There’s a really good video essay about Nolan’s Western depiction of the Odyssey: https://youtu.be/yFn1JfOd3b0

There’s a possibly apocryphal statement from Henry Kissinger about precisely this sentiment of westernizing Greek history/identity specifically to advance western imperialism.

“Greek people are anarchic and difficult to tame. For this reason we must strike deep into their cultural roots: Perhaps then we can force them to conform. I mean, of course, to strike at their language, their religion, their cultural and historical reserves, so that we can neutralize their ability to develop, to distinguish themselves, or to prevail; thereby removing them as an obstacle to our strategically vital plans in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.”

Being called anarchic and difficult to tame by this evil man is something to take pride in.

Considering that latin resentment over iconoclastic greeks drove the creation of the west that stands against the oriental it is a truth, greeks were the first victims of orientalism.

Appreciate this article and perspective and hits home to me as a Greek American.

It frustrates me to no end that when self-identifying the only option is to mark “white”. I choose “other” whenever given the option, which extremely rare.

I’m taking time off generally on being too “online” but this post was too good for me not to comment; very much well done and much needed. Thank you!

If we consider that

(1) Ancient Greece philosophy and science was resurrected, translated and then brought to Europe through the Islamic Golden Age - typified maybe throught the Iberian Peninsula ie Spain (tangent: I don’t know if you remember a while back we had a discussion on the nature of secularism and Ibn Rushd, well the latter was an Andulusian Arab)…

(2) the bulk of the rest of Ancient Greek literature such as Odyssey here was brought to Europe through Eastern Byzantine, which you have astutley recognised has been divorced from European Heritage (ie the “jungle” seperated from their precious “garden” - the EC VP parasite Borrell)…

(3) Greek philosophy was not some sort of self-made miracle, and not an accident that it was considerably birthed off mainland Greece in Ionia which sat in the crossroads of Mesopatamia and Egypt, and furthermore the likes of Plato, Thales and Pythagoras all studied in Egypt (or at the very least there was knowledge transfer)…

… it hammers home how much of this tradition is invented - the metaphysical immutablity, and by extension its supposed supremacy, of Western Civilisation. We are all children of the South and East.

I find parallels over and over again of what Paolo Friere Paulo Freire relayed in his pedagogy - the oppressed find their model of manhood in the oppressed - from Jews, to Greeks, to Indians (go look at the US and UK largest political parties), to Lebanese Maronites to Nigerian Christian Zionists to countless examples from Central to South America, (edit: there are load more examples but there are two glaring omissions worth mentioning that I forgot - Eastern Europe and Occupied Korea) it is being played out here in “both sides” of the Odyssey film here - the Hollywood production with people of colour supposedly transgressing what was apparently a lily white mythology which in fact is a vehicle to say “see our imperialism, and communist purges, are worth it see our token diversity!” - to the righter wing reaction against “wokeness”.

Thanks once again, as you can see from above so much of your post resonates; hope you do more posts.

(Books for those interested - Inventing Tradition by Hobsawm, Paolo Friere Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Bernal’s Black Athena (I have only read part of vol 1, and it is considered so controversial it is called pseudoarcheology. I would argue some schlolarly errors does not put it in the same league as aliens/atlantis/mystical forces, and if you read most of the backlash they are steeped in bigotry. However it does make the next two books important), and a couple of my list to read is Diops’ African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, and Amin’s: Eurocentrism). [I have found more for the reading list: Vlassopoulos’ Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History Beyond Eurocentrism]

Unfortunately this article is so spot on that i have little if anything to add. It would just be me agreeing with everything but i’ll just highlight what i think are the most important parts:

“Western Civilization” is the most important foundational myth of Western Civilization. It’s not a real, physical thing that exists in history; there is no continuation of civilization from the Roman Empire to France to Britain to the USA. That’s propaganda, not history.

“Western Civilization” should be understood as a dogwhistle for the ideology of White Supremacy

This is absolutely correct and every time the term comes up people need to be reminded of this.

The history of that land is a selling point for tourism — the ritual humiliation of an intentionally impoverished people by the labor aristocrats of dying empires.

As is the case for many other “exotic” tourist locations where rich westerners go to consume the history and culture of impoverished countries as if it were a product and not a real people’s heritage.

And that’s ultimately what the West did to the history & culture of Greece: they plundered it, just as they did everywhere else.

Starting all the way back with the Romans who were the first to do this.

At the very least a shield for the “defense” of Europe against those they’ve bloodied or at the very most a blood bag to be sucked dry when the loan sharks of the IMF need tribute; a hostage for NATO to thrust in front of missiles and a bank for the EU to rob at whim.

The role that NATO and the EU have played in plundering and impoverishing Greece cannot be understated. What German banks did to that country deserves the death penalty.

Here the West was truly born: in the rejection of all things Greek — all things Eastern. The Eastern Rome, the Eastern Church, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Eastern Christians, the East as a whole as something foreign and alien and that included Greece and the Greeks. They were strange, these Eastern men with their Eastern Christ.

Yes. The cold war changed in people’s minds where the distinction line between East and West lay (and there was and still is a material reality to that new distinction), but historically speaking, at the heart of the conflict between “Western civilization” and “Eastern (European) civilization” was always the Christian schism.

