Part 1 - Introduction - Part 03

Many Greeks, it seems, are not happy with the material I turn out in these chapters and have bitterly complained. It is not that they believe what I have written nor do they believe anything anyone has written outside of their trusted state sponsored Greek educational system. Their problem is that they can’t understand why I do this! And by “this” I mean writing about their true identities which, for some reason, seems to offend them. The largest numbers of e-mails, outside of the profane and downright vulgar ones, I receive from Greeks on a daily basis, show a trend of puzzlement; “why, they want to know, do I do this?” Well, I will tell you. Millions of Macedonians have been denied their ethnic identity by no one else except Greek governments, Greeks and Bulgarians. This has been going on relentlessly for over a century. For over thirty years I have tried to reason with Greeks and explain to them how we feel about being treated this way but in spite of all my effort I have not being able to make any progress. All I received back was more ridicule and the standard Greek government sponsored responses such as “you are a Slav”, “there is no such thing as a Macedonian”, “Macedonia is Greek”, “Tito created the Macedonian identity”, etc., etc., etc. I have to be honest, I don’t much like what the Greeks are doing, especially considering where they stand regarding their own identity, so after thirty years of pleading I have decided to fight back in a familiar manner that every Greek would understand; deny their identity as they are denying mine. There is however, if I may point out, a big difference between the Macedonian ethnic identity and that of the Greeks. While Macedonians are people who are true to themselves and have accepted their ethnic identity as was passed on to them by their ancestors, the Modern Greeks have accepted an artificially constructed identity which is a product of the 19th century Western Philhellenic imagination. Macedonians have put up with a lot from the Greeks in the last hundred years and it’s time we start fighting back. Greece, with its partners Serbia and Bulgaria, invaded occupied, partitioned and annexed Macedonia, a land that did not belong to them. They each then tried to forcibly and against their will turn Macedonians into Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians respectively. Those Macedonians who resisted were persecuted to no end. Some were exiled, some were tortured and many were outright killed. Greece, in its new found megalomaniac glory, wanted to turn Macedonians into Hellenes which is not only alien to Macedonians but downright artificial, a creation of the imagination. In their zeal to expand the curse of Hellenism into Macedonia, the Greeks did some very nasty and unforgettable things to the Macedonians, of which I am sure they are not proud. Among the nastiest things they did is torture, murder and exile many Macedonians because they refused to become Hellenes. They then introduced policies to change all Macedonian place names and people’s names to Greek sounding ones to prove to everyone how “Greek” Macedonia was. They even changed the engravings on church icons and gravestones to remove all traces of Macedonia and to make the past look like it was always Greek. On top of that the Greeks introduced laws to prohibit Macedonians from speaking their mother language in order to erase another unique and dear thing belonging to the Macedonians. Need I say more? Now that Serbia abandoned its share of divided Macedonia and the Macedonian people managed to scrape a little country together that they can call their own, the Greeks wasted no time in exporting their Hellenism and harassing them too. It seems if you are a Macedonian there is no safe place to hide from the curse of Hellenism. After all the things Greeks have done to the Macedonians how can anyone be surprised if the Macedonians started fighting back? Who are these Greeks anyway and what right do they have to abuse the Macedonians and get away with it?

