Contesting the anti-totalitarian consensus: the concept of national independence,the memory of the Second World War and the ideological cleavages in post-war Greece

This article outlines aspects of the ideological debate in post-war Greece, with reference to the contestation of the anti-communist consensus. In the post-civil war public sphere, there was a gap between elite and public opinion concerning the perception of the Second World War and the concept of the enemy. In the counter-narrative raised by the Centre–Left discourse, the concept of the German enemy was employed in order to denounce post-war American hegemony over Greece. This interpretation entails the restoration of the concept of anti-fascism as an interpretative framework for the Second World War and the challenging of anti-totalitarianism.