America the despised

National Interest, The, Spring, 2002 by Takis Michas

Upon learning of the terrorist attack, the immensely popular Archbishop Christodoulos of the Greek Orthodox Church attributed the act to the "injustice and inequality" that pervades the world. It was unleashed, he said, because those in power behaved "without scruples and in defiance of the justice of God and Man." The view that America was somehow to blame for this terrible incident was soon echoed in much of the media. Television broadcasting in Greece in the wake of the tragedy was dominated by discussions of how America supposedly brought this event upon itself for perceived political and military sins.

Perhaps the most outrageous incident, however, involved not the media but sports. During a soccer match between a Greek and a visiting Scottish club, fans of the Greek team tried to burn the American flag before the start of the game and then booed during a moment of silence observed for the victims of the September 11 attacks. This happened to the applause of the nearly 20,000 who were in the football stadium at the time. "What went on in Athens disgusted me", the coach of the Scottish team told the Associated Press. "'What badly disappointed me was that there was no effort made by anyone, the police included, to do anything about it. I could not believe such anti-American feeling in a European country."

While feelings of sorrow and outrage marked the developing responses of most observers in the rest of Europe, the reactions in Greece have been at best subdued. "Instead of reacting with the shock, grief and outrage that every Greek American felt", wrote Nikos Konstandaras, the editor of the English--language edition of Kathimerini,

the Greeks were seen--on satellite television and in editorials and too many comments by people in the street-to be analyzing the event with their trademark 'Yes, but.' The expressions of support for America were drowned out by the inevitable anti-Americanism that was once confined to the Communist Party but in the last 10 years, in the dearth of public statements to the contrary, appears to have become the only opinion on view.

The polls provide evidence. One poll, taken a few days after the incident, revealed that 25 percent of respondents said they felt "satisfied" and "relieved", and believed that "justice had been served" upon the United States on September 11. About 30 percent said that the terror attacks constituted a justified reaction to U.S. policies. Another poll found that only 6 percent of the Greeks, the lowest number in Europe, supported a U.S. campaign against countries that harbor terrorism. (A similar poll taken among the Palestinians showed that 7 percent supported America's anti-terror campaign.) Moreover, in a poll published in the Greek daily To Vima on December 29, 61 percent of the respondents said they felt unhappy about the coalition's victory in Afghanistan, and only 29 percent said they were happy about the outcome of the military campaign.

As columnist Richardos Someritis summed up the matter in To Vima, four main ideas dominated popular explanations of the September 11 terrorist attack. The first is that the attack was an act of Israeli or Jewish conspiracy. The second is that Osama bin Laden is the creation of CIA propaganda. The third is that the terrorist act was part of the struggle of the repressed against U.S. imperialism. And the fourth is that Greece is not threatened by terrorism, but rather by the fight against terrorism.