If I may say so myself said continuity doesn’t quite matter. It is there -partly of course, as thousands of years of conquering and being conquered does help with mixing things up- but has nothing to do with modern history. Modern history such as the resistance movement of the 1940s we can easily be proud of.

I’m with you there. My point is more about the usage of this non-authenticity discourse in the German media than about what Greek people should be proud of or not.

Now, let’s talk Olympics and debt…

The modern Greek do indeed have almost nothing in common with the ancient ones.

I would contest that on a lot of levels, actually. If anything, Greece is notable for the way its ancient and modern culture are linked – especially through the Greek language. That doesn’t mean that the glories of the past are ours to claim, or that there isn’t much that has changed, but it is a historical fact that there is a continuity of Greek culture.

By itself this obviously has nothing to do with reparations; but the discourse that portrays modern Greeks as impostors certainly does.

Edit to add this from Wikiquote:

[..] yet the historical evolution of the Greek language reveals a continuing identity which cannot be paralleled in any other Indo-European language. It is convenient and correct to separate ancient Greek civilization, but, in the words of Nicholas Bachtin, ‘it is neither convenient nor accurate to speak of a modern Greek “language”. There is no such thing. There is only the present state of Greek’ (Bachtin 1935:11). From Homer to modern demotic, the Greek language has enjoyed a slow, organic and uninterrupted growth, and the major changes can be charted in an unbroken literary tradition. Nor has Greek split up into a group of languages, as Latin into the Romance languages. Finally, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than twelfth-century Middle English is to modern spoken English.

* Standard Languages: Spoken and Written. By William Haas.

As someone who has dealt a lot with language in his studies, I can really appreciate just how extraordinary this is.

Which still has nothing to do with the racism of the media or the bullshit nationalism of right-wing Greeks.