The Other 4th of July: Fighter's Day

I published my “congratulations” on the 250th anniversary of the United States in Macedonian for a simple reason: to force a stagnant public to look at what it already knows but lacks the courage to voice. In short, I emphasized that the United States was baptized in violence centuries before the Declaration of Independence was ever drafted. The minute Columbus set foot on the continent (an arrival still celebrated as an official holiday), the machinery of conquest was set in motion. This empire was built upon the systematic genocide and plunder of its indigenous population, a ten-million-person blood price paid for the “brave exploits” of the pioneers.

Centuries later, the state of Israel was constructed using the same blueprint. While it operates outside the formal boundaries of the American system, it routinely commands the empire and holds it hostage. Their DNA is identical: both are built on the foundational violence of settler colonialism, a model currently being modernized through Trump’s “Peace Board” and the corporate colonization of the Gaza Riviera. In my original column, I tried to catalogue the endless line of atrocities committed in the name of the Land of the Free, a place where neither freedom nor justice actually exists.

I did not forget the people Howard Zinn wrote about—those who spent their lives fighting for a radically different society. Nor did I forget the structural and cultural violence exposed so brutally by Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine. Viewed clearly, American history is a grim ledger of crimes committed out of the pure, unadulterated greed of the 1% against the 99%. There is nothing genuinely new here—just a revolving door of new threats, endless wars, and manufactured suffering.

The year 2026 brings a supreme historical irony. It marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, but it also marks exactly 250 years since the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. This calendar alignment is no accident; it represents the simultaneous birth of modern capitalism and the American political project. In 1776, the “free market” and “liberty” emerged as two sides of the same ideological coin. Behind both narratives lies the brutal reality of imperial expansion, expropriation, and structural violence. Yet the West remains fundamentally incapable of admitting this. Even their celebrated “dissidents” fall into the trap: they will fiercely condemn American foreign policy while remaining dogmatic messiahs of the myth that capitalist trade and market exchange are the ultimate recipes for global peace—a delusional contradiction in terms.

At home, censorship and deep-seated self-censorship have done their work. Our media class pathetically laments that the US Embassy, perched on the Kale Fortress overlooking Skopje, currently only hosts a chargé d’affaires. They are openly offended that she isn’t publicly dictating policy or meddling in our internal affairs with the heavy-handedness of her predecessors. Meanwhile, a chorus of paranoid “analysts” warns that this temporary diplomatic vacuum will allow “dangerous third powers” to poison the public with alternative narratives.

Right on cue, our political and cultural elites rushed to toast the empire with champagne and fireworks at the embassy’s reception. They immediately plastered their carefully curated selfies across social media, desperate to signal their absolute loyalty to the foreign governors. This humiliating display of servitude has been standard protocol for the past thirty-plus years of our illusion of independence.

But for those of us who refuse to be brainwashed, the Fourth of July carries a radically different meaning. In the territory of the former Yugoslavia, we possess our own authentic, leftist, anti-fascist heritage: Fighter’s Day (Ден на борецот).

On July 4, 1941, the Yugoslav Communist Party issued its historic proclamation, launching a relentless armed struggle against fascist occupiers and domestic quislings. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia was the first organized force in occupied Europe to ignite a massive, structured resistance (and to soon established the first free territory, Užička Republika). My generation grew up proud of this legacy; American fanfares and Hollywood spectacles meant absolutely nothing to us.

The bitter tragedy of today is that our own authentic anti-fascist history has been buried, condemned, and traded away. To secure entry into the “Western sphere” (a transition toward absolute nothing/ness), the new ‘democratic’ (converted) leaders gladly renounced our revolutionary past. Today, our screens have been flooded with Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day, and Rambo, while the legendary films of Yugoslav cinema have been systematically erased.’

Macedonia now stands in a masochistic posture at the gates of the EU. To appease Western managers, we are ordered to surgically excise the existence of the Macedonian people before 1945, while simultaneously rehabilitating Bulgarian fascist occupiers into mere “administrators.” The heroic battle of the Yugoslav partisans is treated as a dangerous, closed chapter. Anyone who dares to defend it is branded a nationalist traitor and dragged to the ideological stake.

The irony is complete: the current President of Macedonia is the daughter of a former partisan. Yet she aligns herself with the Trumpian universe, participates in the manufactured “fear of communism,” and stays dead silent on the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Yugoslavia was far from a flawless state. It was fractured by internal contradictions, deviations, and political blunders. As the daughter of a worker, I vividly remember how we openly critiqued the emergence of the “red bourgeoisie.” But look at what followed: the children of that very same red bourgeoisie quickly changed their ideological clothes, took the reins of the newly independent states, and greedily orchestrated the capitalist transition. They were privileged then, and they ensured they remained privileged now.

The real fighters (genuine heroes like Ivo Lola Ribar, Orce Nikolov, Nevena Georgieva-Dunja, and Sonja Marinković, to mention just a few) have been completely betrayed by their political successors. Today, those successors stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the masterminds of global genocide, using the fake specter of communism to terrorize the public into submission.

It seems as if there are no fighters left. Or maybe THE LEFT emanates the only fighter’s force that survived (even though they, born after the fall of socialism, call themselves “the children of transition”)?

Two mournful dates, aren’t they?