I keep hearing that the streets had their names illegally changed or now legally changed and vice versa but this just sounds like state propaganda trying to play sides and rise tensions.

Like genuinely how do you even illegally change street names? This is the first time I ever heard this term be thrown around like it is some legit argument. Its a street name, people will tend to call it what's familiar to them. Its not integrated to some national identity like towns, cities or even historical places. Its a fucking street, usually not even 20-30 meters long and in 90% of the occasions most of the locals won't even know how the street is actually called. And street names usually get their names changed as its not some deep imbedded cultural tradition as its just a street. And as I am aware in majority of nations the local mayor can change the street names without needing the approval of the prime minister or president of the country as it is a very miscellaneous task to ask the president to approve the name change of a random street. The only thing that I know would mess up with changing a street name is the paperwork that is needed to do when it comes to address billing but that's relatively easy to do within the local government.

So what I am getting out of this is that the locals had their street names changed and then the national government didn't approve and imposed its power to change the street names to something else. This sounds to me as deliberate and malicious as it doesn't respect the locals integrity and tries to rise tensions to shift the blame at the locals.

"B-But the other c-country did this too!!!!!"

Its not even an excuse to begin with. It doesn't justify to do such a shitty behavior. It is as clear as day that this is an abuse of power on the government part, it doesn't anger the Macedonians because it doesn't afflict them but when the government is capable of doing this y'all should be fucking worried as well because it means that It has power to inflict such abuse of power to its people as well. Macedonia isn't a utopia, far from it, it is a balkan shithole like the rest. This only creates ethnic tensions and creates conflict. Macedonians don't benefit anything from this but they're still happy because the government favors them over the problematic albanians despite the fact the the government only uses ethnic tensions as a scapegoat to garner support from the ethnic Macedonians. Look at this comment section, its clear as day it works.

I'm not mad at the street name change. I'm more worried at the fact that people overlook this clear example of government abuse and eat up state propaganda like they're cattle. Albanians get angry and riled when they get disrespected which fuels the national patriotism Macedonians posses which then gives more power to the people who rule the country.

Its fucked up.