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From an outside perspective the extreme nationalism over "what is Macedonia" just gets weird. As in riots over a name change;

Riots in Greece: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/20/thousands-of-g...

Riots on Macendonia: https://www.rferl.org/a/macedonia-name-change-protest-studen...

The people protesting weren't alive in the hey day of Alexander The Great and hero worshipping like this in any case is pretty weird. They weren't around when the empire Alexander conquered existed. Yet people will riot if you suggest Alexander was either Greek or Macedonian depending on who hears you say it. His country was a completely different nation to the modern nations in the area. Yet there's some tribalistic instinct that's getting triggered here that leads to people going pretty much insane over this.

People often get intense over perceived heritage. That tends to be true from the US to Japan and everywhere inbetween.

The typical person will almost always seek to wrap their self up in - associate with - an identity greater than their own existence. Whether that's a sports team, or Alexander the Great, or a long dead empire or culture, or the success of another person/company/thing. It's seemingly so common as to apply to almost everyone on the planet I'd wager.

I think even unusual persons - those able to stand apart from standard tribalism - end up doing it to one degree or another. For example even if you focus on work, or art, instead of relating yourself to typically tribalistic things culturally, you end up wrapping your identity up in that work/art/stuff/hobby (consciously or subconsciously).

Have you ever seen people on forums lead a comment with: "I'm from such and such place, and here's how we do a thing" - they're borrowing credibility for their self, from some past people that built that credibility. I'm from Greenland and here's why we're so amazing and why you suck so much. It's exceptionally common all over discussion forums. They've wrapped themselves up in an identity greater than their self, they want to associate with it and steal some of the perceived value/amazingness (that they weren't responsible for creating).

Are those people not part of the culture that they reference? They're literally telling you how they do things, as a member of said culture.

Are people not allowed now to reference successful methods that they practice, and their origin for social proof, lest they be too uppity? That's a weird take.

If they aren't part responsible for the referenced culture, as a member of it, than who is? (Forgetting for a moment that this is irrelevant, to the point in question, and the question is solely being used to tear the person down).

That's not why people do it so extremely frequently.

You could just argue in favor of the method. That's not what they're doing, they're looking to capture: I'm better than other people because of where I come from, my culture is superior and I'm part of that culture.

Otherwise you could just drop the location identity and argue the point by itself. They want the easy credibility capture, it's a form of virtue signaling (and all you have to do is location drop and you get magic virtue points, even if you didn't earn any of those points).

Nah. You're over-reacting to an extremely common, normal, and acceptable social tool because you have an agenda. What that is could be a couple of things, from a petty dislike of anyone who has anything to be proud about to an imbalanced flinch reflex against any cultural affinity.

Referencing the method's origins offers social proof that it works. That's often a critical aspect of persuasion. It's completely normal and common. "Credibility capture" is an invented and weird term, and it would both apply and not apply here in the inverse that you would want it to.

In the manner that it applies when offering a positive connotation, again, social proof is necessary much of the time.

In the manner that it doesn't apply when attempting negative connotation, this person has every right to "capture credibility" from the culture to which they belong; especially when referencing a cultural method.

This is a nightmare autistic-style conversation, by the way. In your attempt to de-normalize the normal. Appreciate it.

> They've wrapped themselves up in an identity greater than their self, they want to associate with it and steal some of the perceived value/amazingness (that they weren't responsible for creating).

I agree with most of your post.

However, there’s also the desire to paint one’s own context, biases and giving credit to the shoulders one stands on.

How can you differentiate between negative and positive intentions of communicating one’s context? Just by (often faked) humility? And how do you spot the fake?

It is people who feel inferior looking to attach themselves to something they perceive as great. It is very difficult for many people to find meaning in their lives, so they fall into the excessive fandom / tribalistic / nationalistic / etc mentality when they do not manage to find meaning and satisfaction elsewhere.

I don't find it weird, but it is a testament to many things about human nature, and the successes and failures of society and civilization. Some of those things are positive, many are negative.

I predict that the "belittle them until morale improves" tactic won't ever work. In fact, belittling them seems like the small man tactic in comparison with a simple affinity for tribal history (real or otherwise).
I think we can belittle rioting. If it's directed into other outlets (sports is a great outlet) that's fine but violence is worthy of belittling imho.
Rioting wasn't the core context of the comment nor my response. Here's the relevant comment:

"It is people who feel inferior looking to attach themselves to something they perceive as great. It is very difficult for many people to find meaning in their lives, so they fall into the excessive fandom / tribalistic / nationalistic / etc mentality when they do not manage to find meaning and satisfaction elsewhere."

