Macedonism, a ultra-Nationalilst ideology that spread from FYROM Worldwide

[akritas]

The known dispute is going on between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on the name “Macedonia,” which FYROM is using since 1991 when it broke away from the crumbling state of Yugoslavia.

The dispute goes deeper than the use of the name.

It is an attempt by FYROM to discredit the ancient Macedonians’ ethnicity, break the connection between present-day Greek Macedonians and the Macedonians of antiquity, and establish a connection between FYROM’s Slavs with ancient Macedonia.

The historically,linguistically and archaeologically incorrect challenge is that Macedonia was never part of Greece and the Macedonians were barbarians who spoke a language in comprehensible to theother Greeks.
Cause of this ultra-nationalist behaviour is a ideology that flourish and in FYROM borders and grow dynamically in diaspora Slavmacedonians.

This ideology call as Macedonism.

Macedonism is a political term used to refer to a set of ideas regarded as characteristic of ethnic Slavonic Macedonian nationalism. The term is mostly used in a poltical and cultural sense by opponents of such views, mainly by Bulgarian and recently sometimes from Greek authors (Sfetas, Aggelopoulou) where it has strong negative connotations. It is occasionally also used in international scholarship ( John D. Bell) and in a positive sense by Slavonic Macedonian authors themselves like Alexandar Donski.


ORIGINS

The roots of the concept were first developed in the late 19th century, in the context of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian initiatives to take control over the region of Macedonia, which was then ruled by the Ottoman Empire. It was used to refer to the idea that Macedonians constituted a distinct ethnicity, separate from Bulgarians. The first to coin the term Macedonists in this sense was the Bulgarian author Petko Rachev Slaveykov, who used it to criticise such a view in an article The Macedonian Question published on 18th January 1871 in the newspaper Makedoniya in Constantinople. Also an early recorded use of the exact term Macedonism is in a report by the Serbian politician Stojan Novakoviζ from 1887. He proposed to employ the Macedonist idea as an ally of Serbian as opposed to Bulgarian influence in Macedonia


MAIN IDEAS

Among the beliefs and opinions that are often perceived as typical of Slavmacedonian nationalism and are criticised as parts of “Macedonism” by those who use that term are the following:

• The idea that there is a fundamental, ancient ethnic distinction between Slavmacedonians and Bulgarians, going much further back than the political divisions between the two nations during the 20th century
• The belief that this distinction is related to the inheritance of ethnic elements of the ancient non-Slavic tribe of the Bulgars, supposed to form an essential part of modern Bulgarian but not Macedonian heritage
• The idea that there is ethnic continuity between the Slavmacedonians and the Ancient Macedonians, the inhabitants of the kingdom of Macedon under Alexander the Great
• Irridentist political views about the neighbouring regions of Greek Macedonia (”Aegean Macedonia”) and parts of southwest Bulgaria (”Pirin Macedonia”) and about Slavmacedonian minorities living in these areas, connected to the political idea of a United Macedonia.

Other, related areas of Macedonian-Bulgarian national polemics relate to:

• The presence of the Bulgars in Medieval Macedonia and their connection with today Slavmacedonians
• The ethnic character of various medieval historical figures and entities, including the saints Cyril and Methodius, the medieval Tsar Samuil and his kingdom, and the medieval Archbishopric of Ohrid
• The historical role of the Bulgarian Exarchate and the ethnic character of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
• The historical role of various Macedonian (Greeks, Bulgarian) insurgent movements during the Ottoman rule ( Ilinden Uprising) and during the Bulgarian occupation of Geographical Macedonia in World War II (National Liberation War of Macedonia).
• The opinion that a separate “Macedonian” nationhood was an artificial product of Yugoslav propaganda during the 20th century and the belief of some Bulgarians that Macedonians should naturally form part of the Bulgarian nation.

On the other hand, areas of Slavmacedonian-Greek national polemics relate to:

• The origin of the ancient Macedonians and ancient Macedonian language and their relation to the today Slavonic -and close to the Bulgarian - "Macedonian" and Greek nations and languages.
• The Greeks have Sub-saharan origin ( The Arnaiz-Villena controversy)
• Greeks discover Macedonia as a name in 1988(FYROM Minister Milososki in Mega Channel,1 Nov 2007)

CONCLUSION

With these perspectives in mind, the insistence of FYROM Slavs to be called “Macedonians,” a name dictatorially established and supported by communism’s brutal force and in the present from the US administration, clashes now with the age-old freedom of Hellenic Macedonians to be called “Macedonians.”
If FYROM considers itself Macedonia, a false and audaciously daring step that brings the origin of its Slavic inhabitants close to Philip and Alexander the GreaT then the insistence of these people tobe called “Macedonians” clashes head on with the age-old freedom of others to be called “Macedonians.”
FYROM has the right to survive and prosper, but it does not have the right to acquire, by international recognition, an advantage enjoyed by no otherstate in the world:

…to use a name which of itself propagandizes territorial aspirations at Greece’s expense !!!

sources

1. http://uranus.ee.auth.gr/new/eng/macedonia.old/kofos/
2. http://217.16.70.236/?pBroj=2581&stID=41545
3. http://www.macedoniaontheweb.com/forum/macedonia-articles/1398-ethnic-historical-origins-f-y-r-o-m.html#post38573
4. http://www.macedoniaontheweb.com/forum/macedonia-ideas-essays/3459-how-construct-nationality.html
5. http://www.macedoniaontheweb.com/forum/macedonia-ideas-essays/1240-historical-revisionism-negationism-balkans.html

[akritas]

What are the main claims of Macedonism ?

