I wish to give an example of how the ‘progressive’ mafia manipulates our notion of ancient Greece.
From around 1980 to 2010 the ‘progressive’ lobbies which control the accepted narration about ancient Greece denied that the so-called Doric invasion (i. e. the migration of Doric tribes + Achaeans claiming to be offspring from Herakles from central Greece to the Peloponnese in the late XIIth c.) existed, even if the ancient tradition is unanimous in asserting that this invasion did exist and although the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces clearly testifies of the coming of a hostile army.
Invasions smelled ethnicity, racism, fascism, so if you objected to these people that meant you were fascist and you had to be removed from the system. Luigi Musti wrote a book in which he defended the immigration of the Dorians to southern Greece but nobody in the Anglo-American world took notice of his argumentation. As usual, if you write crucial criticism of these king-makers of the acceptable narration, you are just ignored.
At the time I lived in the British School at Athens and when once I asserted in the Finlay living room that the unanimous ancient tradition about the coming of the Dorians cannot be wrong, people laughed at me: speaking against the mainstrem made you just ridiculous.
However very soon the political agenda of this ‘progressive’ mafia changed, at the time of the immigrations, re-valuating ancient immigrations became trendy. Thus even the Dorian immigration has been revaluated.
Last December, I attended the annual report of the Irish Institute at Athens. A supposed scholar, who enjoys a very wealthy grant from the Europe Union, asserted that now with the new immigrations on top of the agenda of course the Doric immigration must have existed, he even cited as world authority another supposed scholar who in the past promoted pogroms against the few real scholars who dared to contradict the mainstream but now of course also asserts that the Dorians really came from central Greece to the Peloponnese.
Any comment is redundant.
Originally posted 2020-07-03 11:30:44.
