves while executing the pentozali. Was it not the erudite H. H Munro who in ‘The Jesting of Arlington Stringham,’ observed: “It was during the debate on the Foreign Office vote that Stringham made his great remark that ‘the people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally?” Where better to outsource than in the lands of the former colonial suzerains?

 

By now I think I trust you well enough by now to reveal that in keeping with tradition, prophecy and considering his Cretan affiliations, King Charles is actively being considered by the ruling New Democracy part of Greece as the next Consul-General of Greece in Melbourne, as a consolation to those of our diasporic tribe who were completely overlooked for candidacy in the upcoming May elections. According to the policy pundits, only King Charles can save the ailing fortunes of the Cretans, who if the ND party analysts are to be believed, are the only Greeks surviving in Melbourne, post-COVID.

 

And this is where the crux of my dilemma lies. In light of recent revelations as to the identity of Greek-Australian candidates in this month’s Greek parliamentary elections, I am not only authorised to announce that I will be standing as candidate representing the KKE (left-deviant trans-dialectic Hoxha faction) but also that following the party line, which holds that we must support the most reactionary and class exploitative regimes in order to speed the advent of the revolution, I am burdened with the task of forcing my way into the Abbey and co-opting Prince Harry, known for his affinity to things red, to accede to leadership of the Party, or at least challenge the last Greek left in the Socialist Left faction of the Australian Labor Party for it.

Σώσον Κύριεand may the best comrade win.


DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com


First published in NKEE on 6 May 2023