I was confused and extremely uneasy the first time I heard a non-Albanian using the term “Šiptari.” I was a child in the early 2000s, just after the Kosovo war, and was shocked to hear it used with the intention to offend on some Serbian reality TV show. That use differed considerably from how “Shqiptar” existed in my cultural context. The term is an endonym we ethnic Albanians use in our language to refer to ourselves simply as Albanian.

Hearing “Šiptari” used this way exposed me to much more than just a derogatory term. I came to learn that this term existed in a broader Yugoslav historical context where anti-Albanian sentiment was commonplace, embedded in stereotypes, racializations, orientalisms and forms of cultural appropriation. 

As a researcher on Albanian identity and the former Yugoslavia, I have found anti-Albanian sentiment to be a consistent plague before and during in all eras of Yugoslavia, from the interwar period to Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia and of course, the 1990s, when the Kosovo Albanian population’s entire existence was threatened. This anti-Albanian sentiment, however, continues to persist today, affecting Albanian communities both in the Balkan region and in their diasporas.

A history of dehumanization

Dehumanization of Albanians predates the Yugoslav state, as demonstrated in part by the works of Karl May, a German author who wrote wild tales about supposed Albanian savages in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many officials in the early Serbian state echoed such perspectives, referring to Albanians as a “wild tribe” with “cruel instincts.” 

Jovan Cvijić, a Serbian geographer and ethnologist, stated in the late 19th century that “there is a general consensus that the Albanians are the most barbarous tribes of Europe.” Vladan Ðorđević, prime minister of Serbia from 1897 to 1900, claimed that Albanians were “modern troglodytes” who were “bloodthirsty, stunted, animal-like” and reminded him of “pre-humans who slept in trees.” 

These narratives about Albanians are over 100 years old, yet they still impact me, a Kosovar-Albanian man born and raised in London. Not only have I had to contend with negative depictions of Albanians in U.K. media, but even second and third generation members of Yugoslav diasporas have either knowingly or unknowingly projected historic anti-Albanian tropes toward me. 

One example of this comes in the form of people questioning the accuracy of my family’s lived experience. In one instance, I was criticizing Tito online for allowing Aleksandar Ranković, the head of the Yugoslav secret police, to enact a repressive regime against Albanians, which led my family and many others to be displaced. A follower from a different Yugoslav diaspora group responded with “are you sure that actually happened?” It was as if she preferred to discount my family’s story than consider what ethnic Albanians and other non-Slavic communities experienced in socialist Yugoslavia. 

I wanted to gauge whether others in the Albanian diaspora had experienced similar undermining and persistent questioning, so I spoke with Kosovare Duraku, a woman of Kosovar-Albanian descent who currently lives and works in the Netherlands. She told me that people from former Yugoslavia often “completely freeze or turn pale” upon hearing her name. She mentioned instances where she felt like a “fact-checker,” defending traumatic historical realities that are often still denied or intensely questioned. She told me that she was once asked by an individual of Serbian descent in the Netherlands whether it was true that Albanians had historically kidnapped Serbian children and fed them alive to zoo animals. 

Such experiences illustrate anti-Albanian sentiment’s multidimensional nature. Yugoslavia’s anti-Albanian narratives have existed in extreme and casual forms across generations and in different geographic contexts. They have survived longer than Yugoslavia did. In this context, it is crucial to foster a Balkan cultural space, both in the region and its diaspora communities, in which historic stereotypes are broken down rather than maintained.

Yugonostalgia… for who?

In pre-WWII Yugoslavia, many Albanians in Kosovo and other parts of Yugoslavia resented being part of a state that did not afford them self-determination. In a 1930 memorandum to the League of Nations titled “The Situation of the Albanian Minority in Yugoslavia,” Catholic Priests Gjon Bisaku, Shtjefen Kurti and Luigj Gashi detailed the repressive regime against ethnic Albanians, stating that Belgrade government’s political goal was to “change the ethnic structure of the regions inhabited by Albanians at all costs.”

Life was very difficult for non-Slavic communities in early Yugoslavia, which was known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the time. Sociologist Gezim Krasniqi notes that for “Albanians, Turks, Hungarians… their distinct identity was practically denied during the interwar decades by the dominant Serbs in an attempt to define the political community in exclusive and homogenous terms.” This society impacted all aspects of Albanian life in Yugoslavia, leading to a lack of political representation and outlawing of Albanian language education. 

The pre-WWII Yugoslav state expropriated land through reforms and instigated a scheme of settler colonialism, incentivizing Serbs from other areas of Yugoslavia to settle in parts of Kosovo to forcibly alter Kosovo’s ethnic demographics. Many ethnic Albanians also faced deportation, a further effort to disenfranchise the Albanian community. 

Anti-Albanian sentiment pervaded through politics, culture and economics during this period. Some Yugoslav historians even publicly called for the mass expulsion of Albanians. Vaso Čubrilović, a Bosnian Serb academic and political figure, presented a memorandum titled “Expulsion of the Albanians” in March 1937, calling for the state to make the “Arnaut [Albanian] suffer as much as he can.” Čubrilović laid down a framework for making life for Albanians in Yugoslavia unbearable: encouraging fines, arrests, disproportionate punishments for petty crimes and even calling for deforestation to prevent Albanians from being able to sustain themselves.

