Beautiful ugly protest

Alfred Lela

As a supporter of the national team, I attended the match against Israel the other night and was saddened to witness the hostile atmosphere directed at the visiting side. Albanians have had their share of enemies throughout history, but it must be said that the Jewish people are among the very few nations that have never harmed us, never discriminated against us, and never looked down on us. If anything, they have consistently shown goodwill toward Albania.

The booing of the Israeli national anthem before kickoff, followed by chants of “Free Palestine,” unnecessarily politicized what was, after all, a friendly match intended primarily to help both teams test their lineups and prepare for future competitions.

What unfolded in the stadium came directly from the protest movement that emerged after the events in Zvërnec. It reflects either a misunderstanding—or a deliberate manipulation—of facts in favor of emotions. The sight of an Israeli flag on what protesters describe as “forbidden land” in Nartë was quickly linked to parallels with Gaza, becoming yet another attempt to demonize the American-Arab-Albanian resort project through the lens of a broader anti-Israeli narrative. It is a narrative aggressively promoted by segments of the left-wing media in Europe and the United States and imported into Albania wrapped in the packaging of Marxist symbolism on one side and political Islam on the other.

The irony is that among all those involved in the Zvërnec project, the only person of Jewish origin is Jared Kushner. Everyone else—from the Albanian partners in Vlora, Tirana, and Kukës to the Arab investors from Qatar—is Muslim. Kushner’s half-blond profile may serve conveniently as a scapegoat, but the idea of some hidden Jewish conspiracy behind the project is nonsense that circulates online in search of gullible minds willing to believe it.

What we are witnessing, therefore, is a kind of political deep fake: a propaganda campaign born from the alliance between sections of the Euro-American left and political Islam, imported into Albania and eagerly embraced by local zealots from Zvërnec to Tirana.

This is the first group that makes the protest movement difficult to view without skepticism.

The second group consists of what might be called the “all-Albanian rejects”: political figures and parties with little or no electoral support who blame their irrelevance entirely on the major parties. Their attempts to organize meaningful protests have repeatedly failed, and this movement offers them yet another opportunity for self-promotion and self-delusion.

The third group includes the anti-opposition crowd who become almost euphoric at the phrase “Berisha in prison,” while mentioning “Rama in prison” only as a token gesture to avoid appearing biased. They conveniently forget that Berisha has, in fact, experienced imprisonment, whereas Rama—the man they support—has spent twenty-eight uninterrupted years in power, longer than any Albanian politician since Enver Hoxha, without ever facing such consequences.

The fourth group is made up of self-styled patriots who claim to love Albania but only for Albanians. They forget, as one American diplomat once observed, that a nation which produces so many emigrants for other countries cannot reasonably refuse to welcome foreigners into its own. This is little more than a naïve form of isolationism.

The fifth group consists of anti-Trump activists who oppose the Zvërnec resort simply because the Trump family is involved. From a public-relations perspective, however, it is precisely that connection that makes the project internationally attractive. Ivanka Trump’s involvement puts Albania on the map. Yet some Albanians seem to prefer turning every meter of the coastline into another Ksamil—a chaotic and overdeveloped “Bathore by the sea”—rather than accepting a project which, even if it does not benefit everyone directly, has the potential to place Albania within the ranks of serious tourism destinations.

The sixth group is made up of patronage operatives and public administration employees who, much like during the student protests, attend not out of conviction but to take the political temperature. They observe who stands out, who can be manipulated, who can be bought, who can be recruited, and, most importantly, who can be dismissed from their jobs.

These are perhaps the most cynical participants of all. You can recognize them by the lifelessness in their eyes—a surrender of spirit that attaches itself like a leech to events and people, feeding off them without believing in anything.

Having said all this, and despite all its ugliness, the protest remains one of the beautiful things happening in Albania today.

It is one of those rare moments when the consciousness and weary spirit of a neglected and poorly governed society remind themselves that they are still alive.

That consciousness has already transformed the protest beyond its original trigger in Zvërnec. What began as a reaction to a local issue has evolved into a broader social outcry against everything that has gone wrong in Albania.

At its core, the protest is an uprising against power. Only if it remains will it succeed.

If it is appropriated by Arlind Qori or others as a struggle against “foreign enemies,” or as an effort to replace one ideological system with another, it will achieve nothing. On the contrary, it may simply help Rama regenerate his political legitimacy by eventually abandoning the Zvërnec project and presenting himself as responsive to public pressure.

What is happening in the streets is not a clash of systems.

Albania has never created or overthrown grand ideological systems. It has merely borrowed, adapted, or patched together systems created elsewhere.

The only sensible course today is to remain within the one civilizational framework that has proven its value—at least so far: the cultural and economic civilization produced by the Judeo-Greek-Roman-Christian tradition.