[Notes] Restless Nationalism, by Prof. Ljubomir D. Frckoski

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Letters on Liberty

53 min readJun 26, 2020

1-sentence summary: Excellent geo-strategic overview of the path of formation of independent Republic of (North) Macedonia and the imminent nationalism. (pdf) The book is spiced with philosophical argumentative discourse, which I personally enjoyed.

PART I: SEARCH FOR DIFFERENCE

Independence process

The construct of the Macedonian nationalism, which I call restless, would be elaborated or, to put it better, deconstructed starting from its contemporariness, from the rose of its exhibitive epiphenomena, towards its roots and causes, backwards, in forms of flashbacks, from the forms it has taken, back to the causes that have made it assume the forms it has today. I would place the special accent on its “différence” and “différance” (J. Derrida) vis-à-vis other nations in the region, and also its relations with them. These relations are more constitutive for its formation than with other nationalisms.

We talk about phases when the established nationalism decides “to cast a glance backward” and to exploit history by creating “archives.” Reading history always represents a political decision turned backward, while having consequences for the present and the future. Such decision always implies political ideology and political motivation in its assumptions. Explicitly or implicitly, this relates to a political decision on how to use a historical material, what would be defined as important from such files, what would be marginalized, glorified or made a myth, and what would be suppressed and concealed. Such decision is always considered “to have already been made.” On the other hand, we need that material in its instrumental totality (the public and the suppressed) in order to read the symptoms of the contemporary forms in which nationalism appears. That material makes the responsibility of the political elites for the choice these elites make in their relations to history, the present, and the future.

Namely, in the opinion of the author, the basic and critical points in context of the process of independence of the Republic of Macedonia had to go through solving the following political relations and issues:
- Break-up with Yugoslavia (Serbia) and learning about own geostrategy in the region, a cross-land country geostrategy;
- New positioning toward the Albanians in the country and the “Albanian question” in the region;
- Fighting about identity-related issues: with Greece about the name, and with Bulgaria about the language and the autochthonousness of the nation;
- Learning about the attitude of the international politics toward small countries and initial experience with inter-national organizations and multilateral diplomacy, which is very important for small countries;
- Making allies with the global superpowers — USA, an ambivalent attitude toward Russia, and the very ambivalent attitude of the European Union;
- Identity-related dilemmas in the context of creating a political Macedonian nation made up of citizens with different ethnic background. Pace and dilemmas in the majority-minority relations in terms of such Macedonian nation;
- Finally, as it has been shown traumatic as well — the opportunity to be free, in a liberal and democratic country, leaning on its citizens.

Up to this point there was no dispute concerning the independence of Macedonia; however, a side objection to the independence was made by introduction of “the problem” with the name of the country, which was abused by Greece (exploiting the context of the dissolution of SFRY and the fear of the international community to have another destabilization point in the southern Balkans, in Macedonia). Greece was able to sell this issue as “a
threat to the security” in the region and to global peace. By this, this issue became part of the agenda of the Security Council of the United Nations, not only as an issue relating to the admission of a candidate country but also as an issue of potential threat to the global peace.

Dramatization or abuse of the crisis arising from the Yugoslav dissolution, in context of the UN membership of Macedonia, led to the active and flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations in context of the issue of procedure of admitting new members (Article 4 of the Charter, in connection
with Article 2, paragraph 7, of this Charter). Briefly, the violation of the UN Charter consisted of treating the issue of the name of the country (the UN theory and practice treated until then this issue solely as an issue relating to the internal sovereignty of the UN member countries) as “additional” condition for Macedonia to become UN member. This instance of introducing additional conditions for UN membership is a gross precedent executed only in the case of Macedonia, while today it is mentioned and studied in the international law textbooks at some American and European universities. Such precedent is, even more, evident per se, when taking into due consideration that in two previous cases the International Court of Justice had
provided a legal opinion on request from the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly (1948; 1950–1952). This legal opinion states that conditions mentioned in Article 4 of the UN Charter on admitting new members are defined in fixed manner and are only those that had been listed.

Although outside of the main strike by the Serbs, Macedonia was also in a state of confusion with regard to losing “the community” through which it was created as state and uncertain about the security arrangements and the future as an independent country.

By means of the concept of seriously proposing options about certain types of confederation and overcoming the crisis of SFRY, Macedonia actually was desperately fighting for consolidation on two grounds: make an attempt to avoid the war and ongoing complications in its territory on one hand, and prepare its population for the option: the very independence. The Macedonians were not able to decide whether all options, or, at least, those for loose economic ties among the former Yugoslav republics, had been depleted.

This stage was followed by the second major decision: to make a strategic alliance with the American security services and offering them a base in Macedonia on the eve of the war escalation in Bosnia. The CIA regional headquarters were located in Macedonia in early 1992. This definitely set the course of events for us and the strategic cooperation with the USA. This cooperation has demonstrated to be vital for us from several aspects: basic balance along the east-west strategic line, or Corridor 8 (Via Egnatia), which in turn enabled us to survive and withstand the pressure upon the blockades imposed by Greece in the 1990s.

This line of cooperation with the Americans has survived to this day as shown by the American recognition of the constitutional name of Macedonia in 2004; this has defined and sent messages into several directions: 1) to the Albanians in the region: that Macedonia has definite borders and exists as it is; 2) to Greece: with regard to the pressure made against our identity as Macedonians; and finally, 3) again to Serbia: that Macedonia would not be treated as a possible zone for compensation in context of the ongoing debates and decentralization process in Kosovo.

I would like to stress this line of geostrategic cooperation with the USA, because it was conducted in a period when cooperation with our “natural” allies, the Europeans, was very painful and fully disappointing for us.

In contrast to the arrogance of a superpower, brutal pragmatism, and interest in geostrategy, the Europeans are much more cynical, irrationally arrogant, and traditionally adhering to their centuries-old diplomatic lines and connections. Such generalization would be unjustified toward certain European countries that had shown constant friendship and support
for our country; however, the global picture became part of such stereotype. The collective memory of their Balkan-related diplomacies did not include us. Their diplomacies had already been busy in engaging with various local lobby groups and well-established circles. We were not present at their formal celebrations and gatherings, which dealt with traditional friendships, connections, and odium in the Balkan countries.

In its own confusion during the Yugoslav dissolution, the European Community made many mistakes and inconsistencies, which made everybody pay a very high price. First, it was not able to predict the outcome of the crises and so for a long time was blocked being unable to take any action, nursing the idea of keeping SFRY. When the war erupted, the European Community
did not have intelligence information about what was happening in the field. It let the television pictures shown on European television stations force it to take action. Furthermore, the European Community insisted that it was mostly a European issue. After the Hague International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia and the Carrington plan (namely, upon its failure), the
European Community finally gave up and proclaimed collapse.
In legalist sense, the EU tried to propose principles relating to the breakup of former Yugoslavia. It established the so-called Badinter Commission to assess the legal and political “maturity” of the constituent republics to be internationally recognized as independent countries. Basically, this was alright! However, the EU countries did not show any respect for the result of work made by this respectable commission.

One of the constituents of the Macedonian independence and sovereignty certainly is the relationship toward the ethnic community of the local Albanians, considered from two aspects.
The first one implies learning and implementing the minority rights standards in the corpus of human rights. For this, Macedonia was given a positive assessment (especially for its new Constitution of 1991) by the aforementioned Badinter Commission; this is rare, perhaps the only international acclaim on the roads of legal implementations of the human rights standards in the constitutions of the emerging democracies in Europe. The second aspect implies the formation of a multicultural society that is reflected in the institutions of the political system (institutional balance between the individual and group/cultural rights), offering high tolerance
for cultural diversity, formally higher than the levels of minority protection found in the European countries.

This has created a policy of inclusion or involving the Albanians living in Macedonia in the institutions of the system (which was absolute rarity in the Balkans, a region that has been inspired by a different nation-building policy or the Balkan “melting pot” approach) and has neutralized the possible secessionist plans and conspiracies to create greater states in the Balkans.