While Kosovo gained an elevated political position — becoming what was called the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija ― and Albanians were recognized as a national minority in the socialist system that emerged after WWII, stereotypes, discrimination and structural limitations persisted. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia’s slogan “Bratstvo i Jedinstvo” — Brotherhood and Unity — represents an objectively positive ideal. But if all were united under Brotherhood and Unity, why was Kosovo under the grip of a radical ethno-nationalist like Ranković, whose secret police forces brutalized Albanians? 

While socialist Yugoslavia was diverse in lived experiences, the post-Yugoslav space in the Balkan region and in their diaspora communities are often dominated by romanticized Yugo-nostalgia for Tito’s socialist state that overlooks the complexities of the Albanian experience in Yugoslavia. 

When I was in university, my critiques of the Yugoslav system were disregarded by some other classmates of Yugoslav heritage who told me that my position was inherently biased because I am Albanian. Whether through social media, university classroom debates or even my work as one of the founders of the Balkan London Collective, my positions and research have been dismissed; I’ve been told that anti-Albanian sentiment did not exist in socialist Yugoslavia or at least was not as bad as Albanians claim it was, because Albanians held places in politics and culture. 

When I spoke to my father about socialist Yugoslavia, he told me about the positive relationships he had with people across ethnic lines, relationships built in part because he was from an urban area, well-traveled, multilingual and nicknamed “Dini/Dino.” All this allowed him to easily pass for any other Yugoslav ethnicity. 

The part of my father’s experiences that especially captivated me was the shock that others sometimes expressed when he would reveal himself as Albanian. They were bewildered because he, an Albanian Muslim man from Kosovo, did not match their internalized stereotypes of the supposedly unclean, ill-mannered, uncivilized and Islamist “Šiptari.” As Duraku told me, “Those who want Yugoslavia… speak from a place of privilege: their livelihood was not on the line until the actual wars broke out in the 90s.”

Orientalism and cultural appropriation 

Within Yugoslavia, Albanians held some notable social and political positions. However, that does not mean anti-Albanian sentiment didn’t exist. Both can be true at once. Furthermore, the Yugoslav state’s relationship with ethnic Albanians was inherently unbalanced.

Albanian dances, foods, music and aesthetics were used to further the notion that Yugoslavia was a supposedly diverse utopia. Dances from Kosovo’s Rugova region were incorporated into the National Yugoslav Dancing Ensemble. Traditional Albanian songs like “Hajde Shoto Mashallah,” were sung in Serbian. Yugoslavia’s demonization of Albanians, normalizing the bastardization of the very term used to define them as an ethnic group, while benefiting from aspects of Albanian culture deemed positive is cultural appropriation. 

Using aspects of Albanian culture but refusing to engage with the political desires of Albanians in Yugoslavia reveals an unbalanced society that fits with Orientalism and cultural appropriation. Albanian cultural practices deemed “other” but seen positively were allowed to exist, as this arrangement benefitted the structural system. Yet Albanians’ desire for self-determination continued to be shunned. 

Anti-Albanian sentiment today 

Anti-Albanian sentiment still persists across former Yugoslavia, though it is concentrated in Serbia. Serbian media often use the pejorative “Šiptari” to refer to Albanians, despite a court ruling categorizing the term as offensive and politically incorrect in 2017. 

Vuk Jemerić, the former president of the U.N. General Assembly, tweeted that Kosovar-Albanians reminded him of the evil orcs in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” referred to “the battle of the brave dwarves, determined to reclaim their stolen land from the evil Orc.” Jemerić’s tweet also uses the same animalistic language deployed against ethnic Albanians for over a century, falling into the same trope that Ðorđević relied on when he called Albanians “animal-like” or claimed that Albanians were “European redskins” who “sleep in trees with their tails attached to them” at the beginning of the 20th century. 

Anti-Albanian sentiment in a contemporary context returned during a men’s football match between Austria and North Macedonia during UEFA Euro 2020. Marko Arnautović, an Austrian player whose father is from Serbia, used “Šiptari” against two ethnic Albanian players from North Macedonia, displaying how anti-Albanian sentiment and slurs can persist, generation after generation, even in diaspora communities. 

Another case came in early 2024, when a Bosnian singer of Kosovar-Albanian descent, Selma Bajrami, was blocked from entering Serbia because she made a double-headed eagle with her hands during a performance. Aleksandar Vulin, the former director of Serbian intelligence, stated that this was because “you cannot show symbols of greater Albania and take money from Serbia.” Together, these cases show the scale of anti-Albanian sentiment, used and perpetuated by everyone from those at the very top to the very bottom. 

Anti-Albanian sentiment isn’t merely confined to cultural biases. It permeates systematically in countries with sizable Albanian communities and persists as a legacy of a state that vilified an entire group based on perceived differences. This dynamic has endured, echoing through the states, communities and diasporas forged in the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. This makes it imperative to cultivate environments, both in the Balkans and across diaspora communities, where our ethnic identities are celebrated, supported and granted the freedom to flourish. Such an endeavor commences with commitment to introspection, challenging the preconceived notions and biases held about people of other ethnicities.

Feature Image: Atdhe Mulla / K2.0

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