(snip)
Post by a***@gmail.comMy opinion is simple. Both sides are being ludicrously pigheaded.
Post by ERICLudicrousness on the part of the Greeks to take 'pigheaded offence' against
outright and hostile irredentism, an irredentism that is wrapped up in the
'name issue", correct?
Well, I don't know if I'm "correct" or not, but I don't believe that
what you describe is what is happening. Irredentism on the part of the
Skopje gov't is, as Nikolaj says, a toothless monster. If it exists at
all, it is a) a chimera cooked up by politicians to hoodwink their own
electorate or b) the utterly unrealistic ravings of people who have
problems with this "phenomenal reality" thing. Nobody likes it when
somebody says "part of your country belongs to me", but given the
realities on the ground in SE Europe, I can't imagine anyone with any
sense losing any sleep over it.
Post by a***@gmail.comPost by ERICWhile I can't for the life of me see why Athens is being so incredibly
insistent, I think it is equally ridiculous for Skopje to reject out
of hand any alternate suggestions. While I avoid the usage of FYRoM to
describe the country in question out of deference to the people who
live there,
(Gee, Andy, it's a pity you can't extend the same deference to Greece and
the 3 million Greek Macedonians who inhabit Greek Macedonia.)
Gee, Eric, maybe because extending deference to one automatically
involves offending the other? I called it FYRoM earlier to please one
side, and this offended the other. As I have said before, this debate
is so polarized that there simply isn't a way of not offending anyone,
so I accept the fact that I am pretty much bound to offend everyone.
I'll survive. And if apologizing isn't enough, and if you insist upon
casting aspersions on my motives, well, there you are.
(snip)
Post by a***@gmail.comPost by ERICGiven the level of emotion inherent in this debate, this is in itself
a concession of sorts. I agree with people who say that "Upper
Macedonia" would work fine, to be coloquially known as simply
"Macedonia". It would allow Greece to save face (no small
consideration in the Balkans) while allowing "FYRoM" to fade into
obscurity and be replaced by "Macedonia" in common parlance, thus
smoothing over the whole issue and allowing time to heal things.
Absolutely not---no fading away into "Macedonia"----Upper, Northern or
Slavo-Macedonia perhaps
That's not what I was saying. When you look at any atlas, the place is
named "Macedonia". If it ends up being officially called "Slavic
Macedonia" or "Macedonian Rumelia" or something else, the name
"Macedonia" will be what gets used in everyday speech. For instance,
the Hellenic Republic gets called "Greece", even though that term has
no real existence. It's neither pejorative nor offensive, and a
Hellene rarely minds being called a Greek. Same will happen to
whatever the place that used to be called the Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia. To the rest of the world, it's already just "Macedonia",
however the dispute gets officially solved, and that's simply because
when Yugoslavia broke up the FYRoC became Croatia, the FYRoS became
Serbia, etc etc.
I bet this angers some people enormously, but even you must be aware
that as far as the "outside world" is concerned, this issue is either
a non-issue, or it's a done deal. I'm not saying it is right or wrong;
I am simply describing what I see.
Post by a***@gmail.comPost by ERIC In looking for root-causes for all this sordid mess, I am reminded
of one thing that is difficult not to notice while in Greece (provided
you are actually there to do more than get drunk on the beach!), and
that is that many Greeks still seem to have painful memories of the
Civil War and more recently the Regime of the Colonels. I do NOT
purport to be an authority on this, and I am not basing any of this on
anything other than my own horribly flawed powers of observation, but
I get the distinct impression that there are wounds there that have
not yet healed. Superpatriotism is disgusting, but it is
understandable in the aftermath of civil strife.
Macedonia, its history and legend, has been a core and integral element of
the modern Greek national narrative for a few centuries-----well predating
this FYRoMian slavo- macedonist phenomena that's been around from Tito times
at best
I don't deny that. And in all honestly, I find it odd that any of that
can change because of the renaming of an airport. If Alexander is an
iron-clad, essential part of the Hellenic Narrative (and I don't deny
that he is, regardless of its historicity), it is inconceivable that
something as transient as geopolitics could make any difference.
Unless of course, there is more at play here than people are willing
to admit. As I said, I believe that the classical inheritance is being
abused here. Reading between the lines, I get the distinct impression
that there's a bit more to the "Alexander" thing than just national
pride. Feeling a touch of pride in your heritage is a good thing, and
makes for a good, well-adjusted person. But in-your-face jingoism is
something entirely different, and (rightly or wrongly) this is the
prism through which I see the "name issue". It's not enough to have
Alexander as one's ancestor; he must also be "not" the Other Guy's
ancestor. This "proves" that you are somehow better than him.
This is the "whoring" of the whole classical inheritance I am
referring to. Sappho and Homer and Empedocles are not just revered in
and of themselves (which, in all honesty, they are), but they are also
used as ammunition in a gutter-brawl between 2 ethnic groups 2300
years later. "I'm better than you, because my ancestors were
philosophers, conquerors, etc etc ..." That is an abuse of history of
the most revolting kind, and I think at the end of the day it is why a
stupid quarrel in a faraway place bothers me so much.
