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Macedonia is particularly egregious because its genesis as an ethnic group is still within living memory and would make as much sense as Pennsylvanians declarin
by xthrown1 4y ago
Macedonia is particularly egregious because its genesis as an ethnic group is still within living memory and would make as much sense as Pennsylvanians declaring themselves the last true Vikings, erecting statues with horned helmets and talking about retaking their true homelands.
All other major ethnic groups in the Balkans have at least two or more generations from their creation, either synthetic or organic, and as such are as easy to take seriously as any other ethnicity, be it Han or English.
- actionfromafar 4y agoSure, but in a couple of hundred years it will feel normal. This has happened many times before.
- xthrown1 4y agoYes, but this didn't happen centuries ago, this happened in the 1960s to 1990s.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> this didn't happen centuries ago, this happened in the 1960s to 1990s The point is every ethnic group was made up by people at some point. Most retroactively. There isn't a rational reason to prefer old over new ethnic identities.
- xthrown1 4y agoThere is a difference between larping and culture. If you can't understand that you're probably larping thinking its culture.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> you can't understand that you're probably larping thinking its culture We’ve been telling others their culture isn’t real for about as long as we’ve been inventing ethnicities.
- xthrown1 4y agoCulture is what you do when you stop thinking. When everyone in a group does the same thing when they stop thinking you have a nation. Give it another 60 years and Macedonians will be on par with Israelis for a made up nation that is now real. We aren't there yet because there are people alive and well in their 40s who know just how made up it all is, since they were the ones that made it up. This is a very hard concept to explain to liberal americans because they have no culture or nation. Thinking the wrong thoughts gets you excommunicated and what those wrong thoughts are changes constantly. So they have to constantly think about what acceptable behaviour is.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jcranmer 4y agoThe Macedonian culture seems to me to have become distinct from Serbian and Bulgarian cultures by around WW1 at the latest. At the very least, all of the ethnographers being used to divvy up the Balkans recognized them as a distinct ethnicity at that time.
- foobarian 4y agoI don't understand this comment about Macedonians. They seem like a pretty distinct ethnic group, as evidenced by the unique language and culture. That was not just created out of thin air in any kind of recent time. Are people upset about them adopting the name?
- coryrc 4y ago> Are people upset about them adopting the name? Yes. Macedonians of antiquity were Greek. "Northern Macedonians" are Slavic. Greeks are very protective of their identity.
- navane 4y agoPeople who have not much else, are generally very protective of their identity.
- jcranmer 4y ago> Are people upset about them adopting the name? Yes. Oh yes are many Greeks peeved about the name of Macedonia, claiming that it means the country now called North Macedonia has designs on the Macedonia region of Greece. Modern Macedonians are Slavic-speaking people, who moved into the region ~1500 years ago. Ancient Macedonians (whose most famous person was Alexander the Great) were a Greek-speaking people.
- klooney 4y agoThe Greeks are very upset, which is why the country recently renamed itself.
- stodor89 4y agoAnd what exactly is distinct and unique about their language and culture?
- foobarian 4y agoJudging by the username I'll guess this is coming from the Bulgarian perspective? Then again you could argue that most of that region is half-Turk :-)