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Servants of Authoritarianism

2025-03-18 18:46:00, Opinione Irena Beqiraj

The parallelism of Neomalësore leading the closed list of the Socialist Party in Shkodra with Lenka Çuko has caused many reactions, from Strasbourg, Canada to Dukagjin.
Even Marjana herself felt regret because according to her, she was born and raised in democracy and as a girl who studied "Political Science", she has no connection with socialist realism.

Lenka Çuko, Enver Hoxha

Perhaps the parallel with Lenka, a cooperative worker from Lushnja, may not have been too striking for a girl from Dukagjini. Shkodra, the cradle of culture and emancipation, where I have more close friends than I do in Vlora, where I was born, has had in the past many women, from prominent families, who were respected by the community and who were also deputies of the People's Assembly of Albania.

"Neomalysorja", Rama's surprise in Shkodra
March 11, 11:21

Among them, I am bringing as a reference and as an example Mrs. Terezina Marubi, representative of the Marubi civic dynasty, but also an intellectual and honorable lady of Shkodra . To avoid any misunderstanding or misinterpretation, but also so that the neo-Malarian Marjanë no longer refers to socialist realism, because we are not talking about literary and artistic methods, I want to clarify that someone who has studied political science cannot be wrong, that the references are to the phenomena that sustain autocracies and dictatorships and not to personal stigmatizations. So I am bringing Mrs. Terezina Marubi as a reference of the type of representation of that time.

Terezina Marubi

To explain it more clearly, far from any coloration that could be misunderstood as a personal attack, I am moving both in time and space.
In his 1927 book “La trahison des clercs”—“The Betrayal of the Intellectuals”—the French essayist Julien Benda observed and described the particular people who supported the authoritarianism of his time, which had taken both left and right forms throughout Europe. He describes both right-wing and left-wing ideologues, accusing both sides of betraying the central duty of the intellectual, which is to seek the truth and not to favor particular political beliefs. Sarcastically, he called these intellectuals “servants” of political beliefs.

Like the "officers" described by Benda, Terezina Marubi, beyond her personal values ??or admirable civic qualities, was not in search of the truth. Even if she wanted to, she could not do it.
Elected by the party, regardless of her values, she found it difficult, almost impossible, to stand up against the violence or repression of the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. She, like many other intellectuals, workers or cooperators, was forced to turn black into white and to applaud and raise her hand, to vote obediently as the communist regime of the time wanted.

We as a society despised them for the big lie they sold us, for their conformity and for their lack of courage in the face of authoritarianism. The echo of this contempt has reached the younger generation, but apparently not the lesson from it. The fact that today there are intellectuals who, like Ms. Marubi, accept employment as "Representatives of the People" worries me, because it shows that we as a society have either learned nothing from our bitter past experience, or worse yet, have lost the lesson.

We still continue to harbor the mistaken belief that authoritarianism belongs only to communism. Authoritarianism is an approach, not a set of ideas. Authoritarianism has no intrinsic connection to the left or the right. It is simply allergic to debate and dissent within any ideology.

From the time of Caesar, then Mussolini and Hitler, Stalin and Enver, to the present day of Orban, Erdo?an and Edi Rama, authoritarianism, to succeed, needs to rely on a group of elites who understand that their only role is to serve the leader, however dishonest he may be and however great the corruption. They need to argue that violating the constitution or distorting the law is the right thing to do. They need to manipulate discontent and channel anger and fear. Only in authoritarian regimes are intellectuals employed by the party as representatives of the people, as this is the only way to ensure their obedience to the employer and the realization of its objectives.

Therefore, today, the authoritarian personalist regime of Edi Rama, all it needs is money and candidates or “representative officials”. Political principles, plans for specific actions no longer matter. What matters is the way these “officials” are projected by his propaganda. Therefore, Marjanat is offered to us as an alternative reality that is carefully formulated, with the help of modern marketing techniques, audience segmentation and media campaigns, even foreign ones.

But things are even worse than the complacent Marjana can imagine at this moment. The job as a People's Representative in the socialist party where Marjana is claimed to bring change, now unlike before, can even be inherited. In Shkodra, at Marjana's side is the heiress of her father, a deputy, who without any hesitation inherits the representation to her daughter.

Servants of Authoritarianism

In Victorian times it was unworthy to mention trousers in front of a lady. And perhaps it may seem equally unworthy to mention the Lenka phenomenon to young people like Marjana, who were born in a democracy and perhaps (through no fault of their own) nowhere and no one has taught them history and its phenomena.
But a nation that forgets the lessons of the past is very likely to repeat them and even worsen them as is happening in Albania today./ CNA