(lyrics from the traditional poem of “the Dead Brother”)
“I fear you, little brother…
You carry the scent of incense.”
“Last night we crossed over to Saint John’s.
The priest censed us lavishly with incense.”
“Tell me—where has your youthful grace gone?
Where is your proud bearing?
Your golden hair,
your handsome mustache?”
“Long have I lain sick,
and my hair has fallen away.”
_______
1. “Laliotis is writing a book about Mount Athos
efsyn
I admit that I did not expect that Costas Laliotis would write a book about Mount Athos. And yet it is being completed, as he informed me yesterday in a letter he sent me.
The essay under publication, explains Laliotis, is a due tribute of honor and memory to the late Andreas Papandreou, Kostis Moskoff, Elder Vasilios Gontikakis, Archbishop Anastasios Giannoulatos and Dionysis Savvopoulos. Five of his beloved figures, who each defined and marked his experience, his relationships and his journey on Mount Athos and the Athonite State in their own catalytic way”.
2. DIONYSSIS SAVBOPOULOS . All his life is a sham
May 18, 2023 by Nikos Adamopoulos
Dionysis Savvopoulos: “I want a self-reliant New Democracy – Mitsotakis is the best” .
*********
The Polytechnic Generation, the Masks of Power, and an Ideological Homecoming
There is little point in dwelling at length on Kostas Laliotis himself.
His story is, in many respects, emblematic of an entire political generation.
He was among the earliest members of what Greece came to celebrate as the “Polytechnic Generation”—those whose participation, whether substantial or symbolic, in the 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising against the military dictatorship became political capital after the restoration of democracy.
Not everyone who belonged to that generation exploited its legacy.
Far from it.
Most never sought office.
Many returned quietly to ordinary lives.
Others remained politically active without ever treating their youthful resistance as a lifelong entitlement.
But a relatively small circle did something altogether different.
They converted moral prestige into political currency.
The Polytechnic became less a historical event than a professional credential.
Its symbolic capital yielded ministerial portfolios, parliamentary seats, television appearances, influence, prestige and power.
Kostas Laliotis belonged unmistakably to that select company.
He was hardly alone.
Across the political spectrum—Left, Centre and even segments of the Right—a relatively small fraternity succeeded in monopolizing the public memory of the Polytechnic, presenting themselves as its authentic heirs while quietly appropriating an achievement that belonged to thousands.
History, however, is rarely so generous.
No democratic uprising is the work of fifty celebrated names.
History is written by multitudes, even when posterity remembers only a handful.
The overwhelming majority of those who stood behind the Polytechnic never demanded repayment.
They never transformed sacrifice into personal investment.
Their principles were not negotiable assets waiting to mature with interest.
Perhaps that is why today’s ideological migrations provoke little astonishment among them.
They have witnessed too many similar journeys.
Too many celebrated revolutionaries eventually discovering entirely different certainties.
Some found comfort in nationalism.
Others in political conformity.
Others still in religion.
Each insisted that the transformation represented wisdom rather than surrender.
Yet there are moments when biography reveals a quieter truth.
People do not always betray their former convictions.
Sometimes they simply return to instincts that had never entirely disappeared.
That possibility is worth considering in the case of Kostas Laliotis.
For decades he spoke the language of socialism.
He mastered its vocabulary.
He understood its rituals.
He flourished within its institutions.
Yet one cannot escape the suspicion that much of this was performance rather than conviction.
Politics rewards talented performers.
History eventually exposes them.
There comes a point when masks cease to serve their purpose.
Some are torn away by circumstance.
Others are removed voluntarily.
Either way, what remains is the face that had always been there.
The Roman god Janus, with two faces looking in opposite directions, remains one of history’s enduring political metaphors.
Public life is crowded with Janus figures.
They adapt effortlessly to changing winds while presenting each transformation as evidence of maturity.
The public often mistakes flexibility for wisdom.
It is not always the same thing.
Consistency is unfashionable.
Conviction frequently carries a higher personal cost than adaptation.
Those who never abandoned the ideals of their youth are often dismissed as naïve, uncompromising or politically obsolete.
Yet history tends to treat them with greater generosity than it treats those who endlessly reinvent themselves.
For that reason, Laliotis’ latest intellectual destination inspires neither outrage nor surprise.
It merely completes a trajectory that, in retrospect, appears remarkably coherent.
The destination may be Mount Athos.
The journey, however, began much earlier.
One is reminded of the poet’s observation:
“He was never at fault.
He had always been exactly who he was.”
Nothing better captures the quiet irony of political biography.
What many describe as an ideological conversion is often something simpler.
Not transformation.
Recognition.