Why was it impossible and unnecessary to anticipate these
additions to the rights of the ethnic communities while drafting
the Constitution in 1991?
Firstly, because it would not have prevented per se the conflict in 2001. All analyses of the global strategic institutes (such as the Tex as Institute for Strategic Analyses, the Stanford Institute for Strategic Analyses, the International Crises Group, the Carnegie Commission, etc.) have now confirmed that this conflict had mostly been provoked from Kosovo and by an attempt “to export revolution” from there.
Had we enshrined the rights stemming from OFA as early as in 1991, then what further were we to add? In that case, perhaps federalization or cantonization of the country would have been added. We had maneuvering space in the Constitution to expand the minority rights and still keep the unitary character of the country intact. In this regard, the 1991 Constitutional design showed itself to be successful and sufficient. The second issue is that at the moment of adopting the Constitution in 1991, it was impossible and there was no political likelihood to go further with the minority rights. Even about the very civic character of the Constitution, a ditch war was conducted within the left parties as well, such as SDSM.

But, concurrent with this, in political context Bulgaria made several important and positive strategic movements to our benefit.
Firstly, it recognized Macedonia under its constitutional name. Secondly, Bulgaria was the only door open to Macedonia during the time of two Greek-imposed embargoes on Macedonia and the UN-imposed embargo on FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). In that period, Macedonia could have suffered unpredictably greater losses if this door leading to the rest of the
world and energy supply had not been opened up.

Finally, finishing and putting in operation the Corridor 8 connectivity infrastructure (along the east-west line of Via Egnatia) would represent, not as a challenge but more as the permanent battle for enduring our national interests. It is an important geostrategic line that makes Macedonia definitely significant and unavoidable country at crossroads. Only by control of this
crossroad and servicing it in all directions, Macedonia attains its definitive stabilization and significance in the region.
Let me conclude. It is a very fact that twenty years ago, on 8 September, Macedonia became an independent country! That it was an absolute act of virtue, complete pronouncement, an act of birth of historical necessity (to paraphrase Hegel), followed by silence. That it was the culmination of our dreams and those of our prominent historical figures and fighters for the freedom of Macedonia. That Macedonia is again on the map of the world,
which would be incomplete without it.

Geostrategy of Macedonia and Macedonian nationalism

The first important thing to know is that this dispute is not of a strategic policy (realpolitik), in terms of those definitions of disputes over competing political interests of actors to gain access to certain resources. Namely, Macedonia and Greece are not the countries competing for the same resources, but conversely, are complementary. Their quiet but successful economic cooperation following the signing of the Interim Accord in the UN in 1995
showed that. Greece became the first foreign-policy partner of Macedonia and the biggest foreign investor. However, the successful economic cooperation failed to resolve the dispute (by itself), as hoped by political “modernists.” On the contrary, on top of that cooperation the dispute “exploded” into a new phase and negative energy (in the 2004–2008 period, and then to a climax
lasting today).

This is because the main feature of the name dispute between Macedonia and Greece is its symbolism, “sign connotation.” It is a dispute over the use and control of symbols that signify identity, and are associated with the words “Macedonia and Macedonian.“ For this, both countries, for different reasons, pleaded “ownership,” control, or participation in the meaning.

Greece cannot, even if it wants to, internationally use the term Macedonia and Macedonians for its citizens, because it has hysterically ethno-homogeneous orientation toward a single Greek nation and ethnicity. Therefore, Greece only uses internally and geographically the term Macedonia and Greek Macedonians. This means that internationally, de facto, we will be only Macedonians and our country only Macedonia. For the Greeks, it is a nightmare, which they try to prevent by all possible means.

There remains a fundamental question to the Greek side that is important for understanding the dispute: why the separation of meaning and use of symbols Macedonians and Macedonia is so important for the Greeks in order to maintain the monopoly, thus risking to be disgraced internationally and opening the prolonged crisis of low intensity in the region?
That question cannot be understood if one does not know the history of “Greek success” to become part of the European Union on the basis of “control” of the licenses of ancient Greek democracy and culture, and not on the basis of the fulfillment of the economic criteria for membership (at the time when Greece joined the European Union, Yugoslavia had far better economic and financial performances for membership than Greece had).
Regardless of this, Greece has become prominent and “profitable” part of the EU, just acting on the basis of “obligation” of European countries to accept a new member that controls the territory of the ancient Greek and Latin foundations of European civilization.
That experience is built into the collective perception of Greek culture in relation to the outside world.
Now since there is “risk” that a part of such culture needs to be shared with a neighboring country, the instincts of defense, based on the experience of high profitability from the culture licenses, transpire in hysterical outburst. Particularly irritating for the Greeks is that this can happen to a small country, which according to the old Balkan principles must be subordinate to “obey” major regional powers. This farce of local “imperial cultures” and their rhetoric represents the kitsch side to this dispute to this day.

For the Macedonian side, the dispute not only relates to the dimension of the name of the country, but is also connected with the identity of a small nation that if deprived of the opportunity to call itself “Macedonian” and as such recognized on the international scene, there is the danger of opening the old thesis of “the Macedonian salad”, of inexistence of particular ethnicity
called “Macedonian”, which is a substrate of the country with the
same name

A second feature of the dispute between Macedonia and Greece is its lack of balance. This dispute, namely, is radically unbalanced. In the name issue, Greece from the beginning ignored the very existence of an international subject in the form of the state of Macedonia, which it eventually has to negotiate with. Scandalizing this, according to Greek words, “stealing of history” (like in the movies about Indiana Jones), Greece has always been addressing this issue over the head of Macedonia, to someone behind: the European countries, USA, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Russia, or its domestic public, but never the state which it has a dispute with.
That certainly is part of the historical Balkan complex of imperial/local cultures (such as the role played by the Serbian and Greek cultures), of clientelism, arrogance, and resentment, but this dispute has assumed a concretized diplomatic form. This feature of the dispute is important to note because it determines the entire set of diplomatic techniques of mediation
that would not be required to such extent, if this trait of utter lack
of balance were not present. From the beginning, the dispute has been going on in the triangle: the two involved sides and a rather strong mediator

Greece, for example, always felt rather uncomfortable when Americans are mediators. Greece considered them biased towards the Macedonian side, and in a wider context, Greece wanted them to be out of the Region, so that it can be left to the EU and, of course, to the crucial position that Greece would have
had in such a case.

On the main stage, in the context of exerting pressure on the “nameless partner” Macedonia, Greece, in the meantime (1991–1995), tried to do everything except make a direct military intervention. Greece imposed a full economic blockade against Macedonia in 1992 and 1994, intending to make Macedonia surrender. The forecast was that the line of Corridor 10 (Via
Militaria): Thessaloniki — Skopje — Belgrade — Central Europe, is the vital artery for Macedonia and its blockade would have fatal consequences for Macedonia. The goal in such international circumstances was to see whether the state of Macedonia would be able to survive, and only then to negotiate anything.

Still serious economic aid was lacking; nevertheless, Macedonia in that period, regardless of blockades, and having not participated in the wars of the former Yugoslavia, had the best living standard in the Region (excluding
Greece) with an average salary of DM 250 (when Bulgaria had only
14 US dollars, 20 dollars in Serbia, 40 dollars in Croatia, etc.).
Meanwhile, in 1994, Greece was sued by the EU at the Court in Luxembourg for breaking the rules of the EU by imposing a blockade against a third country. After these blockades and survival in extreme conditions,
especially for the maintenance of interethnic coherence and inclusiveness, Macedonia somehow acquired the position to be a partner at international level.

