What would be the first questions that come across the reader’s mind when they arrive at this website? Let us guess… No, there’s not such a thing as a “MacTest”, and hopefully there will never be one, because we’re not prepared to live in such a dystopian version of the Balkans. And yes, we are Greek, so you may assume the appropriate bias. Or, at least for the sake of the argument, read on.
We are Greek Macedonians and we are not offended by our neighbours’ use of the name “Macedonia”. However, we oppose every attempt to monopolize that name either it stems from Greece, from Bulgaria or from the Republic of Macedonia (RoM). We do not support irredentism, nation-building efforts or claims to unbroken, linear ethnocultural trajectories from the classical antiquity on either side of the border. This would make us fail the MacTest as “invalids”.
We created this website to raise awareness against something that, according to our perception, is a revival of the pre-WWII racial hygiene theories: The infamous Arnaiz-Villena paper1 about the alleged “sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks”, in conjunction with the attempts to use politically by afrocentrists, white supremacists, and – last but not least – nationalists of the Republic of Macedonia.
The Arnaiz-Villena paper, co-authored by some researchers from the RoM, is based on unconfirmed biomolecular evidence and claims that the Greeks “unlike the Macedonians who belong to the »older« Mediterranean substratum” are more closely related to Ethiopians. It has been widely refuted by the scientific community, together with the rest of the work by this controversial author. Not only the results contradict common knowledge and scientific experience, but the researchers’ motives are largely questionable.
Moreover, some of our RoM neighbours have gone a step further and created a theory, according to which modern Greeks are descendants of African slaves brought to Greece/Macedonia by Alexander. This theory is widely propagated on the Internet by fanatics, with the purpose of introducing the one-drop rule into Balkan politics.
But now it’s time to set things straight.
As Greeks we are not offended by being considered by some as relatives of the Ethiopians. We have the highest respect for the Ethiopian nation and the great culture it has produced over the centuries. The ones who try to insult us in this way must think twice: They would have the same respect too if they weren’t so blatantly racist.
We are also not bothered by being called descendants of slaves, because our human and social rights are innate, not inherited, as it is with every other single human being on this planet.
What we are concerned about is the growing political agitation in the RoM, with feelings of animosity towards all neighbouring countries and racial hygiene theories gaining unprecedented momentum for this otherwise peaceful country. Though a certain threat to the rest of us, this situation, if left without control, will soon almost certainly backfire against the people of the Republic of Macedonia.
In the past, similar pseudoscientific theories have done their part to alter the demographics of the region of Macedonia, with the annihilation of the Greek Jews of Thessaloniki during the Shoah being the greatest tragedy of all.
It is quite disheartening that some people resort to pseudoscience to answer their own identity questions, and that the current nationalist government of the RoM is allowing (and sometimes encouraging) this expecting short-term political gain.
The Balkan nations had been living together for centuries before today’s nation-states were formed. Macedonia was by far the most multicultural region, inhabited by Greeks, Turks, Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs, Armenians, Levantines, Jews etc. All these people intermarried to a certain extent. Because religion allowed it, marriages between Orthodox Christian Greeks and Slavs in the region of Macedonia were much more common. These people were later claimed by the nation-states.
The Greek people as a Balkan nation face identity issues too. The phrase “we are a brotherless nation”, so perfectly describing our neighbours’ current heartfelt frustrations, belongs to a former president of the Hellenic Republic. Alas, the Balkan nations mirror each other in every possible aspect, including nationalism.
If you asked as we would say that we don’t subscribe to our former president’s point of view. An honest and unprejudiced view of the Balkan reality would render obvious the fact that all Balkan nations are more or less related to each other. Our common sense tells us that we have much more in common with the Albanian and Slav Macedonians of the RoM than with the Ethiopians. And, guess what, we don’t need genetics to confirm this. Our common cultural traits are strong and obvious evidence.
Considering how today’s Balkan nations have been formed throughout history, we would say that things such as culture, religion and language are the constituents of one’s national identity. Nevertheless culture, religion and language are not genetically inherited.
Trying to trace a nation’s identity in genes will, at the best case, only produce embarrassing (for some people) results. At the worst case, it will have an impact on RoM politics, setting the foundation for the systematic discrimination against many parts of its own heterogenous population.
We, the creators and supporters of this protest, would like to extend a hand of friendship over the border and to the democratic citizens of the Republic of Macedonia. We call upon them to stand up for what they believe, speak up and stop the propagation of this racist pseudoscientific venom. We see a great potential for future peaceful coexistence and development. Good will and cooperation from both sides of the border will help us realize this potential.
1 Arnaiz-Villena et al.: HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks,
Tissue Antigens 2001: 57: 118–127. (Download PDF)
