legein

The most famous incident of book burning is undoubtedly the destruction by fire of the Royal Library of Alexandria situated in present day Egypt. Although there is disagreement over who was really responsible for the fire, most of the blame is laid at the Christians when Roman emperor Theodosios  (by then fully Christianised) decreed in 391 AD the destruction of all pagan temples which included the Library. The Library was contained within the Temple of the Muses and was administered by a priest. The Christian Patriarch Theophilos of Alexandria and his supporters are believed to have duly complied. However, Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt in 48 BC and the attack of Emporer Aurelian in the 3rd century AD inadvertently destroyed some parts of the library. The claim that the library was destroyed by later invading Muslim armies is not taken seriously. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, intended as a commemoration of the original, was inaugurated in 2003 near the site of the old Library.

The Library is generally thought to have been founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC during the reign of the Greek king Ptolemy II of Egypt. According to some sources the Library was initially organized by Demetrius of Phaleron, a student of Aristotle. A famous inscription was carved into the wall above the shelves: The Place of the Cure of the Soul.

The Library was the largest library in the ancient world. Ptolemy II is said to have decided upon 500,000 scrolls as an objective. Regardless of its size, the Library contained a large part of the accrued knowledge of the ancient world. It was an enormous treasure house which made its destruction all the more painful.

Fifteen hundred years later a similar phenomenon is occurring in Greece where a spate of arson attacks on bookstores continues. Just a few weeks ago there was an attack on Pelasgos in Thessaloniki and another attack (apparently there have been over 10 attacks) against Neas Thesis. Neas Thesis stocks classical Greek and Roman texts and secondary literature of classical texts. Last Saturday, the nearby Eleftheri Skepsi (Free Thought), which stocked a similar range of books, was attacked by arsonists.

In addition to these attacks, one of Adonis Georgiadis’s (a member of political party LA.O.S) bookstores (he is also a publisher) previously located in the Exarcheia district of Athens has been targeted and burnt several times by unidentified persons. It has been said that Georgiadis, who sells Greek classics at steep discounts, has been able to bring these books to households that previously only read sports dailies. Georgiades has since moved this bookstore. Nevertheless, a different bookstore of the same publisher was targeted in early 2007, the eighth attack against bookstores of Ekdoseis Georgiadi. Again, these bookstores mostly sell copies of ancient texts by such luminaries such as Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Epictetus and Plotinus.

The arsonists are suspected to be anarchists with links to the radical Left party SYRIZA led by Alekos Alavanos and his pimple faced toy boy Alexis Tsipras. In fact, SYRIZA newspapers such as Avgis (Dawn) have openly condoned the attacks. One of the reasons some people have given for the arson attacks has been that Nea Thesis and Georgiades sell books by controversial Greek author Konstantinos Plevris and some others which are said to incite racial hatred. We should note there have been no reported attacks on Jews and Jewish property caused by the recent publication Plevris’s book on Jews. Georgiades has countered that he sells these books like other Greek bookstores including the large chain store Eleftheroudakis. He has stated he disagrees with their content.

The issue of inciting racial hatred or hate speech is very controversial. For example, there is considerable hate speech in the Torah and Talmud sometimes directed towards Greeks/Romans. There is also considerable hate speech in the Septuagint, New Testament and the Koran. Therefore, should activists also burn down Christian, Jewish and Muslim bookstores just to balance the ledger? There is also considerable hate speech against Greece and the Orthodox Church in SYRIZA affiliated bookstores. Should activists burn those down as well? Indeed, probably one of the most inciteful hate books of all time, Meinkampf written by Adolf Hitler, is stocked by Amazon which can be found here. Should activists burn down Amazon? And the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, which gruesomely incites violence against the bourgeoise and which indirectly has resulted in the deaths of millions of people around the world is also stocked by Amazon which can be found here.

In addition, if people do not like Plevris’s books, then rather than burn down bookstores that sell his books they should perhaps write books that refute his arguments, that is assuming the attackers and their patrons have the intellectual capability to write complex arguments and refutations. Some other people have even suggested that books on ancient Greece are Fascist in essence. Ignoring how ridiculous these claims are, should activists burn down the classical libraries of Cambridge, Oxford, Sorbonne and Harvard?

Regardless of whether the some of the books "incite racial hatred" or are "Fascist", there is no justification for anti-democratic arson attacks which can potentially degrade civic democratic culture.

As the Greeks had realised in Antiquity the transmission of knowledge and ideas via the written word is one of the cornerstones of the civilised world. The Greeks believed that education or more accurately paideia allows one to partake in the Divine Mind. It is ironic that the anarchists, whose arguments are increasingly incomprehensible, are destroying the very books which may help them to better articulate their position.