On the Political Situation In Albania
What are we? Where are we going?
The demolition of the national theatre last year in a highly controversial decision has become the epitome of the mass destruction that has been spurred by the ‘renaissance party’ of Albania since they came in power in 2013. This destruction has been cultural, economic, political, and finally, natural (a great man once remarked that Albania was the place of 1001 natural beauties).
As always, men today fall into two categories: the higher men and the masses. The Albanian political clique has in this sense, without wanting to do so (fate does love irony), been preparing its own grave: by spurring their most able population to emigration they have been the catalyst of a long process of training a new batch of higher men who, should they have enough dignity left, will view it as their task to completely uproot the current political system of Albania. Not that any of its leaders are evil but simply because they are harmful.
Harmful to what might it be asked?
Harmful to the accelerated progress and the further development of the Albanians of Albania (keeping in mind that the Albanians of Kosovo are well on their path to development), considering that development and progress are bound to happen given the natural course of things.
The psychological ingenuity of Edi Rama
After the results of the last general elections of April 25th became apparent, Edi Rama achieved what no other politician has achieved in the last 30 years of ‘democracy’ in Albania: he became the first prime minister to win 3 consecutive mandates. This is, without doubt, a clear sign of political ingenuity.
To be sure, one of his biggest weapons in achieving this tremendous power in the country, perhaps the greatest a leader has held since the fall of communism, has been his dexterity in adapting methods from the psychology of the crowds into ruling his people.
As we are all aware, politics in the 21st century cannot be thought of simply as good-old-fashioned politics. Political parties everywhere in the world today make extensive use of social sciences and a great quantity of data, with the aim of controlling their people. Edi Rama has in this respect been completely up to date with the West. Not only has his party masterfully embedded the exploitation of cognitive biases, i.e. primitive psychology, into their everyday life of politics, but moreover, he has violated every possible data protection law in order to keep perfect track of all the Albanian voters.
This is to be sure a topic in and of itself but two of his main psychological tactics in manipulating his people seem to me to be the following.
Always on the lookout for an enemy
Albania’s prime minister is always on the look for an enemy. And the scope of this enemy includes everything. Every single, possible thing!
The most obvious candidates are of course his political rivals, of whom one must say that he has not only utterly defeated again and again but, moreover molded and made use of exactly how he wished. But the definition of an enemy for this particular autocrat actually greatly exceeds that: it can encompass ideas, natural disasters, — as the earthquake that recently hit the country — and finally, even Covid-19 to which the prime minister frequently referred as “the invisible enemy among us”, portraying himself in the fashion of a chivalrous middle-age knight that was solely waging war against it. This is also, to be sure, part of his megalomania that seeks to take credit for everything.
His oratory frequently centers (and more so at election time) on imprinting to his fellow citizens the very simple idea that they actually only have only two choices: the friend camp, which is lead by, you guessed it, he himself, and the ‘other’ camp which includes most of (if not all of) the rest. One step further, the friend camp becomes one’s own camp and the ‘other’ camp becomes the enemy camp. Thus the choice is not this and that as a democracy would have it, but only one oneself or one’s enemy. Finally, this becomes a tautology: It basically means that he, and only he, is the only choice that everyone ought to even think of having and, indeed, has. Everybody ought to be part of his camp and the benevolent father shall hold his children close to his bosom.
It's very important to grasp that this idea is not based on reasoning but rather on feelings. As the average demagogue leader would have it, he resolves around appealing to people’s feelings and not, however, people’s reason. Would he have tried the opposite, appeal to people’s reason, he would be, as many of his kind, without any doubt, a failed politician. This is, incidentally, another crucial reason behind his great political success.
Let me give you one example of what I mean by this, and also slightly digress from our current discussion by mentioning yet another crucial point. He will appear for example on all debate shows of the country and very frequently so if there has been some sort of major scandal recently — which are an all too frequent occurrence in the daily life of an Albanian citizen —, let us say a plot to rob millions of euros out of the Albanian taxpayer’s pocket by means of a dubious road project just got revealed.
Scandal after scandal he will appear on these debate shows and for a long time I used to think to myself: this is the last straw, the people have reached the critical tipping point, they will surely not bear with this and take to the streets till the last remnant of this regime has been wholly and completely eradicated. This of course never happened. On the contrary, after every major scandal, he did appear on a debate show, like a gladiator he fought and slew his ‘enemies’, and his position, in the end, appeared more secure and stronger than ever.
Why is that?
Well, I believe that what matters is not what he says in the debate show but rather simply the fact, the action, that the (archetypal) leader himself has stepped down his golden throne and is personally ‘dealing’ with the situation. He has rolled up his sleeve, grabbed the pickaxe, and started to plow the ground. Nothing can stop him now.