Post by a***@gmail.comTo get a bigger and better understanding of the 'painful memories' the
Greek national consciousness shares, you'd best research the struggles and
wars between Greeks, Ottomans and Bulgarians in the 19th and early 20thC for
the area in addition to the First Worls War and Bulgarian activities, the
interwar era, the 2nd WW and German and Bulgarian occupations and then the
Civil War and the latter slav seccessionists of 1946-1948 fighting.
I don't disagree. It's a terrible, tragic mess, and anyone studying it
can see that the wounds are still fresh. The truly tragic thing is the
fact that every single ethnic group involved - without exception -
honestly believes that it is in the right, has suffered more than the
others, and has a more valid claim to the moral high ground.
That's the insanity of ethnic nationalism: it is impossible for
everyone to be "right", but everyone's insistence that they are in the
right absolutely infuriates the Other Guy because he's got an
extensive litany of horrors that he (and his people) have been through
- and all of it may be true. Now, when you have seen with your own
eyes your daughter sexually attacked by a bunch of thugs from the
Other Side, this doesn't exactly dispose you kindly towards the
Others, any of them. It also has the effect of traumatizing you to the
point where you are les-capable of acknowledging the very real
sufferings of others, as how could they *possibly* know how you
feel?
Ask a survivor of the Holocaust how much pity he feels for the
Palestinians, and you'll see what I mean. "My suffering trumps yours"
is an extremely common refrain in today's world, and everyone wants to
be the victim (or sincerely believes they actually are the victim).
And on it goes, ad infinitum.
Post by a***@gmail.com Always
remembering that this slavo macedonian entity and nation/people was non
existent until the first 1/3 of the 20th century..
Asian Canadians didn't "exist" then either. They exist now, or at
least there are plenty of people with names like Bill Wong or Susan
Fujimoto out there. Their grandparents were known as Chinese and
Japanese respectively (even if they were born in Canada, they
certainly weren't widely-accepted as Canadians), but they are
essentially the same people. Until the Boer War, the people now known
to us as Afrikaners thought of themselves as Dutch (even though they
actually have as a percentage as much German and French blood as
Dutch), but they certainly don't see themselves that way now. Same for
Turks, Ukrainians, New Zealanders, Icelanders, Pakistanis, etc etc.
There are plenty of "peoples" that didn't exist 100 years ago that
exist now (assuming such a thing really exists), and plenty of
"peoples" sense of what they actually are has changed so radically in
the same period that their identity ends up meaning something
completely different than it did 100 years ago. In 1900, being an
American meant being a WASP, no exceptions. It means something very
different now. Same for being a German or an Arab or even a Jew. When
you start looking at things this way, you see why I believe that all
"ethnicities" are ultimately illusory anyway.
Post by a***@gmail.comfor example, NO such
people existed in any Ottoman census, ever.
So?
Post by a***@gmail.comI heard first hand stories of that struggle from my immediate family.....
for example, my father was the youngest of 6 siblings born circa 1904....he
was well into his 50's when I was born and I am now just into my 50's. He
was born in Greek Macedonia when the Ottomans still controlled the area. He
lost first his own father and then his eldest brother fighting the
Bulgarians and Turks and actual witnessed his brother killed by Bulgarian
guerillas in the 1912 war. The family was left in severe destitution. All
sides, Turk, Serbian, Greek and Bulgarian suffered in the same way and can
tell of similar stories. He recounted watching Bulgarians and, later, Turks
(or at least Moslems) leaving his village. Never, ever, were any of these
expelled/exchanged peoples claimants as to being (slavo) macedonians. This
slavo macedonian phenomenon surfaced in the 1930's as a means of
de-Bulgarizing the population for better incorporation into
Yugoslavia.........
You may be right, I don't really know. What matters is what people
think right now, as people who aren't around anymore don't count (or
care). Is that an offensive thing to say? I don't mean it as such, and
am not out to show disrespect to anyone's forebears. But the fact is
that the dead have no business casting their shadows over the living,
and I believe they don't even want to.
Post by a***@gmail.com.Why on earth should Greeks ever accept these newly
created slavo macedonians as anything but fabricators and thieves of an
integral part of the Greek national identity.
Once again, who says it's part of the Greek identity anyway? Who gets
to decide these things in the first place? And for that matter, why is
this whole thing a zero-sum equation? Why can't Alexander or Macedonia
be an integral part of both peoples' identities (as from a historical
perspective this is almost certainly the closest thing to any "truth"
one can arrive at), unless of course we're back to the brothel again,
and it's all down to "I'm better than you because Alexander is my
ancestor, not yours".
Post by a***@gmail.comTotalitarianism and Stalinism are alive and flourishing in the FYRoM----you
are not a naive individual, I cannot fathom your knee jerk reaction against
these reasonable objections raised by all Greeks adainst blatant irredentim
and historical by the FYRoM...............unless??????
Unless what?