by Akis Gavriilidis

Ιn April of 1978, the Greek music review Ichos kai hi-fi (Sound and hi-fi) made a survey about the Greek radio, in the framework of which they asked a large number of musicians to voice their views on the matter. Among these was the folk Cretan singer Nikos Xylouris, who unabashedly said what follows (my translation):

The radio is a shame and a disgrace for them [those running it] … They corrupt and mislead young people with these songs brought from abroad,  this negro stuff, the hu-hu! They brought to our homeland all the filth of America, and this way they lure young people into discotheques and they stultify them. We are close to losing our manners and morals with all these things they brought us. I am ringing the alarm bell. We all must be cautious so that our children do not purchase American records, with all this brainwashing they are subject to through radio. What happens is terrible. You put the First Programme on, you listen to foreign music. The Second Programme, the same thing, from morning till night. You go for the Armed Forces Channel, yet another humiliation, it’s even worse … One certain Petridis character has humiliated our nation. This person should not be permitted to broadcast at all, either on radio or on TV. Shame on them; at a certain point we should remind them we are Greeks.

Any decent person would agree that this is a typical extreme right discourse: not only is it a pure expression of xenophobia and racism, but it goes so far as to demand censorship and a kind of Berufsverbot, specifying by name the person who should be fired and never get a job again.

And yet, this extreme right discourse found an enthusiastic supporter in the person of somebody who, in principle, defines himself as a Marxist and a historical materialist. This person was Panayotis (typically transliterated, inaccurately, as “Panagiotis”) Sotiris, member of the Editorial Board of the international review with this name and one of the principal organizers of HM’s biannual conference in Athens, 24 to 27 of April.

This is how: when I came across this statement, two years ago, I published a short post at this same blog, with the title “Nikos Xylouris, the racist” and with the content suggested by this title, thinking that I was just stating the obvious. The very same day, Sotiris posted on his facebook account the following text (my translation):

… it is not bad for someone to get old. Provided they do not get old in a shitty way. E.g. by trying to prove that a series of figures from the cultural “Pantheon” of the Left are in essence racists and nationalists. Overlooking historicities, conjunctures, even linguistic conventions.

Personally, I have no problem with bringing down idols etc., but this must have a point …

This post mentions no names or texts. But, unless something escapes me, it is rather clear that the objective of this libel is my blogpost.

Adding ageist insult to historicist stupidity, Sotiris comes to defend the infantilization and dehumanization of “negroes”, explain them away as a result of the “conjuncture”. Which is this conjuncture? In 1978, the human rights movement in the USA and the murder of Martin Luther King were well known to everybody, as was the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa –to name but a few instances. But for Sotiris, we should show understanding to anybody undertaking a crusade against “foreign brought music” because these were the “linguistic conventions”.

This is obviously a sophism. In 1978 Greece, calling Afroamericans “negroes” was indeed a linguistic convention. On the other hand, presenting Afroamericans as “filth”, and as inferior humans unable to produce articulate speech, and their music as a set of incomprehensible barbaric sounds, was not; this is pure racism in any time and any place.

Also: although this is not the main problem, I would add here that the theological aspect of this defence, this reference to a “Pantheon” and to “idols”, is inaccurate even from a pragmatic point of view: Xylouris did not have any particular link to the Left; during his short life he was, and he still is, very popular with Greek society at large, so also with the Left, but he himself belonged to the Venizelist tradition.

Every historical materialist should be by now familiar with the classic Freudian idea, that, when we hear somebody saying “I do not object X, but …”, we should simply drop the “not” and keep the remaining phrase in the affirmative.

These days, at the Panteion University, we may be certain that passionate discourses will be made i.a. against fascization and genocide, co-organized and sometimes chaired by the person who did this defending. This is fine, but it would be even better for the authors of these discourses to match them with a corresponding practice and not forget them in the face of concrete conjunctures.