Although Gruevski’s origins is not really relevant, Doug’s comment just showcases his bias: First, because what matters in a report is whether it is true or not and not whether
the reporter is a “nationalist” or not.
Second, of course there is no proof that the given reporter is a nationalist, but “he must be, because all greeks are”. Interesting thinking. Actually I am told that the specific
show has on a number of issues taken a stance that can only be viewed as anti-nationalistic.
Anyway, “nationalism” is nowadays more often than not used to discredit somebody we don’t like. I am not sure what greek “nationalism” consists of(Greece occupies no foreign country as far as I know, it is not revising history and there is no “insulting greekness” law ) and it might be worthwhile comparing it with neighboring countries or even other western countries.

G-le stated that “Btw, last week or two, some newspapers found that Gruevski(his grandfather and father) is also from aegian macedonia, where “there are no macedonians”.” I got the impression that G-le was not aware that some people disagree on this subject and for that reason I challenged him by pointing to a source with a different opinion.

It is my impression that the Greek with their statement that there are no Macedonians don’t want to say that there are no Slavic speakers or people with Slavic ancestors. They just deny Macedonia the right to speak for those people. For that reason I don’t consider the issue important.

As for Wikipedia: you are right that some more research in the source might have been helpful. On the other hand it wouldn’t have made much difference. Wikipedia has a discussion page for the subject and there you can’t find any Macedonian nationalist challenging the present version. Given that Macedonian nationalists are not too shy elsewhere to voice their opinion this might indicate a lack of arguments.

“we could had that whole region of macedonia under same state. It was a legitimate idea, that was under considerations in some talks, like treaty of Bucharest from 1913.”
Any idea is legitimate, the problem is that
the population did not really want it: Greek Macedonians preferred to live with their greek compatriots, Bulgarians with their bulgarian compatriots and so on for Serbs and Turks. You can look up Macedonian Struggle in Wikipedia where it is clear in the words of the VMRO founders that the original VMRO was founded
with the maximalist goal of uniting Macedonia with Bulgaria(against the wishes of the greek, serb and turkish macedonians) and if this fails to have an indedpendent Macedonia. In any case I fail to see why the wisdom of Comintern should take precedence over the people’s wishes.

“greek/macedonian communists would probably won”.
Funny, I thought the ELAS and later Democratic Army partisans never identified themselves as “greek/macedonian” but as greek. In fact they had a presence throughout Greece and Macedonia was their last stand.

As for “greek assimilation tactics”, I’ll give you two examples. How many greek or italian-americans changed their name? How many “papadopoulos” changed their name to “Pappas”?
But if we want to concentrate on the region, because of the practice of jennisaries by the ottomans(taking the fittest christian boys, converting them to islam, making them into an elite army unit and sending them against their parents and brothers), Balkan countries can argue that a part of the current turkish population is actually “macedonian”, greek, bulgarian, serb, albanian or whatever, yet nobody in his right mind thought of asking to
undo the ethnic structure change there -which among other things involved real genocides-.
So even if there has been assimilation(which btw happens in the US and most EU countries all the time), what exactly is your point about what must be done NOW?

Also, whether Gruevski
“had to flee” is at best debatable.
Certainly after 1949 there were still left wing people left in Greece.
It is not like the 1922 Asia Minor cleansing of greeks by the turkish army(or even Cyprus) where those that stayed behind got slaughtered. At the time the UN and the US made a big deal about some 28000 children abducted (that is the term used by the US and UN) by the guerillas, whose rights are probably being referred to and whose return was denied at the time not by Greece, but by Tito and Stalin.

A “real Greek” — well, that’s a question of information (incomplete) and definitions (slippery). Up until 1949, these descriptions were a lot more fluid than they are today. Both sides of the border had people who were ethnically mixed and spoke multiple languages, and identities were much less fixed. Go back another couple of generations into Ottoman times and things get even worse… but anyway: it’s probably a moot question.

Doug M.

History is for historians. When politicians start to talk history my question is: what do you want. Greece thought that it was finished with Macedonian nationalism in 1995. Yet since then they have already received two Macedonian demands: minority rights for Macedonians in Greece and more rights for Civil War refugees. My feeling is that this is not the end and that more demands will follow.

These kind of demands can be very destabilizing and my feeling is that the Greeks are right to demand clarity and an end to it.

