Lessons in Authoritarianism: Albanian Ghosts Dance in the White House
Much has been written about how Trump (and his Maple-MAGA admirer Poilievre in Canada, if he gets the chance) is following Hitler’s playbook to destroy democracy, but Albania offers a much more recent example. Learning the horrors of Enver Hoxha’s 41-year authoritarian reign has been emotionally draining as I see the parallels to current affairs back home.
When visiting historical sites such as Roman coliseums and German concentration camps, I never believed that such atrocities could happen “now in modern times” nor in the “more advanced and humane civilization” I grew up in. But those self-protective illusions fall away here, where every museum display and guide’s story contain vivid parallels to the direction the USA - and, I fear, Canada - are being led less than three decades later.
As each tour guide talks about what happened here in Albania up to 27 years ago, a second voice in my head narrates the new version happening in real time in the US. I’m going to reflect that second voice in italics below - if it’s jarring and unsettling to read, please know that it’s been even more jarring and unsettling to stand inside a recent torture chamber or surveillance network or underground atomic bunker while holding in awareness that history is repeating itself right now.
Communism Tour: Blind Loyalty and Faith in the President
On a 3-hour walking tour our guide explains that President Hoxha rose to power promising democracy and freedom, then immediately switched to communism and oppression (remember Trump denying knowledge of the Project 2025 now being implemented)? Hoxha banned and ruthlessly persecuted all religions (Trump still needs the religious right support) and replaced them with a mantra of giving “thanks to the mother party” instead of to God (“Trust in Trump” has been the reassurance given during these first months of economic upheaval, not coincidentally parallelling “Trust in God”).
Clint - our guide was named after Clint Eastwood, on whom his grandmother had a big crush - explains that all wealth and power was concentrated in a small group of rich men who swore and demonstrated blind obedience to the party and leader. They would be viciously cut out of the circle - torture and death for them, forced labour camps for all their family members - for any suspicion of disloyalty. (Trump is openly purging the civil service, government, judiciary and military of anyone not swearing allegiance to his agenda, though so far he has only exiled non-citizens to El Salvador prison camps).
“Is there nothing at all good you can say about the Communist regime?” I ask. Clint points to the investment in education and health for the first 2 years, but that’s it. Even women’s rights he won’t concede - “Yes, women did step up into the workforce and academia, but mostly as a way to exploit their labour while still expecting them to come home from a gruelling day building roads or operating machinery then also do all the traditional “women’s work” of running the house while the men drank raki.” (Trump’s take on women’s rights, including reproductive health, is to take them back a century.)
Museum of Surveillance: Spying, Dehumanization and Torture
The dark foreboding house is set back from the road, covered in leafy vines, oozing dark energy. Once a maternity clinic, in the communist era it transformed into the center of the “Sigurimi,” President Hoxha’s version of the KGB secret police. Today it is one of many buildings that has been opened to the public as a way of bringing all the dark secrets to light to allow for learning, recovery, and hopefully assurance that it could never again happen (at least not here…)
“The House of Leaves was covered for a long time with all sorts of legends and it comprised the unknown, a mystery. Whispers of people and rustling of leaves… By opening the doors of this house, this museum will unfold simultaneously aspects of Albanian society in the conditions of a regime that aimed at the total control over the human bodies and souls.” (Museum of Surveillance website)
We walk through the heavy house - a notably small facility for such a sweeping national organization. The leader believed that anyone not endorsing his world view was an enemy, including every foreign nation (even Russia and China were eventually written off as “not socialist enough”) and anyone within Albania with a different opinion. (Trump demonizes the “woke Leftist” internally, and even the peaceful democratic trading partner Canada to the north. Like Hoxca, he is breaking relations with traditional allies and isolating the country).
Total control of the narrative required, and justified, extreme measures to monitor citizens - bugs in houses and hotels, phone taps, spies, informants. Human rights, privacy and due process were less important than the national interest of routing out the “enemy within.” (Elon Musk’s DOGE team is openly accessing computer data and seizing private information on American citizens using much more sophisticated technology. Officially it is only to enhance “efficiency” and “cost savings,” but this is really data mining to identify illegal immigrants and control the entire US population.)
Every time someone was arrested the government would announce that they had been informed by a neighbour or relative, deliberately destroying trust and solidarity, turning family and friends against each other (remember Trump calling on federal employees to report on their colleagues?). Our guide, who wasn’t even alive during this era, speaks to the generational trauma: “You see us Albanians at a bar and we are so happy and talking loudly together. But watch carefully when a waiter approaches, we go quiet, like he might be an informant. We don’t even know why we do this, it’s just a learned behavior passed down from our parents and grandparents who never knew who they could trust.”
Still in this Museum of Surveillance, I stand in the room where Albanian citizens were interrogated and tortured to sign false confessions, then sent to either life imprisonment or execution depending on the whim of that day’s officer. The physical torture was secondary, the display says, to the emotional torture of knowing that their entire family would now be labelled a security threat and sent to forced labor camps in distant parts of the country. (Trump is already deporting people without due process nor proof of any wrongdoing, and outsourcing inhumane treatment to El Salvador. The dehumanizing of “others” that is a prerequisite to inhumane practices, including torture, is everywhere: Immigrants are all “rapists and drug dealers.” Democrats are “libtards.” Canadians are “nasty.”)
Women’s Museum: Control of Education and Families of “Bad Biography”
In a restored 2-bedroom communist-block apartment we experience the starkness of an era where private ownership of anything was illegal. The standard government-issued furniture, dishes and portrait of President Hoxha are sufficient and bland. Sigurimi forces would regularly arrive unannounced to move families to a new building, both to disrupt community bonds (ie, possible resistance blocks) and to inspect all their belongings for signs of religion or rebellion. (While Trump shares Hoxcha’s authoritarian characteristics and disregard for privacy and rights, his economic model clearly differs, favoring private ownership and ostentatious displays of wealth, particularly by the upper 1% or 0.1%).
