'The Azure Generation': Liberal Youth Politics in Greece and the Politicization of Music, 1982-1984

Abstract

This article focuses on the years 1982–1984, which witnessed the first systematic effort to establish a moderate right-wing youth organization in Greece during the Cold War. It shows that the invention of the political songs of the Liberal youth ONNED underpinned its mass mobilization in 1982–1984. In this vein, our analysis enriches recent historiographical approaches that focus on cultures of Conservatism and on political and cultural changes in post-authoritarian Southern Europe in the 1970s to 1980s. Those political songs were linked to both the rhetoric and the practices of ONNED cadres and members. Their lyrics conveyed anti-Communist post-memories of the Civil War in Greece (1943/1946–1949), as reconfigured and filtered through the experiences of ONNED cadres and members in the aftermath of the 1967–1974 dictatorship and the electoral victory of the Socialists in 1981. Thus, the study of the Liberal youth complements the analysis of moderate right-wing subjects in Spain, for whom the Civil War was no reference point after democracy was restored in 1975. Simultaneously, the article enriches research on the Greek Liberal youth so far, which has neglected how this subject reconfigured its approach to the Greek Civil War in comparison to the Right in the preceding decades. Our article also shows that the songs under study accompanied a wide range of ritualistic and prosaic practices of ONNED cadres and members. Listening to and singing those songs was part of a double demarcation process between ONNED cadres and members and their left-wing opponents, as well as within ONNED. For instance, in Thessaloniki, the more Conservative members embraced those songs in their leisure activities and their everyday spaces. By contrast, the more centre-right members were more critical, but still tolerated such music. The everyday life and spatial history approach is crucial to illuminating the varying reception of the political songs of ONNED within this organization.