Comments by "aantony2001" (@aantony2001) on "" video.

This is uploaded on the day that Greece ratifies the deal with Northern Macedonia, recognising a nationality, and putting to rest state-sanctioned ethnic tensions, as ethnicity is for historians and sociologists to argue, not states.
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος "false nationality" In what way? Do you specifically deny the right of the Republic to exist? That's quite aggressive. "denying basic history" How?
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος And what does that have to do about the deal? The deal recognises a nationality, and makes no mention of ethnicity. Because it was a touchy subject, it even has clauses about Northern Macedonia not claiming Ancient Greek history, and establishing a comittee of historians to coordinate history textbooks so that they don't produce enmity.
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος This has so many factual mistakes I'll just choose some. "BECAUSE THEY STILL HAVE NOT PASSED THIS NEW CONSTITUTION" They have. It's a common precedural arrangement to put a clause requiring the other party to ratify a deal for the changes to take place. "that isn not an ethnic group" Ethnic groups are not negociable in treaties. It's a matter of the people how they self-identify. There is no clear definition of what an ethnic group is.
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος What ethnicity are the "Fyromians"? Based of more than a century of history and current identification, they are part of that ethnic group you mentioned, "Fyromians". But you aren't asking about that, since you would be answering your own question. You are asking about how they should be called. I think a clear name would be "Slavic Macedonians", and the name they use, the endonym, is "Makedonci", or "Macedonians".
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος I responded with a long answer but Youtube seems to be stuck buffering and won't upload it. Now I don't have the time to write it again.
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος Now that I have time I will quickly respond to what I think is most important. Many Slavic Macedonians, maybe the majority, don't consider themselves to be descendants of Ancient Macedonians. This was propaganda of the Gruevski government, not really supported before and after it. Internet trolls aren't an accurate representation of the population. Tito wasn't the one who invented the identity, it existed long before him, albeit not being that popular (search for Krste Misirkov). They aren't Bulgarians, at least most of them, as they don't identify as such. It has been chosen to call people based on how they identify themselves, not to assign them identities based on language or genetics and conflate it with politics, as when people did that, atrocities like the ones mentioned in the above video happened. Greece wasn't really bound by the deal, it is about North Macedonia. It doesn't really mention Greek Macedonia. So, for example, Greece can have a state university called "Macedonia". North Macedonia can't, but it could before the deal.
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Φώτης Στεφανόπουλος "they would have no problem agreeing to change their name" They did because its their name, and it means much more than that. There doesn't seem to heve been much opposition to the part of the deal that denied claims to ancient Greek history. "there were some Slavs with a false outlook on history" It wasn't a false outlook. There were no claims to Greek history back then. They only used the name of the area they lived in. "You cannot choose your ethnicity, that is decided for you at birth." That's a common misconception that has been debunked by science. There is nothing about a person that physically or genetically "makes" his part of an ethnic group. It's a sociological phenomenon. There are nations that stop existing and new ones that are created all the time. It's called ethnogenesis, and in North Macedonia it was successful. "The name Macedonian is Greek to begin with" So is the name Anatolia, but we let the Turks use it, because we have no ownership over Greek lamguage terms. Did you know that "Athens" and "Corinth" were originally loan word that Greek borrowed? Does that make them less Greek?
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@ConorMcgregor322 That has nothing to do with it. Epirots were Greeks, and they still are Greeks. I don't know of Albanians identifying as Epirots.
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος "the majority accepted the deal, which is not suprising because it was a complete victory from the Fyrom side" Let's see what he thinks about it. Becuase most nationalists think it's a complete victory for Greece by a traitorous government. "They have been and up to this day are steal appropriating foreign culture and history" As I told you, it seems claiming Ancient Macedonia started and ended with Gruevski. "ethnicity is a social-constract" Of course it's a social construct, what else could it be? That's the definition you would see in any scientific source. Do you think that if a Greek baby is borned and spends his whole life in India without being told about it, he will have any "Greek" characteristics? Actually this has already happened, when Greek children were taken from their parents and became Janissaries. Their descendants are today no different from other Turks, most of whom have Greek-speaking ancestors too. "I do not seem to remember a time where the Turks have claimed Greek history and culture" Exactly! That's the point, not the name. The point was for that to stop, and it did in the deal. Now in North Macedonia it's the same situation as in Turkey with Anatolia or the USA with the Athenses.
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος The fact that you use the terms "social construct" and "strawman" make me think you are influenced by a, much more dangerous, USA kind of propaganda. Stay away from the people, they are mad.
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@ConorMcgregor322 What do you think about the Prespes Deal?
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@ConorMcgregor322 Yes but what do you think of the deal?
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος The USA political landscape is made of two sides that both hate each other and are both deeply indoctrinated. There is the danger that because of social media this situation will affect the political discourse of other countries, and that's already happening. The terms that you used are commonly used by Americans when arguing about politics, so I felt obliged to warn you. We shouldn't be influenced by a society that thinks Greeks are the same as Slavs because they are both "White" and that it's fine to give 3-year-olds guns.
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@ΦώτηςΣτεφανόπουλος The problem with "White" identity is that they don't accept that it is a concept that they made themselves and applies only to them. They use it as if it is some scientific categorisation and categorise people from all over the world using it. It would be great if 3-year-olds using guns was a hyperbole. There was a person who went to USA lawmakers and, telling them he was a security officier from Israel, he proposed to them that 3-year-olds should be given guns. They agreed. "Strawman" means misrepresenting the other person's argument and trying to prove that wrong, instead of the actual argument. The word "strawman" refers to the fabricated argument. They didn't choose the word Macedonia randomly. It was used from the 19th century and for a long time Greece had no problem with it, in fact many Greeks encouraged it, thinking this would make the Slavs identify as Greeks (Konstantinos Tsioulkas). They already used the name "Republic of Macedonia". In the deal they change it to "Republic of North Macedonia" to distinguish it from the Greek province. About the social construct, I myself in the beginning couldn't really understand it either, but after studying history and ethnicity for some time, trying to educate myself about the relationship between ethnicity and genetics, I realised that such a connection doesn't really exist. Being a social construct doesn't mean it holds no meaning. The value of money is socialy constructed, as well as languages, and I think most of us would recognise these things as being very important. Same goes for ethnicity.
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