EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis).  It was a remarkable victory for Clavdia and “Asteromata” last weekend at Eurovision, going against all the things that the Euro-globalists celebrate. It promoted national identity and remembrance of crimes against humanity, the Genocide committed by the barbarian Turks, who are still today not punished. It was a remarkable coincidence that her performance happened on the weekend of May 19, the Memorial Day for the Pontian Genocide… The Euro-officials asked Clavdia not to mention “Genocide” and “Lost Homelands”… But she found a way to do it…

BELOW A VIDEO OF HER PERFORMANCE AND AN EXCELLENT ANALYSIS BY MANOLIS KOTTAKIS

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SOURCE – NEWSBREAK.GR

By Manolis Kottakis

A road without obstacles usually leads nowhere! Such has always been the road of the Pontians, the black anniversary of the Genocide of which we remember today. A road full of obstacles, which is also reflected in their music. In the sob of the lyre, in the sharp steps of the pyrrhic, in the pride of the Kotsaris. Of their traditional war dances. Such is the story of Claudia Papadopoulou and her family, who repatriated to Greece from the former Soviet Union in 1991 with the “Golden Fleece” operation of Virginia Tsouderou. She repatriated along with thousands of others (who took root in Thrace) and settled in Aspropyrgos. Young Claudia’s grandmother used to tell her stories from her Pontian refugee days when she was little.

Pontians, as is well known, are stubborn. When an idea gets into their heads, it never comes out unless they implement it. This is what happened to Claudia. After wandering around various TV shows, such as “Greece, you’ve got talent” and “Voice”, where she gained experience performing English songs, what prevailed in her mind while studying the competition every year was how she would go about singing a song with Greek lyrics that she would identify with. An ethnic song with Greek lyrics at the top of Europe . Not a disposable song of the “ I fall and roll like a dice ” type. A song that will stay. Her bet was not easy.

Claudia lives in a country that suffers from xenophobia and usually does not defend its national identity. Which officially “loves” other flags, not the Greek one. Together with a group of creative young people, mainly Greeks, which was called Arcade, and specifically with Dimitris “Divennos” Beltsos, Loukas Damianakos, Pavlos Manolis, Gabriel Russell and Aegion “Gioni” Parenasi, they created the history of Asteromata. Which, from the couplet, is shocking and foreshadows: “My sweet mother, do not cry for me/even if they wear black for you,/my faded body/flames cannot defeat it./Even if the swallows of fire and seas cross,/the soil of my roots never forgets./My sweet mother, do not cry for me,/my life is a ship,/that seeks the return,/the wind is my sail.”

With this song, which speaks of rooting, of returning, of mother, of soil, of flames, of oblivion, Claudia identified herself as she wanted. She was going back to her roots, to uprooting, and of course, as she implied in one of her first interviews, before the great powers intervened, she was alluding to the Pontic Genocide. Luckily, the choice of the song that would represent us this year was not made by direct assignment – a common practice in our meritocratic homeland, as was done with the minor son of a shipowner a few years ago -, but by a national final in which thousands of Greeks participated. Their votes were 50% of the contestants’ score. From this national final, it was clear that the Greeks wanted the Greek language intact. Not a hint of a foreign word. They wanted a national identity. They wanted pride. Claudia’s dream met the dreams and sorrows of millions of Greeks who love their roots and their history.

And, finally, she was chosen. Claudia’s father in Aspropyrgos, Pontios, naturally shy, when he learned of her first success in the national final, told her ” keep your head down and everything will be fine “. And she kept it, radiating from that moment throughout the event, the unparalleled ethos and simplicity of expression of the Pontic family, the Greek family. Her amazing Greek, in which no foreign words were intruded, even though she knows English perfectly. Her love for tradition, the history of our place, but also of her family. Nana Mouskouri told her this in the conversation they had shortly before the semi-final: that it was interesting that she chose to say something traditional.

However, Claudia’s path was not smooth – it was a path full of obstacles. Obstacles from the outside, but obstacles, smaller, from within as well. When the first video clip of the song was released, in which women from the Tetralofos of Kozani participated in Pontic costumes and Claudia hinted in her first interviews that the song was connected to the history of the Pontians and the Genocide, we had the first side-songs… The Turkish public television (TRT) reacted to hearing it, threatened that it would… analyze its lyrics and that, if it found anything objectionable, it would… resort to Eurovision, from which it has withdrawn, to denounce it. The same was true of Eurovision Tyrkiye fans in the neighboring country, who threatened – we know how these things happen – with denunciations.

In order not to create tension, as Turkey does not recognize the Pontic Genocide, which was established to be commemorated in Greece since 1994, the organizing authority discreetly recommended to the national authority to ask Claudia to be very careful in her interviews when talking about the history of the Pontic people. To avoid the term “genocide”, which her relatives in Aspropyrgos wore on their T-shirts, as we saw on the eve of the grand final. She, very smartly, followed the Pontic virtue, patience. And her Pontic fortitude was rewarded.

Some did not believe in Claudia even internally, because they simply do not understand the pain of Pontus and the power of language. And when at the end all those who believed that this song would not go high because it has purely Greek lyrics were exposed, then the hymns of awkward commentary were dedicated exclusively, generally and vaguely, to Greece. Not to “Claudia of Greece”. Claudia generally spoiled the “soup”. And with the love for national identity and with the love for the flag and with the love for tradition and with the love for the language. But mainly she spoiled it because she presented the solid model of moderation, ethics, and seriousness.

[I dedicate this text to Giorgos Petrosian, who arrived in Greece in 1991 with the same refugee caravan as Claudia’s family from the former Soviet Union and settled in Komotini. He did not know a single word of Greek and his teachers at school were not very supportive. But when he started telling them phrases that he heard and copied, watching the show “7+7” on Mega with Theodoros Roussopoulos (he understood him because he spoke slowly), they paid him their attention. They brought grammar and syntax books , and today they taught him to speak Greek better than us natives. And to look to the future with optimism through his Cafe, which is located across from the Komotini Fire Department. If you go, you will easily find him. A large Greek flag flies outside his shop.

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