ΣΚΟΠΙΑΝΗ ΠΡΟΠΑΓΑΝΔΑ

Το παρακάτω έρθρο δημοσιεύτηκε από τον Σκοπιανό "ιστορικό" Risto Stefov στο www.americanchronicle.com

Risto Stefov
February 15, 2010
While Greek people struggle to keep their heads above water trying to weather their government´s self-inflicted economic crisis, Greeks propagandists worldwide are busy mounting new anti-Macedonian offensives and looking for ways to demonize the Republic of Macedonia, its leadership and the Macedonian people in general. I guess there is always money for anti-Macedonian propaganda!

I know all Greek propagandists don´t get paid; some do it for free out of "patriotism". Unfortunately they do it purely because they have been brainwashed to believe the lies their government and leaders have been feeding them over the last two centuries. Even the staunchest, most narrow minded and warped minds, however, at some point or another must realize that there are some things that can´t simply be explained by the lies of their mentors. Let´s start with me for example. No Greek to this day has ever accepted the fact that I was born and grew up in Greece. In their so-called "fantasy world" people like me do not exist. Well I am sorry to disappoint you guys but I do exist and so do hundreds of thousands of Macedonians just like me. Sorry for "polluting" your thoughts of purity but sooner or later you too will come to the realization that Macedonians do exist in Greece. I and many like me are indigenous Macedonians born in your precious "Greek Macedonia", the very same land your so-called "Greek" predecessors invaded, occupied and annexed in 1912, 1913 illegally and by force. It is a fact that I and many like me are descendents of those indigenous Macedonians whom the Greeks found when they came to take away my (not your) Macedonia from me.

No Greek to this day has accepted the fact that I am a Macedonian from Greece, from INSIDE Greece. Allow me to elaborate yet again. I am not from "Skopje", from "FYROM", or from "Vardaska Benovina". I am from Aegean Macedonia, the part of Macedonia that is now occupied by Greece.

Having to expose the fact that I come from Greek occupied Macedonia has always been a sore point, a thorn in the Greek propagandists´ side, a fact which they cannot accept because it deconstructs their concept of a "pure Greece" where only pure Greeks exist. Therefore it is inconceivable for them to admit that someone like me could possibly come from inside Greece. That is why they CONSTANTLY refer to me as a "Skopjan" a "Slav", a "Bulgarian", a Fyromian, etc., but never as a Macedonian. And I am not the only one, there are hundreds of thousands of others who fall into my category and not just Macedonians but also Turks, Albanians, Vlachs, etc.

Speaking of Vlachs, a Greek person who now writes for the American Chronicle, born of a Vlach father and a Bulgarian mother (you know who you are), married to a Macedonian from the Republic of Macedonia wrote about me recently and said that I can never be a Macedonian because to be a Macedonian I had to be a Greek first and Greek I was not.

Now here is the irony for you; while being of Vlach and Bulgarian origin, he sees himself as a "pure Macedonian Greek", (notice how the reference has changed from Greek-Macedonian to a Macedonian Greek) and he sees me as a "Slav" with Bulgarian origins. According to this guy I am not a Macedonian at all but he is; and a pure "Macedonian Greek" at that. You will need the magic of "Greek logic" to figure this one out!

Knowing nothing about me, except that I have been a thorn in the Greek´s side, this man seems to know more about me than I know myself, especially since, according to him, I cannot possibly be a Macedonian. Given his own situation, I wonder what he thinks privately of himself. I know what I am trying to say here is completely childish but I am attempting to convey to you the workings of this "Modern Greek man´s mind". Knowing full well that he himself is half Vlach and half Bulgarian he not only claims to be a pure "Macedonian Greek" but at the same time denies my identity without knowing anything about me!

What is a "Macedonian Greek" anyway? Is it a new ethnicity that sprung overnight out of this overwhelming "Greek love" for Macedonia?

Until yesterday people like this guy loathed the word "Macedonia" and put people like me in jail for just uttering it. Now the haters of Macedonia have become the lovers of Macedonia. Have these Greeks gone topsy-turvy? Have they forgotten how they acquired Macedonia and how they attempted to choke the life out of it? Have they forgotten to whom Macedonia belonged before their great grandfathers invaded, occupied, annexed and partitioned it with their partners the Serbians and Bulgarians? Have they forgotten that Macedonia was never Greek and in order to make it Greek they had to change it by erasing everything that was Macedonian and replace it with a fake Greek façade? Have they forgotten they had to change every person´s name and every place name in order to make it Greek sounding? Have they forgotten that they banned the Macedonian language by law from being spoken, even by those who spoke no other language? Where was the "love for Macedonia" then?