The Greek could find more kinship from the Slav or Romanian or even the Turk of all people than of the Western imperialist, the European chauvinist.

As a Romanian, this resonates with me one hundred percent. I feel far more cultural kinship with Greeks, Slavs and Turks than i do with West Europeans. On a visceral level i can feel the difference in mentality. The former think like i do, the latter do not.

And it is very unfortunate that many of us in Eastern Europe are now desperately trying to emulate and become the West (including by adopting its worst traits such as supremacism and chauvinism), not least of all because they will never truly accept us and always look on us as inferior.

We love to have our fair Nordic men prance about in the pteruges and muscle cuirasses of Greek warriors as they pretend to slaughter wicked Eastern men — be they Trojans or Persians — in defense of Western “freedom” before a camera to the delight of our imperial citizenry.

This could not be more obvious when you look at Hollywood movies featuring ancient Greek protagonists (fair skinned and sometimes even blond haired) fighting against the eastern “barbarians”, who are presented as the most heinous racist caricatures. Anyone who has seen these types of movies knows what you’re talking about.

And yet to meet a Greek on the street the Western chauvinist would spit at him and call him an Arab or Turk, call him a threat to the “White Race” and an “invading” migrant, and even when corrected on their error insist that this dark-skinned man with dark hair and eyes isn’t a “true” Greek like the ancients but a mongrel born of race-mixing.

This is such often repeated myth that you constantly hear, this “race-mixing” story, and those who are ideologically invested in it are also often the kind of creepy weirdos obsessed with genetics and haplogroups to the level of how Nazis would obsess over “Aryan” lineage percentages.

The Greek is Eastern, not Western. This was established long ago. And yet the West still feels it has a right to appropriate Greece because we cannot fundamentally accept that all the great civilizations of old — the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Indians, and even the Greeks — were neither White nor Western. We cannot stand that human history doesn’t begin with us. That is why we cling to racist myths of ancient aliens building Tenochtitlan or fictional genealogies of White pharaohs in Egypt. How dare these brown men develop civilization before us? How dare they lay the foundations for all civilizations after them? No! This cannot be! Clearly the progenitors were pure and White! Clearly their bloodlines have been muddled by the savages of the hinterlands! There can be no other explanation! How could brown men build the Pyramid of Giza? How could black men build Great Zimbabwe? How could savages build mound cities along the Mississippi? Don’t these fools know that civilization belongs to the White man?

It’s nothing short of a tragedy that there are Greeks who cling to these identities — Whiteness and the West — thinking they are welcome there and included, believing they are part of the in-group. A tragedy akin to Slavic Nazis or liberal proletarians. The “White Man” never included the Greek. The “West” never included Greece. Not the real people, not the real civilization. Fictional versions; romanticized, ahistorical, propagandized.

A Christ with blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin.

Nothing to add. This was perfect.

I loved this article. I don’t have much to add.

When you mentioned how much “Western civilization” hates other civilizations, I remembered this footnote from Wealth of Nations:

These statements [made by Adam Smith] of the living conditions in China are horribly distorted. Such stories and myths were likely told by eager European traders and sailors, who bore extreme expense to travel to China for trade, but became disgruntled and suspicious when upon arriving they found a closed, but extremely rich society. An imagined poverty and savagry of the Chinese people made for a good excuse when the sailors returned home to explain how they came up so empty-handed.

I never thought about it that way, but it makes a lot of sense. I know almost nothing about modern Greece and yet I have at least passing familiarity with various elements of ancient Greek philosophy or mythology (through a westernized lens of them anyway). It seems like a very colonizer thing to do. Pick out the parts you want to keep, warp them to your ideology, and erase/ignore/exploit the actually existing society.

It reminds me of the psychology of quoting figures from the past more generally. I don’t understand the why very well, but I’m sure there is something to the idea that, at least in the white western context, people will tend to take words more seriously if you frame them as something said in the past by a famous figure (hell, sometimes even a fictional character).

Like if I were to say, “The fall of the US will be marked by the rise of a false populism. With popular will so starkly and continuously buried beneath a facade, the anger at being ignored will rise like never before.” I’d probably say I’m being dramatic and trying to sound profound when I’m not. But if I went: “The fall of democracy will be marked by the rise of a false populism. With popular will so starkly and continuously buried beneath a facade, the anger at being ignored will rise like never before.” - Socrates

There’d probably be people who would be like, wow, so deep. Socrates got it, even back then.

And it brings me back to the idea that the “white” west is fundamentally stuck in the past. Which is ironic because as you point out, it doesn’t have a legacy to be proud of in the first place. So it’s stuck in the past yet also stuck pining for a civilization that never was, a profundity of understanding it never had, and a capability it only ever got through things like mass racialized slavery. It has little to actually be proud of, so it steals bits and pieces from others and claims them as its own. And it has plenty to be deeply ashamed of, which it washes away at the altar of “humanity is flawed and broken and fundamentally can’t be fixed but you can do some penance and then go do more war crimes.”

That last paragraph carried it home.

Thank you.

I loved this read. I didn’t realize that I too was westernizing Greek culture in my understanding of history. But the more I read the more it clicked how wrong that notion was

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