Muslim immigrants and the Greek nation: The emergence of nationalist intolerance

Introduction

Dealing with migration-related ethnic and religious diversity and maintaining social cohesion is one of the challenges that European liberal democratic states are facing in the 21st century. In recent years several politicians have proclaimed the ‘death of multiculturalism’ reflecting, to a certain extent, public feelings of disappointment and uneasiness with policies dealing with migration, integration and difference. This challenge becomes all the more important in the light of the recent acute global economic crisis; when resources are scarce for all it is tempting to blame migrants for many of the society’s and economy’s problems such as rising criminality, unemployment, and urban decay. The threat from the economic crisis is projected onto migrants: they become an internal significant other (Triandafyllidou, 1998), which helps reinforce social cohesion when the welfare state is falling apart and social solidarity is put to the test. This double crisis brought into question not only cohesion within European individual countries, but the relevance and future of the EU integration project as a whole. ¹

Faced with claims for recognising religious diversity, European liberal democracies tend to reject those. Their rejection, however, is framed in liberal and democratic terms. Dominant public discourses and related state policies argue that such rejection and actually non-tolerance of certain behaviours or claims is based on precisely the principle of liberal tolerance and equality. Indeed, in countries with a long experience in receiving migrants and different philosophies of integration (Favell, 1998) like Denmark (Mouritsen and Olsen, 2012), the Netherlands (Maussen and Versteegt, 2011) or France (Escaffre-Dublet, 2012) there is a common liberal, secular intolerance emerging. More than often Muslim communities are seen as ‘unfit’ for the European liberal and secular democracies. Discourses on what kind of religious diversity should be accommodated or indeed non-tolerated in European societies are further developed by far right-wing parties which are on the rise in several European countries. Recent studies have attempted to explain their electoral success by showing how they tailor their discourse to the civic and liberal elements of national identity, presenting themselves as ‘defenders’ of citizens’ rights (Hainsworth, 2008). This way, anti-immigrant rhetoric becomes all the more tolerated and xenophobic discourse takes centre stage in European politics.

This paper seeks to make a contribution to this line of research by studying the case of a southern European country, Greece, with less experience in integrating migrants than the northern and western European countries mentioned above. Even if Greece already has a 20-year-long experience as an immigrant host country, its migrant integration policies are still rather under-developed. Greek governments until 2009 have been particularly hesitant to encourage the settlement and socio-political integration of migrant populations in a country with a rigid ethnocultural conception of citizenship. The dominant view has been that migrants are a convenient, albeit temporary, labour force that should go home when their job is finished and who, in any case, were not welcome to stay and become part of the Greek nation (Triandafyllidou, 2010).

Meanwhile, however, immigrants in Greece have been more or less actively participating in the public life of the country during those last 20 years by challenging economic, social, political and cultural realities. State policy has also changed (in early 2010) with a new citizenship law that has opened up citizenship to the second generation, has facilitated naturalisation for first-generation migrants and has given local voting rights to long-term residents (of 5 years or more) (Triandafyllidou, 2012). Research conducted in the first decade of the 21st century revealed a more flexible understanding of Greek national identity not only in terms of public policy and elites represenations, but also among citizens (Anagnostou and Triandafyllidou, 2007; Kokosalakis, 2004; Pavlou, 2009).

While these policies seemed to represent a break with the past and a concrete political will, not only to tolerate, but also to accept and accommodate ethnic and religious diversity, recent developments in society and in politics suggest an opposite trend. Official political discourse and public attitudes towards migrants have worsened significantly in the last 2 years, with overt xenophobia and racism taking the toll. The reform of the citizenship law has been met with great suspicion and while only very moderately implemented, the new law was recently (November 2012) judged as unconstitutional by the Council of State (Triandafyllidou, 2012). An acute economic and political crisis since 2009 has been coupled with a notable increase since 2007 in irregular migrant and asylum seeker arrivals from Asia and Africa via Turkey. As job opportunities have been drying up, the lack of any local or national policy for addressing this issue has turned migration into a pressing social problem as well as an election campaign issue. Rising insecurity has also contributed to the spectacular rise of extreme right-wing forces since 2009, gathering approximately 8% of the national vote in the last election of June 2012. Anti-immigrant rhetoric and xenophobia has turned into mainstream discourse, while neo-Nazi discourse and practices by far-right groups are tolerated to a large extent by both the official political establishment and by public opinion.

