The protest’s real danger comes from within

There is something forced about the way some of the protest’s protagonists are trying to present themselves as victims of attacks on the protest. They seem almost determined to feel persecuted, saying: “We are not Greek agents, Iranian agents, Albin Kurti’s people or Serbia’s people. We belong to Albania.”

They do belong to Albania.

They can relax about that.

The debate about foreign actors trying to involve themselves in the protest is normal, because this has become one of Albania’s most internationally visible protests since 1990 and 1997, though for entirely different reasons.

It has not become visible abroad because it is huge or unprecedented. Albania has seen protests several times larger, much more peaceful, and much more violent than this one. This protest has gone international because it is directed against a project involving the family of the president of the United States.

Its visibility, in other words, does not come from Albania. It comes from its target: the most powerful family in the world. That is why foreign actors cannot be stopped from poking their noses in.

You cannot stop photographs like the one Reuters published yesterday, showing a young man climbing onto a police car with a poster on his back reading “Edi Rama Jew.” Even the Iranians have every reason to settle scores with Trump in a country they officially regard as hostile, such as Albania.

Nor should anyone expect Greece to stay away from this protest. It has no reason to miss such an opportunity. Anyone working for their own country deserves respect. What we should ask is how we are working for our country, not how foreigners are working against us. They are doing their job.

At first glance, it may seem outrageous that Albin Kurti’s whole protest machine is at the front line of applying its manual in Tirana. WhatsApp groups are full of instructions on how to raise tensions in the city after the protest ends: how to go into cafés in Blloku and get people up from their tables, how to gather outside the Socialist Party and Democratic Party headquarters and insult them. This is not some method they have avoided at home and are now politely sparing us in Tirana. This is what they do.

It is just as clear that separate protest groups include students who have organised protests in Serbia and Sandžak. They too are within their rights. Complaining that they are dirtying the protest is pointless.

The protest is being made by Albanian citizens. These others are simply trying to steal it from them. Whether they are volunteers, intelligence people, Albin Kurti’s envoys or people acting without his permission, they are there to profit from the protest, not to create it. At this point, it is useless to give protesters advice on how to get rid of them.

It is now clear that the pelican can serve only as the protest’s logo, not as its real objective. Everyone who has taken to the street has done so for their own grievances, and those are the real reasons for the protest. They need political representation.

The only clear fact is that everyone in the square is politically unrepresented. They are an anti-system movement, and they should enter the political arena.

But the protest must be protected from those inside it, not from those against it.

The government is against the protest, but it is not a danger to it. On the contrary, it gives the protest its reason to exist. The government should focus on defending the project, not on judging the quality of the protest.

The Democratic Party is also against the protest, but for ideological reasons. It has no reason to worry that a few small parties are straining to look larger than they are. Opponents cannot kill a protest. They only make it grow. A protest is killed by protesters who make it lose its purpose.

The protest must find its own course once the excitement of international attention fades. That attention is not the protest’s achievement; it comes from the protest’s enemy. After that, the protesters will have to enter politics. Only then will we see whether this protest can produce something new.

So far, the only new things it has produced are the ones invented by artificial intelligence: videos making it look as if one million people are protesting, polished memes and, of course, trial runs for speeches.

Great upheavals are not made by large protests, but by great ideas and great leaders. We cannot produce protests larger than Serbia’s, but in the end those protests have degenerated into racism against Kosovo Albanians, to the point where Vučić can look decent by comparison. We cannot produce protests larger than Greece’s either, but they usually end with burned shops and an injured police officer. Greece has been governed for 200 years by five big families. That is not the end of the world.

So far, we have neither a large protest, except in AI, nor great ideas, nor a leader born from the protest. We have only a beautiful protest and a pack of dogs trying to bite it, steal it or claim it as their own.

If those distributing instructions for Greek-style Molotov protests, Belgrade-style blockades, Kosovo-style lynching of opponents or Iranian-style antisemitic violence are given free rein, the illusion of this beautiful protest will turn into disappointment.

It is a little like the expectations of a boy from Tirana who is dazzled by a beautiful girl from Kosovo, only to be disappointed when she starts speaking — at least until his ears adjust and she sounds like everyone else.

P.S. Below are some photos of instructions reaching the protest from people with experience in Kosovo, Serbia or Greece on how to make protests violent. Beware of these people. Criticism will not harm you.