Calling a comment on HN a "tactic" in regard to political discourse in southeast Europe seems a bit of a stretch.
>From an outside perspective the extreme nationalism over "what is Macedonia" just gets weird. As in riots over a name change;

Name changes, in countries that have witnessed recent 2-3 centuries history from within "hot zones", are not just some insignificant detail, they are often driven by and soon enough accompanied with territorial and other claims.

But even the part about not wanting some other to claim your legaly itself is not that weird. It's cultural appropriation at a national level.

> From an outside perspective the extreme nationalism over "what is Macedonia" just gets weird.

Outside perspective that's a silly thing to fight over and "why don't you kids just get along" is not uncommon. But to those involved it's matter of identify, history, etc. It's a complicated thing. It depends how it's presented I guess, when it's comes with a patronizing voice, it's different than from someone from withing who wants to normalize things or reach out to the other side.

Claiming national history is about the most common thing in the world for a nation to do. It's far from weird, rioting and unusual dismissal tactics aside.
The same can be said of Israel and Palestine. The tribalism that existed there in ancient times has absolutely no bearing on the tribalism that exists there today. Yet, for some odd reason outsiders attach a wildly different bias to that issue compared to Greece and Macedonia.
Current conflict has nothing to do with ancient tribalism but everything to do with real violence and hatred that's been commonplace in the region in the last few centuries.
It seems to have a lot of bearing.
Obviously it’s the strongest.
Slavs moved into Southern Balkans/Macedonia approximately 900 years after Alexander the Great. The claim that there is any connection between him and the current inhabitants of the region is laughable.
This is a bit like denying the English King Arthur because the bulk of them are descended from the Saxons that King Arthur was supposed to have been fighting.

Our connection to the land is no less real than our connection to our ancestors from 2000+ years ago—both are largely social constructs, made up of stories that we tell with our modern friends and family. I don't see any compelling reason to say that the modern Greeks are more entitled to Alexander's legacy than the modern Macedonians, given that neither ethnic group is actually descended from Alexander (his family was all murdered) and neither culture bears any resemblance to the culture of Alexander.

> I don't see any compelling reason to say that the modern Greeks are more entitled to Alexander's legacy than the modern Macedonians, given that neither ethnic group is actually descended from Alexander (his family was all murdered) and neither culture bears any resemblance to the culture of Alexander.

So Italians are not any more entitled to Caesar's Legacy than the Japanese because Caesar lived thousand of years ago?

Modern Greeks are descendents of Ancients Greeks while modern Northern Macedonians are not. Alexander was an Ancient Greek living in Ancient Macedonia.

> Italians are not any more entitled to Caesar's Legacy than the Japanese

If the Japanese settled in Italy in the 500s AD and lived there for 1500 years telling stories about Caesar and spent centuries adopting him as an honorary forefather, yeah, I'd say they were entitled to his legacy. It's not like he's around to mind.

The modern French identify strongly with the Gauls (to the point where most Gallic scholarship is in French) even though their language is of Latin descent and they're mostly descended from the Germanic tribes that came later.

The modern English identify strongly with the early Britons (to the point where their largest folk hero is the King of the Britons) even though they're mostly descended from the very people who displaced them.

This is just a pattern applied across the world every time nations migrate. I'm going to need a better explanation than a Japanese straw man for why the North Macedonians shouldn't be entitled to the same kind of folk-hero appropriation that the English are.

Slav's didn't spend 1500 years telling stories about Alexander the Great, they have their own heritage. The first claim to the heritage of Alexander came from Northern Macedonia (formerly a province of Yugoslavia) in the 1990s for the reasons the article states.

> This is just a pattern applied across the world every time nations migrate.

So then I guess if you were a Native American and modern Americans claimed to be descendents of Geronimo you wouldn't find it ridiculous? It's factually wrong.

> Slav's didn't spend 1500 years telling stories about Alexander the Great

It seems that they did, as much as anyone else in Europe at that time. Slavic versions of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Romance (which was the main way the story of Alexander the Great was known in folklore) appear quite early.

Demosthenes was an Ancient Greek who called the Macedons barbaroi, as in, not Greek. That's pretty clear-cut. He went as far as to say that Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great "... is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honour, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave".
Macedons spoke the Greek language. Philip's and Alexander's names are Greek. Philip launched a successful military campaign to unite all Greeks. Are you seriously arguing that Philip and Alexander were Slavs?
> Are you seriously arguing that Philip and Alexander were Slavs?