How can a fabricated nation of people who are not who they say they are have such rights? In fact, how can a people like the Modern-Greeks even be allowed to have a country? The only reason Modern Greeks have gotten away with what they have done (and are still doing to this day) is because the Macedonian people have been passive. Macedonians who have been abused over the last century have accepted their abuse as “an act of fate” because there was no one willing to help them. Macedonians however are human beings with rights and it’s a matter of time before they discover they have those rights and start fighting back and exposing the racist Greek attitude which has ruled over them for more than a century. If I am any example, Macedonians will no longer tolerate the Greek abuse and will fight for their place in this world and get back what was taken from them, including their identity and dignity. For many years Greeks have abused, tortured, exiled and murdered Macedonians and not a single perpetrator has yet to be punished. Naturally all Macedonians have lost faith in Greece and in Greek justice. Greece has shown no interest in coming to terms with the Macedonians and reconciling the past wrongs it has perpetrated against them. Is there any wonder why its abused loyal citizens drift through life like zombies? If I may add, Greece is perhaps the only country in Europe where racism, Nazism and Fascism are still alive and well. Racism, Nazism and Fascism were destroyed during the Second World War but not in Greece. Racism, Nazism and Fascism are not only tolerated they have been allowed to flourish in Greece. Greece is still ruled by the same dynasties which served Metaxas, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, people with no respect for human rights, people who still believe in Hellenism and in the creation of a superior race. The USA among others has also supported these Greek dictatorial regimes on many occasions since World War II and if not directly, then indirectly is responsible for the fate of the Macedonian people in Greece. No wonder the US State Department in its “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” downplays the plight of the Macedonian minority in Greece! Speaking of Metaxas, in the book “The Metaxas Myth Dictatorship and Propaganda in Greece” by Merina Petrakis on page 126 we read “The word Hellenism is a symbol and this symbol is the central point around which the civilization of all the nations on earth will be constructed.” To the Greeks who place blind faith in their trusted government which has been telling them they are “Hellenes”, “descendants from the Ancient Hellenes” please take heed; even Metaxas did not believe “Hellenism” was an ethnic entity; he believed “Hellenism” was a symbol, an idea! One cannot build an ethnic nation from a symbol or from an idea! “The target of Metaxas’ theater propaganda was the transformation of the masses in such a way that they could become worthy citizens of a ‘regenerating Greece’ and participate in the creation of the ‘Third Greek Civilization’. The ‘regeneration of Greece’ formed one of the basic objectives of the new regime and was launched by Metaxas on 10 August 1936 on his radio speech, and was repeated and analyzed in Thessaloniki on 6 September 1936: ‘We were forced to impose a dictatorship (…) in order to be able to accomplish our supreme goal which is one and only one: the ‘regeneration of Greece’: a regeneration which is not only economic but social. Greece cannot exist socially if its society consists of unhappy and miserable people. The Greek people have reached such a point of degradation and indifference that they have endangered the fate of the nation and the country (…) Thus I repeat: Regeneration from a national point of view: because you cannot exist but as Greeks; as Greeks who believe in the power of Hellenism and through it you can develop and create your own civilization.” (“The Metaxas Myth Dictatorship and Propaganda in Greece” by Merina Petrakis, pages 126 and 127).

Further down on page 127 in the same book we read “Metaxas envisaged a new state based on the revival of Hellenismos (Hellenism-Greek National Identity), and the supreme Greek ideals. These ideals and Hellenism had been squashed after the Great War and the Asia Minor catastrophe, together with the Megaly Idea (the Supreme Idea) of a Greater Greece, which was the standard-bearer of Hellenism. In Metaxas’ view, no person, especially a young person, could live without national identity because he would become disoriented and confused.” Further on, on page 127 we read “The existing educational system, instead of offering them a cultural education based on national ideals, introduced new theories to instruct and enlighten young people on general matters. This was, according to Metaxas, a fatal mistake: education in Greece should serve no other purpose than to educate Greeks and directed them towards the great national ideals. Spiritually, people could only exist as Greeks, Turks, French, English, Germans and others. Therefore, Greek youth should realize that they could exist and act only