Rallying the Nation: Sport and Spectacle Serving the Greek Dictatorships

Abstract

This study offers brief soundings into the exploitation of sport by the Greek dictatorial regimes, both the interwar dictatorship of 1936–1941 and the military regime of 1967–1974. During those eras, sport provided templates of competition and combat. The most recent dictatorship showcased sport along with a ‘canon’ of historical re-enactments in massive open-air spectacles, which deserve further attention. The strongmen of both regimes saw, in addition to communist threats, signs of decay in Greek society, and they insisted on military-style discipline and orderliness. How then did their regimes approach sport? Or rather, how did they manage to convey persuasive images of sport and of the political propaganda behind it? This article addresses the above questions and reconstructs the dictators' excessive acts of stage-managing a mass theatre of indoctrination through athletic events, military displays and historical re-enactments. I argue that Greek dictatorial regimes allocated an important role to sport and bodily culture to shore up their nationalist ‘mission’ and that, as a result, they militarized and politicized the field. The essay pays brief attention also to the realm of pedagogy, because those regimes wanted school instruction and discipline training to be conducted in a ‘patriotic’ and militaristic fashion.