Could you lay off the straw men and try to address the actual argument?

I just explained why they were Greek, do you have anything constructive to add?
"Alexander" ("Aleksandros") and "Philip" ("Philippos") are very Greek names though. They are composite words with very clear meanings which any Greek with basic literacy can understand, because they use "αλέξι-", "άνδρας", "φίλος" and "ίππος" every day. This sounds more clear-cut than an instance of Greeks from different regions shitting on each other.

In any case, the notion that the people of North Macedonia have anything to do with Alexander is laughable, as Kiro Gligorov himself stated.

>This is a bit like denying the English King Arthur because the bulk of them are descended from the Saxons that King Arthur was supposed to have been fighting

No, it's more like denying WASP Americans the native american heritage. Even ignoring the clouded history between the two groups, the former simply came later and have nothing to do with it.

>I don't see any compelling reason to say that the modern Greeks are more entitled to Alexander's legacy than the modern Macedonians, given that neither ethnic group is actually descended from Alexander (his family was all murdered).

The claims of legacy is not about having Alexander's family DNA - it's about historical tracing and culture and so on. In any case, even DNA wise, ancient to modern Greeks are quite close according to related studies (and unlike some western racist prejudices in the past centuries, dismissing modern Greeks right to their ancestry).

>and neither culture bears any resemblance to the culture of Alexander

Says who? Greeks have been speaking and developing the Greek culture and language since before the times of Alexander. And Greek vocabulary as developed at the time of Alexander's expansion, is still easily understood by modern Greeks.

Things did change, as they do everywhere - a culture changed after 2.3 millenia of development, is not the same as it being something alien that came from nowhere.

Does 16th or even 19th century US culture look like the modern one, if seen superficially? Not. However if traced back, and seen as a series of historical developments, it's a specific stream, discreet than say Mexican or Canadian culture or whatever. And that's just a few centuries. And of course, there being a big difference to 2024 US culture to 1780 US culture doesn't mean current Americans don't have a claim to the Founding Fathers, or Poe, or Mark Twain or whatever - or that suddenly Canadians can lay claim to those things.

> neither culture bears any resemblance to the culture of Alexander.

Language, to name just one, maybe the most important component of a culture.

On the other hand, its hard to imagine there wouldn’t have been quite a bit of admixture.
How much admixture would there be? All the major Macedonian cities are part of modern Greece.

Even the application of the name to North Macedonia is more a Roman thing than anything else. We don't call all of Greece (not to mention all the other lands conquered by Alexander) "Macedonia" just because it was conquered by Macedon back then ...

Not that true. There were significant populations of slavic macedonians living in what is now modern greece back when it was all ottoman empire. Post ww2 there was a yugoslav - greek war disguised as a civil war, which led to ethnic greeks killing and kicking out the majority of macedonian slavs that didnt want to convert to being greeks (change their name, and stop speaking macedonian at home). I personally know plenty people whos grandparents were refugees from that “civil war” and had to flee to yugoslavia, because their land and houses were stolen. Actually if you go now to Florina and Kozani because times have changed you will find plenty of people starting to come out of the closet and speak macedonian yet again and start openly practicing their culture, despite enduring forced assimilation years ago. Even despite the changing of the majority of town names, theres still slavic sounding names in the thessaly and epirus region.

The current people living in modern turkey that were greek back centuries ago and had to assimilate due to various reasons from greeks to turks, would current greeks nor accept them as part of their culture and greek identity now? Would you say that current turks and greeks share some identity despite the annihilation of the byzantinians?

Would the aromanians of modern greece not be accepted as being part of the greek identity?

Would the bulgarians not identify with their mongol steppe nomad overlords that came over in early medieval age and started a khanate over the local slav populations?

Would the modern hungarians claim that they are in fact mongol asians?

These are complicated topics, and politics are just making it worse. There is no definite answer, because the truth lies in who has more power to enforce it. Both greeks and macedonians drown their daily life struggles and sorrows by beating the nationalism drum, so that the corrupt politicians can scream stupid lies on the microphones so they can continue with their corruption, and the common people eat it up like porridge. History is much more complicated.

I’m implying that southern slavs having distant ancient macedonian ancestors seems pretty likely to me. People don’t just disappear and make way for an incoming group of people, these slavic migrants 900 years after alexander the great lived probably interbred and assimilated cultures to an extent with whoever was in the balkan peninsula at the time.