Combining both structural (past and current migration policies, past and current positions on migration by the main political parties) and contextual (economic crisis, rising numbers of irregular migrants and asylum seekers) factors Greece finds itself at the heart of the double-faceted contemporary European crisis. Against this background of rising intolerance throughout Europe, Greece emerges as a special and interesting case for studying political discourses on religious diversity and how it is tolerated, accepted or indeed rejected at a time of acute crisis.

This paper is organised as follows. We first provide the conceptual framework of the study discussing the contemporary configurations of the concept of tolerance as related with liberalism in contemporary European societies. We then present the Greek context within which our case study is situated, which differs in terms of integration and migration policies and traditions of belonging when compared with Northern European democracies. The fourth section of the paper concentrates on our case study which concerns the public Muslim prayer that took place in several squares of Athens on 18 November 2010. The prayer was organised by several Muslim and migrant organisations in Athens as a peaceful protest against the fact that Athens still does not have a formal mosque. We use this event as an opportunity for interviewing social and political actors directly or indirectly involved in it (local authorities, party representatives, migrant organisations, and civic activists) on their views regarding migration, religious diversity and their accommodation in Greek society and in the Greek public space. Suggesting that the Greek experience forms part of the European one towards diversity, we actually propose here the notion of ‘nationalist intolerance’ as a variant of the ‘liberal intolerance’ term coined by Mouritsen and Olsen. The concluding section further reflects on the notion of nationalist intolerance in Greece and discusses its relationship with intolerant positions in other European countries too. Our aim is to explore further the roots and variants of the concept of tolerance with a view to understanding better how it is used today as a basis for excluding migrants and rejecting religious diversity in the public space rather than for contributing towards the creation of a common liberal and democratic public space. Even if national contexts naturally differ, there are, however, focal points of similarity that give shape to a widespread backlash of intolerance throughout Europe that need further empirical and conceptual research.

Nationhood and tolerance in Europe and in Greece

The concept of tolerance is not new in the political theory literature. In its basic form, tolerance means to refrain from objecting to something with which one does not agree. It involves that one rejects a belief or a behaviour, that one believes her/his objection to this behaviour or idea is legitimate, and that one disposes of the means to combat or suppress it and yet one decides to tolerate this negative behaviour and even its possible consequences (King, 1997: 25).Historically, the development of a body of theory on the subject of toleration began in the 16th and 17th centuries in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion. It started as a response to conflict among Christian denominations and to the persecution of witchcraft and heresy and was then understood with reference to religious diversity (dominant religions’ toleration of minority religious groups). Today the concept is applied to all forms of difference including race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender. However, it has been criticised since the Enlightenment, as it is considered to imply a negative view of the object of tolerance and hence a form of discrimination. There are thinkers, thus, who privilege the notions of acceptance and recognition of cultural diversity. It is also worth noting that tolerance implies a relationship of power: only majorities have the power to tolerate minorities. A minority cannot tolerate a majority simply because it does not have the power to do so. For this reason, there are other thinkers who have suggested other interpretations of the concept, such as Dobbernack and Modood (2013) who argue in favour of a distinction between three types of attitudes towards ethnic and religious diversity: non-tolerance, tolerance and acceptance.