Notwithstanding the fact that both are democracies, in the case of Greece, it is about an almost schizophrenic obsession with building ethnically homogenous Greek society with a single culture, involving hard suppression of diversity and minorities, to the limit of unlaw. It is about, in European terms, atypical harshness toward cultural diversity and minority rights and
insistence on ethnic homogeneity, which is seen as an absolute condition for the stability and functionality of the Greek state.
On the other hand, Macedonia is the opposite in every detail of such picture. It is a multicultural society with high inclusion of different cultures in the political system and with all the problems that this brings. This involves a rather slow internal negotiating political system of making decisions that sometimes blocks itself and requires international support and mediation. Macedonia is a society open to the extreme level to the participation of
international experts from the Council of Europe, the EU, and the USA in some domestic decision-making processes. Macedonia has by far the highest standards for minority rights at European level, standards that go beyond the minority context and grow into something more, creating a rare multicultural society and democratic political system. In that regard, Macedonia is a unique
case in the hard Balkan environment.
When Greece sees Macedonia, it sees its very “nightmare”!
It sees everything it does not want to be and everything it

Greece perceives Macedonia as the “contagion” of uncontrollable ethnic demands, which could spill over and spread to Greece, easily and predictably. If Macedonia succeeds and builds a functioning democratic political system with such pluralistic society, it would then represent a great challenge for ethnically closed societies such as Greece.
For Greece, the best solution would be to show that such a system, as the Macedonian one, is dysfunctional, weak, and vulnerably prone to blackmail and constantly on the verge of collapse and blockage. To have such a weak Macedonia on the Greek northern border is probably a desirable, hidden, if not the best solution for such Greece.

At this early stage of the dispute, there was perhaps the only serious attempt to resolve the dispute, a compromise suggested by the British diplomat Robert O’Neil, sponsored by Britain and the United States. He proposed for international use the following formula: Republic of Macedonia (Skopje). This was accepted by the Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov and the Macedonian Parliament in early 1992. But after refusal by Greece, the only
serious attempt failed.
The second characteristic of this stage is the success of Greece to “colonize” the climate within the European Union on the issue of recognition of Macedonia. It culminated with the EU summit in Lisbon in 1992 (26–27 June), and the so-called Lisbon Declaration. In it, the EU says, “it is prepared to recognize Macedonia, but under the name that will not contain the word
Macedonia”.
The Macedonian Parliament rejected that proposal and the resolution, and relations were frozen.
This rude intrusion by Greece and abuse of solidarity within the EU very soon proved to be short-term success for Greece, especially because as a prerequisite for the Lisbon re-solution Greece made a wider legal usurpation or denying the Badinter Report on Macedonia (Part 6) of 1991. In it, the most
prominent commission of experts and politicians which EU has ever produced, headed by Robert Badinter, on the occasion of meeting the criteria for recognition of new states formed from the breakup of Yugoslavia, precisely states: “… the name Republic of Macedonia cannot be treated as a basis for any territorial claims and irredentism… and thus an obstacle to recognition of the new state.”

After Macedonian admission to the UN in 1993, Greece continued to make tensions toward Macedonia, and in 1994 introduced a second economic blockade. Other EU member states sued Greece before the Court in Luxembourg, for infringement of the Union Treaties. This situation was resolved by agreement between the two countries on good neighborly relations, a.k.a. the Interim Accord in 1995, concluded under the auspices of the UN Secretary General and the Americans.
In the Accord, Article 11 defines that Greece will not block Macedonian membership in international organizations if Macedonia applies under the designation provisionally referred to within the UN (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).

At this stage, Macedonia fought for the wider legalization of its constitutional name in the international community. This effort was successful because all major powers (US, Russia, China) recognized us under the constitutional name, and eventually (by 2007), we had 132 countries that did it. It is practically two-thirds of the composition of the UN General Assembly.
It did not matter just whether the dispute would be resolved by this and whether we would abandon the negotiations in the UN, but simply, it was important to become “visible” and consolidate our international position. This phase was also a major diplomatic defeat for Greece, regardless of how Greece explains it.
To the question whether there was a time and place during these phases that the dispute be resolved by compromise, my answer would be NO. In these phases, which had to pass, both states showed their muscles and were exhausted in the effort to consolidate and get the most out of their positions. Proposals to solve the compromise were met with a radical rejection, so even
the solutions that in the last stage are considered a reasonable compromise (such as Northern Macedonia as a replacement for FYROM), then were outright rejected, while their proposers were stigmatized.
This second phase was exhausted at the doors of the two organizations that were crucial for us, and in which Greece has the right to veto: NATO and the European Union. This in turn has opened the last, third stage, which I called
the phase of agony/unraveling.

This phase began classically: with a Greek scandal in NATO. Indeed, Greece has decided to block Macedonia, despite the obligations from the Interim Accord. Macedonia was prepared to apply under the UN-designation of FYROM to join NATO.

NATO members concluded that Macedonia has met all other conditions, but Greece even in such situation threatened to veto just because of the unresolved name dispute. It was a surprise to the Americans as well, and was probably intended for them.
A way out was the NATO unanimous decision that invitation for Macedonia is definite and guaranteed if the name dispute is resolved. Greece once again managed by usurpation of procedures to enforce its national interest and position as a general one. And so the name for Macedonia becomes an extra criterion for admission to NATO.
It is subject of the lawsuit filed by Macedonia before the International Court in The Hague, which was won by Macedonia in triumphant manner; this unequivocally strengthens our position of “being right” in the procedural fight of the dispute, whatever that means in international relations.

Security before democracy

Republic of Macedonia is a multicultural country that makes the transition most difficult case, both in terms of institution building and in terms of conflict management. In this context Macedonia tried to develop a political system that equally offers a good balance between protection of individual human rights and representation of group cultural rights of ethnic communities.

Macedonian independence stems from the disintegration of the previous Yugoslav federation; likewise, Macedonia avoided war by very procedurally correct, politically powerful, and wise management of its internal affairs.

In the logic of its position and political stabilization, Macedonia becomes what it is geographically: political crossroads of the southern line of Europe with the Middle East and Asia, or a cross-land country.
Such an important crossroads context creates the known syndrome and political model with a reduction of their political alternatives. Such countries are especially vulnerable to pressure from neighbors and other commercial and political forces, because all have an interest, at least, that the crossroads be open and fair to all. This in turn exposes “cross-land countries” to only
two options for development policies: either these countries in stable manner control their situation and thus the intersection is in favor of all or are targeted by a constant threat of division among their neighbors; i.e., all interested parties fight and try to divide such cross-land countries for and among themselves!

In this regard, our imperative in the next period is the development of the severed east — west transversal line! Who understands this better than we do? Maybe the Americans when they become interested in the region; hence this is the next possible overlapping of interests with them! What is their special
interest? The line of securing oil and gas from the Caucasus via Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania to international sea routes. Therefore, to our pleasure they showed renewed interest in and have stimulated the “AMBO” project consortium for the construction of the transversal communication.

Who is our objective adversary in the context of such stabilizing strategic commitment? Perhaps only Greece, because its strategic interest is to become a crossroad of the region, not Macedonia.

France also backed Russia over the partition, finally being joined by Great Britain in that context, despite American opposition, until the last moment, to such a reversal.
Otherwise, in the period of 1895–1897, Great Britain showed a clear position: Macedonia to the Macedonians.

Interestingly, despite small influence, the position of America, exerted mainly through Great Britain, remained to the very end the same: support for two new independent states in the Balkans — Albania and Macedonia.

Bad karma concerning the partition of Macedonia and disabling its independence or autonomy was mainly the outcome of Russia’s policy in the region and its resolute rejection of such option, and later its fierce policy to curb VMRO.

The Russian operative policy along these lines was especially devastating in leaving and promoting a free hand in the reprisals carried out by the Ottoman Turkish authorities against the local civilian population upon the Ilinden (St. Elias’ Day) Uprising (1903) and in the processes of constant campaigns to kill the Macedonian revolutionary and bourgeois intelligentsia (a kind of extermination of the then Macedonian elite), which was mediated by this Russian policy (during the 1905–1908 period, more than 5,000 Macedonian
revolutionaries and intelligentsia were killed.

Namely, one is able to especially note the Russian discontinuity concerning Macedonia, following the recognition of the constitutional name of Macedonia by Russia. If one believes the memoirs of Zhelyu Zhelev, how he persuaded Russian President Yeltsin to recognize us , despite the opposition shown later by the then Russian Foreign Minister and Russian Parliament (Duma). All this took place while Yeltsin was riding a train to Romania.
Likewise, the continuation of American support and, later, the strategic partnership with USA have been of crucial important for us; clear indications of such American support can be also traced in the American policy in early 20th century.

Perhaps one of the clearest conclusions made by transition analysts dealing with the theory of the transition to democracy in the communist countries — is that security issues are shown to be priority for control and stabilization in the transition process, particularly in its initial establishment stages.