through their nationality: Hellenism, Metaxas claimed in the ‘historical’ articles exchanged between him and his political rival Venizelos, (the charismatic propagandist for ‘Greater Greece’), through Kathimerini in 1934-1935 had no boundaries, and the Megali Idea was dead only in its territorial form. By and large, Greek Civilization and Greek Culture had no boundaries either. Thus, it was imperative that Greek National Culture, the Hellenic Culture, should be reconstructed and reinstated, in such a way, that it could spread beyond the geographical frontiers of Greece. This was the essence of Hellenism and the Megali Idea and it became the dream of the ‘Fourth of August State’. On 2 October 1936 when Metaxas set out the main objectives and policies of his government the ‘regeneration of Greece’ formed the central theme. ‘Greece has but one way out’ he strongly emphasized ‘to march ahead determined to achieve her regeneration; this regeneration would be a long and difficult task; but we are determined to accomplish this task completely and thoroughly. This objective needed the mobilization of every section of Greek society.” Allow me to remind the reader that by “regeneration” Metaxas meant the total destruction of the real ethnic identities which seemed to “creep back up” in Greek society. The re-emergence of real ethnic identities Metaxas calls “degradation and indifference”. In other words regeneration according to Metaxas means the re-introduction of “Hellenism” in a more potent form. Then at the bottom page 127 Metaxas goes on to says “The route that must be taken by our Organization, an organization which bears a successful title which signifies your goals, are open to discussion and further meanings. I am sure that you will work very hard so that your ideals will be very successfully conveyed to the whole of Greece in such a way that a special class of people, who think alike are totally devoted to the state, will emerge and form the governing class of our society.” On page 128 we read “The above extract suggests that the regime was determined to use every possible means to ensure the ‘regeneration of Greece’ and the creation of the ‘Third Greek Civilization’. In his speech to EON in Ioannina on 13 June 1937, Metaxas analyzed this concept and set out the conditions for its materialization: ‘You must be prepared for what is coming because you will live to see the creation of the Third Greek Civilization which is the Modern Greek Civilization. The first civilization was the ancient civilization. That civilization was great in spirit but lacking in religious faith and is gone forever. Along came the second Greek civilization (Byzantine) which did not accomplish great spiritual things but had a deep religious faith. Now it’s your turn to combine the best elements of both these civilizations and with your deep Christian faith (…) and the inspirations drawn from the great accomplishments of your ancestors you must create the Third Greek Civilization.’ The ‘Third Greek Civilization’ demanded a return to national values as they were epitomized by the Metaxas regime.

These values would, according to Nicoloudis urge the ‘thirsty’ Greek people ‘to return to their eternal springs where they would accomplish their spiritual elevation and national regeneration and create a new supreme civilization: The Third Greek Civilization’.” And finally on page 131 we read “Thus, the Greek foreign policy under Metaxas, at least in the beginning, came under German influence.” Besides sounding utterly mad like a script for a fiction b-rated movie, Metaxas’ approach in theory may sound progressive. There is nothing wrong with a people returning to its roots, but to what roots was Metaxas proposing to return? To the Slav, Albanian, or Vlach roots from which his Modern Greek people descended? Of course not! He was proposing to return to his mythical roots of the Philhellene creation, the ones that never existed before. Still one might say that there is nothing wrong with that, unless the one was a Macedonian who lived through and witnessed the Metaxas madness. Outside of Macedonians being exiled in the hundreds of thousands to the hot and dry island concentration camps purely for being born Macedonians, outside of having their language banned by law not to be spoken in private or in public, and, outside of having been forced to accept foreign names and a foreign imposed alien identity, Macedonians don’t have much to complain about Metaxas’s accomplishments. But the worst thing about Metaxas is his policies which he instituted in the late 1930’s regarding the treatment of ethnic minorities in Greece; policies which exist and are still enforced to this day. Another prevalent issue in today’s Greece is Metaxas’ racist attitudes which have survived and been practiced not only in education and in government institutions but in the psyche of the Greek people who for years have been brainwashed and sold on the glory of Hellenism which, if they care to find out, is synonymous with racism, Nazism and Fascism. Ladies and gentlemen, the legendary Dr. Frankenstein is alive and well, and for the past