This was the apartment of a family with a “bad biography” - intellectual, formerly wealthy, international ties, artistic - all indications of non-communist ideology. They and all their relatives were excluded from higher education, good jobs, and freedom of movement, and had to maintain a “House Book” recording their daily activities and outings to be regularly reviewed and approved by the Sigurimi.
Education was a key weapon for this authoritarian regime. Children were indoctrinated to despise and fear the outside world, while putting absolute trust in Hoxha - known by the children as “Uncle Enver” - and the party. (I reflect on the personality cult around strongman Trump, how more fanatical and blind that feels than the left’s belief in democracy and governing principles regardless of the leader’s strengths and weaknesses - nobody thought Biden was God!)
As a family of “bad biography”, the children of this apartment were automatically excluded from higher education. For other youth, one of the university entry test questions was, “You’re on a boat with 2 others that’s almost sinking…”. If they answered “(A) I’d give up and accept death”, they were seen as perfect sheep and assigned to factory-type jobs. Answer “(B) I’d steady the boat and find a way to save all 3 of us” meant that they were populists and punished as a threat to the regime. Answer “(C) I’d thrown the other 2 overboard and save myself” identified them as ideal party loyalists, earning them university entrance and a ticket to power within the regime. (Trump is using education to further his propaganda and control, crippling the Department of Education and cutting funding to schools and universities teaching “woke” subjects outside his Party’s ideology.)
The Presidential Palace: Propaganda and Power for Personal Gain
Lea Ypi, in her highly recommended autobiography Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History, recalls her tears of abject fear and despair when President Hoxha died - and later the long process of reeducating herself when finally given access to true information about the regime. I try to believe we are smarter nowadays than to swallow preposterous propaganda that leads to such devotion (“They kill puppies on church doorsteps”, the equally outrageous German Nazis told their citizens about us westerners), but then remember how easily Americans chose to believe that Haitian immigrants were eating pet dogs in Ohio.
On the day we tour Hoxha’s former villa, our guide also begins by recalling how he and his classmates cried when their grief-stricken teacher informed them of Hoxha’s death, believing Hoxha to be the one protective father between them and the evil West. He continues to explain that now the impression of the US has swung too far the other way, believing capitalism to be perfect and the US its nirvanic capital. “But at least these days we can have a discussion about it,” he philosophizes. “Isn’t it great that people can have their own opinion now!” (Where is there room for true debate and respectful sharing of different perspectives in the US these days, especially when Trump's discrediting and attacks on the free press make it impossible to even agree on basic informational truth?)
The villa is in the Blokku neighbourhood - once completely cut off to all but the party elite, now bustling with trendy restaurants and nightclubs established in the old villas. Hoxha’s residence - a gorgeous Frank Lloyd Wright-style sprawl - had been a private residence before the covetous president had him tortured for several years, then released but under such heavy surveillance that he went crazy and committed suicide. (I think of Trump using his presidential power for personal gain, persecuting judges, universities, military personnel, tech companies, anyone who has in the past tried to stand in the way of what he wants.)
Bunk’Art 1&2: Closing the Borders
We descend into the labyrinth of underground tunnels and bunkers meant to protect party leaders in the face of attack and nuclear bombing. The two sites - one downtown and one chiselled into the mountain - now house historical and artistic displays about the travesties of the Communist era.
One display that hits close to home shows how tourists were treated with intense scrutiny and suspicion. Questioning rooms at the border included a barber’s chair to rid them of their hippie hair and beards. Those lucky enough to be admitted were given a pin to wear at all times, identifying them as subjects to be constantly watched and reported on. (As I write this, two young German travellers have been detained, strip-searched and deported trying to enter Hawaii for a mere three-week vacation. US border officials are asking visitors about their political views, and are looking through private phones and laptops for anti-government communications.)
History Repeating
Every one of the sites we visit displays a quote about history repeating itself if we don’t keep it in the light. For me, the emotional impact of learning about the horrors of Albania’s dictatorship has been heightened by the clear parallels to current US politics. Collection of private data, concentration of power, intolerance of opposing viewpoints and demands for blind obedience, deportations without due process, stacking of all levels of government and civil service with party loyalists, control of information through media and education, dehumanization of people from other countries and religions and ideologies - this all built the authoritarian regime in Albania and is all happening again right now.
Trump and the Project 2025 MAGA power elite are not making this up - they are following the playbook of Hoxha (and other dictators). Americans (and Canadians) are not smarter or stronger or more prepared than Albanian people were. It’s crucial to understand and not hide from this truth - it happened here in Albania just yesterday, and is happening in the US today. If we don’t learn from the past, history will repeat itself.
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Currently in...
Mayne Island, BC, then to a family wedding in Surrey
Heading to...
Paris, Albania, Milan, then Cambodia-Thailand-Vietnam for Oct-May. Please share any sites, people or ideas by email.
Rick, oh boy really hard to see,,,, thanks good honest work,
It’s devastating for many Americans, Rick. It’s visceral for us — this history repeating itself. We feel the happening of it. And we stand up and speak out every day. Contemplating how to fight when what we pray for is peace — and understanding that for many other Americans, they see “peace” in the violence that is done to “Others”. Despair is a tool used by those in power. We need to find the experience and share Joy. To take a stand the moment. In addition to remembering how the bad happened, it’s important to remember the lessons of how the good survived. Your wanderings and wonderings buoy me. 🕊️
Knowing that so many Americans are doing what you can to oppose the regime is heartening. And you’re right, we also have to hold onto the good. I love Dan Rather’s weekly “reason to smile” (and his other weekly analyses).