Film Review: Netflix’s ‘Descendant’ Shows Capitalism Continues to Oppress African Descendants

This article was produced by Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service.

The Workers’ Party of Tunisia and several human rights groups have strongly objected to a deal proposed by European countries on the movement of migrants. They have called it a violation of sovereignty and the human rights of refugees.

On June 11, top European Union (EU) officials visited Tunisia and issued a joint statement after meeting President Kais Saied, saying that both parties have agreed to work jointly to end “irregular migration.”

Critics of the deal claim that the EU is using Tunisia’s precarious economic condition to force it to control the movement of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea in exchange for financial support, just like they did with Turkey and Libya.

The Workers’ Party claimed in a statement on June 15 that any such deal will make Tunisia a “policeman” patrolling its borders so that people trying to escape their deteriorating economic conditions can be stopped from going to Europe and punished.

Reports indicate that the EU is pushing Tunisia to establish a harsh border policy in exchange for its support for the country’s stalled bid to obtain a $1.9 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Tunisia’s loan has been stalled for months due to Saied’s reluctance to implement the reforms demanded by the IMF. Saied is reportedly worried that his government—already facing large-scale popular resistance since his political coup in July 2021—will face another popular upsurge if the IMF’s demands to cut subsidies for essential commodities such as flour and fuel, cuts to social services, and privatization are implemented.

With the United States’ Independence Day having passed, Toward Freedom is re-printing this analysis by Gerald Horne, which originally appeared in OrganizingUpgrade.com.

The good news is that Comrade Bob Wing’s analysis represents a step forward in terms of the U.S. Left’s understanding of the nation—“republic”—in which it struggles.

The bad news is that the U.S. left has not necessarily kept pace with the U.S. ruling class in terms of similar issues, or even with non-radical African-Americans, for that matter.

Consider the multi-part series on HBO Max (a member in good standing of the much reviled “corporate media”) that premiered recently, i.e. Black filmmaker Raoul Peck’s “Exterminate All the Brutes,” a sweeping analysis and condemnation of settler colonialism (a term curiously absent from ordinary discourse on the left) and white supremacy.  His other credits include the superb docu-drama “The Young Karl Marx.”

Consider the 1619 Project of The New York Times, spearheaded by Black journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, which—inter alia—had the audacity to suggest that a settlers’ revolt in 1776 led by slaveholders may have had something to do with maintaining slavery.  Revealingly, the assault on this estimable initiative was mounted by self-described “socialists”, liberals and conservatives:  in essence, The White Republic.

Consider the book by Black scholar Tyler Stovall (published by an Ivy League press), White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea, which is more advanced ideologically than comparable analyses on the U.S. left.

Consider the response to the concerted effort to deodorize the smelly roots of the vaunted “Founding Fathers”:  I speak of the Broadway/Disney extravaganza, “Hamilton,” celebrated by the Cheneys and Obamas alike, not to mention some to their left—but skewered by paramount Black intellectual, Ishmael Reed.

How and why the U.S. left has tailed the ruling class on such a bedrock matter as conceptualizing white supremacy soars far beyond the confines of this brief response.  Suffice it to say for now that misconception begins with the origins of the slaveholders’ republic in 1776, a creation myth that Comrade Wing does not challenge explicitly. Those who consider themselves to be sophisticated refer to an “Incomplete Revolution,” as if the founders had in mind “others” not defined as “white” but, perhaps, forgot to include them. This is akin to referring to implanting apartheid in 1948 as an “Incomplete Reform,” as if these founders, perhaps, forgot to include Africans in the bounty that was accorded to poorer Afrikaners. Even the supposedly perceptive term “bourgeois democracy” as a descriptor for 1776 and its fruits is misleading at best since “rights” definitely did not include any not defined as “white” and, thus, this term becomes part of the massive misdirection that now has us on the brink of fascism.

 

Settler Colonialism and the Construction of Whiteness

First, consider the confluence of settler colonialism and the construction of “whiteness.” When settlers arrived in what is now North Carolina in the 1580s it was a multi-class venture—shopkeepers, smiths, etc.—sponsored by the London elite. This was in the midst of religious wars between Catholics and Protestants.  Catholic Spain, which came within a whisker of toppling the London monarchy in 1588, imposed religion as a qualifier for settlement.  England, the scrappy Protestant underdog, moved toward Pan-Europeanism—or “whiteness”—incorporating Scots and Irish and Welsh in the first instance, those with whom they had been warring for centuries, and then moved toward incorporating others who had been warring:  British v. German; German v. Pole; Pole v. Russian; Serb v. Croat—the list is long. All of a sudden when crossing the Atlantic, in a manner that would make Madison Avenue blush, all are rebranded as “white,” which subsumes many of the tensions, ethnic and class among them, in a new monetized and militarized “identity politics” of “whiteness” based on expropriation of the Indigenous and mass enslavement of the Africans.

