Wednesday, May 26, 2021

When you are a new neo-Nazi in the Ukraine


 

3 comments:

Ahmed Fares said...

Goosestepping reminded me of this (pompoms on the shoes look funny) :

Changing of Guards, Athens (2017)

But then as I was searching for the above video, I also came across this which is sad:

Changing of the Guards ceremony on Pontian Greek Genocide Memory Day

I'd remembered that lastgreek had mentioned the Pontians, so in I found this on Wikipedia:

The Greek genocide (Greek: Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων, Genoktonia ton Ellinon), including the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was instigated by the government of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish national movement against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire and included massacres, forced conversion to Islam, forced deportations involving death marches[where?], expulsions, summary execution, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece (adding over a quarter to the prior population of Greece). Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.

source: Greek genocide

Anyway, back to the pompom thingy:

From Homer’s epic poems to Byzantine Empire’s final moments and from the Greek War of Independence to the modern Hellenic Republic- the Evzones- the elite light infantry of the Greek Army, have always stood in history’s first line.

With their origins lost in the labyrinth of the nation’s ancient tradition, the Presidential Guard as we know it today was founded on December 12 1868, during the first decades of the Greek independent state, as a combatant and ceremonial force that -among other duties- was tasked with King Otto’s safety.

Although, during the centuries that followed the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in 1453 up until the 1821 Revolution outbreak the skirt clad Evzones was renamed by Greece’s rural population to ”tsoliades” (coming from the Greek word for rags) due to their petty appearance.

The unit’s uniform, as we know it today, was worn by men at arms, klephts and anti-Ottoman insurgents during the Turkish occupation of Greece. The Evzones, with the so called ”foustanella” kilt and the rustic shoes with pompoms, called ”tsarouhi”, became the symbol of the War of Independence. After the Revolution of 1821 their uniform was established as the one of all chieftains and fighters of the Revolution.


source: Evzones: The Elite Guards of Athens

In summary, I'd have to say that the Ottomans were probably the norm as far as empires go except at the end when they got nasty as they were collapsing. As an aside, the first half of the twentieth century was a bloodbath. World wars and all that.

lastgreek said...

The Yorkshireman Who Became A Greek Presidential Guard

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g9HsnljEXWY

You gotta be at least 6 feet 2 inches tall :(


lastgreek said...

Btw do the neo-nazis know that President Zelensky is Jewish?