Comradeship // Freechat

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.