The security paradox for Macedonia was that as a new state it could not defend itself from such aggressive neighbors by closing itself and relying on its military, police and intelligence potentials — but only by a radical opening towards the international community and the military potential of serious Western countries like the USA (NATO) — whose presence in Macedonian territory and in the region neutralizes the military potential and superiority of
the neighboring countries.

In the context of inter-ethnic relations that are significantly influenced by mutual prejudices and stereotypes, it is important to distinguish between the following (the difference in the political experience of Macedonia is based on this): between the very existence of ethnic and religious prejudices and stereotypes on one side, and willingness to base social confliction on them.
Namely, when they are the main driving force for the inter-ethnic conflicting correlations.
The Macedonians have approximately the same stereotypes and distrust of fellow Muslims, especially of the Albanians, as the Bulgarians have distrust of the Turks as a minority in Bulgaria, the Serbs for the Albanians of Kosovo or
the Greeks for the local Turks in Greece. That ethnic distance varies in all these cases with lack of confidence from 60 to 68%.
However, when respondents were asked the question (involving active prejudice) whether they would become politically activated based on this prejudice, mistrust and distance, members of different nations differently answered or gave even dramatically different answers: even 48% of the Serbs said YES, and so on. Macedonians showed a drastic decline in that possible engagement based on prejudice with only 12% of respondents saying YES

The Macedonian people, as a relatively small Slavic nation, developed properties of cohabitation and cultural survival and existence, which is specifically reflected in the position of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Although one of the oldest, it is still unrecognized by the family of Orthodox Churches - which creates a special instinct for survival by making alliances
with the Vatican (closer relations than those with the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, or with the neighboring churches). Its position forces it to make complex political maneuvers and learn of political compromise and cohabitation.

I think the suppressed basis for the specified fear is the still unsubdued, unraised to level of awareness and acceptance, security paradox. Namely, we still do not see clearly the very reason for our relative stability: in our fragility, resilience, dynamism, and tolerance. These are values that have been “diagnosed” but not yet internalized or accepted in our political culture. Still, when mentioning the word “security,” our first association implies the very state, army, police, borders, the Albanians, etc., as hegemonic cultural supremacy, that guards the tribal “fire.”

We are not ready, at least not to the very end, to accept the state of constant fragility and resilience and constantly redefining the consensus and balance (so important for multicultural societies) as our stability. We must constantly defuse the different levels of social confliction through dynamic inclusion
or the involvement of social actors in the hubs that “cook” social consensus.

A condition for success in this delicate project, which is new even for established democracies, is the effective functioning of a small but strong central state administration. It must ensure the neutrality of rules and procedures for the contacts among the great variety of cultural actors. It should provide “the market” and rules of peaceful interaction. Its role must be as neutral as possible, but extremely effective.

What is really “anti-Macedonian conspiracy”?

As the Macedonians belong to the proposed group of nations “prone to conspiracy” who previously identify themselves as victims of history, the process of opening toward the EU, NATO and similarly is always considered by the Macedonians to have a conspiratorial background narration, a
substratum that follows the project as a shadow.

What does it mean for a million and a half Macedonians?
What is challenging? Either we will be able to organize ourselves in a way that our cultural production and dynamism become better than everyone else’s, and that we will be able to maintain an elite production, self-support, and self-protection (to be “Jews” in this region) — or we would jeopardize our own existence as such. Others will “flood and wash” us; we will then become mere “spice” in their “casseroles.” For this, no particular conspiracy theory and special conspiratorial activity are needed; the numbers themselves and the dynamic forces of the market will do the finishing job.

The right wing (whatever that means today in Macedonia) instinctively feels this situation with the opening of the country as a danger to itself and its own rule in a closed-traditional society, while its strategy is resistance or delay of NATO and the EU integration of the country. If it cannot be done openly, then only by retaining the rhetoric of integration-oriented policy, efforts are made for such policy to collapse de facto and be postponed indefinitely. In this context, the right wing abundantly exploits the already tested ideology of fear of extinction of the nation and conspiracy theories against us, the Macedonians, as if everyone in the world were our own enemy. This policy should not be underestimated, because in the short run is rather successful.

The left, in contrast, has no strategy or political utopia to which it aspires in the context of the post-integration process of Macedonia.

In the context of a free and possible, future integrated, Macedonia, culture and cultural production, which for us mean national survival, visibility and
creation, seem as if they were a taboo subject for the left. It seems as if there is no decision by the left about what to do in a situation of “cultural competition among nations” when our substrate of million and a half Macedonians is faced with cultural productions by so many neighboring nations around us and with globalization as well.

What are those priority pillars that enable our cultural reproduction and national visibility? Our sciences (architecture, construction, medicine, humanities, and their logistics) must be the best in the region, or we will be doomed to disappear together with them, as the Khazars had done. We must be the best to even be visible in the relations involving four and more against one, as they are at the national-level competitions in the region.

Political pluralization in terms of attitude towards national identity

For us, it is a matter of survival to be the best, not a prestige or whim. Only as the best, we are visible and exist; otherwise, we are doomed to perish.

In the early 1990s, the political scene was formed under the superego of democratic pluralism, multiparty system and under the shadow and fear (justified or not, whatever) of a pluralization in the Albanian political bloc. On one hand, there was the fear whether we would succeed “alone,” and on the other hand, there was the dilemma of how to organize multiculturalism in democracy, so that such a process would not affect the stability of the country. It was about creating a security paradigm. That was the dilemma of the decade and of the recent history of the Macedonians.

SDSM perceived (which later proved incorrect) that the nation had a chance to be stabilized as modern, almost solely through economic consolidation and integration of the country into NATO and the EU. Their cultural policy on national identity was suppressed by these priorities and the entirety of culture as a field of political struggle was not seen as crucial. Culture as a politics or political arena was not understood by the left and was so abandoned to the new rightist parties, especially VMRO-DPMNE. It proved to be a grave mistake for the left and fundamentally flawed policy, which cost it a series of defeats, leading to a confrontation with a settled authoritarian system that is almost impossible to beat in elections, because free and fair elections can no longer be held in the country.

In this segment SDSM repeated the mistake in the last thirty years, so characteristic for the social democratic parties of Europe, which is indicated by Zygmunt Bauman saying they lose political battles exactly in the field of culture, unable to understand and to be reformed in a way that the culture will be accepted as a primary field of political struggle in times of globalization and wild neoliberalism on the rampage.

On the other hand, SDSM, as transition left party, had to bear a special burden. Namely, according to the textbook on the superego of transition, it voluntarily bore the brunt of the general, collective guilt for the previous one-party system. When it increasingly tried to be democratic, open, liberal, it then received more blame for totalitarianism and communism.

DPMNE began to develop itself as a party with a super hierarchy (a.k.a. “Sultan party,” a party with a very authoritarian party leader) with no tolerance to any intraparty factions and different opinions and with elements of the mobilization of para-military organization. They started building
a racketeering state (during periods when they were in power) that
interferes in everything and does not tolerate any other center of social and political power. It is seen through their attacks on and interference in public health care system, education and the university, through the suppression of independent media, the business sector, etc… Also, and perhaps most tragically, we can observe these trends with the creation of ethnic-nationalistic ideology of mobilization of fear and historical frustration among
the Macedonians in all directions rhizomatically.

In the later development of party ideological relations, another transitional bizarreness took place. VMRO-DPMNE started completing itself de facto as a Bolshevik, para-Communist party of the nationalistic right wing (Bolsheviks with ethnic nationalistic sign), and, serially, began to show classic (leftist)

Thus SDSM got a strange role to represent and defend the liberal values of the legal order together with the individual rights and the free market, something that, basically, would initially fit the liberal centrist and center-right parties. Social Democratic parties primarily in their agendas stick to social justice, the role of the state in the distribution of wealth or “the state that cares” for
solidarity as a fundamental value, this most often being against neoliberal capital, especially against ethnic nationalism!
SDSM has moved to the right of the political center (unaware of it), while VMRO-DPMNE, has taken radical left and radical right positions as the party that has the ambition to become a movement, the party that wants to collect and control everything.

