By Ben Andoni

For days, students from Belgrade and Novi Sad have been shaking Serbia and the extremely autocratic rule of Vučić. Their actions are projecting influence on many peers abroad, providing a form of confrontation against autocrats. They generate so much news in foreign media that their trend is being welcomed as one of the tools to shake the numerous autocrats in post-’90s democracies. And there are quite a few. In the Balkans, they are right before our eyes and exist in almost all of our countries, some more and some less in power. In Central Europe, Orbán and his “Hungarian model” dominate; in Eastern Europe, there are Slovak and Czech leaders; and deeper into Asia, there is Putin himself, the modern Russian Tsar. The situation in Bulgaria changed somewhat recently when a group of young technocrats challenged Sofia’s political system.

Over the past few years, there have been other sporadic cases, but they all remain… incomplete. This is not the place to go into detail on all of them, but it is astonishing why such examples are not utilized in Albania. Why have we not taken examples that could shake the corrupt and change the elites?

Similar to the aforementioned countries, what unites all the countries of Eastern and Central Europe is an almost common thread that could be considered a denominator: the new democratic system is very corrupt, and the only effort is to change it either at its source or with a deus ex machina. The people remain heavily propagandized; how else can it be explained that autocrats are liked and do not relinquish power? The conclusion is that the problems remain very significant in these new democracies.

It is no coincidence that our Balkan spaces are emptying, just as the Albanian population is halving while the intellectual segment, which would bear the burden, is increasingly emigrating. Experts’ calculations from INSTAT have shown that Albania had the highest percentage in the region of emigrating educated individuals and students living abroad up to 2020 (Monitor, 2024).

The problem seems even more inflamed when considering that the trends shaping democracy in Eastern and Central Europe have also served as a warning for the changes that would occur in the USA. The first references and predictions in Europe about the possibility of Trump’s first election left American polling units and colleagues across the Atlantic stunned, as they underestimated the Trump phenomenon, driven by hybrid warfare, cyber tactics, and the power of fake news.

Historian Timothy Snyder articulated this argument very simply but symbolically in the 16th chapter of his treatise “On Tyranny.” He urged his American compatriots to obtain passports en masse, based on a statistic indicating that Americans were not very engaged with travel documents. Only by seeing and learning what was happening abroad, especially in Europe, could America be changed.

“The war will be long. Even if it requires sacrifice, it will first require continuous attention to the world around us so that we know what we are resisting and how we can do so better.”

Snyder’s words relate to Trump’s first term, but the beginnings of a second Trump era appear equally troubling. Trump’s claims about acquiring Greenland, “uniting” with Canada, taking the Panama Canal—sometimes with military force—demonstrate how propaganda and lethargy are slowly suffocating the idyll of democracy.

But why are we Albanians, here and across the border, so lethargic? The most “serious” and sole concern in Albania so far is whether the new Trump administration will lift the “non grata” designation of the Berisha family (!), as is similarly awaited in Republika Srpska, Serbia, and a few other Balkan countries.

Recent news regarding the Biden administration’s third executive decision on corruption shows that it will not be as easy as anticipated in Tirana, Belgrade, Skopje, Banja Luka, Pristina, etc. U.S. history has shown that “non grata” individuals remain largely untouched in their “predicament.”

The only saving grace of the region is that it still carries little weight on the international chessboard—not the influence Balkan politicians claim—unless war breaks out, and this small region, which has genuinely exported significant wars, becomes relevant again.

In Albania, we have yet to learn, as other countries have, that democracy comes with immense responsibilities and requires continuous effort to keep the spirit of control over your country’s institutions alive. Above all, power should not be left to corrupt individuals. The vote is the only tool for change, despite propaganda’s manipulation of even this process.

Thus, it remains astonishing how little corruption in Albania seems to matter, as does the lack of a culture of rejecting wrongdoing. The problem does not end there: a far greater issue is that we do not take advantage of or learn from experience. The corrupt members of the Rama administration are not isolated cases; they are part of a system that, through its cynical behavior and alarming luxury, is driving away youth, intellectuals, and people from all walks of life. The lack of hope from the empty promises of the opposition, articulated by Mr. Berisha, only exacerbates this trend.

The rare moments of reaction over recent years remain etched in our memory as fleeting and lacking the hope they might have kindled. We are not even discussing the students, who a few years ago tried something, only for it to dissolve into division, confusion, and, above all, a pronounced lack of protest culture, systematically undermined by both the majority and the opposition, often using identical methods.

Time has shown that majority democracy is always fraught with problems because it does not provide sufficient political stability. The case of Albania demonstrates that, amid this global chaos, politicians only adopt examples that maintain their power, while the people fail to learn from democracies striving for change.

It is somewhat ironic but seemingly true. In his time, one of the fathers of classical democracy, Plato, would have been even harsher: democracy is a danger because of its excessive freedom! However, the Greek democracy of his time was direct, not representative like ours, where votes are represented by individuals who do not respect voters but simply follow the decisions of the PS or PD party leaders in parliament.

Ancient Greeks did not elect people to make decisions for them; the voters themselves made those decisions. This concept is far removed from today’s reality, where the corrupt mock us, leaders cling to power, and the public is controlled through indoctrination and propaganda.

Our situation is even more concerning because the influence of foreign democracies on different social strata is non-existent, while the country is governed by a mix of forces where “the wealthy and powerful learned long ago how to select and manipulate the politicians who claim to lead, but in fact, it is the oligarchs who dictate the current government policies,” as David Spero writes in his article “Why our democracy doesn’t work.”

This case mirrors our own, where we face the cynicism of frightening corruption and a propagandized public that cannot learn from positive experiences. And, while Americans may need passports to learn, Albanians only need to doubt those who have created this situation. That is all that is “required,” yet it remains so challenging for our shoulders to bear.

(Homo Albanicus)