Why Albania’s business community is divided against the revolution’s shakedown

The attack on Albania’s tourism sector was an act of pure desperation. The decision to target hospitality businesses was made only after the "Revolution's" playbook failed and the boulevard began to empty out. It was nothing more than petty revenge.

What caught the public by surprise, however, was just how divided Albania’s big business community really is. I am not talking about small and medium-sized businesses, which have limited power anyway. Even so, those smaller shop owners fought back harder than the big players whom the "Revolution" brands as oligarchs.

Albania’s major business figures failed to defend even themselves. If Google hadn't stepped in, their businesses would still be buried under fake negative reviews—the ones triggered by the mob's infamous "Erebara Playbook."

This attack wasn't driven by principles; it was an organized shakedown by boulevard extortionists. They didn't target big businesses across the board, but followed a mafia-style hit list drawn up by protest leaders. There was no moral standard here. They didn't say, for example, that every government-designated "strategic investor" would be targeted, or that anyone who profited from public construction permits was an open target. No. They targeted entrepreneurs who have zero ties to the government simply because someone on the boulevard hates them for not supporting the protests. Meanwhile, the "oligarch" friends of the protest leaders were left untouched.

This proves that this wasn't a fight over principles; it was a mafia-style shakedown. I won't name the "oligarchs" who were spared because I don't want to invite attacks on them, but it clearly shows that the people preaching morals on the boulevard are just collecting protection money. After all, they have gone 40 days without a real job and they need the cash.

On the flip side, this selective targeting exposes the deep divisions within the business community itself. Some business owners—and I know their names—have already started paying protection money just to be spared. It is eerily similar to 1944, when some of Albania’s wealthiest landowners began bribing communist commissars, hoping they would be spared after the war. In reality, they were the very first ones shot.

That is exactly how these big business owners are behaving with today's boulevard extortionists. Not to mention that some of them actually see these attacks as a convenient opportunity to settle old scores with business rivals. All of this proves that our business elite still lacks any collective awareness of its role in society—leaving it completely unprepared for an attack that, at its core, is driven by sheer envy.

What Albania is witnessing today is the resentment of a frustrated middle class and chronic underachievers directed at big business—an industry that represents the wealth they dreamed of but never achieved. The people acting out on the streets aren't destitute, nor are they fighting for their daily bread. They are people who dreamed of becoming multimillionaires, but only managed to become comfortably well-off.

Because this is a revolution of chronic underachievers, it is naturally aggressive, spiteful, and driven by a desire to destroy whatever they couldn't build themselves. This has nothing to do with a popular movement or environmental activism; it is just an attempt to find a social excuse for why they didn't become multimillionaires themselves.

Just look at the aggression of certain former officials from Edi Rama’s government. They all dreamed of getting a little more power than they were actually given—hoping that today people would talk about them the same way they talk about former Socialist Party ministers accused of grand corruption. Instead of being grateful that they were kicked out of power before they could do real damage, they are actually bitter that they never got the chance.

The same goes for the network of professional parasites in this country who have spent 30 years living off NGO grants and genuinely believe that taking aid money is a real career. Right alongside them are the NGO journalists and protest cheerleaders who seem to think that when a war breaks out, God protects them so they can just watch from the sidelines while other people do the fighting and dying.

There is nothing wrong with being a working journalist who survives in the real market and also acts as a social activist—even one far more aggressive than the people on the boulevard. For example, almost the entire staff of News 24 is out in the square protesting, but that is their right; their livelihoods depend on a media business that feels directly threatened by the government. BIRN, on the other hand, sells itself as a neutral, professional outlet funded by European taxpayers. When you weaponize an organization like BIRN for personal vendettas, you are no longer just an activist—you are abusing European funds, at least according to the official rules for why that money is granted in the first place.

Using this wave of protests to boost the profiles of Albania’s chronic failures—people desperate for an excuse for their own shortcomings—has turned into a collective extortion racket that actively enjoys inflicting pain on local businesses. And they get away with it simply because the Albanian business community is disorganized and defenseless against these kinds of political hit jobs—attacks carried out in the name of "the people" by figures who don't even represent their own families.

It is a textbook shakedown by self-styled revolutionaries who have finally figured out how to avoid doing a day of real work while getting paid by the very people they attack.

Originally published in Albanian as: Pse biznesi shqiptar është i përçarë përballë gjobëvënies së revolucionit