9 ms·

Welcome to the Balkans, where this kind of ancient stuff is used as arguments in historical disputes for modern nation building and pride. Whether your genes ha

Welcome to the Balkans, where this kind of ancient stuff is used as arguments in historical disputes for modern nation building and pride. Whether your genes have traces from the Illyrian, Thracian, Dalmatian, Greek, Slavic or proto-Bulgarian tribes, is a major force in international relations on that peninsula.

4gotunameagain 4y ago
you mean where entire nations are created after the balkanisation(ha ha) of yugoslavia by using false history to base nationalism on and create a national identity ? coughcoughNorthern Macedoniacough
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  You don't see the irony, do you? As ever, impossible to tell if it's sarcasm.
  - xthrown1 4y ago
    Macedonia is particularly egregious because its genesis as an ethnic group is still within living memory and would make as much sense as Pennsylvanians declaring themselves the last true Vikings, erecting statues with horned helmets and talking about retaking their true homelands. All other major ethnic groups in the Balkans have at least two or more generations from their creation, either synthetic or organic, and as such are as easy to take seriously as any other ethnicity, be it Han or English.
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      Sure, but in a couple of hundred years it will feel normal. This has happened many times before.
      - xthrown1 4y ago
        Yes, but this didn't happen centuries ago, this happened in the 1960s to 1990s.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > this didn't happen centuries ago, this happened in the 1960s to 1990s The point is every ethnic group was made up by people at some point. Most retroactively. There isn't a rational reason to prefer old over new ethnic identities.
        xthrown1 4y ago
        There is a difference between larping and culture. If you can't understand that you're probably larping thinking its culture.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > you can't understand that you're probably larping thinking its culture We’ve been telling others their culture isn’t real for about as long as we’ve been inventing ethnicities.
        xthrown1 4y ago
        Culture is what you do when you stop thinking. When everyone in a group does the same thing when they stop thinking you have a nation. Give it another 60 years and Macedonians will be on par with Israelis for a made up nation that is now real. We aren't there yet because there are people alive and well in their 40s who know just how made up it all is, since they were the ones that made it up. This is a very hard concept to explain to liberal americans because they have no culture or nation. Thinking the wrong thoughts gets you excommunicated and what those wrong thoughts are changes constantly. So they have to constantly think about what acceptable behaviour is.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - foobarian 4y ago
      I don't understand this comment about Macedonians. They seem like a pretty distinct ethnic group, as evidenced by the unique language and culture. That was not just created out of thin air in any kind of recent time. Are people upset about them adopting the name?
      - coryrc 4y ago
        > Are people upset about them adopting the name? Yes. Macedonians of antiquity were Greek. "Northern Macedonians" are Slavic. Greeks are very protective of their identity.
        navane 4y ago
        People who have not much else, are generally very protective of their identity.
      - jcranmer 4y ago
        > Are people upset about them adopting the name? Yes. Oh yes are many Greeks peeved about the name of Macedonia, claiming that it means the country now called North Macedonia has designs on the Macedonia region of Greece. Modern Macedonians are Slavic-speaking people, who moved into the region ~1500 years ago. Ancient Macedonians (whose most famous person was Alexander the Great) were a Greek-speaking people.
      - klooney 4y ago
        The Greeks are very upset, which is why the country recently renamed itself.
      - stodor89 4y ago
        And what exactly is distinct and unique about their language and culture?
        foobarian 4y ago
        Judging by the username I'll guess this is coming from the Bulgarian perspective? Then again you could argue that most of that region is half-Turk :-)
- hhlevnjak2 4y ago
  While this has been a more recent development for (Ex) Yugoslavia, nations and nationalism followed a similar pattern elsewhere. You can see a lot of diversity between regions in i.e. Germany, Spain, Italy which is more or less unified by a shared history narrative. Not arguing it's good or bad. Just saying it's about how and when you define what a nation is. edit: And to clarify some more, the reason why divisions here are harder is due to the lack of the shared history narrative. :D
- chillstreem 4y ago
  if anything, Yugoslavia itself was created using false common history as a glue for enforced national South Slavic identity that never took a strong hold, precisely because most of its constituent peoples always felt stronger connection to their specific ethnic identities than this forced common identity. Croats, Serbs, and some others who made up Yugoslavia had separate and firm national identities in the modern sense of the word for at least 150 years before Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s, and in the more extended sense some of them had written history, rulers, institutions, their own language and script going back for more than a thousand years before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Xk9b92oKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Xk9b92oKY
emptyfile 4y ago
[dead]
duxup 4y ago
When history is used like that I always wonder how much it gets skewed for other purposes. At that point how much of it is a science or honest investigation and how much is it a tool?
croisillon 4y ago
i used to do some work for the french-german youth office where french and german students would meet over activities and translated discussions during a week; since the office had too much money there would sometimes be further partner countries invited. so here we were once, a french-german team trying to solve a conflict between 1990-born hungarians and romanians “but you don’t understand” one told me, “we were at war against each other up until 90 years ago” right, ever heard of wwii?