Liberalism and nationalism have both played pivotal roles in European history since the 19th century. There is a fine balance between national identity and universal human identity that has to be maintained in liberal democracies so as to ensure social cohesion. Liberal ideas are called to ‘take action’ whenever the dominant national and religious identity threatens minority identities or when the majority culture does not tolerate being challenged. Against this background, tolerance describes contexts and practices where practices or attitudes that are disapproved of, are allowed to exist. It is a concept and a norm referring to the wider variety of issues on which different groups in society may not and need not be agreed and, thus, as a liberal value managing public life in contemporary diverse societies. European countries with long traditions of hosting immigration, have developed integration policies favouring liberal concepts such as secularism, multiculturalism, and, of course, tolerance in view of better fortifying societies against xenophobia and discrimination. During recent decades, however, the increasing presence of migrants and post-migration minorities in European countries has reversed this relationship, actually transforming liberalism to a bastion of nationalism. Liberal and secular principles and arguments are used to reject ethnic and religious diversity and defend social cohesion. Minimal liberal tolerance of diversity has thus replaced earlier quests for acceptance and recognition. However, even such minimal tolerance is now questioned by the argument that some forms of diversity are essentially illiberal and should not be tolerated. In this vein, it is acceptable and even necessary to violate the principles of liberalism and suppress/exclude some forms of diversity for the very reason that they put liberalism into danger. As Mouritsen and Olsen argue, we are witnessing the emergence of a ‘principled liberal intolerance’ which:

is liberal by being associated with the values of autonomy and equality, democracy, and the health and stability of liberal societies. It reverses the pragmatic of old school tolerance, insisting that too much leniency may be bad for social peace and a sign of undue cultural self-doubt, and that values and virtues may in fact be implanted in recalcitrant minds. It implies that liberalism as a social and institutional order and form of civic subjectivity is vulnerable, should be defended, and needs active promotion, so that not leaving people alone is good. (…) it defines as undesirable such groups that are seen as predominantly illiberal, who have their access and/or residence possibilities restricted as a consequence. (Mouritsen and Olsen, 2013: 130)

One could note that the above theoretical undertaking in the different levels of tolerance towards diversity is reflected in more or less flexible immigration policies, models of integration policies, inclusionary or exclusionary attitudes towards immigrants, laws on citizenship defined by jus sanguinis and others by jus solis (Medrano and Koenig, 2005). It is widely acknowledged that models of citizenship reflect the relationship between immigrants’ and citizens’ rights in each country and, thus, the ways in which national identity, cultural difference and tolerance interact in each case. Brubaker (1992) in his influential study on France and Germany argued that ethnic conceptions of the nation are related with jus sanguinis models of citizenship whereas civic conceptions of the nation are connected with jus soli models (Medrano and Koenig, 2005). This ethnic/civic dichotomy has been thought so far in scholars’ works to explain why some countries are more tolerant than others when it comes to ethnic, religious and cultural diversity (Koopmans and Statham, 1999).

Within this vein, Greek national identity is believed to be predominantly defined in ethno-cultural terms. Until very recently, the definition of Greek citizenship had been based almost exclusively on the jus sanguinis principle and difference in the country is understood at two inextricably connected levels: ethnicity/nationality and religion. Greeks are people of Greek descent – regardless of where they have been born – who are Christian Orthodox (Christopoulos, 2012). The two elements, the ethnic and the religious, are used in a pivotal but also deeply entrenched manner. Thus people have to be of Greek ancestry even if they do not speak the language. Having Greek ancestry is conceived to bring with it necessarily a Christian Orthodox religious identity. In other words, Christian Orthodoxy is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition while being of Greek descent is a necessary and sufficient condition.

