It will be dreadfully commonplace to repeat here how disastrous the dictatorship has been for the national interests of Greece and its internal social cohesion.

For over a century Greece is governed by the same families, the crypto-dynasties of wealth and influence, whose hold on power is never questioned and is continued unchallenged-and the new politicians choose to join them in strange alliances instead of beating them and marginalising them out of the political arena.
– Prof. Vrasidas Karalis –

But who is to blame for the imposition of such an incompetent regime with its institutionalised oppression, extensive use of torture and illegal imprisonment of the most productive members  of Greek society?

For decades most Greeks, especially the Greeks in the Diaspora, suffer from a naive anti-Americanism. For everything that happened in Greece, the Americans and the CIA are to be blamed. The truth however is, according to my opinion, different.

It is true that the Americans, like the Soviets back then, tried to establish puppet regimes throughout the world.

It is also true that American secret  services were involved in similar coups in many under-developed countries and changed their government.

However in order to be successful they needed local agents – they needed the collaboration of local establishments. In countries where the establishment had genuine “national” interests, their intervention could only be underground and marginal.

When in 1969, the CIA tried to make contact with the Italian army in order to organise a coup in Italy, the Italian right-wing officers declined the offer declaring that it was an internal affair of the Italian state, if the Communist party was to win the elections.

In Greece, the discovery of such collaborators was extremely easy amongst the army and the local conservative ruling class.

Indeed reactions against the ridiculous Colonels were not only subdued by industrialists, the Church and the army but quickly evolved into a wholehearted embrace.

The reaction against the dictatorship was organised by isolated groups and individuals, and was therefore ineffective.

Yet it was rather obvious from the beginning that the Colonels were unable to govern and a major disaster was imminent. Certainly the American influence was decisive but the ruling class of Greece, so invisible and effective, supported the dictatorship all the way to its end, with the national tragedy in Cyprus.

Didn’t the second guard of the dictators know that Turkey would invade Cyprus if they tried to overthrow President Makarios?

They did-and yet they went on with their foolish agenda which can be squarely called “national treason.”

Was anyone punished for what happened in Cyprus? No – and pardon my prediction, no one will ever be.

And why? Because the ruling class of Greece, the very same that accepted and welcomed foreign intervention within its own territory, never developed the principle of national interest above class interest.

They were always content with the possession of power, keeping the middle and working class away from having access to the decisions making centres, with populist slogans and policies, which satisfied everyone without affecting the political system itself.

The same ruling class brought Costas Karamanlis in 1974 who instead of breaking with the past, attempted again a compromise, under which Greece still lives to this day.
The old ruling elite accepted restricted access to power by the middle and lower classes.

In 1982, the failed socialist experiment tried to give unrestricted access to power to people who didn’t have any idea of governing-and made the individuals who participated in the resistance a kind of instant celebrities, who started selling their “antistasiaki drasi” as their ticket to unrestricted power and wealth.

These are the people that we see today being in power and they have a really good time at the expense of the Greek people.

Unfortunately the 1967 Dictatorship showed the real face of the Greek political establishment.

Indifferent to the needs and concerns of the Greek people, servile to foreign intervention, unable to govern on the basis of consensus, unable to create social mobility and renew its own political and social dynamic.

For over a century Greece is  governed by the same families, the crypto-dynasties of wealth and influence, whose hold on power is never questioned and is continued unchallenged-and the new politicians choose to join them in strange alliances instead of beating them and marginalising them out of the political arena.

These families have been responsible for the Dictatorship, the tragedy in Cyprus, the widening social  inequality, the crisis of culture and education that we see dominating the country for the last forty years.

The Dictatorship and the tragedy in Cyprus proved beyond any reasonable doubt who was, and is, responsible for the dysfunctional government and  paralysed administration in Greece.

Not the USA,Kissinger or the CIA, but the very same ruling elites that control the political system to this very day.

Some say that people have the leaders they deserve: it is a very sad thought, like the sad day we are invited to remember 42 years later.

Professor Vrasidas Karalis teaches Modern Greek at the University of Sydney.