Returning to the baseline of interest in the topic — the attitude towards the Macedonian identity and its conceptualization in the newly independent Macedonia, the main story takes place almost exclusively on the side of the ethnic danse macabre by “the right” versus the inert and vague position of SDSM, which probably considers that everything has already been decided, clearly and unequivocally.

Basically, this party never showed honestly and clearly any concern about “Macedonism” in the classical sense of the meaning, as a distinct Slavic identity and people (in the ethnic sense of the word).
It is important to connect this experience with the theoretical concept that we follow in the text and ask the question: how to deliver what (according to Lacan and Zizek) is called the “ideology of the vanishing subject” (decentered subject)? This theory paradigm suggests that it is possible, even effective in a
historical context, to form a strong ideology based on the myth of self-denial, the ideology of the “Grand absence” — the subject that should be historically established has vanished; it has denied itself!
The subject of the Macedonian identity is absent in the places where VMRO-DPMNE looks for it.

Again, it is an attempt for establishing the subject in its absence and in/out of the hole. Establishing in the presence of large “absence” of the culture and subject certainly represents the attempt by means of the ancient hero Alexander of Macedonia and everything he represents, especially in culture, to establish a modern Macedonian identity as such. Alexander III of Macedonia basically took over the Hellenic culture as his own and tried to
“globalize” the world by spreading it. That fact is insurmountable for the DPMNE attempt to perform an identity alchemy. VMRO-DPMNE has additionally created a new problem for itself: first it is not able to skip the separate Slavic being of the modern Macedonians, and now additionally it collides with the Hellenism of Alexander the Great.

Normally, at the end of the day, the question arises: Is it possible for this identity alchemy, super-construction of identity to succeed at all, even if the whole nation believes in it, even such an operation is sponsored by an authoritarian populist government, which controls everything it needs for such an operation: money, media, culture, and education?
Of course, it cannot, and the answer would be NO! But it does not exclude a tragedy for such nation! A great damage, a large scar that such an attempt would certainly leave (in this case) on “the face with so many scars” — the Macedonian very identity!

The populist political elite exposes the nation to the bleakness of its fragile
stability by ruining the international reputation of the country, which is essentially important in solving international problems and international positioning.

After 20 years of independence of Macedonia, this political elite even has initiated the issue of what Macedonians are — thus shocking all our friends in the world, and the domestic public as well. How others can perceive a nation that after 20 years of own independent state and centuries-long struggle for statehood now asks itself, “Who am I” and “How do others perceive me”? Such a clownish turnabout has made us hit the very ground.

In order to feed on fear and inferiority of the Macedonian, this elite creates, develops and exploits picture of him as a true and authentic if he is hated and surrounded by enemies (the archetype for the Macedonian Red Riding Hood and the four wolves). It puts itself and its people as an object of hatred and conspiracy by its fellow citizens, the Albanians, from whom the Macedonians need to constantly defend themselves and so hate them by “keeping them under control”.

This party advertises itself as the only party defending this “Macedonian with special needs” from all the above-mentioned monsters.

Given the climax of the affair driving the authoritarian populism in Macedonia into a deep political crisis, in the spring of 2015 we have again been mired in the binomial: all people know that they cannot continue like this and such, but cannot imagine how the leader will fall and how all the obscenity of the particular “pleasures-in-the-nation” among the Macedonians above all, will disappear or get transformed, along with the very leader.

PART TWO — MACEDONIAN NATIONALISM AND MACEDONIAN IDENTITY

Macedonian nation in concepts of nations

The desire of the nation to constitute itself reversibly constructs the memory, re-reads history, forms the “archives” (J. Derrida) and the archeology of knowledge (M. Foucault) for itself, as a separate nation. Such a process, as we learned from Lacan and Zizek, is not linear; rather, it is based on the facts and on neutral, objective chronology;and it goes through the notion of the fantasies that organize the jouissance-in-the-nation and political and ideological constructs of what will be remembered, and what should be forgotten.

The second syndrome is stress of conspiracy and self-conspiracy. This is most pronouncedly seen in the case of Macedonia. The state is under constant examination of its self-confidence and has doubts about a possible conspiracy against it by neighbors, minorities and the international community.

Third pathology of self-perception is the syndrome of the victim, feeling constant cheating by the others. Counter-position of this is the use of violence to stop it, and it is the syndrome of the awakened victim. Such is the case with the Albanians in the region and it is also displayed by the Macedonians.

In the recent reviews, addition to this definition is made by Benedict Anderson, saying that the nation is “imagined” community, meaning that people who feel solidarity on national basis do not personally know each other (like a real community) but imagine that they have a common origin (and without personal contact).

There is nothing “natural” in creating a nation is especially stressed by Will Kymlicka, when he says that all political operations in that direction are a political decision of an individual ruling elite; they take place in the following frameworks: adoption of an official language; national system of compulsory education; centralization of political power and the abolition of the earlier.

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First with Lacan’s attitude toward nationalist particularism, when he says it is a response to hysterical division of contemporary capitalism. The desire for national unity grows with the distance of its satisfaction in globalization. Overcoming of this hysterical division takes place through the discourse of
“the master.” The master is the ideology of nationalism which is to establish the disturbed balance and set new points of satisfaction and stability for individual and group identity of the nation.
Slavoj Zizek complements this thesis with the definition which says that nationalism is particularly developed discourse of collective satisfaction of the nation, a paranoid super-identification, which tries to maintain the unity of the group identity as opposed to global capitalism.

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Finally, Gilles Deleuze defines “super-ego” of nationalism as a false unity. Namely not as an exchange between individuals but as an exchange between empty spaces, in light of the “death of the subject.” Nationalist communication is communication between emotional states, structures, empty spaces where the subject was. It remained defined only as empty space and is not an actor in that communication exchange.

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Peter Sloterdijk offers my preferred definition of psychoanalytic condition of nationalism, defining it as a permanent plebiscite, referendum, which is a hysterical construct that must constantly reproduce itself. For him, nationalism is hysterical, panic-based information system, which constantly irritates itself, leads itself in a state of stress, terrorizes itself and has panic attacks to convince itself that it really exists to confirm its existence

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The ideology of nationalism “attacks” such balance in modern nations between individualization and feeling of “belonging” to a specific cultural group. Nationalism unbalances this delicate relationship through pathological insisting on re-melting into the group, on achieving a general whole; moreover, it would mean, according to this view, attaining a genuine and complete freedom for the individual.
This denial of the reality of separation, of individualization of the
citizen, should lead to the disappearance of anxiety and to instilling
the confidence/sense of belonging, while de facto in extreme form it
takes nationalism toward denying the existence of a private sphere
separated from the state; at the same time, the public sphere becomes
colonized by the state and well-known and already seen totalitarian
experiences start gaining ground.

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George Orwell is right when he says that love of one’s own nation means nothing if it does not mean that I love some people more than others. And finally I do not love some at all.

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Cultural plurality should be valued not only because it offers a diversity of lifestyles, but because it is a way to improve our special lifestyle, inside our distinct culture.

Macedonia through categories and Macedonian nationalism

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Macedonia had no concept at all, except for the period of establishment of the 1991 Constitution and a series of politically concluding moves around that time. This could be more evaluated as liberal incident imposed from above, rather than a self-realized process of “nation-for-itself.

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Clifford Geertz: “The state’s policy reflects the nature of its culture.”

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The ability of a state and nation to define itself depends on the ability to see itself “from the outside”, from the external perspective. It is similar in individuals and is called “mastery of an outside perspective”.

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Cultural identity is not meltable; it is self-reproductive, stubborn and powerful. It becomes even more pronounced and powerful right through the
matrices of globalization and is so called “new particularism” or explosion of self-awareness in cultural diversity.
Culture, whose heritage is our responsibility to keep and live it, does not create our very civilization. Our civilization and civilizedness is something other than bare possession of historical culture or cultures. Civilization and culture include organization of priorities on different grounds of people’s daily lives and the very nation.

