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The Rhetoric of War and the Reshaping of Civil Society in North Macedonia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 August 2019
Abstract
In this article, I explore recent efforts to “de-Sorosize” the Republic of Macedonia, arguing that they reveal an obsession in Macedonia—and more broadly in east central Europe—with defending ethnonational interests against assumed interlopers. New, self-proclaimed patriotic associations have mobilized ideas of combined external and internal threats to national existence as though there were a war frontier. This imagined war frontier marks the dividing line between belligerent nationalists, who claim that Macedonian sovereignty and national identity are under threat of extinction, and the Macedonian center-left and liberal (moderate and left-leaning) NGOs, which tend to promote greater inclusiveness in society, are assumed to side with “the Albanians,” and to have a direct connection to George Soros. The case study of Macedonia highlights the outright public rejection of liberal ideals and the key role that populist, militant sensibilities play in the formation of civil society groups in Europe today.
- Type
- Critical Discussion Forum: New War Frontiers and the End of Postsocialism
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019
Footnotes
I am grateful to Neringa Klumbytė and the anonymous reviewer for Slavic Review for suggestions that improved the article. Special thanks to Victor A. Friedman, who graciously read the penultimate draft and offered helpful suggestions for clarifying some points, and Dmitry Tartakovsky, for his invaluable assistance with copyediting and formatting the text.
References
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15. Ibid., 260.