Specifically regarding religion, it is widely believed that national identity is tempered by this same ongoing conflict between the secular interpretations of Hellenism advocated by the Western Enlightenment on the one hand, and by the Byzantine Empire legacy and the conservative religious conformism of a strong and very present Eastern Orthodox Church on the other (Tsoukalas, 2002). Not only in terms of national identity but also from a geographical point of view Greece is located at the crossroads between the European continent and Asia. This is also reflected in the geopolitical and economic relations between Greece and its fellow member states, which are often fraught with misunderstandings and tensions on the country’s role within the European Union. According, thus, to this East/West divide, the attachment to tradition and to the Christian Orthodox religion is often found at the core of a rigid conception of national identity to the extent that it is hard to differentiate Greek ethnicity from orthodox religiosity (Halikiopoulou, 2011). So while the Orthodox Church demands little from its members and is rather tolerant towards diversity, it retains its stronghold as a national church (Dragona, in press). Studies have shown, for instance, that more or less tolerant attitudes towards the ‘other’ throughout Greek history have been integrated in a large pattern of cultural and religious assimilation that does not challenge the dominant national narrative (Divani, 1999; Mazower, 2004).

Rising intolerance is a phenomenon currently on the rise throughout European countries dealing with variant forms of diversity related with migration. Greece is a telling example of how ideas, practices and discourses of exclusion emerge within a modern liberal nation state founded upon democracy. At first glance, however, it seems that the country’s relation with modernity, liberal values and nationality has been tempered giving rise to rigid traditions of belonging and ethnocultural conceptions of citizenship. What is the relationship, then, between this national case study and other current European attitudes towards diversity? In this paper, we move beyond path dependency accounts that present the current rise of racism as an unavoidable result of specific national traditions in each country. On the contrary, we situate the case of Greece within the European context with a view to analysing political discourses on migration-related religious diversity in the country and whether it should be tolerated or not. This way, we attempt to uncover what is the basis of such intolerance discourses in relation to mainstream democratic political culture across the continent.

Islam and the public space in Greece

Political and cultural arguments about migrants and their religious diversity

Two competing dimensions organise the discourse of the 19 social and political actors interviewed: tolerance vs. intolerance of religious diversity; and political–ideological vs. cultural-identity argumentation.

The political–ideological frame is adopted by left-wing local politicians, civil society representatives, Muslim organisations but also by a clergyman interviewed. It explains words and actions taking place in public space as choices made by citizens on how to live their lives in relation to other people and power structures. They all accept that religious diversity should be accepted in a democratic country. Thus, they argue, there is no problem whatsoever in Muslims conducting their religious duties in open public space, as this is a right they are entitled to. The municipal councillor that represents the leftist coalition justifies her position not based on constitutional provisions, but on her political ideology;

This is the first strategy used to justify the position of a type of tolerance that is amplified to denote acceptance, namely the appeal to a political and ideological culture that considers diversity to be an added value not a problem. The co-existence of more than one culture is a ‘gift’ not a ‘problem’ argues the President of the Association of Muslims in Greece (Interview 16), a Greek citizen of Egyptian origin. Another respondent, a member of an architects’ group for the city centre’s improvement, frames the issue as a question of democratic citizenship values and ethics:

Why is there a rise in xenophobia, when all those years migration offered so much to Europe and Greece in terms of economic prosperity? Well, now, we enter into the political field, into the domain of ideology, how we want our world to be, how we want to construct it, it would be naive to wish to live in a society all together without looking deeper what must change. And in order for things to change, things must change, in education, in schools … It is the huge responsibility of the democratic citizen, not just of the progressive one, there is an urgent need to participate and to be alert, to fight for the co existence in urban space … (Interview 15)

This is not a principle stemming from legal duties or political party positions, but a political choice on how to relate to migrants in the public sphere and how one wishes the world around him/her to be. In this sense, it is also the Church representative who seems to end up in the same perspective over diversity, even if departing from a different principle, the ‘Love Thy Neighborhood Christian’ standpoint. The church representative, however, hesitated to frame the issue under question using the terms ‘toleration’ and ‘tolerance’, as these may lead to a problematisation of migration and diversity instead of treating these as enriching elements of a whole culture and people:

Toleration means that I tolerate something … I think I disagree with this term, because it is not related with notions as integration, solidarity, which means that I want the other to treat me as I treat him, this is a question of values, it means I love the other person next to me, I care about him, and I want to help him throughout this period of his life, as I would like him to do If I were at his homeland. (Interview 11)

