Thera, Cyclades, 21st century. Public Domain
Huge debt and national collapse
The debt-ridden Greek government has not protected Greece from Turkish or industrial tourism. Turkey continues its long-standing operations against NATO countries while threatening Greece. Turkey’s insults and aggressive actions in the Aegean Sea continue. Turkey boldly and arrogantly promotes to its NATO “allies” and the world that the Greek Aegean Sea is at least half Turkish. Erdogan, the president of this rogue and genocidal nation, keeps talking about “our blue homeland” where he means the Aegean Sea.
Destructive tourist orgy
The Greek government is equally passive, evasive and silent about the development frenzy and criminality that supports industrial tourism. This over-tourism causes massive pollution and unpleasant overcrowding. Too many foreigners are being dropped off daily by huge tourist boats on the small islands of Thira, Mykonos and Astypalea. The situation is getting out of hand. For example, the English edition of the Greek newspaper Ekatimerini reported that tourists at Balos Beach in Crete were wading up to their necks in water to catch a ferry to Kissamos, on the northwestern tip of Crete.
The situation is even worse on the tiny Cycladic islands of Thira and Astypalea, where Thira is over-deployed with buses to accommodate the 10,000-plus tourists it receives daily. Thira is becoming a tourist factory with a huge car park where, according to a Greek report, “more than 500 motorcoaches, 4,000 mini-buses and vans, and hundreds of quads join residents’ cars and rental cars to navigate the inadequate road network and narrow streets of Oia, Fira, and other once-peaceful villages.”
These buses, cars, motorbikes and narrow roads become a nightmare and a danger. They turn the Bronze Age island of Thira into a 21st century hotel for foreigners. Of course, Thira is the real name of the island, not Santorini as the government and tourist advertisements claim. Santorini is the name of Thira, the name the Venetians gave to the island when they ruled it from the 13th to the 16th centuries. But shamefully, the Greek government continues to call Thira by its Venetian name, Santa Irene (Santorini). After visiting Thira in the 1980s, I went to the Athens tourist office to complain about the foreign name of this wonderful Greek island. The official who listened to me in silence told me to send a report. I did not. She should have known that hundreds of years before the volcanic eruption of 1650 BCE, Thera was a highly advanced civilization with cobblestone streets, running water, two- and three-story houses, athletics, beautiful women, jewels, metallurgy, trade, and hygiene.
Boxing Boys, Akrotiri Fresco, Thera, 16th century BC. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Public Domain
Congestion and pollution are not only polluting the beautiful islands of Thira and Mykonos. They are also polluting the tiny Cycladic island of Astypalea. A real estate company from Athens, Greece, is planning to build a tourist “village” on Astypalea, which will be bigger than the island’s capital, Hora. This new “village” will have villas for rent and sale, as well as very large condominiums and apartments for the less affluent foreigners. The mayor of Astypalea is against this monstrous plan. But the decision is not his.
Corruption and crime
Tourists who visit the Cyclades islands in the South Aegean Sea are generally well-off. They want luxury hotels, beach clubs and homes. This demand and the availability of big money has given rise to criminals who sometimes beat up or kill people who try to stop the development of tourism by factories or the illegal destruction of local lands that contain archaeological treasures. These gangs killed an engineer in the first week of July 2024. The man, Panagiotis Statis, was an engineer with many years of experience in Mykonos. The murder is not unique to Mykonos. “In certain islands of the Cyclades, such as Mykonos, crimes centered on construction and illegal construction have taken root in recent years due to the lack of organized policing,” says Greek journalist Yannis Papadopoulos. But over time, these illegal activities have evolved and in some cases have taken on the characteristics of organized crime. As proof of this, there are many cases of assault and extortion that remain unsolved to this day and are still being investigated. “
Revolutionizing factory tourism
Foreigners have been visiting Greece for thousands of years. Zeus, the most powerful of the Greek gods, also had the virtue of protecting foreigners visiting Greece. He was known as Zeus Xenios. The word xenios (foreigner) became philoxenia (hospitality). This spirit of hospitality is still alive in Greece. However, factory tourism is based more on business than hospitality, an aggressive business in fact. As a result, this un-Greek practice invites crime and harm.
Reforming this ruthless business will require reforming the Greek government and electing patriotic Greeks who love Greece, rather than ethnic atheists who hate Greece and promote foreign interests.
Yes, tourists support the economy, but too many tourists traveling from island to island to enjoy pristine beaches, delicious food and entertainment leave a trail of pollution and behavior that is harmful to the environment and local communities.
The Greek government should realize that tourists are potential Heliophiles. But to draw that virtue from some tourists, the Greek government should hire educated officials to guide as many tourists as possible to the country’s archaeological treasures in museums and ruins. Also, to provide orderly and friendly accommodation and education for foreigners visiting Greece, regulations on ships and hotels should be instituted to discourage factory tourism. Mega-ships should not be allowed near the Greek islands. These very large ships are floating environmental bombs. The owners should dismantle them. Their very existence shows the arrogance of the planet and the extreme ignorance and indifference that we are living in a time of climate chaos.
But if we are realistic and ignore the climate tsunami for a moment, is tourism helping Greece get out of its terrible situation of debt slavery? As we said before, tourism is helping the Greek economy. Experts call it Greece’s heavy industry. With around 30 million foreigners visiting the country and spending billions of dollars, you would think Greece would be a thriving country. But the opposite is true. “Greece remains last among the 27 EU member states in terms of productivity, is a peculiar archipelago of very small businesses, has a record of tax evasion (what was once a means of survival, is now a means of organized wealth), and claims the first position in Europe in terms of the extraordinary size of corporate profits, and the last in terms of the real value of wages and the share of wage labor in GDP.”
In other words, a tourist-driven Greek economy is driving up the prices of food and other necessities across Greece. This hardship continues the hated austerity measures of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund during the first decade of foreign debt. This also continues a corrupt billionaire economy, with most of the profits siphoned off by a very small number of corporations/billionaires. And the Greek state, modeled on the American billionaire political economy, pretends that all is well.
