Introduction: Original Response

A user wrote:

"The Greeks did actually do stuff in antiquity, and to be fair, they did quite a lot. Sure, they lost relevancy when the Middle Ages and the early modern era came around, but who can forget influential figures such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pericles, Pythagoras, Leonidas, Herodotus, Hippocrates, Archimedes, Sophocles, Homer, Aesop, among others who actually did contribute to the development of Western civilization? And it was the Greeks who stopped the Persian takeover of Europe at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The Greeks literally invented the concept of democracy, and most Western traditions of free speech, rule of law, and representative government, which form the bases of practically all constitutions of democracies worldwide. ... Greeks have enough historical figures in antiquity to boast about, even if they didn’t produce any relevant historical people from the fall of the Western Roman Empire onwards, while Romanians only have Henri Coanda, Serbs only have Nikola Tesla, and Bulgarians only have John Atanasoff. ... You also mentioned that Albanians and Romanians bring drugs, crime, and rape to Western Europe, and that Slovenes and Croats culturally appropriate Italian history while destroying Italian artifacts, but when did I ever hear of Greek crime in Western Europe? When have Greek gangs been on the news for stealing, murdering, and raping? When have Greeks attacked Western Europeans in their cities and refused to assimilate in their host countries? ... Yes, their Megali Idea is cancerous, with their fanatic claims to historical Greek territories as far away as Georgia, or their myths stating that every word in every European language has a Greek root, or even their neo-Nazi Golden Dawn terrorist organization that has even illegally elected members to their own parliament. But while communism infected other parts of the Balkans after WWII, Greece chose to side with the Western Bloc, and developed economically along the lines of Western European countries, and because it did so, it has the highest living standards in the region today, higher than even Slovenia and Croatia. ... I think that, even though Greeks were only important in antiquity, and that Greece was only a great power in antiquity, they still laid much of the foundations for Western civilization, and should be praised for their contributions to European culture and society, even if they were ancient and not recent."

 Greece definitely does not have a higher standard of living than Slovenia. As of 2019 Greece has an HDI of 0.888 and an IHDI of 0.791, which is considerably lower than Slovenia’s 0.917 and 0.875. And this is only natural, given the countries which border Slovenia (Northern Italy, Austria, Central Europe) compared to the ones which surround Greece (Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Middle East). Not to mention the fact that for years Slovenia has been very heavily subsidized by EU funds and foreign investments. Of course, this means that Slovenia’s development is not solely due to its own merits; it has been artificially propped up by external forces while also benefiting from its geographical position. Nonetheless it is a fact that its quality of life is still considerably higher than that of Greece.

 Greece definitely does not have a higher standard of living than Slovenia. As of 2019 Greece has an HDI of 0.888 and an IHDI of 0.791, which is considerably lower than Slovenia’s 0.917 and 0.875. And this is only natural, given the countries which border Slovenia (Northern Italy, Austria, Central Europe) compared to the ones which surround Greece (Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Middle East). Not to mention the fact that for years Slovenia has been very heavily subsidized by EU funds and foreign investments. Of course, this means that Slovenia’s development is not solely due to its own merits; it has been artificially propped up by external forces while also benefiting from its geographical position. Nonetheless it is a fact that its quality of life is still considerably higher than that of Greece.

It is actually not conclusive that Ancient Macedon was Greek. It is true that the aristocracy later adopted Attic Greek as a language of communication, which eventually developed into Koine Greek. However, for all we know, the ancient Macedonian language could have been Thracian, Illyrian or even an independent Indo-European language distinct from all others. The native language of the Macedonians is far from being a settled matter, despite what is stated on the English Wikipedia article (heavily slanted due to biased Greek nationalist editors).

There is a lack of historical evidence to support the claim that the Ancient Macedonians were Greek (i.e. Hellenic), and at the same time there is quite a bit of evidence which seems to indicate that the Macedonians were a non-Greek population whose ruling elite later adopted Greek as a lingua franca and, following the conquest of Alexander the Great, began to assume a Hellenic identity. Contemporary Hellenic authors would have then re-imagined the Macedonians’ origins, re-interpreting their history in a Hellenic light.

This is the most likely explanation, rather than the Greek nationalist interpretation that the Macedonians were Hellenes who always spoke Greek and deliberately united the Hellenic world.

Among other things, the Macedonians are not mentioned in any of Homer’s works. Moreover, it seems that ancient Greek authors initially regarded the Macedonians as barbarians and considered their native language as unintelligible, and only following their subjugation by Alexander do they conveniently begin to depict the Macedonians as fellow Hellenes. This is most clearly seen in Herodotus who, in his endeavor to establish the Greek heritage of the Macedonians, claimed that Alexander the Great’s ancestors had participated in the Olympic Games (a privilege reserved only for Hellenes). However, most scholars now believe that this was an invented history and that Alexander’s ancestors never competed at the Olympics.

The Macedonians could have been Hellenes; they could have merely been Hellenized; they could have been a closely related but still distinct people; or they could have been a totally different group who were simply culturally influenced by their southern Hellenic neighbours. They definitely became part of the Hellenic world from the 5th century BC onward, but that is all that can be said with certainty.

There are a lot of open and unresolved questions concerning the Ancient Macedonians, their origins and their ethno-linguistic affiliation, but the scholarship on the subject is very much tainted by ideological Philhellenism and by emotional Greek nationalists motivated by current-day politics.