All that matters is that people simply see him bashing and cutting through his enemies — and what a genius he is in this respect — in that debate show. It truly matters not what the hell comes out of his mouth. He can safely go pure nonsense, hell even dance naked, and it probably still wouldn’t matter.
Again, what matters is that he simply appears there, for the people have to see and feel the leader taking his responsibility, ‘taking up his cross’ if we are to use a deeply ingrained metaphor in the human psyche. However, I think that such a crude manipulation would probably not work for the average German. Yet, again, we are here talking about a people, whose average citizen is still moved by scenes such as these.
From which it incidentally also follows that every single political show in Albania that invites him for a debate is actually, in the final analysis, an accomplice and a farce: The only way not to be an accomplice in this dirtiest of games is indifference, that is not inviting him to the show under no circumstances whatsoever.
But back to our topic.
On the political front especially and from very early on, the idea that the other political parties are part of the enemy group has already been deeply entrenched in the mind of the average Albanian voter, especially the older generation. This has also been facilitated by extensive training in communist ideology where purging one’s enemies, real and imagined was a daily and enjoyable exercise.
However, this idea of finding and fighting one’s enemies most powerfully plays upon the prehistory of our species. For most of our pre-historic times we really had only two main ways of thinking of other human beings: On the one side, there was one’s own hunter-gatherer group and on the other, there was the rest, which almost always was thought of as a potential enemy, which ultimately means an enemy.
To be sure, such a way of thinking does seem crude with today’s reasoning standards but one has to remind oneself of the dire and terrible conditions of existence for most of our history and the grave necessity of such a way of seeing the world (whereupon a great psychologist once remarked that the greatest achievement of the past mankind is that we finally are free from fear).
But exactly this primitive, irrational fear towards everything is what is being sought to put the heel upon by such ingenuine autocrats.
So, to sum up, populist leaders like Rama exploit this extremely primitive way of looking at the world: they are constantly on the lookout for enemies on all possible nooks and thereafter wage wars — which frequently are imaginary ones — on these enemies, with the goal of provoking these primitive thoughts and feelings into their subject’s mind to their own profit.
This propaganda actually has one more advantage: people might even be inclined to gratitude towards their leader, for after all he ‘did save’ them from the sly enemies (including a virus!) who are all but waiting to pounce over them as beats of prey.
In the final analysis, what he wants to do is rob a people of its reason and only appeal to their cruder, lowly feelings, thus he breeds and perpetuates a lower type of human being among his people. And precisely this is the reason, why his regime must be uprooted: he hinders the acceleration of the rate of progress in the Albanians of Albania.
This seems to me to be a main (if not the main) reason behind his political success.
Believing what one says
This might sound pretty straightforward but it’s actually quite subtle. When one is full of shit in everything that one utters from one’s mouth and knows this for a fact (here we’re assuming that our pal is not significantly delusional), it is very difficult to appear as if one believes what one says.
And yet, appearing, nay truly and heartily believing everything that one utters from one’s mouth is absolutely crucial if one is to convince others of anything. One has to be very deeply and moreover, most personally invested in something if others are to follow in this belief.
And thus another psychological feat of Rama is that he indeed appears to believe almost every piece of nonsense that leaves his mouth: he is deeply invested in his mask of being the just, fair, and best possible ruler that the Albanians of Albania can have.
Another thing to note here is that he does not portray himself as a flawless character as this would be psychologically very unwise (the reader that wants to know more about the veracity of this statement may consult this video). He rather simply states that, notwithstanding his flaws, he is the best possible leader that the Albanians might have right now.
This is to be sure, something not to be taken lightly. Others have tried but failed and thus they fail to inspire belief in the masses. Of the socialist party of Albania, indeed of the whole 140 politicians of the newly elected Albanian parliament, I believe Rama is unique when it comes to truly believe what he utters from his mouth.
And the way how Rama does this is that he really tries to answer every question to the most truthful possible degree. His answers range from very dry and formal ones, to passionate and full of conviction. At one time he will throw a bunch of memorized statistics, or perhaps at another, he will take what is said in the most literal sense in order to answer it truthfully, although at a very superficial level. But most of the time, anything that is said, is said with the semblance of truth.
To be sure this does not mean that what he says is actually the truth. That is clearly not the case. Again, he speaks in such a masterful manner as to portray everything with a semblance of truth. And that is enough for most people.
Let us take a brief example: In a very recent interview, the host, with a rather childish naivety blended with a degree of masked servility asked Rama to name for him one institution that was not under his influence or control.
Rama’s perfect answer:
There cannot be any shred of doubt that any institution, which is not somehow connected to the executive power, is even remotely within my grasp.