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This is important to all nationalisms in the region, the Balkans; still it is crucial for the formation of Macedonian nationalism. Two things are fundamental for its appearance: sharing history, which is common with neighboring nations or other ethnic communities in Macedonia; and the opposite phantasm, the resistance to such a process turned into “drive”
for constantly inventing or a desire for an ethnically pure history

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In the longer term, this sense was politically projected in support of a populist, nationalist political “elite” (VMRO-DPMNE, 2006–2014…) such as Macedonia has never seen until then. This elite collected the discontent shown by the Macedonians projecting it into “an object of hatred” towards the international community that “harasses us and pushes us”, towards the Albanians who “constantly want something and are never satisfied”; and towards the Greeks (the name issue), who want us to disappear and not
exist as Macedonians. Such irrational nationalistic projection of being hurt is self-inflictive for the Macedonians and is also determined by other moments of Macedonian transition, still it is a political fact that should be considered. That is why I think it is partly a consequence based on the fact that there is no project of reconciliation with the Albanians after the 2001 conflict.

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These are the Rules (Constitution) drafted by the Macedonian Revolutionary Committee (1878–1879) during the Kresna Uprising and the Constitution of the future polity of Macedonia that was prepared by the Macedonian League in 1880.
The first document, more modestly, but from the beginning clearly, defines Macedonia as: “a land of glorious Slavic educators and teachers Cyril and Methodius” whose liberation process can involve all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion and ethnicity, if they love freedom.

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The authors of the documents had no doubt (and it never existed) that Macedonia is possible only as a multi-ethnic state and never as a nation-state only of the Macedonians. On such a basis the Constitution drafted by the Macedonian League of 1880 defined Macedonia as a state of the Macedonians, Turks, Albanians, Jews, Greeks, Vlachs and others who live in Macedonia…
It established principles of non-discrimination, equal rights, and equality of languages. The entire structure of the state authority (state council, parliament, government, administration, judiciary, etc.) was to rely on a multinational basis and principle of proportionality

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The thesis that we defend by means of the previous assumptions is that without a political decision to open some key collaborations that have occurred throughout the Macedonian and Albanian national revival of the 19th and 20th centuries, our multicultural present cannot be established comfortably, or, it will not be able to accommodate naturally

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We will start with the point that Macedonian — Albanian cooperation is the most significant political cooperation the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO, in all variants of the name) had with any of the neighboring peoples and their revolutionary organizations in the 19th and early 20th century.

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Let us begin by listing the important groundbreaking fact of creating the Albanian — Macedonian League in 1887 and the two declarations that the League made in 1889 and 1902.58 The League defined a position to support the establishment of united Macedonian state and a united Albanian state.

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Significant and continuous field of cooperation between Macedonian and Albanian revolutionary organizations was joint preparation for an uprising against Ottoman rule, and even against other Balkan countries that had ignored the Macedonian and Albanian demands for independence. This is an important moment for showing the width of the foundations on which
cooperation was based not only against the Turks but also against other Balkan peoples and states which had hegemonic aspirations toward that territory.

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It is interesting to note in this context that the then maps of United Albania did not include the Macedonian lands (only Kosovo and Chameria). Today these maps indeed look different. It was the result of cooperation which was then founded and later abandoned in 1945.

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It laid down intensive collaboration and defining common interests in the creation of own independent states. Such cooperation with different intensities run until World War II and establishment of the Republic of Macedonia as part of then socialist and federal Yugoslavia in 1945. The Macedonians took another track, and so forgot the centuries of cooperation, while taking the Serbian “glasses” to view the Albanians

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The first issue concerns the need for formalization of this new view of
cooperation and to move it into the mainstream of official history and education literature. The second problem is that all this requires extremely capable and qualified (statesmanship) political elite, qualified historians, not just party junk commonly found in the offer to the public.

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In this context it is to be noted that every reading of history is a political decision that will define what is important in the forensic history of facts, events and personalities. Every fact appears with unique interpretation; it is never just as cruel fact, as bare obviousness (Michel Foucault). Each collective memory of each nation contains a mix of alternative counter memories. It cannot be understood without the conflict, the struggle of memories and it
becomes a field of struggle for control (again M. Foucault).
By deciding what historical memory contains, we decide how and where we develop our nation and which fields of struggle it will have. The control of the dynamism of a nation goes through controlling memory, or fields of fight of the memories of that nation.

Identity

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Charles Taylor defines identity as self-interpreting action of the individual.

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For this topic that is opened in relation to the Macedonian identity, there is a very important remark by Taylor that the absence of recognition or even more erroneous recognition of identity inflicts “wounds”, creates harm, generates a form of subordination and keeps man in reduced and limited form of existence. Sometimes the wrong forms of recognition also represent techniques of submission, if subordinated groups accept underrated pictures of themselves and their culture.

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Herman Van Gunsteren says, that so-called deep groups, as he calls them, or societal identities (as Will Kymlicka calls them) dominate the social perception of its members, their social relationships and, ultimately, their self-perception. Membership in these identity groups becomes “primary reality” that determines everything else and is a challenge for the civil consensus achieved. This reality is further seen as “obvious”, “natural” and thus has indisputable advantage over other socially constructed pacts and consensus.

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If you create this “dance of negative emotions” and stereotyping, it could be and has been a good basis for a number of ethnic conflicts and their escalation to genocide.

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Perhaps paradoxically with this tendency, identity, as mentioned, is a relational concept.

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Identity is always constituted in relation to the other, as opposed to the other, “in the view of the other.” (St. Augustine observes: “I exist only while the other dreams me.”) In no other manner it can be constructed and constituted as a term nor any such practice.

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Next important feature of identity is the conclusion of a group of authors — that identity is not a “given, primordial or natural”, as often seems to us, but constantly subjected to CONSTRUCTION, namely a given/assigned term. Ethnicity and identity based on it, is an entity which is constantly in construction and reconstruction. Similar to the old, huge temples and
cathedrals where reconstructions of some parts are constantly in progress and one never sees them fully reconstructed.

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Second, the Macedonian ethnic identity is challenged also by the open denial of its recognition as separate one (according to the definition of C. Taylor) or by the very attempts for wrong recognition (which is just another form of attempted domination over the Macedonians).
Both debates open stressful perspective. The first is a classic
postmodern debate about complex, overlapping identities in one
state, and the second is the diplomatic struggle for recognition of
identity through the name, language and specificity of the nation.

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Ethnic identity is stable and defined. It was obtained in the dramatic and
historically unambiguous way, through cultural struggle and survival without their own state, in terms of enslaving and negation politics of denationalization by others. When you survive and win in such an unequal fight, no one can deny so acquired identity of the people/nation.

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The Macedonian identity is formed around two axes of absence or two traumas, if you want: emphasized relational connection with close identities and late différance from them — which increases to a collective neurosis the issue of recognition of the specificity (C. Taylor); and secondly, libidinal organizing of the satisfaction-in-the-nation takes the form and dynamics of a
nation-victim!

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Because, as mentioned, the identity of every nation is the result of the operation of differentiation from the “other” and of internalization of the difference in its own dynamics of self-identification — this is dramatically perceived in the way we experience our “national-pleasure-in-nation.

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The Macedonians must clearly understand that if they love “their” state, they then will have to define it as a civil and free - as a state and community that creates a “Macedonian nation” composed of all its citizens. It is an inevitable path. Everything else is gambling with its stability.

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Also there is need for an atmosphere, circumstances that will become part of liberally designed and expected environment in which identities feel unthreatened, relaxed and are prepared for cooperation and communication.

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A condition for the process to obtain a stable acceleration is efficient state administration, which needs to be kept neutral to the maximum possible level from direct cultural patronage. How this process is dependent on responsible political elites who lead it and who must believe.

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“Antiquization.”
The current government develops it for the sake of the political mobilization and control of the Macedonian electorate. A body that is put in the constant stress of the economic and security crisis, which is now further converted into quasi-identity crisis as well. It is a crisis that this populist authoritarian elite in
Macedonia creates and manages, while offering itself for abstract solution of such crisis.

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The project is intended to abolish the identity of the Macedonians as Slavic and replace it with some ancient one (antique/antiquization). To pursue this, the said project exploits by creating a frivolous political, national myth. This populist elite believes that this new and “rooted” identity in antiquity in the ancient Macedonians of Alexander III of Macedonia — is more dignified, more stable, prouder, stronger and more resistant to attacks and denial. Also in this context it is suggested that “the return of dignity to the Macedonians” is under the direction of precisely this new leadership, by which an obvious metaphorical bridge, linking the associations and similarities of today’s and the then glorious leadership of Macedonians, is constructed.

