Anti-Greek sentiment
One author explains, "the relationship of Romans to Greek culture was frequently ambiguous: they admired it as superior and adopted its criteria, while they remained skeptical of some aspects; hence they adapted it selectively according to their own purposes.
[12] However, Erich S. Gruen argued that Cato's "anti-Greek 'pronouncements' reflect deliberate posturing and do not represent 'the core of Catonian thought'.
"[13] The prominent philosopher and politician Cicero (106–43 BCE) was "highly ambivalent" about Greeks,[14] and practiced "anti-Greek slur".
[20] Anti-Greek sentiment dominated the thinking of Enver Hoxha, the communist leader of Albania, during the Greek Civil War.
During World War I, due to King Constantine I's pro-German sympathies, Greek immigrants were viewed with hostility and suspicion.
[24][25] The word "wog" is an ethnic slur used in Australia to refer to Southern European and Middle Eastern people of the Mediterranean region, including Greeks.
"Mobs of up to 5,000 people, led by war veterans returned from Europe, marched through the city's main streets waging pitched battles with law enforcement officers and destroying every Greek business they came across."
[36] According to Dimitar Bechev, a British-based international relations researcher, then Prime Minister of North Macedonia Nikola Gruevski (the leader of VMRO-DPMNE) exploited "anti-Greek nationalism" during the 2008 parliamentary election.
Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Gregory Delavekouras responded that Gruevski's statements "stoke the systematic negative government propaganda that is aimed at turning public opinion in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia against Greece.
This led to a reconsideration of the role played by the Phanariotes who ruled modern day Romania as emissaries of the Ottoman Empire.
Romanian national poet Mihai Eminescu described Greeks as "the poison of the Orient, hypocritical people who crave to exploit others".
[39] During the course of the Macedonian Struggle, Romania founded the Macedo-Romanian Cultural Society which conducted ethnographic expeditions to Macedonia, Epirus and Thessaly.
On 2 August 1905, the Macedo-Romanian Cultural Society organized an anti-Greek protest in Bucharest, attended by army officers, students and ethnic Aromanians.
An official remonstrance by the Greek ambassador Tombazis was rebutted leading to a mutual withdrawal of embassies on 15 September.
In November, the Romanian government allocated funding for the creation of armed Aromanian bands in Macedonia, a parallel motion closed numerous Greek schools in the country.
[41] A 2011 survey in Turkey revealed that 67% of respondents had unfavorable views toward Greeks, though only 6% said they saw Greece as their main enemy in a poll carried out that same year.
[49] In 1999 Turkey "was again swept by a wave of anti-Greek sentiment, encouraged by the Turkish government"[50] following the capture of the Kurdistan Workers' Party leader Abdullah Öcalan in Nairobi, Kenya who was initially hiding in the Greek embassy.
In 1904 Greek immigrants, unaware of labor conditions and largely inexperienced, served as strikebreakers during a strike in Chicago diesel shops.
[63] In recent years, anti-Greek sentiment has emerged within neopagan communities through efforts to redefine Hellenism as a modern pagan religion.
[64] In an interview in Tablet magazine, American independent scholar Angelo Nasios explained that: "Hellenism refers simply to Greekness.
[67][68][69] A 2014 study found, "An anti-Greek sentiment evolved and spread among German citizens and solidarity for crisis-hit Greece was mostly rejected.
A 2013 study found that Western European news sources "indicate bias against Greece in financial crisis coverage" and "include stereotypes, the recommendation of austerity as a punishment, morality tales, an absence of solidarity, and fear mongering.
"[70] Dutch TV producer Ingeborg Beugel (nl) claimed that "the [anti-Greek] propaganda of the mainstream media provides Europe and the Netherlands with a convenient scapegoat to exploit.
"[73] German politicians, such as the former Minister for Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle and former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, publicly criticized the anti-Greek sentiment in their country and called for solidarity with Greece.
