Tsipras’ lesson on patriotism

Erol Rizaov

The word patriotism has long lost its true meaning not only in the Balkans, where it has the highest number of patriots per capita in the world, but also in Europe and the entire planet Earth. How to “love” your fatherland strongly enough to stifle common sense in peace is one of the greatest crimes and abuses of politics for conquering or staying in power. It is the most powerful weapon of dictatorships and dictators, of regimes, hardcore or velvety, of all authoritarian authorities, of the far right and left, of radicals, of nationalists, and of chauvinists of all nations and religions. Unfortunately, the overwhelming love for one’s own people at the expense of other nations, nationalities and the various ones is a scab, of which not even educated people, well-known intellectuals, and public figures are immune.

In fact, they are most often the “non-party” ideologists who regularly appear in critical situations when the country and its people should be “saved” by domestic traitors and foreign enemies. Their patriotic speeches, hidden behind paragraphs and laws, behind universal legal and philosophical definitions and quotations of world authorities expressed on other occasions, are heavy misuses with daily political motivation. With the same motives they elaborate the propagandist and mystical great injustice done to us, they are courting the public with their sweet talk and expertise that are one hundred times more suggestive than the primitive, easily recognizable populist slogans of their party mentors. The less the ordinary citizen understands, it is referred to as something very cleverly and wisely as we cannot figure out what the writer wanted to say. Classic Balkan inferiority and incompleteness. Narcissistic, vain intellectuals start the most dangerous interethnic fires when they begin to believe in their own constructions and lies, even when they are given the honor to save their fatherland as great statesmen sent by God to be fathers of the nation.

We witnessed and suffered in such a regime for an entire era called Gruevism, whose creator today is an escaped convict, an asylum seeker in Hungary, and his recidivism demands a renewed power and restoration of the Renaissance and Rebirth in order to complete what has remained incomplete in a decade of criminal rule. We still endure, with incomprehensible tranquility, one bad stepfather for the different-minded, and a father to the patriots only. The two self-proclaimed saviors of Macedonia were elected ten times in ten years in elections organized by criminal organizations, supported and suggested by petitions and signatures of intellectuals and educated people, which were quickly rejected when they saw what they did.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, unexpectedly for a Balkan politician, gave a lesson in the Greek parliament about what is true patriotism. Deeply aware of the sacrifice he needs to submit for the Prespa Agreement, Tsipras not only told his political opponents and the Greek people, but also all the peoples of the Balkans and all over Europe that it would be greater patriotism to announce the black spots of its past clearly and loudly, rather than the hatred of a neighbor who has been for decades a propaganda trump card for gaining power. With his courage, Tsipras won the hearts of the citizens of Macedonia, not because he told Greek nationalists about Mirka Ginova, the first innocent political victim of the Greek Civil War, the truth about the Macedonian alphabet and language, the lawful violation of human rights and freedoms, but because it has become an example of how other political leaders in the Balkans should gather up courage to speak about their own interventions in science and campaigns for a glorious past by stealing someone else’s history, glorifying the misdeeds that made the void in the consciousness of Macedonians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians and Greeks, in general, all the Balkan peoples who have been intoxicated for centuries with piles of lies and myths commissioned by politicians from ideologized historians, party scientists and intellectuals. Their product is a sad image of the tragedy of the Balkan peoples.

Today, when historical events change that tragic image that is being broken into tiny pieces by courageous leaders, there are still dark forces with lectures of justice and identity stories and various myths, with nationalistic and chauvinistic messages, who want to stop the democratic processes and achievements that have historic dimensions recognized throughout the world. We yet again read about petitions from the supporters of President Gjorge Ivanov to maintain the continuity of the meaningless policy that has been buried us on the European road for over a decade. Again the lead role on the stage is the idiotic lie that a better agreement with Greece is possible instead of this one which is defeating. There conspiring for political marginals to collect 150,000 signatures for a referendum that will invalidate the Prespa Agreement. The traitors are the creators of the Agreement with Greece, which the world congratulates and proposes for the Nobel Peace Prize. Poor Macedonia – yet again there are dark forces marching all over it, masked as patriots willing to take us back to Neverland, instead of focusing on the political competition that will soon take us to a common goal that was determined 28 years ago. It seems that the common goal was common until it became viable.