On tue un homme, on est un assassin.
On tue des millions d’hommes, on est un conquèrant.
On les tue tous, on est un dieu.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin.
Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror.
Kill everyone and you are a god.
Jean Rostand
Pensèes d’un biologiste
The wraps are off. The secrecy surrounding the death of the Ethiopian dictator is in itself highly instructive to those who do not know the history and the reality of the Ethiopian empire dubbed “the Federal Republic” by the EPRDF/TPLF regime. More instructive is, however, the reactions of some eminent personalities in the west especially in the USA and Britain to his death. Their gushing shameless eulogies in his memory show clearly, if anything, the structural problems of western democracies and global capitalism, an issue which I briefly tried to raise in my last article.
We are living in a highly dangerous transitional phase of history where the only leading superpower acts like an angry god doing what it always likes to do, dictating its own standards to the human race no matter how inhuman and brutal they are, and no matter what the majority of ordinary peoples of the world think. Actually the history of double-talk here is very old. Let us not forget that even the Declaration of Independence confirming that all men were created equal was drafted and signed by large-scale slave owners. Of course forms of slavery are constantly changing but its essential disregard for human dignity is not. I think this point is clear to every informed sensible person.
What is not equally clear is the fact that most of us belonging to the oppressed peoples in general are active participants in our own enslavement not in the struggle for our emancipation. The habits of deception and dissembling, the basic survival instinct, learned over generations of yes-man mentality is our number one enemy. This is nowhere truer than among us Oromos. Toward the end of my involvement with the EPRDF, I saw for myself how Meles behaved like a lion, behind closed doors, among the hyenas of the OPDO. For such hyenas he is a genius, even a god.
The praise for Meles Zenawi is followed by statements of the regime and its international paymasters that there will be no change of policy- there will be no end to brutalities at home and abroad in Somalia. I think I have said enough for the time being in my last article on the possible post Meles scenarios. Ethiopia is a huge prison in which all forms of torture and killings are practised. One of the most effective strategies always used by the Amhara and now Tigray despots is trying systematically to limit peoples’ access to knowledge and information even in this internet age.
By letting all this happen is the west fulfilling its “manifest destiny”? Mao Zedong was wrong when he described American imperialism as paper tiger. It is a real tiger. What can oppressed peoples do in the face of its might? The problem is the philosophy of instant self-gratification, of a quick fix and irresponsible living has become the religion of our time. Can we clear this hurdle? Can we afford at least a silent no to injustice and arrogance?