Not a new Balkan Nationalism: The “Macedonian Issue” today - A Short portrayal

Nationalism is a political principle, which holds that the political as well as the national unit should be similar, and one of the most interesting regions for someone to examine the origins of the modern aspects of nationalism is the Balkans.

The Balkans is a region considered a cauldron of ethnic hatred particularly within the last decades. Such flaring issues as the break-up of the then Yugoslavia, Kosovo, the dispute over the naming of “Macedonia” have all continued to have the same outcome in the region that all the previous disputes seem to have had, an inevitable push towards a volatile expansionist nationalistic agenda and a very real threat of war.

The very dependence of the Balkan peoples on the ideology of this type of expansionist nationalism has helped cynical post-communist leaders to legitimize their rule and the west to interfere, imposing their interests and building a new world on the rubble of the old without any regard to rightful ownership, cultural heritage let alone historical & Civil rights.

The former Yugoslavia is a study case that can provide many examples as it was only in 1945 when the then Communist leader Tito re-formed Yugoslavia into six communist ruled republics, rehashing out the old ancestors and building myths of the chosen and hidden truths.

With the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, came a thoroughly organized NATO plan that led to a dangerous experiment of turning a nation-state into a “multicultural map”, where different cultures means different borders, and states with constitutions written on a military base by western experts.

New national identities should be understood as a denial of previous identities!
No new nation can accept to be considered to derive from another nation because such a premise would cancel out the very purpose of its goal which in this case is nation building. What is needed is an honorable and unique myth of ancestry to use as a foundation of individuality, setting themselves as far apart from previous links as possible and whether this is based on a lie is of no political relevance.

If history has taught us anything it is that history belongs only to the people who have suffered from their mistakes. The Greeks took their lesson almost a century ago led by the vision of the “Great Idea” a Grand Hellenic world spanning 2 continents and 5 seas. We believed that we would take back the territories of our “Ancient” ancestors. Alas though for in the end all we saw was our people deported and butchered by the Turks.

Bringing out ancestors in the present is usually a lack of the present itself.

In the Naming Issue of the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” we are now witnessing a neighboring state, although still at its relative birthing stage willing to repeat the same mistakes, as if this is going to cure all its ills. The young State is projecting the crude emptiness of a people who are totally bereft from humanitarian ideas and who assign themselves to the identity of the chosen (in this case stolen) especially when these names come with new maps and propagandas.

Greece to its credit being in the position of political and economic leader within the region both through its EU membership and its ties to NATO has tried to build bridges with its neighbor despite the propaganda and the utter ignorance in the belief that they have the exclusive rights to use names, make up the past and worst of all dream of rewarding their self proclaimed rightful boundaries.

In the case of “Macedonia” it’s not the name that makes a difference; It is the adjectives that unravel the expectations, the strategies and the hidden agendas. Everybody can be named whatever they want to, but a name accompanied by adjectives such as “Sacred:”, “Constitutional”, “Great” or anything else that implies a right to expand, re-draw the map so as to relate to minorities are not acceptable, and even more so when these names come at a historical and cultural cost to an existing nation and in this case the rightful air to name, Greece!
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New names and nations have always indicated tendencies and visions that our global society can easily reproduce as causes for change. However, with “Macedonia” it’s a forced change! A fallacy that supposedly benefits people while all it does is it relieves them until the moment some other chosen(s) will “discover” their right to a new heritage.

From Great Greece, to Great Serbia and Great “Macedonia”, we have seen time and time again that its always the myths that immunize the same virus of expansionism and the quest for a historical identity in a global world can become a pretext to erase identities and change borders while forming nation states based on a lie, creating the precedence of a people with both a past to push them along to an uncertain future.

The story of Macedonia to an “outsider” as an issue might not mean much more than “just a name” to the nations involved though the implications of the issue are much more deep rooted than that.

On the one hand we have Greece and its undisputable right to protect its rightful historical & cultural heritage, which encompasses not just a name but a whole region of Northern Greece and on the other sits FYROM a state for which although new we all agree has every right to self preservation, in it’s means to an ends of creating a nation state;

What Greece says is a big <> to supporting FYROM in it’s difficult quest of statehood, but be certain for by no means will it be at Greece’s expense!