This type of tolerance is thus framed as a question of political–ideological choice: it is endorsed in the name of values such as equality and respect of diversity. Respondents seek to broaden the concept so as to endorse a positive interpretation of multiculturalism rather than the classical ‘negative’ attitude of minimal tolerance towards difference. That resembles the way Elisabetta Galeotti (2002) elaborated the term involving not only acceptance, but also combating negative stereotypes and identities that may have been attributed to ‘tolerated’ minority groups. While the classical form of tolerance may be also characterised as liberal tolerance, this second type predicated by Galeotti and stemming from the interviews can be characterised as a respectful ‘thick’ form of tolerance, what Galeotti refers to as ‘public tolerance’ and symbolic recognition of the minority or immigrant group.

Public tolerance is presented as a value conditioning social relations and promoting other values too, such as, for instance, gender equality. In this sense, the left-wing party representative notes that unequal gender relations must not go unabated in the name of ‘multiculturalism’. Here the concept of public and respectful tolerance is thus qualified: it must go hand in hand with liberal principles such as gender equality. We need to ensure both the respect of religious and cultural diversity and the respect of equality as defined by law. The possible tension is thus resolved by an active and public attitude of tolerance that seeks to satisfy and reconcile both conditions: religious diversity and a common set of civic principles. It is deemed that this kind of tolerance responds better to contemporary diversity challenges in the country. Moreover, as is evident in the case of the Orthodox priest and other respondents, it is possible to accept religious diversity in public space, while at the same time agreeing with the dominant definition of nationhood. Even if this would appear contradictory, however, the same interviewee can defend both civic and ethnic elements in the way national identity is understood. Citizens throughout the interviews do not adhere solely to the ethnic model of nationhood as projected through national education and official political discourse, while some depart from this to defend notions much broader than the minimal liberal tolerance one.

However, the majority of interviewees adopt the cultural-identity framing of tolerance, which, in contrast with the above political/ideological framing, attributes social practices and discourse uttered in public life to the culture and identity of individuals and groups involved. This emphasis on identity, which points to an attempt to define the self and the opponents based on nationality (Tilly, 2003), is rather common when it comes to public discourse on immigration. This is done by putting emphasis on the cultural (and not civic) identity defined by the category of nation and which is appearing as beyond and above politics and irrelevant to ideology. Acknowledging that minimal liberal tolerance is an inherent value of any democratic regime, right-wing interviewees make use of two strategies to justify their intolerance towards (religious) diversity.

We tolerate ‘them’ as long as this does not clash with ‘our’ rights: The first strategy is to acknowledge the need to tolerate others’ rights only to the extent that native people’s rights are not threatened and public order is maintained. An affirmative stance, thus, that soon retreats into a restrictive view of the notion of tolerance. In this context, the crisis frame is also operationalised so as to prove that values, such as tolerance, are highly irrelevant when the majority population is faced with economic and social insecurity.

When the Greeks have to contribute 30–40% of their wages in order for the state to survive, they are called to contribute also for those people who for their own reasons decided to enter in here. Greece is facing its own problems, very serious ones, so serious that there is no time to think whether we can be tolerant towards other things or not. If the problem of massive and uncontrolled move of people from other countries and civilizations continues, then intolerance will increase. (Interview 6)

It is the same sense of growing crisis that gives shape to the principled liberal intolerance as suggested by Mouritsen and Olsen. The need for self-defence of liberal democratic orders and their civic and cultural underpinnings transform liberal societies into highly intolerant ones (Mouritsen and Olsen, 2013). This implies a certain hierarchy between more and less advanced societies, majorities and minorities, in-groups and out-groups. In the present case, in the name of the native majority’s wellbeing, tolerance should be legally and institutionally limited.