century or so, has been working for the Greek government in aid of Hellenism. For those who still ask “why I do this?” let’s say I have my reasons. Besides the countless Macedonian lives lost in the fight against Hellenism, the countless people exiled, split apart from their families, had their properties and homes confiscated, and, besides those who were converted into ardent Hellenes, there are also those Macedonians who still feel insecure about their culture and identity thanks to the Greek need to propagate Hellenism. I have decided to speak to those people and tell them that they have no reason to feel insecure and ashamed of who they are and have no need to question their history and ethnic identity just because the Greeks told them to. I want these people to look into the true face of Hellas and the Hellenes and see them truly for what they are; a fake nation full of frauds unworthy of attention and undeserving of admiration. Part 11 - The curse of Hellenism

Hellenism is not a religion, it is not an ethnic entity and is not even a national identity; it is an idea, an idea designed to mold an entire country into believing and behaving the way Modern 19th century Europeans wanted. Hellenism began in a small part of Modern Greece, in fact to be more precise the Philhellenes created that small part of Modern Greece because they needed a cultural basis to model their idea after. The Modern Europeans found what they needed in a society that lived in that very small region of Modern Greece 2,400 years ago. Once upon a time during the late 18th and early 19th century there were some Western Europeans who considered themselves “forward looking” and believed they could improve the world if only they could teach it how to behave in a manner to their liking. To do that they needed a model which they found in the people of 2,400 years ago who lived in the southern part of today’s Modern Greece. The ideas and actions of these Western Europeans came to be known as “Hellenism” and they themselves became known as “Philhellenes” or friends of the Hellenes. The people that accepted the ideals of Hellenism thus became known as the “Hellenes”. Modern Greece was not named “Greece” by accident and neither was Ancient “Greece”. We all know that there is not a single ancient map showing “Greece” because there was no “Greece” back then. The names “Greece”, “Greeks”, “Ancient Greece” and “Ancient Greeks” came into use and prominence in the late 18th, early 19th centuries. One of the reasons for giving “Greece” a Latin name is because the Philhellenes needed “Greece” to have a Western name in order to be part of the Western World. Another reason for coming up with this name was to, for the first time ever, group together all the ancient worlds including the City States, Achaea, Thessaly, Epirus and Greek occupied Macedonia under one “Western sounding” name, “Greece”. Modern Hellenism was expected to begin in the southern part of Modern Greece with the toppling of the Ottoman Empire and from there expand outwards. Not everyone however bought into the idea of Hellenism, not if it had to be at the expense of traditional values. The idea was that in order to be a Hellene one had to not only embrace the ideals of Hellenism but had to forsake ones own culture, traditions, language and even religion. To many people Hellenism was synonymous with paganism. It is funny nowadays to hear Greek Orthodox Priests bursting with pride about being such great Hellenes unknowingly or intentionally forsaking Christianity, the very same faith they have sworn to serve. But that is not all; a Hellene is obligated to keep his or her real identity a secret not only from society but also from its offspring. The children must not know the truth, which would ensure that they would remain good Hellenes! Surprisingly Hellenism was embraced by many people but not as many as expected. People with strong traditional values and long family roots refused to give up that which they held dear and near to their hearts. Many fought against Hellenism and many more even lost their lives. The ones who embraced Hellenism were either ignorant of their own history or wanted more out of life than what it had to offer even if it meant trading their real history, language and ethnic identity for it. The new Hellenic identity required the Hellene to have a Hellenic name so every non-Greek personal and family name had to be changed to sound Greek. Unfortunately, as is with people receiving alias names in witness protection programs, real identities cease to exist. And since the new identities have no history, phantom histories have to be fabricated and lies propagated in order for the individuals to fit in. The “changed” individuals then have to be instilled with pride to not only convince their neighbours of who they are but eventually to convince themselves and their children. This is why today, after 200 years of Hellenization we have so many Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs and even Christian Turks from Asia Minor bursting with pride about being “pure Greeks, direct descendants from the Ancient Greeks”.

