Recycling propaganda : remarks on recent reports on Greece's “Slav-Macedonian minority”

Abstract

Between November 1993 and October 1994 various NGO reports
focused on the alleged ethnic “Macedonian” minority living in Greece.
Supported by a number of books and articles published during the same
period, NGOs argue that “Macedonian” is a primordial ethnic identity
embraced by a considerable proportion of the population of Macedonia
and still corresponds to a sizeable but suppressed and violently
assimilated ethnic minority in Greece. This paper is not intended to
challenge the apparent ideological obstacles that an ethnic nation-state
like Greece faces when it has to deal with minority issues. It seeks to
contest the generalising character of these accounts by revealing (a) the
misuse of data and terms, (b) the use of deceptive data, (c) the selective
use —indeed the recycling— of biased bibliographical sources. The
bottom line is that international observers have failed to give an
objective view of the minority question in Greece. Basically this was
due to a general misinterpretation of ethnicity in the Balkans and to
various political necessities which unfortunately seem to be assessed
together with human and minority rights.