Counteracting Pagan Lies

For some time now, Anglo-American pagans and occultists have been trying to appropriate, exploit and harm indigenous Hellenic culture for various reasons, including profit and self-promotion.

However, since they have encountered resistance, they are spending a great deal of time slandering and agitating against ethnic Hellenes, especially those standing in their way, exposing their transgressions. So I took the trouble of translating some selected passages from Greek to English to neutralise some of the pagan implications and lies against the Hellenic people.

In order to ensure the cultural appropriation and commercially driven distortion of Hellenism, pagan colonialists are moving beyond their standard marketing strategies.

They have started to attack, distort and publicly deny vital aspects of the Hellenic ethnic identity and history, such as the self-designation of many Hellenes or the historically proven genocide of the Greeks in the Ottoman empire, in order to justify their transgressions. In this context, they seem to focus on the ethical denigration of the term «ethnic Hellene,» a term they place in the vicinity of «folkism» or even fascism, which makes Anglo-American paganism even more disgusting. Ethnikoi Hellenes is the favored self-designation of those Greeks who abandoned Christianity and Romiosyni for their ancestral culture and religion.

«Ethnic» is the adjective form of the noun «ethnos.» Ethnos is a term derived from ethos (meaning character, custom, habit, way of life), which is basically the Greek word for «culture.» Thus, ethos also refers to the ethnic religion of the Greeks and the concept of eusebeia (piety), that is, the worship of the gods according to the customs of the ancestors. «Ethnic Hellene» means «Hellenic by ethos,» it is, as shown above, a religiously connoted ethno-cultural but also empowering self-designation, which has undergone a long and complex process in the last two centuries. Pagan colonialists attempt to disparage this empowering designation and to describe ethnic Hellenes as racists or «folkists» in order to break their resistance. It is easy to fathom their motivation, particularly as it aligns with the general ethos of Anglo-American paganism. But all their efforts are in vain: they are simply in no position to dishearten the Hellenes. A glance at history shows that we can handle them. Our people faced Ataturk’s Turkish nationalists, we fought Bulgarian stalinists, Italian fascists and German nazis, and all this within 32 years. By comparison, pagan colonialism is a joke.

In their pursuit of advancing their individual interests and making Hellenism accessible to them, pagan colonialists and charlatans endeavour to rationalize the exploitation of Hellenic tradition by efforts to delegitimize the Hellenes‘ right to self-determination and the sovereignty over their own culture, for instance by misrepresenting themselves as members of the Hellenic community. Step by step, through deception, defamation and distortion they strive towards their goal. In this context, it is very understandable why they wish to link the self-designation «ethnic Hellenes» to the «Völkisch movement» and «folkism,» often described as a particular tendency or movement within paganism, which in itself shows the ethnocentrism behind this defamation tactics, since a) «folkism» describes a phenomenon within paganism, and b) the claim itself is an assessment of alterity, in this case Hellenism, based on the norms, categories and standards of their own culture. But their structural colonialism makes them immune to such details.

However, much more interesting is the fact that the designation «ethnic Hellene» is older than the «Völkisch movement,» which, of course, refutes the many implications made by pagan colonialists and Christian nationalists. The following quotes clearly demonstrate this truth:

«διατί ήσαν εθνικοί Έλληνες [because they were ethnic Hellenes]»
(Athanasios Parios, Αλεξίκακον Φάρμακον, Leipzig 1818, p. 58)

«Τελευταίον, και αυτοί οι Εθνικοί Ελληνες … [And finally, these ethnic Hellnenes too …]»
(Konstantinos Oikonomos: Περί των Ο‘ Ερμηνευτών της Παλαιάς Θείας Γραφής, Athens 1844, Vol. 4, Ch. 4, p. 298)

«τους Πλατωνικούς φιλοσόφους και οί εθνικοί Ελληνες … [the platonic philosophers and ethnic Hellenes …]»
(Margaritis Dimitsas: Ιστορία της Αλεξανδρείας, Athens 1885, p. 696)

«οι εθνικοί Έλληνες ησπάσθησαν τον Χριστιανισμόν, και οι ναοί των ειδώλων μετετράπησαν είς χριστιανικούς, η δε εθνική φιλοσοφία έγένετο χριστιανική … [ethnic Hellenes converted to Christianity, and the temples of the idols were transformed into Christian churches; the ethnic philosophy became Christian …]»
(G. I. Papadopoulos: Λόγος Πανηγυρικός εκφωνηθείς τη 4 Δεκεμβρίου 1899 κατά την επέτειον εορτήν του Εκκλησιαστικού Μουσικού Συλλόγου, Constantinople 1900, p. 5)

«οί εθνικοί έλληνες … [the ethnic Hellenes …]»
(Patriarchate of Alexandreia and of all Africa: Εκκλησιαστικός Φάρος, Alexandria 1908, p. 221)

«Πανταχού δέ οί εθνικοί Ελληνες ήνοιξαν ενθουσιωδώς τούς κεκλεισμένους αυτών ναούς … [The ethnic Hellenes opened their closed temples everywhere …]»
(Panagiotis Ch. Doukas: H Σπάρτη δια μέσου των αιώνων, New York 1922, p. 351)

As we see above, the designation «ethnic Hellene» never had a racist connotation. The link to «folkism» is a pagan fabrication. Especially in the light of the Nazi appropriation of Greek mythology, the instrumentalization of Hellenic history by neo-nazis in contemporary Greece (whose ideological forefather Metaxas and his Christo-fascist «Third Hellenic Civilization» banned Sophocles, Pericles, Plato, Thucydides and Xenophon from public life) and the distortive appropriation of Greek philosophy by the orthodox church (which is also eager to link Hellenic religion to fascism), the pagan tactic outlined above turns out to be an expression of deep depravity. And just like Nazism’s «Hellenism,» the «Hellenic education» of the so-called «church fathers» or the «Hellenicity» of the neo-fascist ideology in contemporary Greece, the «Hellenism» of Hellenic «wannabes» is a charade. Their link to Hellenism is about as real as the link between Nazi Germany and ancient Greece. Somehow it seems the more people emphasize their alleged philhellenism, the more antihellenic they prove to be.

Therefore, when «Hellenists»—who don’t even speak Greek—talk, for instance in a pagan online group called «Hellenismos» [!], about Hellenism, a culture they don’t know, interpret its past through the lens of their own stereotypes or questionable desires, and, in addition, attempt or pretend to speak on behalf of a community without being members of it, they must be put in their place, because they cross a red line. The damage caused to Hellenes and Hellenists by the pagan counter-enlightenment will last only temporary. In the end, it will hurt them more than us. Because, in doing what they are doing, the only thing they achieve is to reveal to the world who they really are. Until then, the main goal of Hellenic resistance is to defend Hellenism and to expose the role played by colonial paganism, especially pseudo-Hellenist charlatans, in the exploitation, abuse and misrepresentation of indigenous people’s sacred traditions.