I hope now you understand why the “real” history of these people cannot be allowed to surface. If it does it will shatter the illusion of Hellenism and not only expose the perpetrated Philhellene conspiracy but will also alienate its willing and unwitting participants who now number in the tens of millions. If the conspiracy to create Hellenism is exposed then every Greek will have no choice but to question his or her “Greek” identity; are they Slav, Albanian, Vlach or some other unheard of ethnicity from Asia Minor, the Caucasus or somewhere else? The Republic of Macedonia’s coming into existence has threatened to expose this Hellenic conspiracy which explains why so many paranoid Greeks negate its existence and act so suspiciously. For many, including the vast majority of Macedonians, who valued their culture, language and traditions, the fight against Hellenism has become a relentless and never ending struggle. For them Hellenism is a curse. Following are excerpts from the book “Blood Lines form Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism”, by Vamik Volkan. On pages 121 and 122 we read “Greece’s movement to build a national identity, however, contained a unique element not shared by others: external support and even pressure, for a specific kind of new identity. The British, French and Russians demanded that the modern Greek identity be Hellenic and respond to the Europeans’ nostalgia for the restoration of a pre-Christian Hellenic civilization that has been in eclipse for some two thousand years. Europeans confidently expected to see the characteristic of Homer in post liberation Greeks, in spite of the ebb and flow of history over such a great span of time. The neoclassicism that rose in seventeenth – and eighteenth-century Europe as an aesthetic and philosophical idea was to be physically embodied in modern-day Greece. The idealistic and hopeful attitudes of neoclassicism that would later be imposed on the Greeks was succinctly expressed in 1822 when American President James Monroe declared: ‘The mention of Greece fills the mind with the utmost exalted sentiments and arouses in our bosoms the best feelings of which our nature is susceptible’. In reality, however, just before the Greek war of independence, most Greeks still referred to themselves as Romans. Vlachavas, the priest rebel leader who rose against the Ottomans, declared, ‘A Romneos I was born, a Romneos I will die’. Some Europeans and the few Americans who came to help Greece start a new nation-state, were disappointed even indignant, to discover among Greece’s peasants there were no warrior-heroes like Achilles or Ajax, no statesmen like Pericles, no philosophers like Socrates or Plato and no poets of the caliber of Aeschylus or Sophocles. There was, in fact, little likeness between nineteenth century Greeks and the idealized Greeks from ancient history that had such hold on the imagination of European liberators.” Further down on page 122 we read “The folklore scholar Michael Herzfeld has identified three major obstacles to the project of re-Hellenizing Greece. First, the people in the new nation-state found it difficult to accept that they should resemble the long-lost inhabitants of their land; most of the common people had no idea what they were supposed to be. Second, they could not be “Hellenic”, in the old pagan sense of the word, since they strongly adhered to the Christian faith in their Orthodox church. Finally, it was hard to be Hellenic while using a Romaic language mixed with Turkish, Arabic and Persian origin.” Even further down on page 122 we read “Hellenism was embraced, but under the three obstacles listed above, under a special way. It was made ‘intimately personal’, identified as a mystical sensibility that could not be understood by even Western supporters. George Evlambios in 1843 declared that foreigners should not attempt the impossible by trying to fathom the mysteries of Greekness. It was ironic that the Hellenism thesis, although initially externally directed, would in practice ultimately lead Greeks to differentiate themselves from the very others who had helped to define them.

