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Spyridon-Adonis Georgiadis (Greek: Σπυρίδων-Άδωνις Γεωργιάδης; born 6 November 1972), better known as Adonis Georgiadis, is a Greek politician, historian, publisher and author. He is the Vice-President of New Democracy. He was Minister of Health from June 2013 until June 2014.[1]

Adonis Georgiadis (right side) with Apostolos Tzitzikostas

Early career

Georgiades' ancestry heralds from Lefkada, Macedonia (Amyntaio), Pontus, and Smyrna He started working at his father’s bookstore at age 15.[2] He graduated from the Department of History and Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens.

He served as the spokesman for the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) political party until August 2007.[3] Georgiades ran for the office of the Prefect of Athens in the 2006 elections and on September 16, 2007 was elected a Member of the Greek parliament.[4] He was overwhelmingly re-elected on October 4, 2009 for the 2nd district of Athens. In November 2010 he was LAOS' candidate peripheral governor for Attica at the Municipal & Prefectural elections.

Deputy Minister

On 11 November 2011, Georgiadis was appointed Deputy Minister for Development, Competitiveness and Shipping in the coalition government of Lucas Papademos.He resigned on February 11, 2012. On February 13, he was crossed out of the parliamentary team of LAOS due to voting in favor of the Second Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece, against the party line.

In New Democracy

On 17 February 2012 Adonis Georgiadis joined New Democracy, having first given up his parliamentary seat to LAOS. He has since been elected a Member of Parliament, representing the 2nd district of Athens, in the May 2012, June 2012 and January 2015 elections.

He was appointed Minister for Health from June 2013 and served until June 2014.[5] As a Minister, he gave free pharmaceutical coverage to more than 2.000.000 uninsured citizens,[6]with the cost being set at 340 million euros. He also merged hospitals and closed unnecessary ones, curbed the cost of medicine and completed the reform of the National Primary Health Care Network, a reform that had been announced since 1979 but was never done.

In September 2014 Georgiadis was appointed Parliamentary Spokesman for New Democracy. In the elections of January 2015 he was elected in the 2nd district of Athens with 70.853 votes and he was reelected in the September elections.

He was one of the four candidates in the New Democracy leadership election, 2015.[7] He campaigned for liberal reforms, tax cuts and cut of public spending and for an ideological battle with the Left, which he considers that it has an ideological hegemony. In the first round he got 11.40% (46,065 votes) and finished fourth. In the second round he supported liberal centrist Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who won the elections and became new President of New Democracy. On 18 January, he was appointed as one of the two Vice-Presidents of the party.

Television

Georgiadis often appears on TeleAsty news programmes, a TV channel founded and run by LAOS' leader Georgios Karatzaferis, expressing the opinions of his party. On his daily programme Ellinon Egersis (Greek Uprising; Greek: Ελλήνων Έγερσις) on TeleAsty, along with his brother Leonidas he comments on current affairs, and presents books of mainly historical and philological interest, both from his family publishing house Ekdoseis Georgiadi and other Greek publishers. He also publishes the magazine Elliniki Agogi (Greek Upbringing; Greek: Ελληνική Αγωγή), which covers issues of national and historical interest. An organization under the same name of Elliniki Agogi runs lessons of the Ancient Greek language.

Linguistic views

Georgiades' speaking style might have a nuance of the more formal katharevousa. He also advocates the use of the traditional polytonic system for writing the Greek language; Elliniki Agogi is written in this system, which is not the prevailing practice in Greek publishing from the 1980s. Georgiadis has called for more research to investigate whether the introduction of the monotonic system was beneficial or not to the Greek culture and education.

Work as an author

As an author, Georgiades has written a historical book titled Homosexuality in Ancient Greece: the Myth Collapses in which he argues that whereas homosexuality was present in Ancient Greece as in other countries, its extent and social acceptance have been inflated.[8] He had also previously written a Guide to Ancient Greek Coins.

Political attacks to the Left

Georgiades often condemns the opinions expressed in left-wing publications such as Eleftherotypia or by left-wing politicians such as those of Synaspismos, with both parties having exchanged sharp-tongued criticism. He also routinely condemned the policies of the two former leading Greek parties, New Democracy and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, which he viewed as two sides of the same coin. He has often used the term tholokoultoura (Greek: θολοκουλτούρα; hazy-culture) to group his left-wing ideological opponents:

The hazy-culture is a very specific thing: it is a group of people who believe that to remember our national ancestry is a factor of conservatism. They are today the best allies of globalization. What is the goal of globalization? It wants to destroy every notion of a national tradition and a national memory so as to transform the totality of the population of our planet into simple customers of multi-national corporations and into complacent subjects of the world-ruling Superpower.
— Adonis Georgiades in Greek TV show Erevna hosted by Pavlos Tsimas, March 13, 2007

He often states that the destruction of the Greek economy and Greek society began in 1981 with the election of Andreas Papandreou as PM and the party of PASOK.

During the recent New Democracy leadership election, 2015, he accused Syriza of being "a second-time PASOK". He described himself as "liberal" in economic matters, while often stated that is necessary to break the "hegemony of the Left on the ideas" inside the Greek society. He stated "I want to be in Greece, what Nicolas Sarkozy is in France", while rejected the policies of Marine Le Pen and her euroscepticism as anti-European.

