Ethiopian Nationalism is wounded nationalism because of the bloody war it has been fighting with its foes since 1960s. It has been fighting both with its internal and external enemies which were created, harbored and brought up by Narrow Ethiopian Nationalism itself. It was decisively defeated both in the battles of armed struggles and in realm of ideas. Due to these bitter defeats Eritrea has gone forever. “Ethno”-Nationalists (even though I do not like this name, I could not get better one) have got State power and launched bloody wars against Ethiopian Nationalism. In fact, Ethno- Nationalists have scored so many successive “victories” that has far deepened the wound of Ethiopian Nationalism. Due to these defeats and wound the Ethiopian Nationalists have started to doubt the validity and viability of their political commitments and values. Hence, they have lost self values and trapped in to the vicious cycle that could be analogized to theory of “insecurity dilemma” of the given regime.
In this regard Messay Kebede, the best mind Ethiopian nationalism can offer, wrote these statements in his recently published article titled Ethiopia’s Fragmented Elites: Origins and Syndromes. He wrote, “The dreams of the generation of the 60s and early 70s have been squashed by the victory of the Derg whose dictatorial rule decimated its morale and that of their offspring. Both were offered nothing but the humiliation of a massive exodus. Whether they stayed in the country or left, all experienced another cycle of humiliating events when they witnessed, powerless, the defeat of the Ethiopian army, the invasion of the country by an ethnic army, and the secession of Eritrea. It is hard not to infer from these events a severe damage to Ethiopian nationalism and an erosion of self-confidence such that the generation’s belief in its ability to accomplish great things has received a deadly blow. Without self-confidence, the readiness to unite for a great cause is also likely to suffer gravely.”
For me the real problem is not only the humiliating defeat the Ethiopian Nationalists faced but also how they understand and appreciate their humiliations and defeats. They rightly come to conclusion that they cannot simply sit and watch their “ideological” and political death. Without any doubt, they will, and indeed have done, come to the conclusion that they have to do something about their irreparable losses. It seems they want to do this unknown “something” urgently. Because of this urgency, humiliations, loss of self confidence and values, Ethiopian Nationalism turned to be reactive and irrational as opposed to pragmatic and strategic calculations. The reactive and irrational nature of this nationalism exposes itself to more systematic and organized attacks of its foes, who have been better organized and armed with better ideas and instruments. The more it reacts, the more it gets heavy smacks from all corners of its angry and suspicious adversaries. This has similarity to theories of insecurity dilemma: the more you do things to insure your survival, the more you expose yourself to the greater threats and risks. This is a serious confusion and a fatal vicious cycle that kills via euthanasia.
Ethiopian Nationalists deeply misunderstood their relative strength, weakness and challenges they face. They think their adversaries are weak, useless and eventually die. You can say Ethiopian Nationalism has been incurably hurting itself by “delusions of greatness and feelings of impotence”. Since what they think of themselves and what they get on the ground do not correspond, they are living and talking the world of contradiction. These create and deepen the psychology of “haplessness” and prevent them “from devising realistic responses” to the deadly socio- political problems that they have been creating, developing and promoting. When more organized and competing political forces come to the show and effectively challenge the Ethiopian Nationalism, which was protected from all sorts of democratic or whatever competitions until 1992, the leaders of Ethiopian Nationalists get themselves in to unceasing and deepening crisis. They could not come up with unifying ideologies that can compete and win support in the realm of marketplace of ideas. Since they do not have any galvanizing idea around which they democratically organize people from different sections Ethiopian peoples, Ethiopian nationalism and its leaders face problems of trust and confidence as to their competence and ability to guide and lead. Who is going to follow the losers and people who cannot come up with contextualized, updated and working ideas? In this regard Messay writes again,
