Many groups, one language: the protest’s real danger

Much has been said and written about the protest, which today enters its 35th day, presenting it as broad and plural.

In its first weeks, it really did look that way. It brought together, on the same boulevard, groups with different interests and political impulses, sometimes even in conflict with one another.

But as the days and weeks have passed, another feature has become harder to ignore, however supportive of the protest one may be — or perhaps precisely because one supports it.

It now seems that, in order to protest, and above all to be accepted as part of the protest, you must speak its language.

You may bring your differences with you, of course, but only if you translate them through the slogans and symbols that dominate the movement.

That is the protest’s main contradiction.

It has brought together many grievances, but it has not produced an internal political conversation.

On the one hand, it is inclusive. On the other, it is very narrow in its political expression.

Day by day, this is producing a new deadlock. Environmentalists, students and citizens with sincere anger toward the government, or even toward the entire political class, cannot find a common political language.

Instead, the diversity so often praised as a sign of the protest’s civic character has been compressed into a single form of expression: five demands which, in reality, amount to one demand — the resignation of the prime minister.

Whenever someone tries to suggest concrete ways in which citizens might win their battle against power — through clarity, ideas and political steps — that voice is immediately drowned out by the cry: “We want nothing except the prime minister’s resignation.”

But there are many steps that would have to be taken to reach that point.

So the problem is not that the protest has too many voices.

The problem is that those voices are accepted only if they all speak in the same way.

So far, the protest has offered space to many groups, but not necessarily to a real plurality of voices.

And the pressure to speak the same language has, paradoxically, made the revolt more confused with time, instead of making it clearer.

The fear of division is so great that every difference in idea or rhetoric is seen by most protesters as a threat.

That makes the protest increasingly emotional, and risks adding even more tension once every nuance inside it has been erased.

This lack of clarity suits the government.

It is comfortable in this new situation, because it can reduce the whole protest to its most aggressive voices and features, while ignoring the real anger behind it.

Instead of being forced to answer the concrete issues the protest raised at the beginning, the government can focus on its harshest forms and use them as proof that the entire movement is irrational.

But the problem also lies inside the protest itself.

As it is swallowed day by day by anger, it is forgetting the concrete problems it first brought to light.

It is turning into a single, enforced political voice that asks only one question: “Are you with us or against us?”

At that point, it loses the chance to become politically meaningful.

But this political vacuum will not remain empty forever.

On the contrary, it will be filled by whoever can shout the loudest and offer the simplest answers to the anxieties of the people in the protest.

Fortunately, Albania does not yet have a serious populist politician who could fully exploit this situation.

And the few who may walk among the protesters are too unlikeable to turn clicks into votes.

The only real anxiety for the protest, and for all of us in the days ahead, is what happens if it is crushed, fades away or ends in some other way.

The despair that found at least some voice in it may return tomorrow as angry nationalism, fed by conspiracy and by the desire for strong politicians who promise simple answers to complex and real social wounds.

That is why the protest’s challenge is not to confuse unity with uniformity, or anger with politics.

If it claims to defend an Albania that belongs to its citizens, then it must allow those citizens to speak differently inside it: with concrete concerns, ideas, doubts and disagreements, not only with the same chant repeated every evening.

Otherwise, what began as a revolt against the arrogance of power risks leaving behind a justified anger without a democratic language, ready to be captured by whoever later offers it a leader to follow and an enemy to destroy.