so i know this isn’t going to get talked about at all because the rest of europe generally doesn’t give two shits about the balkans, but during the austria vs north macedonia match earlier today, when marko arnautović scored the third goal, instead of celebrating with his teammates he decided to turn to ezgjan alioski (and egzon bejtulai, from what i could tell) and curse at them for no bloody reason except the fact that both alioski and bejtulai are muslim from albaniandecent. (as you can see in the above clip, arnautić said something along the lines of “jebem ti albansku majku”, which translates to “fuck your albanian mother”.) for context the player in question, arnautović, is from serbian decent.
anti-albanian propaganda is something that has been so instilled into (some) people’s mindsets, it rarely, if ever, gets talked about. it stems from a politically infused ethnic conflict which, like most things, should have been left behind in the past but it wasn’t; and the result of this is subtle prejudice. mockery. sneering. name calling. cursing. slurs.
but what was the ref’s response to this? what was uefa’s response to this? what’s the public response to this? silence. absolute deafening silence. one of the only non-macedonian players on the pitch to react immediately to this was david alaba. otherwise there were no yellow cards, or red cards, not even the shitty two sentence apologies via instagram. arnautović faced no consequences except his team captain (alaba) trying to physically stop him from speaking, and that’s it.
but that sucks! that sucks because i know what the uproar would have been like if this wasn’t about two semi-known players from a developing country. a country which has been through so, so much going back years and years and years, at the hands of all the ploys and schemes of our own corrupt politicians. but the thing a lot of people miss about macedonia is that we are not ethnically homogeneous. i’m not sure we’ve ever been. our history and our culture is an amalgamation of macedonian and early slav and albanian and turkish and romani. we’re part of each other so we (we, the people, not the government, not those same politicians in their big leather chairs) have always stuck together.
which is why i had to say something. call me dramatic, or a snowflake, or petty because we lost, i genuinely do not care at all. i had to say something because not doing so goes against the concept of equality i stand for.
there’s been an uproar in macedonian (and i think croatian?) media about this, especially considering the fact that arnautović referred to either alioski or bejtauli with a disgusting slur (it’s a mispronunciation/‘mockery of the word ‘albanian’ in albanian and it’s very common to refer to them by it on the balkans even though it is extremely offensive).
the article linked above is in macedonian, so here is the translated version:
“The public’s reactions have not quieted down in the aftermath of the scandalous reaction of Austrian player with Serbian decent Marko Arnautović, who yesterday, after scoring the third goal in Austria’s 3-1 win over Macedonia turned to swearing at one of the Macedonian players, likely to be Ezgjan Alioski.
Even the media from the region are talking about Arnautović’s reaction here. The Croatian ‘24 hours’ have characterised Arnautović’s choice of words as scandalous, but within that same article one particular paragraph stands out, and it has everything to do with the heritage of the Austrian player himself. In other words, the Croatian article says that the surname Arnautović has Turkish origins and translates to ‘Albanian’.
‘F*ck your ———- mother’, Arnautović screamed at the Macedonians for a still unknown reason.”
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe & Anne Shirley Characters: Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe, Marilla Cuthbert Additional Tags: bookverse, Poetry, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Book: Anne of the Island - L. M. Montgomery Summary:
In Anne of the Island, Anne muses, “Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows” (Montgomery, 174). However, when the two are newly engaged, she discovers she may have been mistaken about that. Oneshot.
