Translated from Albanian · Original article in Albanian →

by Besmir Semanaj

Edi Rama has described the young protesters as ideologised under the influence of ANTIFA, the organisation the US president has declared a terrorist group. Security experts say that, to date, no evidence has been presented of the existence of such a structure in Albania. Nevertheless, let us accept the prime minister’s hypothesis for a moment and follow it with his own logic all the way to the end. If we do, we will see that every road leads to the same door: the door of Edi Rama himself.

I. Ideology

According to Rama’s own description, ANTIFA is a radical left-wing movement. In Albania, the left-wing force that has governed for thirteen years is Edi Rama’s Socialist Party. This party is the direct heir of the Party of Labour, which based its entire legitimacy on the anti-fascist struggle. Every 29 November, Rama’s party celebrates liberation from fascism as one of the founding dates of its history.

So if a “radicalised anti-fascist spirit” existed anywhere in Albania, its place would not be among the students protesting against corruption, the miserable conditions in universities and Kushner’s resort in Zvërnec. It would find its natural home in the political tradition that Rama himself represents.

II. The money

Rama did not mention ANTIFA by chance. He linked it directly to Donald Trump’s decision, thereby adopting the US administration’s perspective wholesale. That perspective does not stop at the organisation’s name; it also extends to those who, in its view, fund it. Trump demanded that ANTIFA’s funders be fully investigated. In September 2025, a presidential memorandum asked US prosecutors to draw up plans to investigate the Open Society Foundations, the network founded by George Soros. Republicans in Congress then asked Open Society for documents on its alleged links to groups close to ANTIFA.

It must be said clearly that these are political accusations, unproven in any court. But they are precisely the accusations of the camp that Rama chose to cite. And in Albania, the most visible friend of the Soros family is not some student, but the prime minister himself. In April this year, Alex Soros published a photo of a one-on-one meeting with Rama in Barcelona, captioned “progressives in Barcelona”. In August, according to media reports, Rama hosted him at the government residence in Dhërmi. Earlier, Rama and his wife had attended Alex Soros’s wedding.

If we follow the logic Rama himself cites, if ANTIFA is paid by the Soros network and that network has a friend in Tirana, that friend is not the masked young man on the boulevard. It is the man who sits at the table with the Soroses.

III. Who benefits

In every investigation, the first question is always the same: who benefits?

For five months, the peaceful protests put Rama in the greatest difficulty of his career. But as soon as stones, fires and broken shop windows appeared on the boulevard, the prime minister got exactly what he had been missing. He now had a reason to portray the protest as violence, the students as “terrorists” and their demands as worthless. Immediately afterwards, he announced technology to identify masked individuals and a ban on entry to the European Union for violent protesters.

The students have gained nothing from the violence. It has weakened their public support and brought the police down on them. Politically, the benefit has gone only to the government. This does not prove that the government is behind the violence. But the question is addressed to the one who brought ANTIFA into the Albanian debate: if there is a group that, through its actions, is serving Rama, who is it?

Conclusion

Rama has made an accusation that, if taken seriously, turns against him. Anti-fascism in Albania is the legacy of his own party. The network accused by Trump’s camp has its friend in the Prime Minister’s Office, not in the university. The violence he blames on ANTIFA has served, politically, only him.

That leaves only two conclusions. Either ANTIFA does not exist in Albania, and Rama is lying about the students. Or, if it does exist, it is within his own circle and is serving him. In both cases, the young people who take to the boulevard every night have nothing in common with it.