Thessaloniki (or Salonica) (also known as Saloniki, Salonika, Thessalonica, Thessalonika, Thessalonike, or, Thessalonice) is the second-largest city in Greece, and, is located on the Thermaic Gulf, at the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea. It is bounded on the west by the delta of the Axios. The city was founded in 315 BC by Cassander of Macedon, who named it after his wife Thessalonike. An important metropolis by the Roman period, Thessaloniki was the second largest and wealthiest city of the Byzantine Empire. It was conquered by the Ottomans in 1430 and remained an important seaport and multi-ethnic metropolis during the nearly five centuries of Turkish rule. It passed from the Ottoman Empire to the Kingdom of Greece on 8 November 1912.

Soon after the turn of the 15th to 16th century, however, nearly 20,000 Sephardic Jews immigrated to Greece from the Iberian Peninsula following their expulsion from Spain by the 1492 Alhambra Decree. By c. 1500, the number of households had grown to 7,986 Greek ones, 8,575 Muslim ones, and 3,770 Jewish. By 1519, Sephardic Jewish households numbered 15,715, 54% of the city's population. The city became both the largest Jewish city in the world and the only Jewish majority city in the world in the 16th century. As a result, Thessaloniki attracted persecuted Jews from all over the world. Many of whom spoke Ladino or Judeo-Spanish.

In the early 20th century, Thessaloniki was in the center of radical activities by various groups; the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, founded in 1897, and the Greek Macedonian Committee, founded in 1903. In 1903, an anarchist group known as the Boatmen of Thessaloniki planted bombs in several buildings in Thessaloniki, including the Ottoman Bank, with some assistance from the IMRO. The Greek consulate in Ottoman Thessaloniki (now the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle) served as the center of operations for the Greek guerillas. Thessaloniki was also the center of activities of the Young Turks, a political reform movement, which goal was to replace the Ottoman Empire's absolute monarchy with a constitutional government. In 1908, they started the Young Turk Revolution from the city of Thessaloniki, which lead to of them gaining control over the Ottoman Empire and put an end to the Ottoman sultans power.

In 1922 a population exchange took place between Greece and Turkey. This made the Greek element dominant, while the Jewish population was reduced to a minority for the first time since the 14th century. During World War II it fell to the forces of Nazi Germany on 8 April 1941 and went under German occupation. Of the 45,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz, only 4% survived.

After the war, Thessaloniki was rebuilt with large-scale development of new infrastructure and industry. Today, Thessaloniki has become one of the most important trade and business hubs in Southeastern Europe, with its port, the Port of Thessaloniki being one of the largest in the Aegean and facilitating trade throughout the Balkan hinterland. A stereotypical Thessalonian coffee drink is Frappé coffee. Frappé was invented in the Thessaloniki International Fair in 1957 and has since spread throughout Greece and Cyprus to become a hallmark of the Greek coffee culture.

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    • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      this was specifically spurred by that particular one swinging their dick around that they had read more peripheral theory than another person (who had been a leftist longer) in the group chat

      they got shut down pretty hard though

      mostly by me

      as a quick aside, reading theory does not mean that you understand it
      as demonstrated by the un-marxist notion of queer liberation being a bourgeois ideology
      as opposed to being completely inline with marxist thought
      which would be the conclusion of anyone who actually understood the concept of dialectical materialism

      • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        to add to this

        far too many (primarily) internet leftists seem to take theory as a series of religious texts instead of what they actually are
        a toolkit for analysing the world around us
        and using that analysis to affect real tangible change

        all theory and no praxis makes Jamie a shit comrade

        • soft [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Even if you worship The Texts, they'll command you to remove your head from your ass and get to work engaging with the masses and using your brain to analyze the dialectics.

          If you want to seek answers for everything in Marx you will get nowhere. You have in front of you a laboratory such as the USSR which has existed now for more than 20 years but you think that Marx ought to be knowing more than you about socialism. Do you not understand that in the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx was not in a position to foresee! It is necessary to use one's head and not string citations together. New facts are there, there is a new combination of forces -- and if you don't mind -- one has to use one's brains.

          - Stalin

          In order to guide correctly, the experience of the leaders must be supplemented by the experience of the Party masses, by the experience of the working class, by the experience of the toilers, by the experience of the so-called "small people". And when is this possible? It is possible only if the leaders are closely connected with the masses, if they are bound up with the Party masses, with the working class, with the peasantry, with the working intellectuals...

          - Stalin

          The invariable fact is: doctrinairism is appreciated only by the mentally lazy; it brings nothing but harm to the revolution, to the people, and to Marxism-Leninism. To enhance the initiative of the masses, to stimulate their dynamic creative spirit, and to promote rapid development of practical and theoretical work, it is still necessary, right now, to destroy blind faith in dogma.

          - mao and the CPC politburo, iirc?

          • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            a depressing amount of "communists" don't actually do their own analysis, they just lazily accept what the "great men" who wrote the theory said as gospel without question

            • soft [she/her]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Well, hm. I think of myself as kind of a "baby leftist" still, and I've often felt ill-equipped to go much off the beaten path of what respected writers wrote. There's a lot of subtle nuance to this stuff that I'm afraid I might mess up, so I've had a lot more confidence when I'm able to feel my way along with close citations of the gospel of Saint Lenin or whomever. As I learn more about an issue I'm able to see the matrix a bit and be more bold in my conclusions, but it takes time and a lot of learning to get there. I guess I'm saying that I can understand where people are coming from with the habits you're criticizing, especially in the Onlines where nobody is leading anything and lots of people are just trying to learn. 🤷‍♀️ Then again, I totally agree, none of this excuses overconfidence or having an inappropriate attitude.

              • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                i guess the only advice i can give is that you fully study the ideas of dialectical materialism and historical materialism in order to get the tools necessary to get a full marxist understanding of the world

        • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          These are usually people who could tell you the names of every major soviet leader from the USSR's inception and a short backstory on each, but could not tell you the names of 5 of their neighbours