Absorbing Hellenism made modern Greeks proud of their uniqueness.” At this point I usually make my commentary about the Modern Greek hypocritical stance against the Macedonian ethnic identity and how while ignoring the fact that there is no real Greek identity, only a manufactured one, Greeks continue to be an obstacle to Macedonia’s entry into the world. But instead of making my own commentary, this time I will use quotes from the book “The Emerging Strategic Environment Challenges of the twenty-first century” edited by Williamson Murray. On page 17 of this book we read “Considering, for example, the contemporary notions promulgated by the Ministry of Education in Athens regarding Macedonia. Greek textbooks portray Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great as exemplars of Greek civilization and their kingdom as thoroughly Hellenized. Therefore, according to this logic, the modern inhabitants of Macedonia are a product of an unbroken cultural influence stretching back to the Greece of the fourth century BC. As a result, the present Slav-inhabited Republic of Macedonia supposedly has no right to its name nor to use the sixteen-pointed Star of Vergina, the symbol of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia, as its national emblem. Left out of this fairy tale is the absence of any proof that the ancient Macedonians spoke Greek or formed part of Greek culture. Furthermore the undisputed fact that Philip and Alexander admired Greek culture and that Greek was spoken at their court hardly made their subjects Greek, any more than the fact that the court of Catherine the Great and Alexander I spoke French made the Russian serfs of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century part of French culture. Ignored, too, is the influence of successive waves of invasions that smashed into the Balkans between the fourth and fourteenth centuries AD.” Then on page 18 we read “What was left of ancient Greek culture in medieval Macedonia after one thousand years of rapine, enslavement and slaughter at the hands of outsiders? Today the Greek government insists that its country has no minorities. But a traveler to Greek Macedonia or Thrace will discover that many (perhaps 250,000 or more) Albanians, Slavs, and Muslims - what precisely to call them is completely a matter of opinion – live near the Greek border with Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and European Turkey. All that these contradictions really prove is that after two centuries of independence, Greek nationalists remain insecure and self-doubting behind their boastful and touchy facades.” And now a word to my critics; When I first started writing these chapters, Greeks accused me of “making up stories” and of “telling lies”, demanding to see proof and quotes from reliable sources. Now that I have produced quotes, many, many quotes from over thirty different reliable and unbiased authors, who by the way all support the Greek side while telling “your” story, you accuse me of using “other peoples’ words” and of “not having a mind of my own”. Please make up your minds!!! Please, instead of putting blame on me for telling you the truth, admit to yourselves that you are a fake nation with a manufactured identity and instead of trying so hard to prove that “Macedonians don’t exist” try harder and prove that “Greeks do exist”. For those who are still not convinced that the Modern Greek identity is an artificial creation, please continue to read this series of articles. Part 12 – Is there a Misunderstanding?

No matter what I do these days there seems to be a misunderstanding between what I say in my articles and what is understood by most Greeks. Once again I will repeat myself. For various reasons, which every Greek should understand, successive Greek governments and the majority of Greek people who elect those governments have been denying the Macedonians their ethnic identity. This has been going on since 1878 when it became obvious that Macedonian lands were available for the taking. One of the excuses Greek governments and many Greeks use to deny the Macedonians their identity is their empty claim that “Macedonians do not exist”. So then who were these people living on those lands which Greece acquired by war in 1912, 1913? Depending on which Greek you ask, you get a variety of answers which range from; they are “Slavs”, “Bulgarians”, “Serbians”, “Skopjans”, “Slavo-Skopjans”, etc., etc.; but NEVER Macedonians. Greeks have been denying the Macedonians their ethnic identity for over a century not because there are no Macedonians but because they, the Greeks in 1912, 1913 usurped 51% of Macedonia’s lands and stole the Macedonian heritage and they don’t want to be exposed and identified as the lying and thieving culprits that they are. The excuse Greeks use to justify this, without an ounce of proof of course, is that “Macedonia is Greek”. And how is Macedonia Greek? They say because the Ancient Macedonians were Greek. Are we missing something here? Even if the ancient Macedonians were related to the ancient people living south of Olympus, and they themselves say they were not, it is neither here nor there because the modern Greeks have nothing to do with either the so-called ancient Greeks or with the ancient Macedonians. In fact as I have shown numerous times the only people the Modern Greeks are related to are the Slav, Albanian and Vlach immigrants who descended upon the territory of modern Greece during the 11th to the 14th centuries. Again as I have shown in these chapters, Modern Greece and the Modern Greeks are a 19th century creation, a fabrication of the Philhellene imagination. How many times must that be said to be understood? Up until the late 1980’s the rules were that one had to be born a Greek to be a Greek. It was my understanding that a Greek