How a single "assembly" shattered the myth of the leaderless protest

For almost two months, the protest managed to avoid its hardest question: who actually has the authority to speak and make decisions for the people in the square?

The protesters insisted this was a pure citizens’ revolt against the government. As long as their identity was based entirely on rejecting things, it was easy to hide their internal divisions. Finding a common enemy in the first week was enough to make the crowd look united.

But today’s so-called "National Assembly" destroyed that illusion. Ironically, right when the movement reached its most ambitious point—trying to turn a street protest into a real political movement—it turned into an absolute mess.

The gathering quickly fell apart into childish arguments over who gets to hold the microphone and who truly represents the movement. Comical as it may seem, these fights for control are a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Every political community—and this protest is now a community—must eventually answer one basic question: who speaks for the people gathering every night in the square?

The organizers love to praise their "spontaneous" and "leaderless" structure. But that is a myth. Someone always speaks first, and someone always sets the agenda. In reality, no matter how "democratic" they claim to be, the protest has its own internal power structures. By keeping these networks informal, the leaders simply avoid taking responsibility.

The great irony is that these activists spent over a month attacking the government for its power and hierarchy. Yet today, they were literally fighting over the exact same symbols of power they claim to hate.

But there is a second, more painful irony. The protest is made up of two main camps: the Erebara–Lëvizja Bashkë alliance, and a network of conspiracy theorists. It turns out that only the conspiracy theorists have any real ability to organize politically—no matter how ridiculous they seem.

Their attacks on the government might be completely baseless, and their solutions might be crazy. But at least they try to understand how the system works, and they actually offer ideas on how to replace it.

Meanwhile, the other group is trapped in endless anger. They are completely unable to answer basic political questions when the movement actually needs to make a shared decision. Who represents them? Who sets the agenda? Who takes responsibility when their biggest plans blow up in their faces?

The wild ideas of the "National Assembly" might be a terrible political strategy, but those people actually believe in something. The "civic" group, on the other hand, simply rejects everything. They have zero strategy. Their only plan is to tape pictures of politicians onto trash cans and write fake one-star reviews on Google Maps.

For this, at least, we should be "grateful" to today's National Assembly. It exposed a simple truth: the moment this protest tried to become a real political movement, the people who spent weeks attacking the government suddenly realized they had absolutely nothing to replace it with.