The cultural framing of tolerance emphasises the limits and preconditions of tolerance signalling its gradually ‘diminishing space’ towards immigrants, those ‘significant others, who are legitimate objects of manipulation and exclusion and, thus, not equal political subjects. In their analysis of critiques towards multiculturalism, Vertovec and Wessendorf (2010) showed how they all blamed minorities for wanting to hold on to their cultures. When the liberal order becomes intolerant in its self-defence then the role that the nation state has to play in protecting the national majority from migrant minorities changes significantly:

Migration is not a right, we must not give the right to everyone who wishes to come to enter Greece and get a job and stay forever. We must check how many we could have, where to canalize them, what kind of jobs they could do, but, at the same, time, make sure that all of those, whom we already have, are given labour and social rights, a decent presence in the country. Otherwise, too much tolerance can lead to imposition. (Interview 8, journalist in mainstream TV, no explicit political affiliation)

Too much tolerance jeopardises integration, well-being and, thus, this same liberalism that intends to defend. As in the case of liberal intolerance, this type of proclaimed ‘nationalist’ intolerance is also spelled out in the name of democratic values. There is a ‘real’ problem with immigrants in the Netherlands, but also in Greece and Sweden, that should not be underestimated. Against a politically correct narrative of ‘multiculturalism’, the liberal order ‘must defend itself’ and become illiberal so as to deal with immigration and difference. The hierarchy between ‘us’ and ‘them’ enables many of the respondents, and not only the right-wing ones, to talk about tolerance while arguing for intolerance of (religious) diversity.

This emerging intolerance is further developed by turning it on its head: it is not a matter of ‘us’ tolerating them by applying our democratic principles, it is rather about ‘them’ who are ‘intolerable’ because of their intrinsic cultural features.

It has become apparent that people from the Third World cannot integrate into the Western World; it becomes difficult due to their background, not difficult, impossible. Due to the lack of institutions, the man from Bangladesh is able only to sell flowers in the streets, which is a parasitic labor according to Western criteria, and he is not willing to channel his skills in another way. (Interview 8, journalist in mainstream TV, no explicit political affiliation)

The representative of the far right-wing party, LAOS, rejects religious diversity in the name of Muslim women’s rights arguing for intolerance exactly in the name of liberal tolerance and equality (Interview 4). Thus, the blame for neither being accepted nor tolerated is put on the migrants themselves, and not on Greek society. If migrants wish to be tolerated, they, thus, must not differ from the native community; otherwise it is them, who put limits to tolerance. Politicising the cultural gap between minorities and autochthonous populations makes the migrant population responsible for bridging the gap and for any intolerance incidents that may occur. What lies behind such a rationale, however, is the unquestionable priority of the national cultural self over migrant identities. However, in the same sense, the concern over cultural cohesion and liberal democratic traditions becomes operationalised also in the case of other European countries’ emerging intolerance (Mouritsen and Olsen, 2013). Tolerance as a liberal democratic principle is abolished as soon as human rights issues come into play and with this priority in mind intolerance and, what’s more, Islamophobia and phobia against the ‘other’ is introduced in politically correct terms and rational argumentation. Western civilisation emerges superior to other, less advanced cultures and traditional practices, like the Muslim ones.

Our case study interviews revealed that there are two contradictory diagnoses of the ‘problem’; notably the political and principled framing of the events by reference to a public tolerance of diversity and the identity framing where all issues are subsumed to a fundamental dichotomy between Us and Others, in which the interest of the ‘in-group’ which emerges as the utmost priority and hence religious diversity is not tolerated. Even if all respondents pay lip-service to tolerance during the interview, the majority ends up defending highly intolerant positions departing from a reactionary nationalist perspective over the self and the other.