4gotunameagain 4y ago

you mean where entire nations are created after the balkanisation(ha ha) of yugoslavia by using false history to base nationalism on and create a national identity ? coughcoughNorthern Macedoniacough

actionfromafar 4y ago
You don't see the irony, do you? As ever, impossible to tell if it's sarcasm.
- xthrown1 4y ago
  Macedonia is particularly egregious because its genesis as an ethnic group is still within living memory and would make as much sense as Pennsylvanians declaring themselves the last true Vikings, erecting statues with horned helmets and talking about retaking their true homelands. All other major ethnic groups in the Balkans have at least two or more generations from their creation, either synthetic or organic, and as such are as easy to take seriously as any other ethnicity, be it Han or English.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    Sure, but in a couple of hundred years it will feel normal. This has happened many times before.
    - xthrown1 4y ago
      Yes, but this didn't happen centuries ago, this happened in the 1960s to 1990s.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > this didn't happen centuries ago, this happened in the 1960s to 1990s The point is every ethnic group was made up by people at some point. Most retroactively. There isn't a rational reason to prefer old over new ethnic identities.
        xthrown1 4y ago
        There is a difference between larping and culture. If you can't understand that you're probably larping thinking its culture.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > you can't understand that you're probably larping thinking its culture We’ve been telling others their culture isn’t real for about as long as we’ve been inventing ethnicities.
        xthrown1 4y ago
        Culture is what you do when you stop thinking. When everyone in a group does the same thing when they stop thinking you have a nation. Give it another 60 years and Macedonians will be on par with Israelis for a made up nation that is now real. We aren't there yet because there are people alive and well in their 40s who know just how made up it all is, since they were the ones that made it up. This is a very hard concept to explain to liberal americans because they have no culture or nation. Thinking the wrong thoughts gets you excommunicated and what those wrong thoughts are changes constantly. So they have to constantly think about what acceptable behaviour is.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - foobarian 4y ago
    I don't understand this comment about Macedonians. They seem like a pretty distinct ethnic group, as evidenced by the unique language and culture. That was not just created out of thin air in any kind of recent time. Are people upset about them adopting the name?
    - coryrc 4y ago
      > Are people upset about them adopting the name? Yes. Macedonians of antiquity were Greek. "Northern Macedonians" are Slavic. Greeks are very protective of their identity.
      - navane 4y ago
        People who have not much else, are generally very protective of their identity.
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      > Are people upset about them adopting the name? Yes. Oh yes are many Greeks peeved about the name of Macedonia, claiming that it means the country now called North Macedonia has designs on the Macedonia region of Greece. Modern Macedonians are Slavic-speaking people, who moved into the region ~1500 years ago. Ancient Macedonians (whose most famous person was Alexander the Great) were a Greek-speaking people.
    - klooney 4y ago
      The Greeks are very upset, which is why the country recently renamed itself.
    - stodor89 4y ago
      And what exactly is distinct and unique about their language and culture?
      - foobarian 4y ago
        Judging by the username I'll guess this is coming from the Bulgarian perspective? Then again you could argue that most of that region is half-Turk :-)
hhlevnjak2 4y ago
While this has been a more recent development for (Ex) Yugoslavia, nations and nationalism followed a similar pattern elsewhere. You can see a lot of diversity between regions in i.e. Germany, Spain, Italy which is more or less unified by a shared history narrative. Not arguing it's good or bad. Just saying it's about how and when you define what a nation is. edit: And to clarify some more, the reason why divisions here are harder is due to the lack of the shared history narrative. :D
chillstreem 4y ago
if anything, Yugoslavia itself was created using false common history as a glue for enforced national South Slavic identity that never took a strong hold, precisely because most of its constituent peoples always felt stronger connection to their specific ethnic identities than this forced common identity. Croats, Serbs, and some others who made up Yugoslavia had separate and firm national identities in the modern sense of the word for at least 150 years before Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s, and in the more extended sense some of them had written history, rulers, institutions, their own language and script going back for more than a thousand years before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Xk9b92oKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Xk9b92oKY

emptyfile 4y ago

[dead]

duxup 4y ago

When history is used like that I always wonder how much it gets skewed for other purposes. At that point how much of it is a science or honest investigation and how much is it a tool?

croisillon 4y ago

i used to do some work for the french-german youth office where french and german students would meet over activities and translated discussions during a week; since the office had too much money there would sometimes be further partner countries invited. so here we were once, a french-german team trying to solve a conflict between 1990-born hungarians and romanians “but you don’t understand” one told me, “we were at war against each other up until 90 years ago” right, ever heard of wwii?