“Defeat and humiliation entail leadership crisis. Just as a defeated army questions the competence of its commanding officers, so too a vanquished generation loses faith in leadership. Once leadership is distrusted, the willingness to unite in an organization is drastically reduced. No less than the need to accomplish great goals, confidence in leaders is a requirement of unity.”Another serious problem of Ethiopian nationalism is that it carries the seed of violence and clearly inconvenient to adopt it into democratic values and institutions that can earn trust and confidence from different sections of the communities. Since this nationalism was ( at until the final fall of the Dergue) created, promoted and maintained by the bloody authoritarian regimes, and hence fully backed by state security/coercive apparatus, the seeds of violence are in its deep philosophy of dealing with all sorts of problems and competing legitimate interests. In other words, Ethiopian Nationalists do not help not to resort to use of violence at their disposal whenever they get themselves in problems or crisis. That is why they are still using the structure of violence that they have been building since the end of 19th century. Even if they do not have a direct control over the institutions and personnel (the hardware) of Ethiopian repressive security apparatus, Ethiopian Nationalists are still providing the game changing ideas and justifications (the lethal software) for current Ethiopian Regime whenever it comes to dealing with their perceived or real “enemies”. For instance, they usually do not hesitate to use the “multimedia platform” under their control to launch deadly offensive propaganda wars against some Oromo political leaders and targeted activists, whom they loved to label as “Atseyyafi Gosangoch /Zeregnoch”, in English “detestable Ethno-Racists”. These acts are a sheer exercise of violence and they show how these nationalists are very much comfortable with the use of violence against their perceived “enemies” whenever possible. These violent natures of Ethiopian Nationalism do not sound convenient to solve any serious political or social matters with peaceful and democratic procedures. Fundamentally, from the past history and current political and social circumstances, it is possible to say Ethiopian nationalism is yet to be “civilized” to accommodate the differences and live peacefully with competing ideologies. Now peace, freedom, liberty, and other democratic values are not in the nature of Ethiopian nationalism; it is as wild and barbaric as that of its Menelik’s time. How anyone with sound mind can be attracted to this kind of nationalism that does not have any moral or substantive political contents of 21st century?
In relation the violent nature of Ethiopian Nationalism is that the more it uses this subtle but dangerous means of violence, the more it creates problems primarily on itself and its followers. By exercising this violence, Ethiopian Nationalists simply remind everyone, including their moderate followers, what this nationalism has been all about for the last one and half century. It is forcing almost all, including the moderate and people who have been incorporated in the Ethiopian political identity, to integrate past traumas of their ancestries into their life stories, or their self-perceptions, the traumas that are embedded in to the minds of the significant majority which have been narrated as “outbreaks of lethal violence that have been described as ‘massacre,’ ‘genocide’ and ‘expulsion.’ Etc. These again create another cycle of resentments and mistrusts which decisively works against their wounds, but immensely strengthen their opponents. This is something that makes me wonder how this nationalism is founded upon its own grave.
I can list so many ways in which the very manifestation of wounded Ethiopian Nationalism works against itself than working against its competitors. Just because of time and space again, I will try to put this in another part of my note. For now, once more, I would like to quote Messay’s recent statement on this wounded nature of Ethiopian nationalism. It sound dark and gloomy but illustrating the points I would like to emphasis. He wrote,
“It would be naive to expect from a wounded generation the solutions to Ethiopia’s numerous problems. What was ruined by one generation cannot be fixed by the same generation. True change requires, above all, culture change, which takes time because it is a matter of creativity and growth. In short, real change is a generational issue.”I totally agree with these statements. I would also like to add, the wounded nationalism would die if it does not know how to stop wounding itself more and more. Now, every day and every moment, Ethiopian nationalism is busy in severely wounding itself and in fact bleeding to death. Doesn’t this nationalism have any nervous system that detects and trace the bleeding wounds and tell the victims to take the correcting measures? I think of their nerve node Professor Messay starts to see how he and his generation has been wounding and slowly killing their Nationalism which they took an oath to take care, nurture and protecting by all means, they means they do not have any clue about however.
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