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.
