Ties that Bind: Greek American Leaders, the Greek Junta, and the Development of Late Twentieth-Century US “Culture Wars”

Abstract From 1967 to 1974, a military junta ran Greece with US approval. Most Greek Americans tolerated, if not fully supported, the right-wing government. This article examines how Greek American elites such as spiritual leader Archbishop Iakovos, business operative Tom Pappas, and Vice President Spiro Agnew helped shape and reinforce both US foreign policy towards Greece and the Greek American community's perceived public stance. While all three influenced US policy and Greek American narratives on the junta, Iakovos and Agnew more directly shaped diasporic debates, while Pappas became US policy makers’ preferred Greek American representative, especially during the Nixon years. All three elites within the Greek American community promoted a communal narrative that made apparently contradictory aims, like supporting a dictatorship in the birthplace of democracy, seem normal and preferred to an immediate alternative. To varying degrees, Iakovos, Pappas, and Agnew became the faces of Greek America during these important years of the White ethnic revival. When these three strategically placed voices within Greek America advocated for continued relations with the junta's Greece, not only did some pro-junta policy makers hear what they wanted to hear, but many in the community accepted this version of Greek American identity. These contradictions symbolize a conservative ascendancy in US political rhetoric surrounding “law and order” and family values that more broadly represent both a shift of working- and middle-class Americans, including ethnic Americans, into the Republican party and the roots of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century US culture wars.