Allow me to put it bluntly, there never was, is, and there never will be any "love for Macedonia" by these Greeks. The only Greek motive for doing this is to gain advantage over the real Macedonians. Greeks such as this guy will lie and cheat in order to hang on to Macedonian lands and heritage because they know precisely how their recent ancestors acquired them. Allow me to say it again in hopes that it will finally be understood! Macedonia was never Greek; Greece however was Macedonian at one point in history. Let me elaborate;

It is well known that a "Greek State" never existed before 1829. The ancient City States were conquered by Philip II, king of Macedonia, in 338 BC and were never united into a single nation until the creation of the Greek Kingdom in 1832. Was it not the Macedonians who conquered the ancient City States? How then can ancient Macedonia be Greek?

While Philip II was recovering from battle wounds, the City States to the south were making alliances and amassing a great army to invade Macedonia. On hearing this, Philip decided it was time to meet this aggression head on and end the treachery once and for all. In 338 BC, in the shallow Cephisus River valley near the village of Chaeronea on the road to Thebes, the two opposing armies met face to face. On the north side stood Philip´s Macedonians with 30,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, the largest Macedonian army ever assembled. Among Philip´s commanding generals was his 18 year-old son, Alexander, in charge of the cavalry. On the south side, stood the allied Athenians, Thebans and Achaeans who assembled 35,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, the largest army ever assembled since the Persian invasion.

Closely matched, the armies clashed and while the battle ensued the Macedonian right flank fell back and began to retreat. Seeing the Macedonians weakening, the allied City State general gave orders to push on and drive the Macedonians back to Macedonia. As the Macedonians retreated, the allied flanks broke rank and began the pursuit. Not realizing it was a trick, the allies found themselves surrounded and slaughtered by Alexander´s cavalry. When it was over the majority of the allied army, including the elite Theban Sacred Band, lay dead in the fields of Chaeronea. Philip erected a statue of a lion to commemorate the sacrifice of the Theban Sacred Band which upheld its tradition and fought to the last man.

Ancient City State and Roman historians consider the battle of Chaeronea as the end of City State liberty, history and civilization.

The entire world, except for the "want-to-be" Greeks, knows the truth of what happened on that fateful day in history from which the City States never recovered until the 18th and 19th century when a number of Philhellenes decided to conduct an experiment by artificially resurrecting this ancient world.

So I repeat, Macedonia historically was never Greek. Part of Macedonia, 51% to be more precise, became Greek when Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria invaded Macedonia under the pretense of liberating it, drove the Ottomans out with the help of the Macedonian people, then occupied it, partitioned it and annexed it for themselves.

When the Greek army invaded Macedonia, Macedonia was not empty and devoid of people. There were people living there. These people were indigenous to Macedonia. The vast majority were ethnic Macedonians.

So allow me to summarize. The so-called "ancient Greeks", along with the Ancient City States, disappeared some 2,000 years ago but the idea of "Ancient Greece" was artificially resurrected by the Philhellenes and became an artificial reality after the creation of the Modern Greek State in the 1830´s. The people that lived on the lands that we today call Greece were not Greeks at all; they were ethnic Albanians, Macedonians, Vlachs, Turks, etc. who had migrated to the region over many centuries. If there is any trace of so-called "Ancient Greek" in these people it is so minute it is negligible.

The so-called "Modern Greeks" (ethnic Albanians, Vlachs, Macedonians, Turks, etc.) are the inheritors of these Greek lands only because they have been living on those lands for at least four centuries (according to the history of mass migrations in the region). Their only association with the ancients is that they happened to occupy the same lands over different times.

The Modern Greeks having NEVER lived in Macedonia cannot possibly be the rightful inheritors of Macedonian lands let alone of the Macedonian heritage. That privilege belongs to the Macedonian people who are indigenous to Macedonia and not to the Greeks, Serbians, or Bulgarians who acquired Macedonian lands illegally in 1912, 1913 by an act of war and against the will of the Macedonian people.

When the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians came to Macedonia in 1912 they found people living there. These people are the ancestors of today´s ethnic Macedonians, the real Macedonians. Many of these Macedonians were exiled and assimilated but many also went underground and remained Macedonian in spite of Greek attempts to eradicate them.

