PETRIT SARACINI

I don’t know if you have noticed, my dear people, that in the part of the media outlets in the country that for many years have been receiving support from the West through various state and non-governmental US and European funds, lately one can often read pro-Russian views in the context of the development of events in Ukraine.

Not to mention the space for comments on the social networks of these media, which for years have been surviving also thanks to the support of the West and its funds. Lately, this space is also under fierce attack of the Russian propaganda and its bot-structures of commentators, who use dreadful hate speech against anyone who expresses pro-Western and pro-NATO views or views in defense of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.

And that hate speech is in no way addressed, nor is it moderated, nor removed in these media outlets. Regardless of whether it’s about views expressed by officials of our institutions, who now represent a member state of NATO, or ordinary readers, who express their opinion, they become attacked in a pack of anti-NATO and pro-Russian commentators.

Unlike that, media outlets, portals and websites on the social networks with a clear anti-Western and anti-NATO orientation control their media space far more, serving only arguments of one side, pro-Russian side of the story that is developing in Ukraine.

And as that story is gaining increasingly more worrying dimensions, so is the “special war” gaining such dimensions, or the hybrid war (call it whatever you like) against NATO in our country, which has fueled up on the Internet especially during the Prespa Agreement and the Referendum in 2018, and which is also entering its radical phase.

For this phase, the anti-Western forces and pro-Russian propaganda are obviously far more prepared, which has been managing in these 3-4 years to win this battle, above all, thanks to the consistent implementation of the strategy, which obviously has not been devised here, but in security and agitprop circles close to the Kremlin or under its control.

In contrast, the pro-Western forces in the public seem chaotic and disorganized. Some of those who for years have been advocates of the benefits of our steps towards the Euro-Atlantic integration even seem frightened and silent under the surge of the fired up anti-Western online disarray.

And how can they not be frightened and silent, when this cyber-violence and hatred is not addressed by those who should mostly fight it – the competent institutions in the country, which should prosecute those spreading such hate speech, which is a crime under several articles of the Criminal Code.

If the situation in Ukraine escalates, do not be surprised if the online violence from the Internet space spills over also into the real, physical space in Macedonian society. 1999 is not such a distant past, we remember well the scenes of the attacks on the NATO military, the setting of the US Embassy on fire… The silence and not having a response to the cyber-violence in the virtual internet space in our country today is an open invitation for such spilling over of violence into the real world tomorrow.

May the young man say, so it doesn’t turn out that it hasn’t been said!

Translation: N. Cvetkovska