A protest turned into a rented lifestyle

One of the greatest achievements now being celebrated, even by the protest’s strongest media supporters, is that the protest is being led by several female influencers.

I will not mention their names, because I do not want to start a competition between them. I am also not young enough to spell their names correctly.

These influencers are famous in Albania for their lifestyle and for what they advertise, whether that lifestyle is real or not.

Their involvement in promoting the protest is a good thing, because it really does make the protest very popular, especially among young people.

But this is a victory for them.

It is not a victory for the protest.

First, why have the media outlets that strongly support the protest — some of which, such as BIRN, Lapsi and News 24, are also part of its leadership structures — not won the battle to become the protest’s promoters themselves?

Why have they left that role to the girls of Instagram?

These are the same people who put every media outlet that deals with politics on trial. Yet they themselves have become political organisers, and they cannot boast about their own media. They boast about the girls of Instagram instead.

If they think the protest has made some Instagram girls popular, rather than making them popular, then this shows that they are the first to have lost the battle with the protest, even though they are both its organisers and its propagandists.

I am against the protest, but I am not competing with the girls of Instagram.

I am competing for my readers and my audience, and that audience is growing.

The girls of Instagram have not reduced my audience, just as they have not increased the audience of the media outlets that support the protest.

Good for them if they have used the protest to become even more popular.

But they are not competing with traditional media.

They may be competing with the Instagram girls who support the Democratic Party or the Socialist Party.

But not with the media.

Second, this social-media trap has made the protests fashionable for young men and women. It is turning this protest from a protest with political objectives into a protest that has produced a new lifestyle in Tirana.

Every evening, there are people who finish work and decide to take a walk through the protest.

That is a good thing, because besides creating the illusion that the protest is alive, it also creates a guarantee that, if it continues like this, the protests can go on indefinitely, even for years.

They do not really bother anyone.

Except Edi Rama, who is trying to keep these bloggers alive so that he has them in front of him, rather than a political alternative.

And finally, if there has been a debate about foreign interference in the protest — from Iran, Albin Kurti or political Islam, with the fanatical hordes from the mosques of Tetovo or Tërnova arriving in Tirana — that has nothing to do with ignoring the real protest in Tirana.

It has to do with its misuse by others.

The protest would exist even without these mercenaries being called in as reinforcements.

Their misuse of it is not a concern for the protest’s opponents.

In fact, I think it is a favour to them.

The misuse should be a concern for the protest organisers, who rent it out to anyone who needs it.

They do this because they themselves do not have the strength to lead it politically, through the media or in public.

Originally published in Albanian as: Protesta si stil jetese me qira