As the 17^th century roots of Maryland suggest, London was willing to sponsor Catholic settlers, while inquisitorial Madrid continued to bar and expel those not deemed to be religiously correct.  Thus, from the inception in the early 1500s, Havana contained African conquistadors who professed Catholicism (a sharp divergence from racialized settlements in the “Anglo-sphere”, leaving a legacy which continues to wrongfoot those seeking to comprehend socialist Cuba) and as late as 200 years ago, settler Stephen F. Austin professed a nominal Catholicism in order to engage in his land grab in Mexican Texas.

Of course, Ottoman—and heavily Islamic–Turkey was an igniting factor in this process.  Their seizure of what is now Istanbul in 1453 impelled an existential crisis in Western European Christendom: as Columbus headed westward in 1492, on behalf of Catholics he was seeking to circumvent the Ottomans; 1492 also marks the accelerated weakening of Islamic rule in Iberia, followed by many fleeing to North Africa and to Ottoman jurisdiction, along with the Jewish minority.

Tellingly, London had expelled its own Jewish minority circa 1290-1291 but in the contestation with Catholics, this Protestant power embraced this minority—as did Protestant Holland—and the victorious republicans did so too by 1776. The philosophically idealistic and credulous tried to convince the rest of us that this was a result of “Enlightenment,” as opposed to seeking to broaden the base of settler colonialism in order to confront obstreperous Africans and the mighty Indigenous.

Interestingly, in the late 1930s, the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo also embraced a fleeing European Jewish minority and only the naïve would ascribe this decision to “Enlightenment”—as opposed to a crude attempt to “whiten” the population in the ongoing conflict with the bête noire that was neighboring Haiti, whose nationals were simultaneously being massacred along the border.

Speaking of neighbors, it is similarly informative that patriotic U.S. analysts of the left generally refuse to scrutinize the “control group” due north.  Canada did not rebel against London and yet now has a health care system that is the envy of the so-called “revolutionary republic”—should not one expect the opposite?

Actually, settlers’ revolts—be they in Southern Rhodesia in 1965 or Algeria in the late 1950s—are generally problematic, especially when driven by white supremacy and/or religious bigotry.  To the “credit” of the North American settlers’ revolt, unlike their French counterparts in Algiers, they were not as advanced in seeking to liquidate the monarch himself, as was the case in Paris in April 1961 with Charles de Gaulle in the crosshairs.  (For the naïve who continue to guzzle the Kool-Aid and propaganda of “liberal democracy,” on the 50^th anniversary of this plot, French military men threatened a coup against President Macron, just as the elite U.S. publication Foreign Affairs reported a disturbing trend of the military bucking civilian rule: see also 6 January 2021 and the recent open letter signed by dozens of retired military brass in the U.S. echoing MAGA talking points and warning ominously against the purported “socialism” of the current regime in Washington.)

Given the troubling roots of this republic, it was inevitable that at a certain point what are described as “cultural” issues—immigration; reproductive and LGBTTQ rights—would leap to the fore as these are perceived as natal matters essential to an apartheid state: maintaining a presumed “white” majority.

 

Left-Wing White Nationalism

This transition from religion to “race” was occurring in the context of a bumpy transition from feudalism to capitalism. “Bloody Mary,” the English monarch in the mid-16^th century, received her moniker as a result of reports of Catholics burning Protestants at the stake. Unsurprisingly, as capitalism attained liftoff as a direct result of the plunder of the Indigenous and the mass enslavement of the Africans, by the end of the 19^th century, Africans were being immolated (in enslaved form representing the essence of capitalism)—with either  Catholics or Protestants of European descent, often of British origin (at times jointly) lighting the torch.

The attempt to build “class unity” without confronting these underlying tensions often has meant coercing oppressed nationalities—Blacks in the first place—to co-sign a kind of “left wing white nationalism,” as reflected in the lengthy attempt to convert slaveholder, Thomas Jefferson, into a unifying symbol. Black failure to do so leads to our denunciation—in today’s terms as “identitarian” [sic], in previous decades, as “narrow nationalist.”  Actually, the class collaboration embodied in “whiteness” was seeking to impose “class collaboration” on the descendants of the enslaved, inducing us to align with enslavers and their descendants.  And given that pre-1865 U.S. history—and to a degree the era thereafter—involved deputizing Euro-American settlers as a class to patrol and coerce the Indigenous and the Africans, this too involved an often undetected class collaboration.  It also involved often lush material incentives for those settlers who complied and harsh disincentives for those who did not.

In sum, unlike Raoul Peck, the U.S. left parachuted into the 20^th century and sought to impose an ersatz “class unity” brutally at odds with historical reality.  They were akin to cineastes entering the theatre halfway through the film, while thinking they had a firm grasp of the plot.  Indeed, Peck’s work and that of other Blacks represents an attempt to wrest the powerful searchlight of Marxism away from those who have strived to convert it into a feeble flashlight.