could not be made, he or she had to be born Greek. In fact Greece, in 1982 by Ministerial Decree number 106841, announced the passage of Law no. 400/76, providing that; “Free to return to Greece are all Greeks by genus, who during the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949 and because of it have fled abroad as political refugees, in spite that the Greek citizenship has been taken away from them.” Similarly Law no. 1540 was subsequently introduced making provision for the return of confiscated properties to political emigrants, read political refugees. The wording used in the legislation was again unjustly circumspect. It defines political emigrants for whom the law shall have application limited to those who are “Greeks by genus”. The term ‘Greek by genus’ is a term used by Greek authorities for all those who identify themselves as being ethnic Greek. Hence ethnic Macedonians who are also political refugees and have had their Greek citizenship rescinded and/or properties confiscated are excluded from enjoying the rights granted under these laws, therefore severely questioning the very standing of the laws based on grounds of equity and fairness. Moreover, the construction of the wording as relating to these laws is not benign, it has the clear intent to discriminate against all those who belong to the category of people classified as political refugees and who are not “Greeks by genus”. Given that ethnic Macedonians predominantly make up this category of people, it is indisputable that they have been the ones targeted by this exclusivist definition and the ones to have suffered the most. What exactly then is “Greek by genus”? Does it means Greek by birth or Greek by blood born from Greek parents?

Yes it does according to the way it has been applied in laws! How then can a Greek with Slavic, Albanian, or Vlach ancestry be a “Greek by genus” and not someone who was born in Greece, is a Greek citizen but feels Macedonian? My friends the “Greek jig is up”! “There is no such thing as a Greek” because according to Greek law a Greek has to be born from a Greek. But how can a Greek be born from a Greek when “there is no such thing as a Greek” in the first place? But as I say this I get comments from Greeks like the following; “Ethnicity is not based on genetic make-up. In no country is one required to take a genetic test before he is accepted as a citizen. Even Hitler did not require any such tests. For Risto Stefov, however, and some of his colleagues, the fact that Greeks cannot prove a genetic identity to someone (not defined thus impossible anyway) who was Greek, means Greeks are not Greeks. Therefore the Greek word Macedonia and the Greek administrative district of Macedonia (in Greece) with its Greek history are up for the taking. The only merit of such an extreme form of racism is that it does not openly ask for the extermination of Greeks as it mercifully makes Greeks non-existent by an act of free will. Nevertheless, through this invention, part of Greece, Greek property (in the administrative district of Macedonia) as well as Greek heritage and history may be appropriated just the same. Unfortunately for Risto Stefov and his friends, ethnicity is not decided by a set of genes and besides we know nothing about how genetically homogeneous the original Greeks (whoever Stefov thinks these might have been) were. This racial, or even racist, attitude towards the definition of ethnicity, ignores thousands of years of linguistic and cultural continuity and the self-definition at all times of Greeks as Greeks. Stefov conveniently also ignores the geographic continuity, for Greeks never lived just around Athens and Sparta by their own accounts and the accounts of others.” (Tymphaios, March 06, 2009) So, what is Mr. Tymphaios telling us? Is he telling us that “anyone who feels like a Greek can be Greek”? What about someone who is and feels Macedonian can they be Macedonian? For over 100 years Greeks have been saying NO! No matter how you slice it Mr. Tymphaios, this type of “Greek logic” is very difficult to swallow. All I want from you Greeks is to apply the same logic to the Macedonians as you apply to yourselves! If a Slav, Albanian and Vlach can be “a Greek” because, if I understand Tymphaios correctly, he or she “feels like a Greek” then why a Macedonian, born of Macedonians, who lived in Macedonia for many generations, cannot be a Macedonian? You can’t have it both ways! Mr. Tymphaios goes on to say “The nationalistic principles of the nineteenth century, in which an ethnicity was genetically unchangeable through time, is a fossil of pre-scientific thinking. Thanks to Darwin and the scientific revolution he brought about, we know a little bit more now than people knew in the 19th century. Humans, like other species, are not static. The ancient Greeks had no special properties all of which disappeared with them when Demosthenes, or Alexander [for your information Mr. Tymphaios, Alexander was not Greek, he was Macedonian] or someone or other died. Linguistic, historic and cultural continuity is what determines the survival of an ethnicity not a unique ‘blood’ or an exclusive set of genes. Like species, so human ‘ethnicities’ evolve over time. Risto Stefov´s quest is a constant search for a genetic contamination from Albanians or some other ‘impure’ ethnicity, so that like a creationist he may say: aha, Greeks as known today were never created by God, or Greeks of the ancient times have no connection to today’s Greeks because they did not call themselves Romioi, presumably did not mix with Albanians, etc. So therefore they were a different ‘race’. He cuts a lonely figure in such a quest, because this kind of thinking is more and more recognized as belonging to those racist theories promoted by the fascistic states of mid-20th century.

