Don’t lecture the protesters

There is one way to keep a protest alive: keep telling it how dangerous it is.

That is what Edi Rama is trying to do. He seems to think that if he explains the consequences to the protesters, they will reflect and turn from a pre-political protest into a normal political protest against him.

Exactly the protest he wants.

But the opposite is happening. The more he lectures them, the more they enjoy remaining pre-political.

Society, meanwhile, is trying every day to understand why these people feel ignored. It speaks to them almost as if they may one day run the country.

So every day the protest becomes a remote argument between those who support it and those who oppose it, with everyone explaining what the protesters do not want.

So what do they not want?

When you tell them the protest is hurting tourism, they show you a few passing tourists who joined the march and gave interviews. Those who cancelled their trips, of course, are not there to speak.

When you explain the importance of the Zvërnec project, they feel recognised. From that point on, they behave as if the project needs their signature to go ahead.

Naturally, they are against it.

When you tell them they are frightening people who think differently, they are almost pleased. They feel powerful. And power, as they imagine it, means being feared, unquestioned and able to silence others.

When you tell them they are publicly targeting people who disagree with them, they show you a list of national “personalities” who support them, usually posing in front of the flag and waiting for the day of the great patriots.

When you tell them they are attacking businesses by tearing down fences and threatening to destroy any business they dislike, because they have “the people in the square” behind them, they feel like partisans in 1945 seizing property from the “kulaks”.

When you tell them they are damaging Albania by portraying Edi Rama with the Israeli flag and calling him a “Jew”, they feel the old antisemitic thrill of hatred dressed up as anti-Zionism.

When you tell them they are becoming cannon fodder in the global fight against Donald Trump, they feel like George Soros, as if Trump were their life’s great battle too.

When you tell them that the organisational heart of the protest belongs to George Soros, and that the NGO network behind it is legally funded by him, they feel embarrassed and shout “Down with George Soros”, even though every cent spent on the protest’s infrastructure comes from his NGO ecosystem.

But Soros, like Berisha, can live with the chant: “Rama in prison, Berisha in prison.”

When they see that many bloggers and singers are no longer funded by the municipality, and Berisha’s people tell them they belong to Erion Veliaj, they chant against Veliaj. But the same bloggers and singers they attacked only months ago as Veliaj’s soldiers are now welcome.

The list could go on.

It shows how society is finally paying attention to the ignored people who came out in protest. But once you understand what pleases them, you also understand the only way to keep them in the street: act as if you are genuinely frightened by their desires.

And because the protest is still in its honeymoon period, everyone is doing that.

They pretend the protesters can be excused for being aggressive. Excused for targeting people. Excused for being Soros-funded. Excused for being cannon fodder against Trump. Excused for antisemitism. Excused for acting as Albin Kurti’s foot soldiers against Edi Rama. Excused for talking nonsense from the platform.

All because, under Edi Rama’s long rule, they were supposedly denied even the right to have these vices.

Until now, those vices belonged only to power.

Now they belong to them too.

So do not advise them.

Let them enjoy their freedom by passing the microphone from hand to hand.

That is the greatest enemy of this protest.

And no one can stop it.

Not even the protesters themselves.

Originally published in Albanian as: Mos i këshilloni ata që kanë dalë në protestë