Nationalist vs. liberal intolerance: Concluding remarks

This paper studies the meanings of tolerance and intolerance towards cultural and religious diversity today in Greece taking as a case in point the peaceful protest of the Muslim inhabitants of Athens in November 2010 on the occasion of the ‘Id prayer. In the absence of a formal mosque in the city despite several laws that have authorised its construction (Triandafyllidou and Gropas, 2009), the Muslim inhabitants of the city, mainly of Asian immigrant origin, gathered in prayer in several squares of the city. The paper takes this event as a case in point and interviews social and political actors involved, directly or indirectly, in the event on their views about migration, ethnic and religious diversity in Greek society. Bearing in mind that religious diversity has not been an issue in Greece until recently (since the vast majority of Muslim immigrants were Albanians and hence non-practicing, the few Asians that were practicing remained largely invisible to the public eye), these interviews which took place a year after the event (in winter 2011–2012) naturally reflect the acute economic crisis as well as the rise of racist violence and discourse by far right-wing groupings and parties.

The public Muslim prayer is perhaps a unique event of its kind in Greece in that it put into question the imaginary homogeneity of national identity, especially during a time of crisis that already hampered some of its basic tenets. Although there is a left–right wing dimension organising the discourse where left-wing party activists and NGOs defend a civic and plural understanding of national identity that should make room for ethnic and religious diversity, a large number of our interviews, supporters of right-wing parties and more, expressed highly intolerant positions towards migrants in general and Islam/Muslims in particular. While the first group of interviewees consider their tolerant position as a choice over how they want to live their lives, the second group present their intolerant stance as based on the self-evident ‘hierarchy’ between ‘us, the Greeks’ and the ‘others, the non-Greeks’ which naturally organises life in the country. In this sense, intolerance as compared with tolerance appears to be rooted into conceptions of nationhood, as it presents a coherent nationalist narrative of the situation: arguments in favour of non-tolerating migrants were presented as apolitical and logical reactions towards an ‘objective’ reality. Thus, with the exception of a few clearly left-wing and pro-diversity interviewees, most others, including those who would classify themselves as faithful to liberal principles such as equality and democracy, justified and legitimised intolerance. A strategy of objectification was also adopted to strengthen the culture and identity framing: it is ‘natural’ that the world is divided into ‘us’ fellow nationals and ‘them’, others. Exclusion, inequality, intolerance, even racist violence can be justified when what is at stake is the perceived interest or well-being of the national in-group.

This type of intolerance and rejection of the migrant ‘other’ is based on arguments about the well-being of the nation, which appears as the outmost and uncontested priority that conditions all matters of social and public life. If we draw from the ethnic/civic dichotomy concerning conceptions of nationhood, then this intolerant position studied in Greece appears as different from the ‘principled liberal intolerance’ that is becoming popular in countries like Denmark, the Netherlands or France (Mouritsen and Olsen, 2013). In the latter case, the rise of intolerance is attributed to a presumed ‘failure of multiculturalism’ that led particularistic cultures to reign over universal human rights (Vasta, 2007). Intolerance is presented as a liberal concern with individual autonomy, equality and reasonableness. On the contrary, in Greece, rising intolerance emerges in the form of a reactionary nationalism during a time of a multi-faceted crisis, an intolerance that can be attributed to the ‘ethnocultural’ conception of nationhood dominant in national traditions of belonging and to the ‘Eastern’ heritage of the country.

However, putting this national case within a broader context complicates the picture. The above analysis highlights that, apart from contextual similarities, this backlash of intolerance in different countries is based upon similar conceptual grounds: an increasing sense of crisis that makes terms such as equality and tolerance irrelevant and fosters hierarchies between in-groups and out-groups; a manipulation of the immigrants, those ‘significant others’ so as to boost social cohesion; a cynicism towards politically correct perspectives of multiculturalism, ‘too much diversity’ and human rights; a concern with cultural homogeneity and cultural practices which implies a resistance to minorities’ accommodation while putting the blame on ‘difference’ for not fitting in. The most recent economic and political crisis in Greece marks a shift in political discourse towards an ethno-cultural direction of closure and intolerance. Interestingly, social and political actors turn tolerance on its head, just like it happens with liberal intolerance, arguing that it is precisely to protect democracy and the nation that they cannot tolerate migrants and their ‘inferior’ culture and religious tradition. Even if the case of intolerance found in Greece cannot be termed as ‘liberal’, it is, though, ‘principled’, as well, as it is legitimised and justified by the national political order. It is ‘new’ as it follows a period of a positive turn of the public discourse and of an opening up of migration and naturalisation policies favouring migrants’ integration (Christopoulos, 2012; Pavlou, 2009).

