{"id":2756,"date":"2022-07-15T21:22:28","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T18:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penna.cydialogue.org\/?p=2756"},"modified":"2022-07-22T09:41:40","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T06:41:40","slug":"the-new-patriotism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penna.cydialogue.org\/the-new-patriotism\/","title":{"rendered":"THE NEW \u201cPATRIOTISM\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
It’s not that there is no longer any point in cursing those who betrayed us.<\/p>\n
It is not that a lot of water but also mud has flowed in the river of History already.<\/span><\/p>\n It is not even that the repetition of images and testimonies no longer puts a knot in the stomach, which doesn’t have time now to “digest” all that is happening in this land.<\/p>\n It is that the “guilty and complicit, innocent and fellow innocents” of that time, later became one and gave birth to a new version of “patriotism”. [Translator\u2019s note: reference to a speech on August 15, 1974, by then EDEK leader Vasos Lyssarides, addressed to Greek Cypriot political leaders from across the political spectrum, where he sought “a remedy for a national tragedy”, urging them to reject then Turkish Foreign Minister Turan G\u00fcne\u015f’ proposal to establish six Turkish Cypriot cantons in Cyprus<\/em>]<\/p>\n It is as if they all washed together in the Pool of Siloam and came out pure and unblemished to give lessons on the new “national cause”. [Translator’s note: a pool in Jerusalem where it is said Jesus Christ performed a miracle, curing a man from blindness<\/em>]<\/p>\n It is that we never understood that extremes, fanaticism, absolute truths, a one-way reading of History will always lead to disasters.<\/p>\n It is that we truly did not deserve this tragedy since we failed to become a little wiser.<\/p>\n Almost half a century and we are living through the same. Only that their faces and their History have got us so confused. Everything was done in the name of a certain “patriotism” and a “national cause”. And we didn’t even realise that, among the many slogans, we had run out of the word of truth, and perspective…<\/p>\n