Nuding Ethiopian History and the Naked Political Reply from Right Wingers

Posted by: Boonaa Dagaa January 11, 2014 

“ Ethiopian history even as a term continues to be controversial for what has been written so far is based on the idealized views of the leaders and covers only the positive deeds. Many argue history making is a societal issue and involves both positive and negative deeds. The lessons learnt from past history is the single most important benefit of having history and guides the way forward. Since  Ethiopian history does not acknowledge the negative deeds in the past  and does not serve this important benefit  many fail to acknowledge it as their own history. It is largely based on “what is good for me by choice should be good for you by force and if you don’t obey you don’t belong”. It is based on systematic exclusion and pushing faraway deviant groups as a strategy to pull them in.

This strategy has been designed in a way that it imposes the culture and identity of one group, putting generation from this group in charge to defend it. The assignment of assimilating others far deep into their culture and identity and very fast is high on their agenda. However as the history that is systematically constructed to keep the supremacy of one group, it is dressed with myths and far reaching legends which are closely connected to supernatural power and symbolized places. The legend queen Sheba and her mythological relation with King Solomon signifies the same and leaders of the Solomonic dynasty  systematically traced their decadency from this legend to load unshakable leadership on the society. The general population in the country, regardless of their ethnicity and religion, obeyed the rules in the chain for violation of their leadership is considered violation of the supernatural power. Societal and individual development in the country has also been stacked in theological stage as the result of this leadership techniques and many issues received their analysis from creationist and supernatural relation perspective and many do the same even today.

The radical lefts group that emerged in the 1960s questioned the validity of this connections between leaders and the supernatural power and whether their leadership is really sacred however not many extended this question to the sacred history of the country till very recently. Although, the history of the country is more of sacred and holly as some described and describing it, it has caused many dangers and pains that deserve critical attention. Over 80 ethnic groups in the country had lost significant number of their population and feel pain in relation to Ethiopian state formation, Minlik II and subsequent leaders and not few grew up hearing  those mind shaking pains. Now wonder that this generation can extend questioning the relationship between leaders and supernatural power to the meanings attached to  the entire Ethiopian history and that already happened and that nudes the false statues of  unquestioned Ethiopian history.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that this act can cause a strong pain on those who raised that Ethiopian history has been crafted in a way that serves their personal interest and they should die to defend it and maintain their supremacy in the country. As a response to this socialization call, the right wingers are now wagging a movement which can be equated to naked politics, not in relation to human body but in terms of evidence dressing. The couple of writings I am reading in the news paper, on blogs and social medias reflect this and they are all naked from evidence. They most often try to attack individuals, they publicly discuss how to physically attack people who nudes the history they were socialized to defend and die for, they misname institutions and personalities and assassinate characters, they try to divide and rule over members of the movements based on their religion and place of origin and even aiming to oppose people and place name changes and removing monuments constructed to signify the injustice done on ethnic groups by Minilk II. For me this is doing nothing better and different from their fathers and forefathers and by this techniques all they can achieve and some already achieved is losing their readers and followers.

This can be equated to naked politics, a political demonstration where people stand naked to attract attention of power holder and authorities in charge of doing or undoing the supported or resisted decision. However, evidence naked reply are self defeating weapons in the modern world and they divert attention than attracting them. Standing, jumping and running naked both in terms of body language and evidence dressing is destructive and on top of that there is no place for the sons of the 19^th century king in the country now because few (themselves) recalls that and if other do, that brings bad (and dangerous) memory. Therefore,  it is better to get dressed well with evidence to get attention and also to escape the bad consequence that bad memory can generate.