ΕΑΝ ΠΡΟΤΙΜΑΤΕ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΠΑΤΗΣΤΕ ΤΗ ΣΗΜΑΙΑ ΣΤΟ ΚΑΤΩ ΜΕΡΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΟΘΟΝΗΣ
Modern Macedonian identity deserves respect in its indisputable Slavic origins. Historical fabrication and chants telling Greeks to “leave” Macedonia deserve none.
By Nick Stamatakis
There is something grotesquely ironic about standing in Meliti, Florina – in Greece itself – and singing “Go away, Greeks, enough with the lies” while claiming Alexander the Great as proof of your own nationalist mythology. The Greeks are not required to leave Macedonia. They are already in Macedonia, in the land where Greek speech, worship, inscriptions and memory have survived across millennia.
The singer’s own official upload independently confirms the song and its published lyrics.
This is another video from a few years ago…
As someone who has spent years researching and writing a doctoral degree on this particular issue, “revisionism of history” (focusing on Cyprus), I get particularly upset facing such questions. Modern North Macedonians are perfectly entitled to their state, their South Slavic language, their songs and their contemporary national identity. What no nation is entitled to is a time machine. Alexander cannot simply be detached from the Hellenic world because a modern nationalist song finds the historical record inconvenient.
Herodotus tells us that when Alexander I of Macedon sought to compete at Olympia, rivals challenged his eligibility on the grounds that the competition was for Greeks. The Olympic judges examined his ancestry, accepted his Argive descent, and admitted him as Greek. Alexander the Great, two generations later, was educated by Aristotle of Stagira, lived intellectually in the universe of Homer, and carried Greek language and culture across an empire whose aftermath historians call, for good reason, the Hellenistic Age.
Ancient Macedonia was not culturally identical to democratic Athens—and nobody serious claims it was. Greeks fought Greeks constantly. Athens, Sparta, Thebes and Macedonia could be political enemies without magically becoming different civilizations. The ancient evidence is more complicated than slogans, but it is overwhelmingly embedded in the Hellenic linguistic, religious and cultural world.
And here is the devastating modern irony: North Macedonia itself signed this distinction into an international agreement. Article 7 of the Prespa Agreement recognizes its official Macedonian language as South Slavic and expressly separates its modern history and heritage from the ancient Hellenic civilization, history, culture, and heritage associated with Greek Macedonia.
Many of us opposed signing this agreement by the “ethnonihilistic” Greek government of Alexis Tsipras. The main reason was that we knew the Skopjans would never respect the letter of the agreement and would start disputes.
Remember, we are talking about people, the official Skopje government, who, 12-15 years ago, had the gall to send an official mission to Sofia, Bulgaria, and demand that the Bulgarians have an interpreter in the room. The Bulgarians, to their credit, refused: “We understand you perfectly; no need for translation!”
Alexander’s legacy belongs to humanity today. No Greek needs to imprison him behind a border.
But universality does not require falsification.
Celebrate your Slavic language. Celebrate your culture. Celebrate your own ancestors and history proudly.
Just do not stand in Greece, tell Greeks to “leave,” and demand that history leave with them. That is not cultural pride.
It is historical distortion and appropriation set to music.
September 12, 2026, www.helleniscope.com, n.stamatakis@aol.com
DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.
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