Question here… wouldn`t EU and its integration process squash local nationalism if given time? Isn`t greece working against stable neighborhood by blocking Nato and Eu admission for macedonia? Btw, someone mentioned the 1995 agreement between macedonia and greece. Under that agreement, we changed constitution to explicitly deny territorial pretensions, changed the flag, and used “reference” of “former yugoslav republic of macedonia” for UN membership, until name dispute is resolved. The greek part of the agreement was NOT TO BLOCK nato and eu membership, as far as I remember

Basically, both major macedonian parties have similar number of party members, but on last election, Gruevski won almost all of the nonmembers of the voters(the albanians ofc voted for albanian parties).
Most of his support is based on diligent work. I don`t agree with lots of his(his party agenda), but I, as lots of others, cant dispute his and his cabinet workaholic habits, which is nice change from his predecessors, both from his party as from the opposition.
Rise of nationalistic hysteria is evident, but I must say, it is fueled by greek politics and hysteria. I guess nobody is surprised that craziness generates craziness.
Btw, last week or two, some newspapers found that Gruevski(his grandfather and father) is also from aegian macedonia, where “there are no macedonians”. So, he has something in common with Caramanlis
The recent letters about the legal land issues of macedonian fugitives are rather welcomed change also. There are thousands of ppl over here that are directly concerned and are supporting the raising of those questions.
Btw, most of the people in macedonia think that those legal land issues are the real problem behind the name, since greek assimilation in last 100 years was that good in changing the ethnic structure in aegian macedonia, that any notion of territorial pretensions are found as nonsense today.
question for werner: are you greek, or you haven`t ever been close to macedonian soil? If you are greek, I can at least understand your blindness and bias.
Let me quote you: “I think “macedonia”’s position is extremely stupid and Greece is absolutely right-at least in its present position because there is no explanation that makes any sense why “Macedonia” cannot agree to a composite name that will be acceptable to both and accurately describe that it does not represent all macedonians.”
Since greece has problem with name, and not us, why doesn`t greece change the name of its province, and its ppl? Which, btw, declare as greeks, as far as I know. Not that anyone here ever objected on them calling themselfs macedonians. Afterall, they also live in part of macedonia. The maps all greeks are so eager to mention, are historical maps of the region under turkish occupation. The national heroes that died for independent macedonia during that time (late 19th and early 20th century) fought for that map in mind, and it is kind of natural to be in history books by their name
Those maps were valid until 1913-1919, balkan wars and first world war. With different major powers constellation at the time, we could had that whole region of macedonia under same state. It was a legitimate idea, that was under considerations in some talks, like treaty of Bucharest from 1913. So, shell we erase those maps from history books, so we can appease greece hysteria? Should we forget the history of the region so greece can claim 2000 years of continuity Someone would think we have china as neighbor…

The argument that if a country is small and powerless, it has the right to be nationalistic and brainwash its population to demonize and hate the bigger neighbor is rather silly. Hezbullah in Lebanon did just the same, to name just a recent example-and Hezbullah is not even the official government.
And, Nazralla is also quite popular for playing this game, just like Gruevski is and others were in history who followed the same suit.

I think “macedonia”’s position is extremely stupid and Greece is absolutely right-at least in its present position because there is no explanation that makes any sense why “Macedonia” cannot agree to a composite name that will be acceptable to both and accurately describe that it does not represent all macedonians. On the contrary, if there is a slav-macedonian minority in Greece, which only Gruevski and Doug can see-election results do not show such a thing,
so I guess Doug and Gruevski know best what the greek macedonians really are-, it is to their interest to disambiguate themselves, as there are more greek macedonians in greek macedonians than slav macedonians in “Macedonia”.
I mean how stupid can you be? Gruevski can talk about macedonians in greece and the greek prime minister will tell hm “yes, I’m one of them along with another 2,5 mil and we are represented by our elected MPs’ not a foreign country”
Sorry, but I cannot place my sympathies with an ultranationalist that wants to revise history and is behaving as stupidly as possible.
BTW, I do not see Greece whining. I see Gruevski whining while sabotaging the talk names by adding new stupid issues and refusing to negotiate seriously. I think Greece has stopped taking Gruevski seriously and so has the EU.

But - other than some general remarks about the dangers of nationalism - is doesn’t get concrete on the ugly ethnic side of nationalism. The nazified Greek flags for example aren’t mentioned.

Also, the article blames the Greek veto in Bucharest for the rising nationalism. This is exactly what I earlier called the “justified anger” model. I believe this nationalism is much older and has its own roots that date back to independence and its exclusion of the Albanians.