The very act of the foundation of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), together with all its subsequent actions as a political entity from 1944 to the present day, show that ‘Macedonianism’ is the basic totalitarian ideological tenet of that state. With this tenet the state and the Slavic component in a population of several different ethnic groups have constructed their existence as a nation and their ‘historical’ mission. Right at the very start, ‘Macedonism’ was proclaimed as a sacred dogma, allowing of no discussion, let alone questioning. It has been practised with all the means available to a State that, up to 1991, had been forced to operate under a totalitarian Communist regime where there ‘was but one’ Truth and where the question that bulked above all others was ‘the security of the State’. Anyone dissenting did so with the foreknowledge that he or she would be ‘eliminated’.

When this totalitarian regime collapsed, as it was bound to do, from external causes, nothing changed. There has been no relaxation in the human geography of power at FYROM, not even in the sacred dogma and the State’s duty to safeguard it. The question is one about which a society trained for generations at the hard camp of Macedonianism remains tight-lipped, phobia-prone, and trigger-happy.

An alternative view of the matter has yet to establish itself, any dialogue being considered out of the question. Instead, every pronouncement to the international community by every Skopje government since 1991 has insisted that even the slightest modification to State ‘Macedonianism’ would be fatal to the very existence of the State and the people. And the outward and visible sign of this insistence is the claim to have a monopoly on the name ‘Macedonia’.

These final apocalyptic assertions from Skopje have effectively been espoused by scores of other states, the USA being one example, precisely because they are well aware how ramshackle is the whole artificial but temporarily expedient structure.

They are certainly not ignorant of history. But for the time being they play down what is a self-evident fact. Following the adoption of ‘Macedonism’ as an ideology, FYROM has been trapped in a dead-end of its own making. Sooner or later it is bound not only to destabilize at large a region which is still in a state of flux, but also to place its own Balkan interests in jeopardy.
Those powerful foreign interests that protect Skopje and make use of her may be counting on exploiting for themselves when the time comes. But the sad conclusion from major events on the international stage – in Iraq, say, in Palestine, in the Islamic world, or in the global context of terrorism – is that in some at least of the places where decisions are taken politics is no longer the art of foresight and anticipation. For the Great Powers of today, it is no longer five minutes to midnight, but five minutes past.

The official totalitarian State ideology cultivated in Skopje and theirs claims are....

1. It claims that Macedonia has long been a distinct political entity; and that during the two Balkan Wars (1912-1913) against the Ottoman Empire, master of the region from the 14th century onwards, the latter partitioned a ‘united’ (when was she ever thus?) Macedonia among ‘its conquerors’, namely Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia, with a small part of it later coming into the possession of Albania.
2. It claims that Serb Macedonia – what was known until 1941 as Vardarska Banovina – was liberated in 1944, to become from thence onward the metropolitan centre of the ‘splintered and still subservient Macedonian nation’. It is the ‘inalienable national rights’ of this nation which the now independent State of FYROM has been seeing to, in line with an express provision of its present constitution (a clause necessarily revoked in 1995).
3. It claims that Greek Macedonia is still ‘under foreign occupation’, viz by Greece, which is said to have ‘inflicted genocide on the Macedonian People’. (This region is therefore always referred to as ‘Aegean’ - never as ‘Greek’ - Macedonia by Skopje, which officially recognizes the Greek Civil War of 1944-1949 as ‘the Macedonian’ national liberation struggle to free Aegean Macedonia’ and to incorporate the latter in ‘the free motherland’, meaning FYROM). It makes similar claims, though these often fluctuate, against Bulgaria, and less loudly against Albania.
4. It claims that the ancient Macedonians – notable examples being Alexander the Great and his father Philip – ‘were not Greeks’. As ‘conquerors of Aegean Macedonia’ and ‘oppressors of our brothers the Aegean Macedonians’, from 1913 onwards, the Greeks have been ‘usurping’ the history, the civilization, and the name of the ancient Macedonians, ‘the forefathers’ of FYROM’s (Slav) Macedonian nation.

These four central tenets of ‘Macedonianism’, given in chronological sequence with the necessary background, are already enough to show that while feigning ‘legitimate irredentism’, Skopje is openly and unambiguously declaring her expansionist designs towards Greek Macedonia. The arguments themselves are full of holes, yet they have been swallowed, wittingly, by dozens of civilized states, the United States included.

Why?

Because they want to advance their own interests and promote hidden geopolitical agendas in the region. But this is a serious blunder, and it goes against their interests. And in politics a blunder (said Talleyrand) is worse than a crime. Small the FYROM may be, but in the hands of powerful third parties it could be lead to catastrophe.

It should lastly be pointed out that for the State and the Slavs of Skopje ‘Macedonism’ has become an article of faith, a question of existence. This question needs fodder to survive, which means constructing an equally fictitious ‘enemy’: Greece.

But at the same time this State and its Slavic population are well aware, since they see it in their daily lives, of what Greece – ‘the enemy’ – can do for them. Better than any of Skopje’s other neighbours, with more resolve, effectiveness and credibility, Greece is assisting them with their economic development, their orientation towards Europe, the cohesion of their ethnically disparate society, and the existence and the security of their State. This she does better and more credibly than all the other Balkan countries put together; and all that she is after is peace in the region, productive cooperation, and a common sense of dignity. The pity of it is that the two positions are so far apart.

source:
Macedonism FYROM'S Expansionist Designs against Greece, 1944-2006

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1. Macedonism, a ultra-Nationalilst ideology that spread from FYROM Worldwide
2. Why Macedonian Slavs Stealing the Greek Macedonian History?