Toxic patriotism

The lynch mob attack on Thessaloniki Mayor Yiannis Boutaris during a gathering to commemorate the Pontic genocide - the systematic killing of ethnic Greeks by the Turks during World War I - and while the national anthem was playing in the background, should give us pause.

On Saturday, Boutaris became a victim of the toxic climate that is being cultivated in northern Greece and in the city of Thessaloniki in particular over certain specific national disputes that remain unsettled and other events.

The Thessaloniki mayor is the kind of politician - if we can really call him that - who never hesitates to express his opinions boldly and to go against the grain for what he believes to be the right thing. It is this that put him in the crosshairs of sundry self-proclaimed defenders of the nation, some of which found an opportunity on Saturday to lash out. That they were...