
Macedonia: Attack of the neighbors edition
A few months ago, a Macedonian-American friend of mine who lives in New York City told me that “those of us who live on the coasts are absolutely threatened by your choice of words.” This was in response to a Facebook post I made on the issue of so-called climate change. It should go without saying that I am a “climate change” sceptic and my friend worships at the altar of climate change. More to the point: my friend feels “threatened” by my “choice of words,” by my speech. Should he desire to pursue it, and should he be able to get a government authority to agree with him (plus the media, all-important these days), he could sue me for this statement in an attempt to either get me to retract it, or to inflict financial penalties (or worse) on me. Don’t laugh: that scenario has happened before, is happening now and will continue — for the balance of our lives.
Many of our friends on the left equate certain speech with what they call “hate speech” and claim that such speech threatens them and therefore they have a right to and/or will attempt to shut down viewpoints they do not agree with (Antifa goes one step further: they equate so-called “hate speech” as being violence and then justify the use of physical violence to shut down those using said speech). I do not need to go into great detail on this as we see examples of this every day. But the Supreme Court of the United States ruled as recently as June (in an 8–0 ruling which includes all of the liberal justices) that such a thing does not exist in law. As author Rich Lowry wrote at National Review “In a passage that should be pasted into the student handbook of every college and read aloud by progressives who have convinced themselves that hate speech is not free speech, the court held, ‘Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’”
Now, you may be wondering where all this is leading, especially with respect to Macedonia and her neighbors. The most recent example comes from the Greek Foreign Ministry last week when they released a statement accusing Macedonian Consul General Jovica Palacevski of Toronto of participating in “an irredentist event, a participation that constitutes yet another violation by fYROM of the Interim Accord, which requires abstention from any action supporting territorial claims.” Granted this statement did not accuse him of “hate speech” per se but in essence it is very similar to such an accusation. The attempt to crack down on free speech is more evident with Bulgaria as we saw with the so-called “good neighborly relations” treaty where any acts of “hatred” will be seen as an act of provocation. As I wrote a few weeks ago, “Article 11 and in particular Article 11.6 commits Macedonia to taking effective measures to prevent negative propaganda by “institutions and agencies” and to “discourage the activities of private entities” (meaning private citizens, businesses, faith institutions, NGOs, you name it) that would incite “violence, hatred or other similar acts” that would harm the relationship between Macedonia and Bulgaria. In this example if private citizens, businesses, or other institutions say and/or transmit language which the Bulgarians deem “hateful” then the Bulgarians will file official complaints with the government of Macedonia and they will demand that the government of Macedonia crack down on such speech and language. If the government of Macedonia does not, the Bulgarian government will refuse to support Macedonia in its NATO and EU aspirations. If the government of Macedonia does crack down on such speech and language, then we will have even greater problems.”
And here’s another example: the Greek foreign ministry also objected to the Macedonian National Women’s Handball under-17 team stating that the team violated the Interim Accord between Greece and Macedonia. The team’s sin? They wore clothing with the name “Macedonia” on their uniforms. They were in Skopje. Now, if the Greeks officially object to the Macedonians wearing clothing in Macedonia that says “Macedonia” where will they stop?
My point here is that, again, if anyone in or outside of Macedonia — and not just Macedonian government officials per the treaty with Bulgaria — says or does anything that Greece or Bulgaria then interprets as “hateful” or “irredentist” or, “discriminatory” or “bigoted” or frankly, whatever they don’t like, then they will claim that they have the legal reasons to continue keeping Macedonia from entering NATO or the EU. They will ask the Government of Macedonia to crack down on such actions and speech and if the Government of Macedonia obliges them, then the Government of Macedonia will be seen as cracking down on free speech which will create an entirely new set of problems, internally.
It therefore follows that if you support the idea of being able to curtail or shut down speech and viewpoints on issues you don’t agree with, then you must, if you are being intellectually honest, support the idea of our Greek and Bulgarian friends in curtailing or shutting down the speech and viewpoints of Macedonians whose claims run counter to Greek or Bulgarian claims.
