A sketch of the anthropology of dignity and the fabricated universe that the author attributes to Rama.
At the latest meeting with the Socialist Party parliamentary group, Rama highlighted three elements that, according to this analysis, are closely connected. First, he said that the public reaction stems from the fabricated world of the algorithm. He then argued that the people reacting have become detached from reality because, in his view, they are being manipulated by that same algorithm. At its core, this continues the idea that the people do not think critically and are easily influenced. Finally, repeating the same line, he declared that whoever makes accusations must prove them.
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According to the author, the claim that the algorithm is defeating everyday reality turns the issue upside down. In fact, the algorithm began to reflect the truth precisely when society returned to itself and openly came out against what Rama’s regime had long been doing. This, the text says, has also been expressed even more clearly by many media specialists. It is precisely here that the analysis seeks to go further: to the way Rama is trying to bring people back to the reality he himself has fabricated, referred to here as the Rama Reality.
So, according to this view, the reality Rama is seeking to restore is precisely the one he himself built as an artificial construct. The question raised is what means he is using to rebuild it.
To restore this reality, the author says Rama has an entire industry at his disposal working for him. This includes journalists paid more than 20 thousand euros a month, media directly involved in the construction industry, a wide network of patronage operatives, as well as international companies known for the sophisticated production of fake news, intimidation, and especially for the policy of constructing the ideal enemy that can then be defeated.
In his speech, according to the analysis, Rama gave assurances to this machine that he will not resign. In fact, according to the author, the message went even further: if I sink, I will take you with me.
In this strategy of returning to the Rama Reality, the thesis that whoever accuses must prove it also plays a role. To support this, he cited Roman law as an example. The author notes that the history of Roman law is more complicated and does not attempt here to enlighten Rama on this point, but agrees to take this claim at face value. Even in that case, according to the analysis, what Rama himself has admitted would be enough to warrant his resignation.
What, specifically, has he admitted? According to the text, he has acknowledged that the fencing off of a protected area was allowed without a project. Likewise, heavy machinery was allowed inside a protected area, and this has already caused considerable environmental damage. According to the author, there must also be accountability for changing the map of protected areas, which shows that this was done with the aim of favoring strategic investors. It also mentions the fact that laws were drafted for so-called strategic investors, which, according to the analysis, turned out to be tailor-made laws. And, remaining in the field of law, the author argues that anyone who drafts tailor-made laws has violated the Constitution and the spirit of the rule of law, because many principles have been undermined, but above all the general nature that the law must have.
The analysis adds that there is even more than that. According to it, Rama has tried to manipulate society when he declared that construction is allowed in category 5 protected areas in the way he interprets it. Likewise, when he says that people’s opposition comes from the influence of enemies, the author underlines that he invents these enemies himself, while as prime minister he proves incapable of arresting or stopping them. The same logic, according to the article, also appears when he tries to control the protesters, to the point of mentioning that he has seen their girlfriends at the protest.
The politics of insult and intimidation, the analysis says, are not new. However, the way they are now being used is presented as different, because until now Rama had avoided half of the strategy that had long been developed by the masters of producing the Rama Reality.
One of the mechanisms of this Rama Reality, according to the author, has been the creation of a media environment and a popular culture that give the impression of a culturally kitsch society, or of a shallow and banal culture. This is linked to the strategy of constructing the image that Albanian society is fortunate to have a prime minister like Rama. As proof of this, the analysis invites the reader to look at these past four days, when one of the main messages promoted by the “agents” of Rama’s Reality has been that there will never again be a leader like Rama and that he supposedly had a vision for this society.
In this way, all of Rama’s abuse of power, according to this interpretation, is presented as a civilizing project. Constructions on the coast and in Tirana are also included within this framework.
Part of Rama’s fabricated world is also, according to the analysis, the production of ridiculous public figures. Especially after Covid-19, television studios, portals, and newspapers were filled with fabricated characters presented as public figures. To understand how they were produced, the author suggests going back in time to see how the main media outlets of the Rama Reality sponsored them.
These figures, the analysis continues, appear everywhere: as analysts, as party spokespeople, as names in art and culture, or as scholars of history. Their function has been to blur as much as possible the line between the fabricated world and the world of facts. According to the author, Rama has used this game in the typical manner of master tricksters, leaving opponents with the burden of proof while building his own Reality on fabrication.
In the logic of the Rama Reality, according to the article, these figures damage the boundaries between truth and fiction. The first effect is that anyone entering the debate starts from the principle of equality between the parties, between the ridiculous approach and the more academic one. In this way, the audience’s mind is stirred and clouded. Not because the public lacks filters, but because the aim is to plant the idea that the search for truth and the struggle for what is right are pointless. The more such figures there are with popular backing, the less hope remains, according to the author, that society has people who can react seriously, as is happening now.
The question then raised is what the other half of the strategy is that had not previously appeared and how the two are connected.
Until now, according to the analysis, Rama had almost never spoken of the existence of Albania’s enemies. Now, however, he says that “we know them well.” The only exception is Iran, which had been mentioned as such several years ago, for reasons that are known. As for the rest of the enemies, the text underlines that until this moment Rama had insisted that he was a leader who denied the existence of enemies and that they were more fabricated than real. For this reason, he often also received credit as a cosmopolitan leader.
But according to the author, reality has been different.
In the daily practice of power, it is said that ideas have been sponsored according to which Albanian society contains many social, cultural, and religious groups that are enemies of one another and of the Albanian state. For this purpose, the Rama Reality used many public figures to write, but the main role was played by those who stood between the ridiculous world and reality.
In the discourse of these new and old “analysts,” according to the analysis, fragments of partial truths about various “enemies” were allowed to enter.
During the Flamingo Revolution, according to the author, the Rama Reality was shaken more not by the algorithm or by the presence of external “enemies,” but by the fact that these worlds, which he had portrayed, and indeed often self-portrayed, as worlds hostile to one another, agreed to unite against the Rama Reality.
For this reason, these days the Rama Reality is trying to identify as many enemy figures as possible within social realities in Tirana and more broadly in the Albanian world. He is trying to link this to the idea of manipulation by the algorithm. Meanwhile, according to the analysis, his hope rests on the fatigue of the protesters, so that, as he himself put it in English, they will fade away, as well as on keeping the party under control and feeding the machine that fabricates reality. According to the author, he will continue with this approach in the future, because he knows that in the Outside World the reality he had proposed to them will no longer work.
In the end, the text concludes that the game is now being played between three realities. The first is the reality people experience every day. The second is what the analysis calls the Rama Reality. The third is the reality people want to build: that of a just and democratic society. It is precisely this third reality, according to the author, that cannot be brought under control, because it is imaginary and is sustained by hope and by the need for dignity.
