in albania they ran out of pigs so they’re using uhh bus ticket salesmen (job that doesnt exist anymore in most countries I’m sure), prisoners and police academy students. they’re pushing protesters out of main squares by using extremely large amounts of tear gas, to the point that you can smell it throughout the whole city. then (potential cw on further reading) the pigs chase protesters in alleys and corners where there’s no media so they can beat the shit out of them. there’s videos of them breaking bones intentionally. it’s terrifying and it happened overnight, stuff that ive only read about materialized overnight. the violence hidden came to the forefront for everyone to see and experience. it’s also very hard to talk to people about these events from a class perspective or socialist perspective since there is no political education of any kind here. it’s almost impossible to bring up marx without people becoming hysterical. almost impossible to question the ways of the western overlords who have god status here and to whom people here look up to. most importantly the population is small, the share of young people even smaller. unorganized protestes cant last long since they already detained/arrested hundreds of people (most will inevitably be let go but theyre terrified). it’s an extremely difficult situation, i dont know what could be done.
it’s almost impossible to bring up marx without people becoming hysterical
It’s even sadder when you think that not so long ago it used to be a socialist country (with its flaws of course)
hi, responding late cause i double-checked a couple of things in order to not risk spreading misinfo since i didnt live back then. hoxha is very responsible for this view that people now have of socialism here and because i dont want to paste a wall of text of known history, ill focus on just one big problem ive noticed with socialist education back then. very few people were actually educated in socialism and it seems people who were in good terms with the party kept marx and lenin’s book for home decor. today i checked some didactic book on historical materialism that was taught in universities back then and it was crap. 0 arguments, just statement after statement after statement. it didnt even talk about historical materialism. there were statements citing hoxha saying china never had a dictatorship of the proletariat among other bold statements lol. so long story short, ML was mystified before and after regime* change, to make a stupid analogy, it went from being doctrine of god to doctrine of the devil overnight. to me that’s very disappointing because how does one fuck up that bad, marx is supposed to help you understand how the world works, how it evolved to this point and so on, so scientific socialism is supposed to explain/demistify capitalism, not be obscured/turned into a religion. so because of this + western influence which is a given, people here now think socialism = mecha-hoxha in charge.
Yeah especially in the Balkan regions socialism was very flawed. Still, I struggle to imagine how you can imagine a better future with capitalism the way things are going than with a, flawed even, form of socialism with the material conditions that are possible in our times.
Surprisingly on the nose title for the Guardian
was my first thought as well
it seems like they get to do that occasionally.
S-tier level projection in the article body
For whatever reason the French people protest more than most western people. In order to keep them down the French police has to be more violent.
If Norwegians were protesting as much as the French, the Norwegian police would be just as violent.
I know this one! They are trained by Israel/USA?
France has its own empire, not every extension of capitalism is an extension of the US.
I just thought I’d read somewhere that European cops train with American cops occasionally and share tactics.
France definitely does, this is from 2023:
The Israeli Police Commission received a fax from the French police to inquire about how to manage the crisis they are dealing with, The Israel Hayom newspaper reported.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/france-seeks-israels-help-to-deal-with-protests/2935719
It seems likely that they still cooperate.