To provide just one example: when the American professor Eugene N. Borza reached the conclusion that the Macedonians of the Classical period were not Greeks, he was forbidden by the Greek government from participating in a BBC documentary on Alexander the Great. The ‘Greekness’ of the Ancient Macedonians is an article of faith among Greeks; they aggressively hinder studies on the matter and even interfere in the research of scholars in other countries who might contradict the Greek sacred dogma.

As a Chinese-American, you can probably see how this behaviour is reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea and the former Soviet Union.

I would not object if it were definitely proven that the Ancient Macedonians were Hellenes. However the presumptions resulting from some scholars uncritically regurgitating earlier authors, the biases on the part of Phil-hellenists and the dogmatic attitude of modern Greeks combined leaves me very skeptical.

With regard to Greece and the Western Bloc, Greece did not choose to side with the West out of some sort of national hatred of Communism. There was a Greek Civil War during and after World War II; the British and Americans backed the anti-Communist side, while the Soviets backed the Communist side, and the Greek Communists almost won. The country was saturated with Communists. And until 1943 even the anti-Communist groups were collaborating with the Communist resistance against the Axis, as the Greeks initially felt that the Axis was a greater threat than Communism. The anti-Communist government of Greece was brought to power by the Western Allies, just as the governments of Germany and Italy were installed by the Allies at the end of the war. Communism was just as widespread among Greeks as it was among the Yugoslavs and Albanians (and still is widespread in Greece today); the only difference is that the Western-backed faction was victorious in the Greek Civil War, and was victorious again following the 1967 coup d'état which led to the Greek Junta. Interestingly, there were more British fighting in the Greek Civil War than there were Greeks.

At any rate, present-day geo-political alignment does not make Greece a ‘Western’ country. Turkey and Israel* are also members of NATO and participate in European leagues and competitions; this does not render them Western either, let alone European. But I will discuss this issue more in depth later.

* Technically Israel is not a formal member of NATO, but it is classified as a major non-NATO ally (MNNA).

The Greeks did not “literally invent the concept of democracy and rule of law” either; this is an enormous exaggeration. Several historical civilizations independently conceived the principle of rule of law, including ancient Hebrews, Hellenes and Romans. The modern-day understanding of this concept and the proliferation of liberal representative democracy comes primarily from Britain, not Greece. But I will address this too in greater detail later.

In my original message I intentionally avoided speaking explicitly concerning Greeks because, after having already written so much about the other Balkan peoples, I did not want to enter into a discussion about Greeks, since it would be quite lengthy, multifaceted and very complicated to explain. Much more so than discussions concerning anyone else. It really is a topic unto itself.

But since the subject has been opened, I will speak of the Greeks.

In the first place, I have noticed that over the last couple decades a large influx of Greek propaganda has entered the Anglosphere. It exists also in Italian circles, but it has become especially prevent in the English-speaking world, above all due to the massive number of Greek immigrants in Australia, UK, Canada and United States. Greek propaganda manifests itself in different ways: it takes the form of anti-westernism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Italianism, in addition to fomenting the usual Balkanic polemics and rivalries against their neighbours (Greeks vs. Albanians, Greeks vs. Macedonians, Greeks vs. Bulgarians, Greeks vs. Turks). Over the last decade or so I have personally seen a lot of this Greek misinformation spring up on message boards, forums, social media websites, YouTube, etc.

It is true that in the Anglosphere some of the pro-Greek bias is due to the long history of anti-Catholic and anti-Roman sentiment on the part of English Protestants, who often uncritically promoted a pro-Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox interpretation of history, merely because it opposed the Catholic Church which they — coming from an English Protestant background — also opposed. Part of the bias also derives from the residual influence of Enlightenment thinkers who idealized Classical Athens and viewed it as the source of all civilization. But nowadays the Philhellenic and Byzantinist obsession is not only a result of the English: it is also and perhaps primarily coming from Greek immigrants and children of immigrants.

The problem with the Greeks is not massive criminality, as is the case with groups such as Albanians, Romanians or Bulgarians. The issue with the Greeks is more or less similar to that of the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and other ex-Yugoslavs (minus the recent history of extreme violence in pursuit of ethnic cleansing).

That is to say, the Greeks are characterized by general chauvinism, historical revisionism and unrestrained exaggeration, combined with an enormous victim complex, saviour complex, unbridled jingoism and delusions of grandeur. Additionally, they are prone to spreading massive misinformation on numerous topics and in many different fields. And what’s worse, they often get away with this dishonest behaviour simply because they are Greek; owing to the classical studies we learn in school, many people equate Modern Greece with Ancient Hellas, and it is often assumed that Modern Greeks are therefore a very scholarly, civilized and high cultured people like their ancient counterparts, rather than just another typical Balkan country — which is what they actually are.

The Greek penchant for claiming credit for everything is parodied in the American film My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), which features a character who insists that everything in the world is Greek. And the parody is not far from the reality of things. What is depicted in the film — and what you listed in your message — merely scratches the surface.

Aside from the usual Greek nationalist claims, these immigrants have now introduced polemical anti-Westernism in general, from an Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine point of view, bringing to the West a version of history which is explicitly hostile to us and opposed to the generally-accepted one.

The catalogue of Greek lies, thefts and historical revisionisms is very long, so I am going to have to divide this message into numerous sections or chapters.