>I read the whole thing.

Alright

> It's literally a showcase of all the mental tics and obfuscations involved in the construction of artificial national histories as I described in my earlier comment.

I agree, all nations are artificial creations. I'd recommend Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. And never did I claim that a unified Macedonian nation has existed for longer than 144 years (since 1880), so not sure what the "artificial national histories" part is alluding to(?)

>Self-definition based on 'we are W because we're not U and definitely not V.'

What's wrong with this? Americans are American because they defied the British Empire. What are you going to claim next - that Americans don't exist? If so, good luck!

And isn't that how all nations are? The French are French because they're neither German, nor English, nor Spanish, nor Italian. Nations are essentially just in-group vs out-group behaviors and dynamics manifested in relatively large landscapes.

Serbs are Serbs because they're not Croats or Bulgarians or Macedonians or Albanians. Macedonians are Macedonians because they're not Serbs or Greeks or Bulgarians or Albanians.

All nations (groups) have traits that are different enough from another nation (group), which is why they become a group (nation) in the first place.

>The denial that it's possible to force the construction of a cultural, linguistic or ethnic group, despite numerous examples of exactly this happening.

I suppose I worded that part terribly, so it's my fault. I tried to say that all (yes, all) top-down nation-building projects don't work. I know you're going to provide examples of something like the middle eastern arab states, but that would be a terrible example, as no one, and I mean no one, from, say, as an example, from Saudi Arabia views himself as Saudi Arabian first, instead they view themselves as Arabs; same goes for people from other projects like Qatar, QAE, Bahrain and the other "nation"-states in that region. The people living in those "nation"-states didn't organically decide to create their state based on their nation, instead their "nation"-state borders were created by some interventionists in a faraway land, unsuccessfully because nobody there thinks that his "nation"-state is much different from his neighboring "nation"-state.

Macedonia, conversely, is not a top-down nation created by bureaucrats - people here, like people all over the world who belong to bottom-up nations, came to their own conclusion that they're different from those around them, hence they became a separate group (nation). And yes, if we got back far enough, at one point people here did consider them Bulgarians, and at another time Serbs, and at a third time, much further back, Greeks (I am not arguing against this fact, if you think I am then we are arguing bout different topics), but if we go back far enough, most people in Europe alone came from one group, which does not invalidate their national affiliations today.

>Appeal to biased histories written by true believers.

Where did I mention this? True believers?

>Appeal to linguistic treatises only available in the language in question.

Haha

https://www.amazon.com/Macedonian-Matters-Krste-Petkov-Misir...

And if you don't want to buy it, you can translate it yourself part by part:

http://damj.manu.edu.mk/pdf/0005%20Za%20makedonckite%20rabot...
https://www.deepl.com/translator
https://translate.google.com/

And btw, it's available in Bulgarian too, it was published in Sofia in 1903 after all; and most copies were confiscated or destroyed by the Bulgarian police, wonder why that happened?

I also wonder why Bulgaria occupied Macedonia in WWII - it wouldn't make sense to occupy one's own people, no? Unless... :)

>Appeal to the time-honored authority of ... the 1880s, a (not very distant) era when every single group of people in Europe was trying to become a nation.

And when did I say that the Macedonian nation has existed since time immemorial? Starting to look like you didn't read my comment. And what's wrong with the 1880s specifically? Would it have been better if it happened in the 1980s? What about the 1780s? Does America not exist because the revolution happened to be in 1776 - a random year as any?

>Alexander the Great did not live in Skopje.

Never said he did. He probably never stepped foot in what was Skopje at the time. Still, Macedonia is not Skopje, contrary to what most foreigners think (along with our politicians, unfortunately.)

>He did not speak Macedonian

Of course not, and I never said he did. The modern Macedonian language is a Slavic language, it would be absurd if he spoke a Slavic language some ~1000 years before the Slavs came to the Balkan with their language.

There is a chance that he spoke some version of Aincent Macedonian, likely a dialect of Greek, which is very likely not related to the modern Slavic language which bears the same name, along with Greek, the prestige language of the time.

> 'a language closer to Bulgarian than to Serbian'.

Yes, what's wrong with that? It's in the South Slavic branch of languages, in the eastern group with Bulgarian and Old Church Slavonic. All languages in the South Slavic group form a dialectic continuum, meaning that we can all more or less understand each other (except, I would add, Slovene). Does that mean that no nation whatsoever exists in the Balkan? Or that we are all just one nation, even though we don't think we are, which is what nations are based around in the first place - thinking we belong to one group and not the other?

>There are at least 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe which have closer cultural, political or ethnic connections with Alexander the Great than Macedonia does.

And when did I say otherwise?

Seems to me that more than half the time here you're just arguing with yourself. And a couple of lines of yours read like they've been copy-pasted from some ready-made document full of zingers