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Anastasia Balezdrova

Greeks are racist because no one has taught them not to be like that. All nations are racist when they do not know how not to be, the chairman of the Liberal Alliance and journalist Grigoris Valianatos said during a public debate entitled provocatively "The Greeks are racists." It was organized by the Greek branch of the non-profit organizations Intelligence Squared and the Onassis Cultural Centre.

In his opinion, the phenomenon has not occurred along with the dynamic emergence of the xenophobic Golden Dawn party on the Greek political scene. "Muslims in Athens and Piraeus pray in 220 basements and premises of vulcanizers while the two old mosques are used for museums. The state still has no immigration policy; it gathers the people in centres, not knowing what it will do with them afterwards. Yes, there is a problem with immigration, but it must be solved with the cooperation of their communities, the embassies of their countries, by giving refugee status to those who fall into this category and through the use of funds from the International Organization for Migration," he said.

Grigoris Valianatos gave previous examples of racism in Greece. "Macedonians in north-western Greece still cannot speak their own language, which others call "local," women cannot visit Mount Athos, because the monks there have decided that they would "pollute" the place, and public workers apparently have different DNA than the other people since no one dares to touch them even when they commit offences." Among the victims of social racism, he included homosexuals.

He was one of the proponents of the thesis that the Greeks are racists. The other one in the group was Kostis Papaioannou - former chairman of the National Commission for Human Rights and a member of the network for recording cases of racist violence. He also expressed the view that all people are racist, but they understand that only when they are put to the test, like during the current crisis in Greece.

According to him, the problem starts from the attitude of the state towards its citizens and he gave as a typical example the area around the Agios Panteleimonas church in central Athens, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants live. Kostis Papaioannou accused the nationalist policy that has been applied for decades. "At the same time, the accepting of a foreigner by society depends on his or her social and economic status. No one would object if Arab sheiks spend their holidays in Greece, but in the case of a poor Pakistani, things change."

One of the interesting points in his arguments is the fact that the victims of racist violence are peaceful and helpless immigrants. "No one from Golden Dawn went to attack the foreigners who are involved in organized crime: trafficking in drugs and people." As an additional factor that is further strengthening the racist attitudes, Kostis Papaioannou defined the "rhetoric of hatred" on the part of some senior clerics, "some of whom have even become image makers of Golden Dawn."

He admits the presence of a serious security problem, which reinforces the xenophobic attitudes of the Greeks and criticizes the movements protecting the immigrants of having been denying this for years. According to him, it has become a weapon in the hands of the far right.

"Yes, there are racists in Greece, but the majority of people are already aware of the need to oppose racism," said the former minister in the governments of PASOK Nikos Bistis, now a member of the Democratic Left. He talked about the stereotypes imposed in the Greek society that have been refuted in recent years. "One of them is that the Greeks are not racist and it was imposed from the 1960s onwards, when the Greeks were those who migrated to other countries."

Among the reasons that have intensified the phenomenon, Nikos Bistis pointed out "the longstanding nationalist propaganda, which the left made as well. Do not forget that today's slogan "Greece belongs to the Greeks of Golden Dawn" was once a slogan of Andreas Papandreou and PASOK ". He also stated that the surge of racism today was due to the longstanding discrimination against the Muslim minority in the district of Thrace, the Macedonians in the northwest of the country, homosexuals and Jews through folk "traditions" such as the "burning of Judas" at Easter.

"But the transition from one stereotype claiming that Greeks are racist to the other stating that they all are racist is equally over-simplifying and dangerous," he said, adding that it was not fair to reduce all people to the same denominator. According to Nikos Bistis, in Greek society there are other racists, who say "I'm not racist, but ..." and a third group that fights against the manifestations of this phenomenon.

His "teammate" Vassiliki Georgiadou did not deny the existence of racism in Greek society, but said that besides the supporters of this ideology, there were people who opposed it. "The division between those who accept the racist attitudes and those who protect the foreigners is quite clear in Greek society," said the political scientist from the Athens Panteion University. Moreover, according to her, the expression of racist stereotypes does not mean that the individuals are racist.