{"id":220,"date":"2015-07-01T19:43:12","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T19:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lapsedordinary.net\/?p=220"},"modified":"2015-07-01T19:43:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T19:43:12","slug":"understanding-modern-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/2015\/07\/01\/understanding-modern-greece\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Modern Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is hard to understand the current Greek crisis without understanding the country’s recent history. SYRIZA for example, is not just a party that was founded to protest the recent austerity measures (like Podemos in Spain). Rather, it traces its roots to the communist resistance against the German occupation in the Second World War. One of the first things Alexis Tsipras did<\/a> when he was elected as Prime Minister was to visit a monument dedicated to 200 (mostly communist) resistant fighters, a move he himself admitted was symbolic.
\nThe reactions of many Greeks to foreign nations whom they believe are meddling in the country’s internal affairs go back even further, to the beginning of the modern Greek state almost 200 years ago.
\nI’m currently reading a book<\/a> on Modern Greece by Yale professor Stathis Kalyvas<\/a>. I wanted to share this quote:<\/p>\n

Most Greeks see Western Europe (and the United States) as unwelcome meddling foreigners, even though they have largely profited from their interventions. Conversely, Europeans (and Americans) are exasperated that Greeks have failed to see those benefits, even though their inverventionism has been driven primarily by their own self-interest and has been imposed over the Greeks – their discourse about the importance of ancient Greek civilization notwithstanding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is hard to understand the current Greek crisis without understanding the country’s recent history. SYRIZA for example, is not just a party that was founded to protest the recent austerity measures (like Podemos in Spain). Rather, it traces its roots to the communist resistance against the German occupation in the Second World War. One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}