America the despised.

• Author: Michas, Takis
• Position: Letter from Athens

IN THE summer of 1999, the popular Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis said during an interview: "I hate Americans and everything American. I hope that the youth will begin to hate everything American." This most popular of Greek contemporary composers--a close friend of Slobodan Milosevic, who was reportedly ferried around in the latter's private plane--had already been widely acclaimed for his assertion during the Kosovo war that "there is no difference between Hitler and Clinton." Moreover, he advocated at the time a nuclear alliance formed of Greece, Belarus, Serbia and Russia and directed against Greece's erstwhile NATO allies-- the United States in particular.

Celebrities everywhere have been known to say foolish things about political matters of which they know little and understand less, so Theodorakis' ranting might not seem worthy of much attention--except that he was soon nominated as Greece's candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Theodorakis' candidacy was supported by leading Greek politicians and intellectuals from across the spectrum, including Prime Minister Costas Simitis, Foreign Minister George Papandreou and the leader of the conservative opposition New Democracy Party, Costas Karamanlis.

Of course, not all those who supported Theodorakis' candidacy shared his anti-American views. On the contrary, some, including Simitis, Papandreou and Karamanlis, have generally supported the United States and its policies. What is noteworthy, however, is that Theodorakis' views did not seem to faze those supporters precisely because such views have become part of mainstream opinion in Greece. Indeed, they are accepted by the majority as self-evidently true. In an opinion poll conducted among secondary school students at the end of the 1990s, for example, respondents were asked to rank a number of nations from most to least popular. Americans joined Albanians and Turks at the bottom of the list--even lower than the Gypsies, a group not held in particularly high esteem by the Greeks. Topping the list were the Serbs.

Anti-American sentiment in Greece was carefully nurtured during the 1980s by Andreas Papandreou, the populist leader of PASOK (Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement). Anti-Americanism based on real and perceived wrongs relating to the rise of the Greek military junta (1967-74) and the Cyprus issue became the common denominator of political thinking. Throughout this period, Papandreou made it a cardinal point to deviate from Western norms and to antagonize Western, and especially American, governments. Greece thus supported the Jaruzeiski dictatorship in Poland, refused to condemn the suppression of dissidents in the Soviet Union and its downing of a commercial Korean airliner, harbored organizations (such as the Kurdish PKK) perceived as terrorist by many in the West, opposed the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe, and failed to arrest the terrorists of the "November 17th" organization who have murdered more than a score of Greeks and foreigners since the mid-1970s, including the CIA station chief in 1975.

But all of this pales in comparison to the Gestalt-switch that took place in Greek foreign policy and in its populist worldview during the wars of Yugoslav succession. Throughout those wars Greece supported the Milosevic regime in Belgrade and the Karadzic regime in Pale morally, economically and politically. It repeatedly violated the UN-imposed oil embargo on Serbia and the EU decision concerning the freezing of assets belonging to the Milosevic regime. Greece's support was massive and involved all strata of society: the political class, the trade unions, the media and above all the Orthodox Church. The victims of Serbian aggression were simply erased from the moral perceptions of the overwhelming majority of the population and the political class of the country. Whenever a Greek politician voiced criticism about the fighting, it was nearly always directed against NATO air strikes and other "machinations" of the West and particularly the United States. "Greece's policies", said leading Serb journalist Peter Lucovic, "benefited exclusively the Milosevic regime, helping the Milosevic family and its associates to retain power in Belgrade. Greece was used by the Milosevic regime as the fine example of a Western country that supported democratic and patriotic Serbia."

Equally interesting have been Greek reactions to the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. Both Prime Minister Simitis and opposition leader Karamanlis denounced the terrorist attack in the strongest of terms and pledged support to U.S. efforts to hunt down the perpetrators. Moreover, Greece provided U.S. and NATO aircraft full access to Greek airspace, military airports and other military facilities for refueling and maintenance. Greece also offered to send additional troops to the Balkans to free up U.S. forces for deployment in Afghanistan. But outside the narrow confines of the political class, initial reactions were very different.

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...