Fascism at Work: Propaganda, Conspiracy, Lies, Hatred, and Incompetence in Ethiopia

By Professor Girma Berhanu, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

EDITORS’ FOREWORD

A Warning Ethiopia Cannot Afford to Ignore

There are moments in a nation’s life when silence becomes complicity. Ethiopia stands at such a moment. The Ethiopian Tribune has long held that the duty of independent journalism is not merely to inform but to name what is happening with clarity, courage, and moral seriousness even, and especially, when what must be named is deeply uncomfortable.

The article we present in this edition “Fascism at Work: Propaganda, Conspiracy, Lies, Hatred, and Incompetence in Ethiopia” is one of the most consequential pieces of political analysis we have published. Its author, Professor Girma Berhanu of the University of Gothenburg, brings to bear rigorous comparative political theory alongside meticulous documentation of on-the-ground realities. The result is a work that demands not merely reading, but reckoning.

Professor Berhanu builds his analysis on Jason Stanley’s framework in How Fascism Works, applying it with unflinching precision to Ethiopia under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. He identifies, one by one, the hallmarks of fascist political practice: the fabrication of mythic history, the systematic destruction of truth, the vilification of intellectuals, the weaponization of identity, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions. His conclusion is not offered tentatively: these are not tendencies that might emerge; they are already defining features of the Ethiopian political order.

We recognise that strong analysis provokes strong responses. We welcome rigorous engagement, challenge, and debate. What we will not accept is the erasure of the evidence or the silencing of those who speak it. The Tribune publishes this work in the conviction that Ethiopia’s future depends on honest diagnosis of its present however painful that diagnosis may be.

We urge every Ethiopian at home and in the diaspora every diplomat, every human rights advocate, every African Union official, and every international observer to read this article in full. The moment for polite understatement has passed.

The Editors

The Ethiopian Tribune Editorial Board

 

SYNOPSIS

Fascism at Work: Propaganda, Conspiracy, Lies, Hatred, and Incompetence in Ethiopia

By Professor Girma Berhanu, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Overview

This paper offers a comprehensive and urgent analysis of Ethiopia’s contemporary political crisis through the analytical lens of Jason Stanley’s landmark work How Fascism Works. Professor Berhanu argues, without equivocation, that the tactics Stanley identifies as the hallmarks of fascist political practice are not theoretical abstractions in Ethiopia, they are operational realities, increasingly defining the political order under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the ideology of Oromummaa.

Key Arguments

The paper identifies nine structural features of fascist politics all of which the author argues are present in contemporary Ethiopia. These are: the fabrication of a glorified mythic past to legitimize present domination; pervasive and unapologetic propaganda that actively replaces truth with politically convenient falsehood; the structural suppression of intellectuals and critical voices; the cultivation of conspiracy thinking and manufactured paranoia to justify repression; the normalization of ethnic hierarchy and “natural order”; the weaponization of a victimhood narrative by dominant groups; the deployment of law-and-order politics as a mechanism of control; the exclusionary redefinition of national identity; and the systematic erosion of democratic institutions, leaving only a hollowed-out façade.

The Finfinnee Reclamation Framework

A central focus of the paper is the so-called “Finfinnee Reclamation Framework” a discussion draft circulating within the government that the author describes as a blueprint for ethnic domination. The document proposes transferring political authority, economic power, and land rights in Addis Ababa to Oromo stakeholders, invoking international models from Dubai’s “Sovereign Host” approach to Malaysia’s Bumiputera policy as templates for an “Oromo First” agenda. Professor Berhanu argues that this represents a direct assault on Ethiopia’s multi-ethnic federal capital and a flagrant attack on civic equality and shared citizenship. Evidence from the economic decline of Hawassa under the Sidama regional model and the effective “Bantustan-ization” of Harar are presented as real-world warnings of what such policies produce.

Oromummaa, Ethnic Federalism, and Comparative Politics

The paper provides a rigorous examination of Oromummaa as both a cultural framework and a state ideology. While acknowledging that proponents present it as a project of cultural revitalization and emancipation, Professor Berhanu argues that in its operative form under the current government, it exhibits structural features comparable to fascist and ethnonationalist movements: the primacy of a singular collective identity, the construction of existential “enemies,” nostalgic myth-making, the erosion of pluralism, and the subordination of individual and minority rights to ideological cohesion. Drawing on Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction and Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism, the paper situates Oromummaa within a broader comparative political theory framework while carefully noting important historical and contextual differences from European fascism.

Ethiopia’s system of ethnic federalism, introduced under the TPLF in the early 1990s, receives extensive critical analysis. The author characterizes it as structurally analogous to the Bantustan model of apartheid-era South Africa a system that has transformed identity into the primary currency of power, normalized inter-ethnic suspicion and rivalry, and created fertile ground for racialized political mobilization, including the construction of a “Cushitic versus Semitic” dichotomy with dangerous ideological resonances.

The Amhara Crisis and Three Tiers of Victimhood

Professor Berhanu advances a three-tiered analytical framework to account for the full scope of the crisis facing Ethiopia’s Amhara population. First-tier victimhood refers to the direct and documented experience of mass killings, displacement, and the destruction of cultural and religious heritage. Second-tier victimhood refers to the manipulation of narrative the construction by ethnonationalist actors of a counter-victimhood discourse that obscures and denies Amhara suffering while reframing perpetrators as victims. Third-tier or “psychic” victimhood refers to the compounding effect of international invisibility: the failure of global media, diaspora networks, and international institutions to adequately recognize, document, and respond to the scale of atrocity. The campaign described by critics as “Amharafrei” an explicit parallel drawn to the Nazi concept of Judenfrei is presented as a deliberate strategy of cultural erasure encompassing historicide, ethnocide, and linguicide.

Significance and Urgency

This paper is not academic exercise. It is, as its author explicitly states, motivated by moral anger and by the conviction that accurate diagnosis of political pathology is a precondition for meaningful response. Its arguments carry direct implications for Ethiopian citizens, the diaspora, opposition figures, civil society, and the international community alike. The convergence of fascist-style political tactics, ethnic federalism’s structural fragmentation, the ideological entrenchment of Oromummaa, and the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Amhara regions constitutes, in Professor Berhanu’s assessment, a coherent and escalating political crisis not an isolated series of events.

 

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

The synopsis above conveys the structure and stakes of Professor Berhanu’s analysis, but it cannot substitute for the article itself. The full text develops each argument with scholarly depth, primary documentation, comparative historical evidence, and the kind of analytical precision that the gravity of the subject demands. We urge all readers to access and read the complete article at the link below:-