To make Macedonia more "Greek", in the 1920´s the Greek State imported over one million Turkish Christian settlers from Asia Minor of whom over six-hundred thousand were settled in Macedonia on Macedonian lands. These people were ethnic Turks of the Christian Orthodox faith who spoke no Greek and felt more Turkish than Greek. But upon their arrival in Macedonia they were assimilated and told that they were now Greeks and that they could only speak Greek and no other language. But in spite of all the Greek pressure and all odds, in a strange turn of events, many of these people indeed became assimilated, not in the Greek fold but in Macedonian society, especially in mixed marriages in the villages where they learned the Macedonian language and accepted and respected the Macedonians and their customs.

In Greek occupied Macedonia these people were given confiscated Macedonian properties gained by the Greek State through expulsion of ethic Macedonians and through several land reforms where lands belonging to Macedonians were re-divided and given to these people. These settlers were also used by the Greek State and Greek authorities to keep the Macedonians in line and to even help Hellenize them. Even Greek authorities admit that in almost every case brought before the Greek courts, rulings were always in favour of the settlers over the indigenous Macedonians. Many Greeks are grateful to the settlers because they helped change the demographics of Macedonia, tilting the scale in favour of the Greeks by making the indigenous Macedonians a minority in their native land.

So, why is there so much "Greek love" expressed for Macedonia nowadays?

Like I said before, it is very simple; the love expressed by these Greeks is not real love but another ruse to fool the innocent onlooker. It is Greek lust and greed for Macedonian lands and the Macedonian heritage disguised as love. Their true nature towards Macedonia is evidently expressed by the way they treat Macedonians.

When a Greek tells you "Macedonia is Greek", what he or she really means is that Macedonia has been taken, stolen from the Macedonian people by force and it is now Greek. If they truly loved Macedonia then surely they would be saying "Macedonia belongs to the Macedonians" or "Macedonia for the Macedonians". How many Macedonian loving Greeks have you heard say that?

When a Greek tells you "these people are stealing our Greek history", he or she means that "we (Greeks) have stolen their history and now they want it back". Besides, how can one steal a memory? Isn´t that what history is all about?

When a Greek tells you "that´s Greek", like the Macedonian ancient symbols and flags, she or he means "we have expropriated those symbols and flags and made them Greek when we annexed and stole their Macedonia from under them". Even if it was indeed "Greek" one has to distinguish between so-called "ancient Greek" or "Modern Greek" because the two are not only NOT the same but they are mutually exclusive when it comes to ancient symbols and flags. The only true Greek flag is the Bavarian flag that the Greek State uses today as its national flag!

When a Greek tells you "I am a pure Greek" he or she means that they are a "fake Greek", probably an ethnic Albanian, Vlach, Macedonian, or Turk who has bought into the Philhellene philosophy that by some freak accident of nature they have descended directly from the so-called "ancient Greeks", bypassing 2,500 years of evolution and ethnic erosion.

When a Greek tells you "I can speak and read Greek and I can read the ancient scripts on the stones left behind" it means that he or she has learned "Greek" in school the same way an Egyptologist has learned to read hieroglyphs. However, you don´t hear many Egyptologists claiming to be Egyptian and descendents of the Ancient Egyptians just because they can read hieroglyphs do you?

When a Greek tells you he or she is "Greek-Macedonian", "Macedonian Greek" or simply "Macedonian but of the Greek kind" they mean that they are a "fake Greek". They have abandoned their real ethnic identity and opted for the fake Greek one. They are actually here for the ride to exploit the real Macedonians and other ethnic groups and to rob them not only of their land and heritage, but of their identity. A fake Greek who pretends to be a "Macedonian of the Greek kind" is nothing more than a despicable identity thief.

Allow me to clarify myself here. While we the Macedonians and perhaps other people in this world see this business of "lying", "cheating" and "stealing" as a "bad thing", many Greeks see it as a good thing, an opportunity to improve their own economic and social status in Greek society. These people see themselves as "cunning" and "masters" in what they do. Just like their true 19th century ancestors who earned the title "clefts" meaning "thieves", they enjoy piracy and the benefits it brings. They see themselves as "gifted entrepreneurs" able to "pull the wool over our eyes", steal our land and heritage from under us and lie to us about it while looking directly into our eyes. I lived among them so I know what I am talking about. To them what they do is not a bad thing as long as it benefits them, no matter how much it hurts others.

No wonder the Greek state is on the verge of bankruptcy, a condition resulting from greed, neglect and nonchalance. These people not only steal from the minorities and from each other but, let me be the first to state the obvious; they also steal from government coffers. It makes one sick and to wonder why the European Union would still want to bail them out of their current economic mess?

I really feel sorry for the poor Macedonians and other minorities still living in Greece who not only do not have even the most basic human rights but now have to endure poverty on top of that.

When will the Greeks ever learn? But more importantly, when will their benefactors who support them ever learn?