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Second, modern national identities that we can reasonably discuss, and which occurred in the 19th century, were established through the kaleidoscope of ethnic groups, traditional cultures and “cultures in fragments.” It goes through the great moves of the codification of literary language and code set to read its history. These moves are made by the elite, civic intelligence of a
nation having potentials. It is people/population, who can survive
on their traditional cultural practices, but not people in modern sense. It is “a floating mass’ (Cvijic) which can be the raw material for creating and joining another nation and its elite culture. It is therefore meaningless “to search for roots” before the creation of an elite, civic culture of a nation that creates its identity. Finding ancient or prehistoric roots of a nation, except scientific nonsense, does not offer any guarantee that the population will become -
people, nation and create a state. It is like when on a tree root you graft other fruit. You will have the new fruit in the crown and in the fruits of the new tree. The roots are not guarantees of becoming a nation. They are only potentials, traditional culture, which may differently, very differently develop or not develop in a nation.

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For us, the Macedonians, this act of identity construction is made in the Slavic cultural code. Today we are Macedonians that have Slavic language and Slavic culture, not Slavo-Macedonians as a new construct…
Language codifications follows a wider trail that weaves from the time of Cyril and Methodius, through Misirkov to Blaze Koneski (“Language is our homeland”).

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The state-forming struggle, however, follows the path of a series of statehood uprisings culminating in the anti-fascist struggle, which creates the state. In this diachronic perspective one can see the efforts and desires of a part of VMRO as a movement.

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All this takes place upon the historical process of dominant overlapping of Slavic culture, which absorbs in itself the pieces, fragments of traditional cultures and parts of the mega cultures (for instance, the Byzantine) of the indigenous population in the historical course of fifteen centuries backwards.

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Such identity roots are extremely tight because they are based/deep-rooted, sharp-forged through many battles; they endured struggles through which they developed internal pluralism, but remained Slavic. Longing to discover deeper, new roots even older and “more eternal” is not further strengthened and entrenched rooting but quite the opposite — uprooting. Instead of strengthening the identity, one enters the whirlpool of its denial.

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Such antiquization project, because of its radical arbitrariness, even for creating fantasies — has to resort to violence, paternalism and lies. To create a radically “false memory” of our roots in the ancient past. Moreover, the hardness to persevere in the battle lost in advance increases skyhigh the very price we pay for the stupidity.
We collide daily with the reasonable definition of what we are and who we are in the eyes of others and of our place in international relations. This policy even as short lunatic flash has inflicted great damage to the reputation and has divided Macedonia once again.

Enjoying the nation

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Libidinal support of national identity and its nationalism allows us to follow it not so much through positive legal norms and order in a country where it is manifested, but through its underside, dark side, through “the collective dirty little secrets” of a given ethnic group (be it a majority or minority). The emphasis would be on ethnic rituals only available to us, on the infringement of law (what Hegel calls “the right of the night”, the dark side). Positive law of a country applies to all: domestic residents, foreigners, immigrants, but forms of its obscene infringement are available and are tolerated only to the members of the dominant cultural majority that controls the system and power.

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In addition, the strength of the national connecting among individuals becomes ideologically leveled with the position of a victim of conspiracy. Nation and nationalism are always buffer for the shocks that social and economic imbalances create. But not directly, but through the mythology of conspiracy. Ethnic unity and fantasy of stable, homogeneous social body are always “disrupted” by some enemies that are actually synonymous with the situation of imbalance, contradiction, tearing and devastating tensions, which prevent the former! National myths always serve to organize a community which they address in respect of any or some external/internal threats. In that sense, nationalism is always in need of “others”, hence it is essentially relational.

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We mentioned earlier that one of the features of nationalist and patrioteer mobilization is creating notion of external threat to the very nation. Hegel calls the operation “the illusion of deliberating outside”, when unity or identity of the nation is the result of deliberations that it is threatened from the outside, from someone or something that threatens to swallow it. Hegel goes a step further when he says that sometimes these threats create
identity.
Such illusion, raised to level of fantasy — serves for legitimization of politics as action in realizing the dream/fantasy about protection from attacks and attaining unity.

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When a nation is dominated or a greater part of it, by an ideology that reaches for the impossible satisfaction. Towards the desire for de-subjectivization in merging with the “fate”, which is interpreted as extinction by becoming one with the whole and achieving harmony. Such so-called passage à l’acte (Lacan) by which it is desired to reach the full, ultimate satisfaction is fatal
for the nation as such.
It is expressed in the form of radical political actions of self- harm, civil wars and genocides, wars of exhaustion, disputes that lead to divisions and so on; especially in smaller nations it is a dangerous road.

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And then the very conditions for penetration of the right-wing myth of “the reborn and proud Macedonian” are created. In this the manner in which the pleasure-in-the-nation is recoiled, of a victim nation?
Register of reactions that nations with the victim syndrome have (with all the risks of this scandalous generalization) can be divided into three levels.
First, such nations consider that all others owe them and that now is the time for all those others to give them something, while refusing to give anything to them, because for too long these nations have been the victims and object of third-party conflicts.
This engenders a political culture in which there is inability to make, adjust and recognize one’s own interest in compromise.

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Second, these victimized nations tend to be very rigid to minority groups in their immediate environment. We are talking about a compromise in the design of the democratic system and group rights for minorities that victimized nations consider weakness, which are not allowed by the history and suffering that they have gone through as nations. They do not want to recognize or learn from their own history and suffering — they do not learn
about solidarity, respect and compromise, but manifest cruelty (if allowed, of course).

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Enthusiasm towards order and law (law with zero tolerance for violations) — that creates the illusion that it controls everything; that establishes an order that is not, that is actually missing — allows avoidance of responsibility for political decisions that determine the system and future. It is an open call to the leader to adopt the decisions that are needed, while we offer our submissiveness and obedience in exchange for the illusion of security.

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The Macedonian discourse about being in shelter or “the Macedonians in the hole” can be tricky as typical Lacanian structure: when a person loses something that never existed — the loss then takes the form of phantasm. That is his lost object, which is the basis of “the impossible desire”, that of the abolishment of any subjectivity and melting into the holistic primordial being
together of the nation as the ultimate pleasure

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After that loss, the community constantly is in sorrow for such loss, by showing lamentation for the lost primordial being together, while such sentiment is exploited in populist manner to spin a political crochet. It is the humus of the identity of the community: how it sees itself, what it wants, whom it supports, and how it struggles. Namely its identity is more like relationship with its phantasms than attitude towards rational understanding
and mastering the world around it. It feeds on and it is built on this. It also organizes the Macedonian nationalism of the political right, its political utopia as “our dirty little secret.”

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Their dirty secret is that we, the Macedonians, love ourselves only dismembered, divided, repressed! Our false newly acquired ancient pride and shouting a big NO to the Greeks, Albanians and the international community is a smokescreen hiding the satisfaction of the pervert, and his secret is that he
wants to be besmeared, divided, and as such to be a tool in the hand of a bestiality of others.
The attitude of VMRO — that Macedonia may disappear but VMRO always will exist — refers to “having” such ideological consciousness in the head.
Their problem is that we still managed to establish an independent state. Now the light is turned on in the the pervert’s room! How to remain a pervert, while feigning sovereignty?

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Today, the leitmotif of the Macedonian in his free state is a trace of a different direction under the influence of right-wing national utopia. Macedonian newly-composed songs express the Macedonian dead drive; likewise iconoclastic songs have texts of this kind: “Slice it, divide it, it will be our dearest; say the name of that partitioned mother(land) of Macedonia.”
The song says that “Macedonia that is our dearest” is partitioned and divided. Therefore, this current, the Republic of Macedonia, is not our dearest, but the imaginary partitioned and probably never again united Macedonia is precisely the “dear mother”, which we are called to mention, as during a memorial
a mention is made of the dead. The necrophiliac nationalism of the right wing sets its target on the imaginary, never achieved in the past and never achievable in the future, identification of “a mother/ethnic Macedonia”, which is probably closest to the territory of the Rumelia region of Ottoman Turkey in the Balkans in the late 18th century.
This in clear manner describes the already mentioned procedure of identity formation, where what is missing, the void, the implicit, is also part of the identity.

