Condemned by fate or misfortune to coexist with Slavic neighbors, who came late to the Albanian court, Albanians and Serbs nevertheless have one thing in common. Their complete submission to national syndromes. Albanians are victims of the syndrome of megalomania, Serbs, victims of their victimization.
There is no normal Albanian, academic or functionally illiterate, of any social class and any political persuasion, who does not sincerely believe that he is a direct descendant of a superior race, that he is pure autochthonous, contemporary with God himself and grandson and great-grandson from Homer to Napoleon Bonaparte, bearer of a language that is the mother of all languages. Albanians are subject and object of a past that, as much as it is history, is also a pure myth. National renaissance as the beginning of national awakening, communism as propaganda and post-pluralist frustration, as a response to lost time, are three portraits of the same identikit.
In the long centuries under the Ottomans until liberation, Albanians have believed that they have used their proud flag to pave the way for history, but most of the time, they have only used it in the bedroom as a means of survival! Even today, Albanian leaders celebrate with excitement from the highest growth rates after Germany to the top of the hierarchy in cybersecurity. From the conviction that Albania is a special case to the breaking of the brutal Russian power in the UN. Today, Edi Rama the first and the socialists after him or Berisha yesterday, are convinced almost as much as Hoxha himself, that Albania is at the center of world attention, forgetting that it is only a modest, small and poor country. A country that can become great only if it understands the modest place it occupies on the map of international interests.
The Serbs are a similar case; they are permanent victims of their national victimization. A normal Serb is convinced that there is an international conspiracy against them. They are the only ones who celebrate their defeats with candles in their hands as victories, like the one in Kosovo Polje 600 years ago, they are capable of transforming their genocidal status in the epilogue of the former Yugoslavia into the status of victim. The Serbs have their victimization as a national ideology. In modern times, every legitimate step and action of the governments in the Republic of Kosovo for the rule of law or its normal governance, they see as revenge against the Serbian minority living there, persecution, terror and ethnic cleansing. The recent complaints of President Vučić, with the portrait of a teenager who despairs about the delay of “them”, blaming the Europeans who tolerate their Albanians for expelling the Serbs from Kosovo, are not new. They are a continuation of what all Serbian leaders before him have done, and likely what those who will replace him in power will do as well.
What is more harmful, the megalomania and unfortunate narcissism of a nation like the Albanians or the victimization as a way of approaching the world of a society like the Serbian one? The first is the folly of grandeur and living in a parallel reality that has little to do with the truth, the second has very often been the cause, source and bloody womb of conflicts throughout the Balkans.
Peoples are condemned to live with their defects. Recognizing these defects is the only way to free themselves from them. The Albanian elite has silently accepted the mimesis of “Homo Albanicus”; standing up against it, more than scientific and historical courage, requires individual bravery to stand in front of the wall of the crowd. In Serbia, there is still no question of rebuking this way of behavior; the timid voices that have done so have been kicked in the physical sense of the word.
And yet, in a world that has less and less time to deal with Balkan disputes, where it is sincerely believed that every stone is simply history, the history of tomorrow will only pass through the solution of a geopolitical equation: The Balkans will never have peace and tranquility, as long as there is no peace and coexistence between Albanians and Serbs. And peace passes only after the triumph of the war over false myths!
