Alexander the Bot: The Twitter War for the Macedonian Soul

For Cheese, the ban on "appropriation" of the Classical Hellenic emblem with its distinctive pointy rays was the latest act of surrender in a bitter fight over Macedonian identity.

It was part of a historic deal with Greece to end a 30-year dispute over his country's use of the name "Macedonia" - which Athens argued implied territorial ambitions over a northern Greek province of the same name and its ancient legacy of Alexander the Great.

Under the deal signed in July 2018, the former Yugoslav republic had to change maps and textbooks, abandon all use of the Vergina Sun and - the ultimate betrayal, in Cheese's view - rechristen itself "North Macedonia".

Sitting in an outdoor cafe as dusk descended, he vowed never to sully his lips with the new name.

"I'm a patriot, and I just don't want my country's name to be changed," he told BIRN.

Few people know Cheese's true identity, though many are familiar with his nationalist views. He is, in fact, Goran Kostovski, a 38-year-old marketing company worker from the capital, Skopje.

With almost 10,000 Twitter followers on three continents, Kostovski led a social media campaign in 2018 urging Macedonians to boycott a referendum on implementing the name-change deal, known as the Prespa agreement after the lake near which it was signed.

While the Prespa deal promised to unblock Greek opposition to the country's hopes of joining NATO and the EU, critics saw it as a compromise too far. They hoped a low turnout in the September 2018 referendum would invalidate the result.

"It made no sense to tell the world to vote no in the referendum because we feared the government would distort the results," Kostovski said. "We had to boycott the referendum first."

Prompting street protests...