There is little doubt that the ethnic/civic dichotomy is helpful in clarifying the issues at stake, also in the case of Greece dominated by an ethnocultural model of citizenship; however, this dichotomy simplifies a rather more complicated reality that especially nowadays tends to be radically intolerant towards the ‘other’ taking various versions in different countries. Recent studies show that, although different national traditions over nationhood significantly influence the citizenship models countries produce, these are constantly in interaction with broader geopolitical and economic developments, migration flows, politics, diaspora and colonial settlements, or power relations within each nation state (Christopoulos, 2012). It is often the case that the same citizen can defend a model of belonging to a nation that entails civic and ethnic elements, at the same time as national traditions most often entail both ‘trends’ (Medrano and Koenig, 2005). And indeed political cultures are rotted in specific national histories. The East-West Divide in the conception of citizenship in Europe is equally called into question (Baubock and Leibich, 2010).

The current popular xenophobic attitudes in Greece can be seen as a variant of ‘principled intolerance’. In Greece, this is a nationalist principled intolerance that subscribes to the values of the nationalism doctrine, notably that the world is naturally divided into nations and that nations need to preserve their political autonomy, ethnic purity and cultural authenticity. This way, the Greek case actually shows how intolerance builds on pre-existing national identity repertoires rather than on universal political principles. It is these pre-existing ethnic or civic models of nationhood and related citizenship concepts that are mobilised even in the face of recent changes in citizenship policy to reject migration-related diversity and migrants in general. While paying lip-service to democracy and tolerance, our interviewees argue for exactly the opposite. However, the same is true for liberal intolerance: it is not only (or not solely) based on presumed universal liberal principles but rather on national traditions of liberalism and secularism which are to be safeguarded. Departing from very different historical contexts and current experiences, countries like Greece, and Denmark or the Netherlands put forward intolerance towards religious diversity, not as an exception to their political tenets, but as emanating from those. Thus different national traditions of citizenship are operationalised so as to justify a common trend, that of a rising intolerance towards the immigrant ‘other’.

The analysis of the ‘nationalist’ intolerance emerging in Greece within a broader European context sheds some light also on the liberal intolerance rising in Northern European countries. Even if appealing to general liberal principles, the latter is actually defending cultural particularities, national institutional contexts and at the very end a narrow definition of European belonging. The generalised discourse of intolerance towards diversity, using a variety of arguments (more or less liberal, more or less nationalist) emerges as a ‘real’ and ‘pragmatic’ response to multicultural threats that have been silenced due to a politically correct discourse on diversity. Intolerant positions across Europe do not even need to be justified as a political option, but are introduced as ‘objective’ arguments restoring ‘normality’ to a state of things that has been temporarily distorted by multicultural policies on minorities. The zeitgeist defended, thus, is not of civic and liberal values, as Halikiopoulou et al. (2013) or Mouritsen and Olsen (2012) argue, but rather a zeitgeist of ‘breaking taboos’ with mainstream politics that does not pay attention to public sentiment (Prins, 2002). While in the Greek case, hierarchy is built around a nationalistic ‘us vs. them’ argument, what is implied in the case of liberal intolerance is a simplified hierarchical opposition between ‘us’, those representing liberal Western civilisation, and ‘them’, those belonging to the world of Islam. The emphasis is put on the defence of a liberal culture of universal aspirations, while it is actually about defending and constructing a new European nationalism, which becomes exclusionary and xenophobic.