Another case of criticism to the Left from Georgiadis' side is about the educational system, and especially the universities system. According to him, the leftists dominate the Greek universities. He has many times expressed his will for the abolition of the "university asylum" (laws that forbid to the Greek police the entry to a Greek university), stating that it is only a tool for the anarchists to burn and destroy the Greek universities.[9]

Controversy

Georgiadis, in the past, has been accused of "troubling remarks about Jews and his public promotion of an anti-Semitic book by a pro-claimed anti-semite".[10] [10][11] Georgiades has countered that he sells these books like other Greek bookstores, saying that he disagrees with their content.[12]. In October 2015, when he was a candidate for New Democracy, he described "my engagement with the Pleural Book of the Jews" "the biggest mistake of my political career to date," but he said he never was an anti-Semite. In January 2017, at the Holocaust memorial day, he asked for public apology that he had "coexisted and tolerated the views of people who showed disrespect" to the Greek Jews and who "supported [and] promoted his abusive book Costas Pleuri ".

Georgiadis has also disputed the mainstream version of the events of the 1973 Greek National Technical University uprising ("Polytechneio") against the military dictatorship.[13][14][15]

On 16 November 2017, Georgiadis announced that he would cease working as a telemarketer. A few days earlier he came under intense criticism after it was revealed that the healing effects supposedly provided by the nanotechnological jackets that he was promoting were in fact void and based on pseudoscience. Fellow telemarketer Makis Triandafillopoulos had been previously convicted of fraud for selling exactly the same model of nano jackets following an investigation by the Greek consumer protection agency.[16][17]

Attacks against Georgiades' bookstore

One of the bookstores of Georgiadis publishers (Ekdoseis Georgiadi), in the Exarcheia district of Athens, has been targeted and burnt 17 times by unidentified far-leftist opponents. Georgiades has since moved this bookstore, stating that he did so to protect the anti-riot police that was tasked to protect his business. Nonetheless, a different bookstore of the same publisher was targeted on 15 February 2007, the eighth attack against bookstores of Ekdoseis Georgiadi.
Personal life

He is married to classical composer and reality TV celebrity Eugenia Manolidou raising a son and a daughter from her previous marriage,[18] and two own sons named Athanasios-Perseas born 2009[19] and Alkaios-Anastasios, born 2014.

References

naftemporiki.gr, June 9, 2014 (in Greek)
Nov 20, 2015
To Vima newspaper, 26 August, 2007 Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.. Tovima.gr. Retrieved on 2012-01-05.
Alpha TV website (17/9/2007) Archived January 2, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
naftemporiki.gr, June 9, 2014 (in Greek)
Adonis: from the state the pharmaceutical coverage of uninsured (Άδωνις: Από τον κρατικό προϋπολογισμό η χρηματοδότηση της φαρμακευτικής κάλυψης των ανασφαλίστων) Archived 2016-01-19 at the Wayback Machine., ygeia360, 23/4/2014
"New Democracy leadership contest begins". Economist Intelligence Unit. 29 September 2015. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
Debunking the Myth of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece Archived February 9, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. A review of Adonis Georgiades' book
Ο Άδωνις Γεωργιάδης πρός Indymedia: «κύριοι του Indymedia, τρεχάτε ποδαράκια μου γιατί σας πλησιάζουμε»
"ADL urges Greece to reconsider appointment of minister 'known to have promoted anti-Semitism'". haaretz.com. 2013-06-30. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
Adonis Georgiades and Plevris' book Archived April 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. (IOS of Eleftherotypia, in Greek)
LAOS and the Nazism of Mr. Plevris (IOS of Eleftherotypia, in Greek)
Newsroom (2017-11-17). "Όταν ο Άδωνης δήλωνε με στόμφο ότι δεν υπήρξε «ούτε ένας νεκρός στο Πολυτεχνείο» (Video)". Documento (in Greek). Retrieved 2018-09-15.
"Σπάνιο βίντεο του Άδωνι: Δεν υπήρξε ούτε ένας νεκρός στο Πολυτεχνείο". Reader.gr (in Greek). 2013-11-16. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
"Άδωνις Γεωργιάδης - Ο αρνητής του Πολυτεχνείου (Το VIDEO του Αδ. Γεωργιάδη και το πόρισμα Τσεβά)". Η Αυγή - Πρωινή Εφημερίδα της Αριστεράς (in Greek). 2018-09-12. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
"Τέλος οι τηλεπωλήσεις για τον Άδωνι Γεωργιάδη – Πήρε τη μεγάλη απόφαση ο αντιπρόεδρος της ΝΔ". Athens Voice. 15 December 2017. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
"Αλικάκος (Ελληνικά hoaxes) για τα "θαυματουργά νανογιλέκα" Άδωνι: "Καλά, δεν ντρέπεσαι βρε;" (εικόνα)". To Kouti tis Pandoras. 15 December 2017. Retrieved 15 November 2017.
OLA 8 TV show (5 October 2007)

Official brief bio of Adonis Georgiadis Archived 2009-06-02 at the Wayback Machine.. Adonisgeorgiadis.gr. Retrieved on 2012-01-05.