The final unveiling of a self long concealed beneath successive political costumes.
And once that unveiling occurs, earlier contradictions suddenly begin to make sense.
The speeches.
The alliances.
The carefully cultivated image.
The selective loyalties.
Each becomes another piece of a puzzle that had remained incomplete only because the final image had not yet appeared.
Viewed from that perspective, Laliotis’ fascination with Mount Athos is less a departure than a homecoming.
The incense was perhaps always there.
Only now has its fragrance become impossible to ignore.
Farewell to the Ideological Wilderness
So, farewell, Kostas Laliotis.
Farewell to the ideological landscape you have chosen to inhabit.
You, who once marched beneath the banners of socialism, now appear surrounded by the unmistakable fragrance of incense.
History has a peculiar sense of irony.
The young militant who once represented political modernity now turns his gaze toward the ancient monasteries of Mount Athos.
The revolutionary arrives at the monastery gate.
The radical discovers tradition.
The politician discovers silence.
Perhaps this is merely the natural conclusion of a long journey.
Or perhaps it is the final chapter of a story whose first pages were written many decades ago.
We would hardly be astonished if one day we heard that Kostas Laliotis had exchanged his political attire for a monk’s robe and had withdrawn permanently to the Athonite Republic—the sacred mountain whose spiritual world appears to have fascinated him so deeply.
Perhaps this attraction existed even in his youth.
Perhaps the longing was always present.
But in those days, revealing such a sentiment would have required courage.
And perhaps courage was not the only missing element.
Political circumstances also matter.
There are moments in life when certain truths become easier to admit.
Especially when political careers have ended, when public expectations have faded, and when the struggle for influence has been replaced by the search for personal meaning.
The old passions return.
The forgotten sympathies emerge.
The hidden preferences reveal themselves.
The mask is no longer necessary.
The world finally sees what was beneath it.
(*) The Neo-Orthodox Phenomenon
(DIONYSSIS SAVBOPOULOS . All his life is a sham
May 18, 2023)
This brings us to a broader phenomenon that has appeared in modern Greece: what is commonly described as Neo-Orthodoxy.
The term itself has been used in different ways, but within this critique it refers to a particular intellectual current that emerged through a mixture of Orthodox religious identity, cultural traditionalism, philosophical reflection and political ambiguity.
Over the years, this circle has included theologians, writers, intellectuals, artists and public figures who attempted to combine elements that historically belonged to very different ideological traditions.
Among the figures associated with this intellectual environment have been people such as Christos Yannaras, Kostas Zouraris, Georgios Metallinos, Panayiotis Nellas, Kostis Moskov, Theodoros Ziakas, Zissimos Lorentzatos, Dionysis Savvopoulos and others.
The author of this essay views this phenomenon critically—as an intellectual confusion, a mixture of incompatible ideas, a space where Left and Right, modernity and tradition, revolutionary language and religious conservatism often coexist in uneasy contradiction.
In this interpretation, Neo-Orthodoxy represents not a genuine synthesis but an ideological crossroads where opposing directions collide.
A movement where, metaphorically speaking, “the Left does not know what the Right hand is doing.”
The Return of the Old Language
Those familiar with Greek intellectual history recognize the pattern.
Institutions and ideologies rarely disappear completely.
They transform.
They adapt.
They change their vocabulary according to the needs of each era.
Yesterday’s certainties become today’s reflections.
Yesterday’s political commitments become today’s cultural identities.
The old structures survive by changing appearance.
Religious institutions, political movements and intellectual circles have all demonstrated this ability throughout history.
The language changes.
The symbols change.
The audience changes.
But the underlying human search for authority, belonging and influence remains remarkably constant.
The Final Word
Perhaps the most revealing lesson of the entire story is not about Kostas Laliotis alone.
It concerns the fragile relationship between ideology and identity.
Political labels are temporary.
Public images are temporary.
Careers are temporary.
What remains is the individual beneath the roles he has played.
Some people carry their youthful convictions throughout their lives.
Others gradually exchange them for new certainties.
Neither history nor human nature is simple enough to allow easy explanations.
But one thing remains certain:
Eventually, every person encounters the moment when the disguise falls away.
When the performance ends.
When the world sees not the character that was presented, but the person who was always there.
And so we return to the old Greek image:
The dead brother arrives smelling of incense.
The living recognize him.
They ask:
“Where is your beauty now?
Where is your proud bearing?
Where are the signs of the person you once were?”
And the answer comes quietly:
“I have been ill for a long time…
and my hair has fallen away.”
A metaphor, perhaps, for every ideology that grows old.
For every promise that fades.
For every mask that eventually falls.