It took
the regime over four weeks to announce the death of the dictator. It looks like
they took their time time to plan what to do and how to do it. They are
perfectly aware that the individual is not liked let alone loved by the
Ethiopian people. Since his illness was hidden from the public his sudden death
would have unjarred the population. They know the situation has to be dealt delicately.
Their main goal was how to use the unfortunate situation to garner sympathy and
good will while at the same time show who the boss is.
The fact the citizen loathed the little tyrant was a big hurdle to overcome.
The only
way the party can get benefit out of this disastrous situation was to go back
into their bag of tricks and revert back to the proven method of bullying by using
force and coercion. It has worked since their inception forty years ago and
they have become really good at it. The system of bending people’s wills
to to fit the tyrants way is the hallmark of all totalitarian societies. The
TPLF did not invent it but they are very good students of everything that is
bad and toxic to society.
The
question in front of us is how and why they do that? I believe this has
eloquently been answered by Mr. Anthony Daniels in his book ‘The wilder further
shores of Marx’.
‘…..with an established totalitarian
regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but
to humiliate. From this point of view propaganda should not approximate to the
truth as closely as possible: on the contrary it should do as much violence to
it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is patently untrue, by making
such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting by everyone
publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals
to nullities. Who can retain his self respect when, far from defending what he
knows to be true, he has to applaud what he knows to be false- not
occasionally, as we all do, but for the whole of his adult life.’
This is a
nut shell describes Woyane kind of mind set. You would think Mr. Daniels has
been to Ethiopia. Mr. Daniels’s book is based on his experience of such
failed states as East Germany, the former Soviet Union, North Vietnam and North
Korea among others. The TPLF controlled Ethiopian government is copying the loathsome
practices of the Stasi in East Germany and the KGB of the Soviet Union. Folks
like Berket Semeon, Workrneh Gebeyehu, Getachew Assefa
are excellent students of such inhuman system that has managed to hurt so many
but was at last discredited by the citizen. Our country is back ward, our
people are kept illiterate by design our culture still is based on fear of
authority, fear of elder and our Woyane warriors found a fertile ground to
practice this craft of crime against a nation.
I would
like to take one statement from the quotation above and look at it in the
context of Ethiopia.
‘…..with an established
totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to
inform, but to humiliate. From this point of view propaganda should not
approximate to the truth as closely as possible: on the contrary it should do
as much violence to it as possible.’
In life Meles
Zenawi was a recluse that disparaged even the word Ethiopia. He lived in a palace
surrounded by robust security and never left his compound to mix or associate
with ordinary people. The only contact the citizen has with the PM was thru the
window of Ethiopian TV. We all know he never allowed open discussion and
surrounded himself with people that worshiped him, agreed with him and swore allegiance
to him. He is known to be very vindictive, ill tempered and unforgiving. The
Ethiopian people, his close associates and his Party feared him. There was no
respect or love for the individual. This is the man we all know.
Today
Berket Semeon and company are telling us a different story. Mind you not a
little different, not an innocent white lie but as outrageous as possible and
beyond the truth as much as possible. They just do not want the citizen to cry
a little, grief some but they expect some genuine wailing to be recorded and
beamed all over the world. Why do you think they do that? It is all about show
of power. By forcing us to do what we all know to be false they make us loose self
respect and individual will. When you see your family, your neighbor, your
coworker being forced to act in such manner when you find yourself doing
something you know deep inside to be untrue you die some. The person is reduced
to nothingness with no self respect, no spine and no free will. Haile
Gebreselassie comes to mind.
It has the
same effect on those that watch such spectacle from afar. I have noticed my
friends to be confused, unable to understand and finally choosing silence to
hide the shame. We all try to explain the phenomena by mentioning culture,
being human or religion. It is an attempt to make sense. We are trying to make
the irrational situation palatable by injecting some logic into it. It is
perfectly understandable. Our brain rejects such dissonance. We get angry, feel confused, embarrassed and helpless.
This
disturbing situation in our society is not a natural occurrence or an accident.
It is engineered by the TPLF party. In their futile attempt to stay in power
they have declared psychological form of warfare on their own people. It is
relentless, unmerciful and very lethal. It does not kill you but it reduces you
into a state of sub human, void of free will and easy to control. That is what
the criminals are doing to us. That is what they have been doing to us with
Meles Zenawi as the ring leader. Today he has left his underlings to continue
from where he left off. They show
no shame, no what is called ‘yelunta’ when they declare black is
white, wrong is right and force us to repeat it after them.
How do you
fight such form of warfare? There
is no need to panic. No shame to being forced to go against our will. A
government is a very powerful organization. When a state puts all its efforts
to do evil no one is immune. The Russians, the East Europeans went thru over
fifty years of hell. The North Koreans are in worse of shape than us. Our
tormentors are amateurs compared to the Stasi. The fact that our country is
backward and our people kept ignorant is what is giving them the power. On the
other hand the world is a different place now. The advent of the Internet, the
ubiquitous nature of Social media has given us a slight advantage. The founding
of ESAT as I said before is a game changer. The Woyane goons
monopoly on the media is no more.
We stop
the complaining and work harder to expose, undermine and attack our tormentors aggressively.
We encourage those that are trying to organize and work for us instead of
second guessing, undermining their effort and splitting hair. We hope those
that have been organizing for some time show us sign that they are here and
active. There is no need to wait for the most opportune moment rather the job
of the activist is to seize the time and make history. My friend Abebe Gelaw
did not wait for the stars to line up but rather he forced the issue and made
history. The time is now and the place is Ethiopia. We shall win, history is on
our side. Stay strong don’t let them break you.