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This right-wing nationalism ends in a fascinating paradox: MACEDONIAN NON-RECOGNITION OF MACEDONIA

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The historical matrix and mythological narrative of this operation is particularly interesting. The technique is almost identical as used by the authoritarian populist regimes in the region: seeking the “zero point” of national harmony in the distant past. A policy of selective memory often falsified is used to build a network of political mythology, which becomes a right-wing utopia and, finally, political action

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Such populist right-wing myth represents a specific focus, flash back in history, which combines two conflicting myths: a heroic myth and another myth of the victim.

Dictatorship and nation, or on Macedonian biopolitics

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Contrary to the potentials for emancipation, the situation in which Macedonia embarked upon 20 years of transition is devolution. It is a sharp turn back toward dictatorship, of the kind of authoritarian populism. This means a dictatorship which uses the election facade for hiding and an operation of the system that is basically based on autocracy of party oligarchy, with the abolition of rule law.

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This situation in Macedonia has been outrageously tolerated by our international friends who are obsessed with “security paradigm” (security-before-democracy, rather than security-through-democracy). For them it is crucial that in Macedonia there is multi-ethnic coalition government which, regardless how it is made up and what motives it uses to function, delivers
superficial peace while the rest is a matter of secondary interest.

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The Macedonian variant of authoritarian populism has been constituted by creating and strengthening a party that has pretensions to represent itself as an essential expression of the Macedonian people, who are under siege, under threat from outside and from within. The VMRO-DPMNE party has turned into a “defensive formation” of the endangered people and asks the people at elections to give the party a legitimacy to define and administer the behavior
in the country beyond and above the constitutional limitations of government in a democracy under the 1991 Constitution.

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In fact, he abolishes the political element, his authentic plurality of antagonistic interests, by replacing it with a super fight, a meta-contradiction, super- war by the Macedonian against the eternal and hideous enemies inside and outside. It certainly ends in farce with the Macedonian being in conflict with himself.
So actually there is militarization of politics, in which every individual right may be sacrificed at any moment on the altar of the motherland, for the sake of imaginary organic unity and prosperity of the nation.Total master and total policy are possible only in this space of meta-politics with a single meta-fight. It is known from the literature as “political aesthetics” that is done by
fascism: the establishment of new organic order, which abolishes modern individuality.

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Everything is possible and everything is prohibited.
Nothing is predictable, except that everything will be finally decided by the sovereign, i.e., the Party.

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One should pay attention to a special feature in the chaos that is administered by the dictatorship, and it is the explosion of irrational violence and hatred. They become present in a form that Žižek calls “id-evil”: dysfunctional cruelty, irrational violence for banal disputes, hatred of the “other” that has no reason, nor is caused by anything. It is about evil and violence, which consist of the most basic unsublimated phantasms about pleasure in the whole of the nation, which are impaired pursuant to the rhetoric of the dictatorship; a dictatorship that by stimulating such evil and violence to go into the streets and our homes, then administers them, thus establishing and maintaining hegemony in politics (Ernesto Laclau).
That is the definition of condition that practically and theoretically is called dictatorship based on bio-political division in the life of the citizens and its reduction to a mere bare life, deprived from all rights that belong to it and from the dignity of the citizens. It is the Macedonian state converted into a concentration camp and the Macedonian citizen as homo sacer in it.

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Authoritarian populism in Macedonia is accelerated film and danger of complete deformation directed against young democratic institutions in the beginning of their establishment.

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Our illiberal social tradition burdened by communism and one-party culture of statism, often connected with nationalism, and bad history toward minorities and ethnoreligious diversity (the Macedonians in former Yugoslavia often played the role of “being bigger Catholics, than the Pope himself” and were especially rigid toward the Albanians and liberal
tendencies in the Yugoslav Communist Party)

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Permanent economic crisis, corruption, and collective culture of letting everything go into the hands of the government, which should decide for us;
- Economic markets deformed by the penetration of the ruling party and the state, corruption and the absence of any foreseeable legal certainty and lack of entrepreneurial culture and initiative;
- Cynicism of the ruling elites to democratic values and especially to human rights.

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In order to achieve success, the authoritarian populist executes the following dangerous operation: he occupies the public space and fully contaminates it with partisan and abrasive speech, creating a permanent division of the citizens (and when it is not necessary) along party lines, which become “bloodthirsty”. Thus, the public space is full of “adrenaline” in constant conflict mode which the populist regime channels and controls. In this context, basic tool used by this populist regime is the classic operation
of producing enemies, threats, conspiracy, and division of the citizens: those who are traitors, foreign agents, spies, infidels, fifth columnists, commies, reds, and those who are patriots and love their current government and country at the same time.

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If we start from the working thesis that populism is a political dimension which constructs and gives meaning to the term “people”, of such kind that has never existed nor corresponded with a similar concept, this thesis then builds on the position of Michel Foucault that:”collective memory of the
people is subject to a struggle for control; control of the memory of the people and groups is social control.” There is a struggle of competing memories. By managing the memory and deciding what it contains, the dynamism of given people is determined. The facts are never truly obvious; they are mediated and interpreted and are basis of collectivist memory narratives.”

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Populists, including Macedonian ones, very often define politics as a ‘dirty game’, by trying to give it a redemption or at least to get it purified.

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Thus, according to F. Panizza, populism destroys the boundary between the private and the public, by exposing the public domain, the space itself, res-public, of the private desires, fantasies and fears.

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What is important in both processes and determines the strength of the Macedonian populist initiative is what Alain Badiou calls the syndrome of the master in organizing political action and collective motivation credos that push forward.
Badiou says that the masses are politically activated and organized through an appeal to the master (the leader) who should know what they want! Their populist leader, as Baron Munchausen with the ducks, should get them out of the mire. The populist master is the one who helps the individual and the masses become subject or actor. The crowd needs a mediation in the form and and face of authority to advance on the path of political action and defining what exactly they want from politics and what that are (the collective subjectivity). Badiou believes (and S. Zizek agrees) it is impossible to execute such political mobilization without the role of the authority neither on the emancipation track nor on the populist-manipulative track.
Zizek has pushed this argument further, saying, “we think that people know what they want! They do not know and, more tragically, do not want to know. This requires an elite by which people fi nd out what in fact they really want (sic?).”

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Populist leaders believe that they maintain direct/non-mediated relationship with their own people and that they transmit the will of the people directly into politics! Gramsci, Laclau, and Mouffe call this an established hegemony. These populist leaders represent themselves as internally coherent and
transcendent representatives of the only truth of the people — as - one. Macedonian populism, and standards of this kind, depend on the sense of internal homogeneity — demonizing heterogeneity and pluralism, which this homogeneity is formed against. In that sense antagonism towards “others” is its key political tool.

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The main action, or the only impetus of such constructed people under the leadership of such “lone leader” — is to seek and exterminate enemies outside and inside. Everything else is metaphysical peace and status quo of the very dictatorship.
What I find most dangerous in sociological, psychological and ultimately political context, is the very ability of authoritarian populism in Macedonia to create its own people. Indeed, to be able to change the matrix of political pluralism in the country and not depend on the free will of the voters but to create “its own voters”, who as living-dead, zombies, consonantly have only one goal/wish.

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Macedonian authoritarian populism is dangerous because of its ability for internalization of crime and repression (human security rather than democracy and freedom) as values of the zombified individual/zombified masses.
Thus Macedonian populism provides its “own people” and its own reproduction. The first result of this trend is the very dissatisfaction as shown by “these people” and their abandoning European values, things that are clearly shown by opinion polls and elections. This creates absurd; actually it closes the vicious circle of the absurd: there exists the populist regime and the
perversion that it has created. There is no credible democratic alternative.

Autocrats of this type in the Western Balkans, especially in Macedonia, in this regard manage to sell their politics surprisingly well to the Eurocrats, working together on the enlargement policy of the EU? They seem to have discovered the famous G-spot of the EU policy in the Balkan region: security before democracy! The result is stabilocracy which they offer the Eurocrats in exchange for EU tolerance for human rights violations and the destruction
of the rule of law in their own countries.