Civil hatred

By Shpëtim Luku

There are countries that have experienced civil war. But there are countries, like Albania, that are experiencing civil hatred.

If civil war is an armed conflict between two or more groups within the borders of a state, the civil hatred in which Albanians are immersed is the great contradiction between two or more groups living within the same state, sharing the same space, the same streets, the same concerns, yet increasingly seeing each other as opponents rather than fellow citizens.

And this is, to a large extent, the “merit” of politics.

A member or militant of the Democratic Party is filled with hatred for his colleague who fights in the opposing camp. His leader helps him in this respect, drawing the dimensions and reasons of hatred toward the political opponent, and the disciples follow behind.

On the other hand, the members or militants of the Socialist Party have no great claim to reflection either, as long as before them stands the “army” commanded by a person who, in their political narrative, is linked to the pyramid schemes, the years 1997–1998, the four victims of January 21, Gërdec, the SHIK led by Gazidede, and so on.

But the circle keeps widening. Even the so-called new parties are pouring fuel on this fire. Their activists and militants often operate with the same methods: persecute, insult, label, curse. As if politics were no longer the ability to convince the voter, but the ability to humiliate the opponent. As if he, the opponent, were not a citizen who thinks differently, but an enemy to be defeated, denounced, dismantled and, if possible, erased from the public space.

Thus politics no longer ends when the election campaign ends. It follows us to the café, to the family, to the workplace, to social media. It creeps into conversations among friends and, sometimes, even into relationships between people who until yesterday had no reason to be enemies.

But this is the paradox. Politicians quarrel over power, while citizens learn to hate each other. The politician can sit tomorrow at a table with his opponent. He can negotiate, make deals, cooperate, even switch alliances, as has not rarely happened. That is part of politics. While the militant remains with the resentment, with the insult and with the hostility that has been fed to him for years.

At this point, civil hatred becomes more dangerous than an ordinary political debate, which has an end. Hatred needs no argument. It simply needs an enemy.

And the more enemies it has, the more its existence is justified.

Perhaps that is also why in Albania we have so many “campers” and so few citizens who can listen to the other without first asking which party they belong to.

After all, what does it matter if one is a socialist, another a democrat, another supports a new party or believes in none of them? Everyone uses the same streets, pays the same taxes, faces the same prices, expects the same services and lives in the same country.

Civil wars have borders, fronts and weapons. Civil hatred needs none of them.

All it takes is a screen, a status, a label, a heavy word.

And then another one responds.

Then another one. Until we are forced to live under this atmosphere that it has created. Civil Hatred.