Metaxism is an authoritarian nationalist ideology associated with
Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas, It called for the regeneration of the
Greek nation and the establishment of a modern, culturally homogenous Greece. Metaxism disparaged liberalism and individualism as roots of cultural degeneracy. The tenets of Metaxism held individual interests to be subordinate to those of the state and it sought to mobilize the Greek people as a disciplined mass in service to the creation of a "
new Greece."
Metaxas declared that his 4th of August Regime (1936–1941) represented a "Third
Greek Civilization" which was committed to the creation of a culturally purified Greek nation
based upon the militarist societies of ancient Macedonia and Sparta, which he held to constitute the "First Greek Civilization"; and the Orthodox
Christian ethic of the Byzantine Empire, which he considered to represent the "Second Greek Civilization." The Metaxas regime asserted that true Greeks were ethnically Greek and
Christian, intending to deliberately exclude Albanians, Slavs, and Turks residing in Greece from Greek citizenship.
