ANTI-GREEK PROPAGANDA: A RESPONSE TO THE FYROM DREAMTIME

Day 1,048, 09:52 • Published in Greece Greece • by NTEMIS


The internet as a technology has enabled humanity to expand its boundaries of knowledge and has also provided modern man with an easily accessible source of entertainment. It has also provided modern man with a convenient and functional method to propagate racial hatred and propaganda. In this, Mr.Risto Stefov has consistently taken advantage of this through the vehicle of the American Chronicle to spread his personal canon of beliefs and feelings which drip with venom, rage, disdain and hatred of Greeks and of empirical and historical knowledge; the articles that Mr.Stefov writes about Greeks are nothing but personal opinions devoid of fact.

Firstly for the object of this response; we will label the citizens of FYROM as Serbo-Bulgar pseudo-Macedonian Slavs – historically and ethnologically, that is exactly what they are – there is no such a race or language as Macedonian. The right of self-determination is a basic enshrined right in the civilised world; but not when that comes at the expense of the appropriation of names and identities, which historically do not belong to them.

That is what has been occurring since these pseudo-historical philosophies and ideals were indoctrinated into the population of FYROM under the auspices of the communist politburo in 1944. Macedonia appeared for the first time as an entity on the world stage since 1991 – prior to that, the world has known the people of FYROM as Slavs of Bulgarian origin, a fact which is attested to by the majority of historians, archaeologists and ethnologists.

Mr Stefov continually dwells and harks back to 1913 and the ´occupation´ of the geographical area of Macedonia by Greece– but he does this in a way as to link this event to the current name, badge or label that the Slavic inhabitants of FYROM have chosen for themselves since 1944 – MACEDONIA, and attempts to claim this as an occupation of his "homeland".

Firstly, the historical ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon has always been part of the Greek world and a part of the homeland of the ancient Greek peoples, and of which the majority of historians and archaeologists again, support and attest to.

Mr Stefov´s ancestors on the other hand were invading Bulgarian Slav tribes who inundated the Balkans and parts of the northern peripheries of the then Greek civilisation of Byzantium; from the ancient times, right through the Roman occupation until late Byzantine times, Macedonia has always been part of the Greek world, contrary to what Mr.Stefov would have you believe.

The Byzantine Emperor, ´Basil the Bulgar slayer´, as he has been colloquially known in history since, successfully reclaimed and repelled the northern Greek provinces from the marauding Slavic tribes. The small amount of Bulgarian Slavs that were allowed to stay and settle in the Balkans and peripheries of northern Greece became the ancestors of today´s citizens of FYROM. The Greek empire of Byzantium then fell in the 15th century; Greece and the Balkans were plunged 400 years into slavery under the Ottoman yoke.

When the embers of freedom started to glow and ignited again in the 19th century, the Greek people again regained their freedom and for the first time, were politically united as a whole. Over the next 100 years, Greece miraculously and slowly, regained and reunited lost Greek homelands again, and the province of Macedonia was one of these Greek homelands.

In this process, completing the reclamation of Greek lands from the Slavs which was started by the Byzantine emperor ´Basil the Bulgar Slayer´, over a millennia ago and completed by today´s Greeks in the early 20th Century; and on this point lies the pivot and source of anger for marginal, irredentist and jingoistic people of FYROM, like Mr.Risto Stefov. The last echoes of a war that the invading Serbo-Bulgarian pseudo-Macedonia Slavs lost in their attempts at establishing a homeland in Greece and of the appropriation of Greek history and culture identity..

In regards to the false, delusional pseudo-historical comments that have been made by Slav Serbo-Bulgar pseudo-Macedonians in recent times; one has to consider their modus operandi in regards to their logic and strategy.

The ancestors of the people of the former Yugoslavia; i.e. -Croats, Serbs, Bosnians,

Slovenians, Pseudo-Macedonians (and Bulgarians)-were considered during the Hellenic civilisation of Byzantium, and indeed even in the opinion of the Western Europeans,(Franks, Spaniards and Italians, etc), to have been Barbarians - a term which denotes a lack of civilisation; a primitive state of being which is devoid of culture, sophistication, refinement and education - and which is not a derogatory descriptive, but one which historians have used to describe their level of societal development in the 7th century.

In their slow transition from their state of barbarity to civilisation since their immigration into the Balkans, over a period of some 1300 hundred years since 700 AD; a process of mythologisation has been occurring - the process of myth-making and nation-building; whereby elements of stories, histories, cultural, national and ethnic images and symbology have been in effect, not only borrowed, but stolen and appropriated and incorporated into the national identity and consciousness of FYROM, at the expense of their much older established, sophisticated and civilized neighbors, the Greeks.

