On August 31, 2025, a 32-year-old Swedish tourist was attacked by a group of young men in Bitola, the third largest city in North Macedonia. The Swede was wearing a T-shirt with a double-headed eagle, which is also on the national flag of Albania. The attackers forced the man to take off the T-shirt, which they apparently considered an insult or a threat.
The majority of Bitola's residents are Slavic Macedonians, but the city also has a small Albanian minority. The place is of great importance for the history of Albanians, because here in 1908, Albanian intellectuals decided to use the Latin alphabet. Therefore, Bitola is considered by Albanians to be "Qyteti i Alfabetit" - "city of the alphabet".
Anti-Albanian hate demonstrations were also held in Kumanovo, the second largest city in North Macedonia. On August 3, anti-Albanian slogans were raised during a basketball match between Romania and North Macedonia. Chants such as "Only a dead Albanian is a good Albanian" and "Gas chambers for Albanians" were heard. The Prime Minister of the Western Balkan country, Hristijan Mickoski, who was present at the stadium, later condemned the outbursts. However, he said he had not heard the chants.
Such instances of racist hate speech are unfortunately not new to the Balkans, says South-East Europe expert Konrad Kleving. "What is new is the massive dissemination in the public space and on social media", he adds.
Hate on social media is ubiquitous
The social media profiles of users from the Western Balkans are full of ethnic hatred, insults and racism. Almost every post about Serbs in Kosovo or Albanians in Serbia is commented on with hundreds of hateful statements. Albanians insult Serbs with "Shkije", which is a derogatory term for Slavs. Serbs, in turn, use the Albanian term "Shiptari".
Ivan Videnović is a professor of physics at the University of Belgrade. From 2005 to 2007, he was Serbia's deputy minister of international cooperation, and today he is an advisor to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and analyzes current political events in his home country. He sees the division between different ethnic and religious groups in Serbia as "more of a political construct and an artificial narrative than a reality".
Ethnically charged insults such as "Ustasha" - the name of the fascist movement that ruled Croatia during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II - for Croats, "balija" (originally "shepherd") or "Islamist" for Slavic Muslims, and "Shiptar" for Albanians stem "from the old far-right propaganda against all non-Serb groups in the Balkans" during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, he explains.
One of these insulting terms was adopted by the current Serbian protest movement - during one of the many demonstrations against Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, protesters called him "Aco Shiptar", which means something like "Alexander, you are Albanian". For Serbian nationalists like Vučić, this is certainly a serious insult.
The difference with ethnic insults against Albanians, however, is that "today's demonstrators are not members of this ethnic group, but rather Serbs who oppose criminal corruption and harmful, pro-Russian policies," says Ivan Videnović.
Politicians use hatred to distract
Where does ethnic hatred in Southeast Europe come from? Kosovo political scientist Arben Fetoshi, a professor at the University of Pristina, points to the history of this multiethnic region: "Historically, the Balkans have been the subject of nationalist discourse due to the uneven distribution of power, which has led to tensions and ethnic hatred."
Conflicts between ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia reached their peak during the wars in Croatia (1991-95), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-95) and Kosovo (1999), continues Fetoshi. Today, 30 years after those bloody conflicts, a new intensity of ethnic tensions is being observed.
As a reason for this, Fetoshi points to digital platforms, where such insults spread quickly and carry the danger of normalizing prejudices and conflicts. He blames this on political elites who use offensive terms to "distract attention from real problems like corruption and economic stagnation".
Historical myths provoke tension
Politics in the Western Balkans acts "as a catalyst for hate speech and incitement", says Konrad Kleving. "The reason for this is all the interstate and interethnic conflicts, combined with the regional interstate instability around Serbia and Republika Srpska, with Serbia's policy towards Bosnia, the tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and North Macedonia and Bulgaria." The political class is not doing much to calm down and de-escalate, the expert criticizes, on the contrary, "it itself contributes to polarization".
The reason for the return of ethnic tensions is the spread of historical myths, Kleving points out. "The strategy of victimhood fuels nationalist rhetoric and support for players who spread hatred", he explains. Historiography must abandon the presentation of one's own country as an eternal victim. Instead, "historical science should counteract ethnopolitical polarization with educational work," says Kleving.
Author: Vyosha Cherkini