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just say no

Celebrating National "No" Day

Posted on 2021/10/28 - 2021/10/28 by julesb

The 28th of October is a national holiday in Greece, so even less gets done than usual. It's "Οχι Day," and Οχι is a truly sublime word and concept: it means "No."

The origin of this holiday is the Greek strongman dictator Metaxis Just Saying No to the Italian strongman dictator Mussolini's demand to annex Greece in 1940. Alas, Mussolini wouldn't take no for an answer and attacked Greece, which is how Greece became involved in World War II.

Greece held off the Italian fascists for six months until the arguably more ferocious and good-at-war German fascists got involved, at which point Greece fell and was occupied by the Italians, the Germans and the Bulgarians.

Last night I was exposed to an alternative theory, advanced over beers, which is that the heroic length of time Greece held out before capitulating to the axis was not due its martial prowess but because Greek bureaucracy took several months to process the surrender paperwork.

There's a big boulevard near me named "October 28th St." and in general Oxi Day is greeted with an orgy of blue-and-white national pride. Here is a cute cartoon about it:

The little cherub with the greek flag says "Let's go to the parade, to celebrate the No!"
and our guy (agender) on the right replies "No."

The arguably unnecessary caption reads "Anarchy on Oct. 28"

i really like the black flag with "οχι" on it.  every day is No day!

There is a nice discussion of this holiday in an anti-authoritarian context here, which you can translate in-browser: https://www.alerta.gr/archives/9253

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