Пушката гръмна: Надигането на македонизма след българското вето
The Gun Exploded: The Rise of the Macedonian National-Populism after the Bulgarian Veto

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents the findings from a media monitoring of the Macedonian online media (news websites and blogs) in the period between the 1st of January 2020 and the 4th of April 2021. The study is conducted via SENSIKA, an automated system for media monitoring. The system uses semantic dictionaries created by the researchers to detect nationalist-populist discourses and anti-Bulgarian speech. Data from SENSIKA shows a fivefold increase in the frequency of use of the Macedonian nationalist-populist vocabulary during 2020. The majority of articles containing keywords from this vocabulary were published in the last four months of the year. The rise of the Macedonian nationalism is a direct response to the rising Bulgarian political pressure culminating in the last months of 2020 with a veto to the start of the negotiations for the EU accession of North Macedonia. Moreover, being under siege – from both Bulgaria and the internal opposition – Zoran Zaev and his pro-European and pro-liberal government are forced to harden their official position and even quote nationalist talking points such as: “the identity and the language are not negotiable”.

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