So this is a very formal and dry answer but it is actually true. In a democracy, the government only has hold of the executive power and that is that. By answering by the book, he actually answered truthfully. End of discussion. The host can go back to his scripted questions.
In reality, however, this is merely a crude semblance of truth and moreover, as it happens, cannot be farther from the truth. As of June 2021 in Albania, Edi Rama has a tight grasp on (ordered by the tightness):
- The Executive
- The Legislative
- The Medias
- The Central Election Commission
- The Supreme Audit Institution
- The Judicial
- The Attorney General
(Note: it is rather early to give a verdict on the Constitutional Court but it seems likely that that too has fallen victim to the grips of unbridled power)
This pretty much accounts for almost every single power that there is in a democracy. The final remaining institution is that of the presidency, which has, rather praiseworthily one has to admit, tried to defend the overt and all-too-frequent attacks on democracy for the past four years. One should also not be misled by a democracy index score of 5.91, which classifies Albania as a flawed democracy: The reality is much dimmer.
The weak-willed leader of the opposition
As of 2021, the only real and serious “opposition” to Rama can be said to be the leader of the opposition, Lulzim Basha. However, he, nor his party have even the slightest chance of offering what we wish for Albania and what we wholeheartedly wish for Albania is, to reiterate, an accelerated path to development.
My case against Basha is not that he too appears to have autocratic tendencies after having hijacked the elections to his party’s leadership thrice now, not that he represents the old due to his connection with the former prime minister Berisha, not that he hasn’t shown himself capable of bringing about any change whatsoever such as being the cause even of the slightest of improvements as exemplified by his mayorship, not even that he has been corrupt when he has been in power but that he, above all, is a weak-willed human being: he lacks the quality of leadership.
I would pick even evil over the weakness of will.
The cured President
Albania is a parliamentary democracy, where the president holds little power. And so, what happened with Ilir Meta, an all-too-average politician until 2017 having once been a major player of the above-mentioned harmful political clique, is that he quite frankly became a sober man as soon as he lost his position of power.
Now, yes, it's undoubtedly the case that part of his sudden ‘quest to justice’ comes from a power struggle with the expanding Rama regime of the latter part of 2017/early 2018 (as the alliance broke, the stronger party preyed upon and expanded on the territory of the weaker party).
While I do not think that this is a sudden genuine concern from Meta about the public damage that is happening in every single domain in Albania, I do think that he has performed a very valuable service for his country for the period August 2017 — late 2020. As already mentioned, in a situation where every power had been forcefully grabbed by Rama, this last standing institution at the very least kept the daily life of the average Albanian from becoming truly Kafkaesque.
The interesting point to note though is that, as soon as he lost his real power, Ilir Meta, started duly serving his country. As far as I have followed him during the above-mentioned period, it seems to me that all his pronouncements, all his non-enactments of the laws passed by the parliament, and similar fighting-back of the regime were completely justified.
Nearly all men can stand adversity but if you truly want to test a man’s character, give him power.
This quote, which is apocryphally attributed to Lincoln actually holds true for the average politician of our times: as soon as they are given power, they become corrupted, or rather as soon as they get to a position of power, their true character reveals itself.
Without power, Meta became cured, an almost dutiful servant of his country.
What We Want
The question that we wish to here convey is this:
How long must one violate and rape a people before they reach the critical simmering point?
I believe, that if one is sly enough when going about it, indefinitely.
Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
said Dostoevsky after all, whilst Frankl added “but do not ask us how” and science truly confirms this. When one further takes into account the technological power at the disposal of such autocrats in the 21st century, it becomes overtly clear that a people in such circumstances might never reach that good old-fashioned ‘simmering point’ anymore.
At any rate, notwithstanding the abovementioned destruction of public goods, given that the world trend is currently that of increased complexity, Albania too will almost certainly develop in the future.
However, what we want to bring about, is to accelerate this development, that is to make Albania a developed country (and perhaps much more) before the natural order of things has reached its full course. Should we manage to only accelerate it by even as much as two decades, it should indeed be a great victory.
Hence my appeal to Albania’s higher and more refined human beings, to perhaps a new type of species: the politically-minded entrepreneurs.
People who shall not go gentle into that good night but who will view it as their task to spur Albania to the path of accelerated development.
I believe it lies within our reach to make Albania a developed nation by the early 2030s.
The case pro-Rama staying in power
As already hinted upon, there is a compelling argument pro-Rama staying in power. The reader that is interested may further read “On the desirableness and usefulness of Autocrats in the Balkans”.
Let me know if you have any ideas about the topic!
Discourse is crucial!
Thanks for reading!
