Every day the newspapers are full of reports about the Greeks. Should Europe give even more money and cancel the enormous debt of the Greeks? Or will they be kicked out of the eurozone? The prevailing sentiment towards the Greeks is not very positive. Is this justified?
Our own Dijsselbloem is the figurehead of the Europeans who are tired of the scheming and lying of Greece. The Greeks, in turn, are very outraged about this. They see it very differently themselves. How is it possible that our European leaders clash with each other like this? Can that be explained historically?
The ideal person to present this subject is Professor Joep Leerssen (European Studies, UvA). He has done a lot of research into cultural nationalism and national imagery.
Are we clashing with the Greeks because we don't understand each other or is it an inexperienced government that doesn't know the negotiating rules?
“It's not about the Greeks or their culture, but about how we view them. Our view has been influenced by the romantic nationalism of the nineteenth century. This also applies to the Greeks themselves. The Greek self-image before 1850 was very different from what it is today. They saw themselves primarily as Christians and as an oppressed minority in the diaspora of the Islamic Turkish Empire. A Balkan people, comparable to the Armenians.”
“Athens was then also no more than a farming village with some ruins on a mountain. Large Greek communities lived elsewhere, for example in Constantinople, present-day Istanbul. Only a small literate elite, mostly traders with trading houses in European cities, got the European image of classical antiquity as the cradle of European civilization. In addition, Lord Byron, the superstar of Romanticism, spread in Europe with his poems the image of the stubborn and brave Greek who fought against the Turks for his independence.”
The writings of ancient Greek scholars have been read since the Middle Ages. But in the nineteenth century, Greece was rediscovered by the rest of Europe. Now the remaining architecture also inspired European artists in all kinds of areas. The admirers and promoters of ancient Greek culture were called “philhellenes.” They saw classical antiquity as the basis of later European culture and the Greeks as its rightful descendants. This gave Greece new prestige and status.
The Philhellenes were very concerned about the independence struggle of the Greeks against the Turks. After their independence, the Greeks looked for a king and found it in the young Prince Otto, son of Philhellene Louis of Bavaria. The new king took with him the romantic nationalistic image that people had of the Greeks in Europe. This also changed the historical image that the Greeks had of themselves.
What does the view on Greece have to do with current politics?
“We often think that economics or politics is about hard business decisions, but that's really fiction. Irrational choices and decisions play a much larger role. Just think of the economic market, which is also based on consumer confidence. This irrational approach to politics can be seen in the way in which Europe previously dealt with bankrupt countries, such as Ireland and Iceland. The difference with Greece is that it concerned Northern European countries. We look at it very differently, and the question is whether that is justified or not.”
“In conflict situations, stereotypes and platitudes that you don't know whether they are actually justified play a major role. Then the group clichés come up. The Irish, for example, were also angry about lowering teachers' wages, but the media reported very differently and less extensively than now with the Greeks. In addition, these countries probably felt obliged to do so by their cultural stamp of hard work.”
How do you explain these differences between countries?
“It's like the relationship between men and women:the idea about the differences between the two is deeply ingrained, but it's not the truth. Ideas also play an important role in national identity. But it's nonsense to blame culture:it's about the cultural glasses we put on. Clichés about the hard-working north versus the let-go mentality of the south are as futile as images about dumb blondes or "men are from Mars and women are from Venus." We must learn to look skeptically at peoples, just as with fifty years of feminism we have learned to look more skeptically at the differences between men and women.”
Where do the clichés about Greece come from?
“The cliché images, both positive and negative, are two to five centuries old and have been introduced to us from our childhood. Just think of the stereotypical image of the Greek with his big mustache in films about Zorba the Greek or in Tintin comics. On the plus side, the Greeks are the heirs of European civilization, which makes us feel we owe them something. After all, the ancient Greeks brought us philosophy and democracy. In addition, Greeks are courageous Christian warriors who have been weighed down for centuries by the Muslim Turks, the bogeymen of Europe. The third stereotype is that of the eternal holiday country of the good life full of sun, conviviality and feta cheese with olive oil.”
“The negative stereotypes are the hateful inverse of this. Greeks are not really the descendants of Aristotle and Socrates, but an ordinary Balkan people. Together with countries such as Serbia and Macedonia, they are part of the Wild East of Europe. These lands belonged to the Turkish Empire for a long time and many inhabitants lived outside the law for centuries. Violence, corruption, honor and macho behavior still prevail here. In contrast, we see the countries of Western Europe as decent bourgeois societies where morality and legal authority prevail.”
“And finally, Greeks are of course unreliable and lazy whistlers, with whom you cannot make agreements because they prefer to lie in the sun. We like the Greeks as long as things go well, but when things go bad, the lazy Greek comes into play. Or the corrupt Balkan people who have taken on irresponsible debts. All clichés are now being brought up again by the media and the debates between the two parties are therefore not business-like. It is pure imaging.”
The Greeks also use this imagery themselves?
“That's right, this image has been smashed in. Since the nineteenth century, Greeks have learned to see themselves as Europe saw them:as descendants of Athens and fighters against the Turkish yoke. That is why they now also always resort to a sense of honour, dignity and oppression. They also like to use the image of the Troika as the new oppressive Turks.”
Where did it go wrong, if these are just clichés?
“Greece had never liked the euro. At the time of accession, the technocrats had strong reservations because they did not want a budget deficit above three percent of the membership. But Greece, the alleged cradle of democracy, was ideologically part of the euro, according to political policymakers, even though Greece was well above that three percent. That's where the derailment started.”
How do you think we can solve this now?
“The media is full of half-truths – all Greeks retire at 50 is one of them – based on cultural stereotypes. And therein lies the real problem. Politics is now played through the media. Politicians who know how to tell a good story to the public make the decisions instead of people who really understand what it is about. Opinion and experts are more important than ever and newspapers eagerly take advantage of that. It just doesn't do politics any good. The problem must be reduced to the business-like, without stereotyping by both parties in the conference room. Would it be so much worse if experts in a smoky back room solve this problem? In any case, the media outcry has not helped the manageability of the situation.”
“The core of the problem is an economic and political choice:should you tackle the crisis with investment to increase purchasing power, or by cutting back even more? This choice must be made with the debts that exist now. In my opinion, exit from the euro is not inconceivable:bankruptcy means ten years of misery before things get better; but is that worse than decades of payments at the expense of the average people?”