Stefov´s ethnic principle is like that of Creationism in the sense of lines that are not evolving but can only stay or disappear. Today this is a thought rarely entertained even by ordinary laymen.” But what Tymphaios fails to understand, or is hypocritical about it, is that the exact same thing he speaks of and accuses me of doing is practiced by Greece today! Mr. Tymphaios, principles which apply to the Greeks as you stated above equally apply to the Macedonians! I can and have accused you of doing the same thing you are accusing me of, except that Greece and Greeks are the ones who deny the Macedonians their ethnic identity and not the other way around? All I am doing is pointing out what others, whose research you might appreciate, are saying about you. So again I will ask the question “why can’t a Macedonian, who calls him or herself Macedonian, born from Macedonians and feels like a Macedonian, according to Greeks, cannot be a Macedonian”? Mr. Tymphaios and the rest of you Greeks who deny the Macedonians their ethnic identity, I anxiously await your answer. Frankly Mr. Tymphaios, I couldn’t care less what you Greeks call yourselves and who you think you are and who you think you have descended from. What I don’t like about you is your lack of fairness when it comes to treating those different from you and your disregard for the rights of the Macedonian people both inside Greece and in the Republic of Macedonia. First, you, and by you I mean Greece and the Greeks, invaded, occupied and annexed our country Macedonia without our consent, which I call theft, then you tormented, killed, assimilated and evicted us from our homes in the name of Hellenism. You then changed our personal names, toponyms and hydronyms and made them Greek sounding so that you could show the world how Greek Macedonia is. You then banned our mother tongue and made us speak your alien Hellenic language which we detest. You openly practice racism by publicly denying Macedonians their most basic human rights and you dare call me a racist for defending myself? Where is the fairness in that? Perhaps Mr. Tymphaios you should learn a bit more about the real Greece before you leap to accusing others for things your country and your countrymen practice every day. And now I will leave you with this; “It is, after all, through the same neo-Classical elite ideology that today rejects Bernal’s arguments out of hand that Greeks were taught to reject everything familiar in their vernacular culture as ‘foreign’ to the Classical Hellenism invented by the eighteenth-century German scholars who had sired both the ‘autochthonous’ theory of Greek ethno-genesis and, in the lineage of ‘Aryan’ linguists, the so called racial science of the Nazis. This is also the ideology that today made it necessary to specify whether one means modern Greeks, as I have just done, because the West has made Classical antiquity the only acceptable touchstone of their cultural worth. The example of modern Greece provides a useful key to historicizing those who Eric Wolf has ironically dubbed ‘the people without history’ (Wolf 1982). For the modern Greeks – a people arguable plagued by an excess of history, but for a kind invented for them by more powerful others – face a real life dilemma…” (“Anthropology, Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society” by Michael Herzfeld, page 67) Part 13 – What is Greece up to?