In this regards, because the world polity has not buying into their peddled story of a magical transformation from barbarian Slav-Bulgars to Macedonians - to the supposed inheritors of the Ancient Macedonians - the most Greek of all ancient Greeks .....They are left with but only one option, but to use reverse psychology and attack and vilify the Greek national identity along racial, linguistic and cultural continuity.

This usually takes on an irredentist form whereby the Serbo-Bulgar pseudo-Macedonian Slavs attack and challenge Greeks by:

1.Claiming that Modern Greek is an imposed language on the modern state of Greece; &

2.Claiming that Modern Greeks are racially descendant from Ethiopians, and have no racial continuity with the Ancient Greeks, and that the Greek state is a new concept and artificial imposition;&

3. Claim that Classical Greeks have disappeared and Greece has since been populated by Vlachs, Albanians, Slavs, 'Macedonians' and Turks; who have been forcibly Hellenised by the "STATE"

These attacks are not only absurdist, ludicrous and farcical, but fantasist and delusional in nature. Even in the face of some natural absorption of foreign elements into the Greek population over the past 2000 years; they are marginal in nature and have not obliterated or destroyed the racial continuity of Greeks.

Indeed, current anthropological studies conducted over the past 50 years by respected foreign scholars from around the world actually attest to the strength of the ancient Hellenic blood strain in Modern Greeks.

Note that one of the tactics used by the Serbo-Bulgar pseudo-Macedonian Slavs is to state that the Greece race and nation does not exist; that in fact it is an artificial creation and imposition by the great powers of the 19th Century, who forced onto the occupants of the Greek peninsular the Koine Greek and their identity!

They also point to the many different names that Greeks have used for themselves over the ages; Danans, Achaeans, Hellenes, Graecoi, Byzantines, Romios and finally Hellenes.

The historical fact is that Greeks as a people have never been politically united as a nation - except when they were unified by Phillipos and Megas Alexandros of the ancient Greek kingdom of Makedon. Greeks however, have always existed as a people and have always been united by blood, language, religion and culture; but chose however to live and govern themselves as separate political entities.ie: Athens, Sparta, Makedon, Thessaly, Laconia, Messenia, Argos, Achaea, etc, etc, etc.

Then as now, Greeks always identify themselves first in respect of their regional and tribal loyalties, and then as fellow Greeks in the sense of a national consciousness.

In respect to the etymological use of differing names; with a history of some 6000 years, Greeks have indeed used different labels for themselves; but at the end of the day, they are one and the same product - Greeks! And throughout history, the term Greek and Hellene has always been interchangeable.

In Regards to the barbaric Serbo-Bulgar pseudo-Macedonian Slav attack on the Greek language, this argument is even more preposterous. The Modern Greek language of Demotic Greek is a continuous language derived from ancient Attic Greek, which evolved in the Hellenistic age of Alexander into Koine Greek (Common Greek); which was an amalgam of Dorian, Aeolic, Ionian and North-Western Greek (which ancient Macedonian belongs to).

From time immemorial; from the Hellenistic age till now; Greek is the oldest and most continuously spoken language in all of Europe, whereby the evolution of the language is so slight in linguistic comparisons with other languages, that modern Greeks can actually make sense of ancient Greek, and where Socrates could have easily have been able to read a modern Greek paper.

The evidence is voluminous; endless generations of Greek writers, poets and philosophers have left actual texts and copies of their works from 750Bc until today; the most documented literary tradition in the world, and one that has been the most studied and documented by world academicians.

So in respect of the absurdist, delusional, false, jingoistic, propagandist and child-like efforts of our Serbo-Bulgar pseudo-Macedonian Slav neighbours in their hate-filled anti-Greek propaganda campaign ... these should be taken with a grain of salt.... a weak and pathetic effort and one that is discredited upon the moment of their utterance from their lips...

The empirical and historical evidence at hand - the linguistic, historical, political, social, cultural and anthropological evidence - attests to the ethnic identity of the citizenry of FYROM; that they are Serbo-Bulgar Slavs in origin, whose language belongs to the south Slavic language group of centum languages, belonging to the indo-European language group, and which is an amalgam of Serbo-Bulgarian, and which has no tie or historical relationship whatsoever to the Ancient north-western Greek dialect of Macedonian.