When reality does not correspond to the facts on the ground, the U.S. left often responds like the fictional French intellectual who maunders: “I know what you are saying is true in fact, the question is—‘is it true in theory?’”  That is, a detailed knowledge of history and contemporary trends is the meat to be placed on the skeleton that is theory—without that meat one is left with a putrefying cadaver.

Thus, when Euro-Americans vote across class lines for faux billionaires, we are instructed that the reason is that the opposition did not meet their exacting progressive standards—hence, they voted for the right.  (Once when I was explaining to a prominent left-leaning scribe that the citadel of the elite, the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and the citadel of the Euro-American working and middle classes, Staten Island, are the bastions of the right wing in Gotham, he demurred seeking to point out that the latter borough voted thusly because of liberal failings: and, yes, he had never heard of John Marchi, Staten Island’s decades long proto-fascist GOP boss, re-elected repeatedly.)  Of course, this miscomprehension begs the question as to why descendants of the enslaved even in the same borough and nationwide – marinated in the ultimate class struggle of slaves versus slaveholder – vote against the right wing in extraordinarily high numbers.

This misanalysis also neatly elides the instructive 1991 gubernatorial election in Louisiana when well over half of Euro-Americans across class lines voted for a Nazi and Klansman, David Duke, for governor—who would have prevailed but for the staggering blow delivered to his onrushing campaign by the mailed fist that was the Black vote.

 

Forge Alliances Beyond U.S. Borders

African Americans in particular sliced neatly the Gordian knot of oppression historically by forging alliances beyond the confines of settler colonialism, with ties to the Indigenous (e.g. antebellum Florida) or Haiti (post-1804) or London (1776-1865) or Tokyo (pre-1945) or Moscow (post-1917) or independent Africa and the Caribbean (post-1960).

What does this mean for today? It means rejecting the new Cold War against Russians and Chinese and, instead, forging alliances with both. It means linking demands for reparations nationally with like-minded struggles in the Caribbean and Africa. It means realizing that the uncanny ability of some on the U.S. left to hand rhetorical weapons to the right to bash the oppressed—from “political correctness” to “cancel culture”—is hardly a coincidence or accident but simply another expression of a “cross-class alliance” that has propped up settler colonialism from its inception. (Truth be told, these weapons were honed principally by “white” leftists in internecine conflicts that led—objectively and unsurprisingly—to a dearth of questioning of the legitimacy of settler colonialism.) It also means forcing class initiatives as a solvent against the pestilence that is white supremacy—for example, the PRO law or right to organize unions, now before Congress.

Per Comrade Wing, it also means seeking to deepen our understanding of the fundamentals of U.S. imperialism, white supremacy not least. Congratulations to Comrade Wing for seeking to rescue virtually every sector of the “radical” U.S. left from a swamp of Right Opportunism.

Gerald Horne is author of many books including, The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music, and Confronting Black Jacobins: The United States, the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic.

Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s opinion and was first published in Black Agenda Report.

Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously connected Lausan Collective to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). A member of Lausan Collective had served as a fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, an organization that has collaborated with the NED.

In the last few months, the left media outlets from various camps, in their sincere attempts to demonstrate solidarity and spotlight conflict in the Horn of Africa and internal developments in Ethiopia, got it wrong. They have been uncritically centering active ideological players on two opposing camps. The significant focus on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) attacks on Eritrea, its invasion of Afar and the Amhara region, and its existence as a willing proxy actor of Washington was correct. They got it wrong, however, in their uncritical framing of neoliberal Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed. They have chosen to over-amplify the Abiy camp’s reactionary narrative on the long ideological internal struggle concerning the path forward for Ethiopia and the Horn.

In 1915, Lenin gracefully asserted:

“We demand freedom of self-determination, i.e., independence, i.e., freedom of secession for the oppressed nations, not because we have dreamt of splitting up the country economically, or of the ideal of small states, but, on the contrary, because we want large states and the closer unity and even fusion of nations, only on a truly democratic, truly internationalist basis, which is inconceivable without the freedom to secede.”

It is in the same framework that the principled Ethiopian and Eritrean revolutionaries during the 1960 and 70s warmly embraced this materialist line on the National Question. One of the most noted and often quoted Ethiopian Marxist is Wallelign Mekonnen. Mekonnen, who is of Amhara background, is famous for this 1969 article, “On the Question of Nationalities in Ethiopia.” This article is very relevant for today, and offers an effective ideological compass to navigate around the war of narratives taking shape, particularly on social media. Mekonnen specifies the basis of the Ethiopian settler state and its class foundation, which operated to benefit the Abyssinian ruling class in  both Amhara and Tigray regions. The oppressed nations were not Amhara or those in the Tigray region, but the other non-Abyssinian nations in the south, who were conquered, colonized, and their names erased for the creation of Ethiopia. Mekonnen writes:

“To anybody who has got a nodding acquaintance with Marxism, culture is nothing more than the superstructure of an economic basis. So cultural domination always presupposes economic subjugation. A clear example of economic subjugation would be the Amhara and to a certain extent Tigray Neftegna system in the South and the Amhara Tigray Coalition in the urban areas. The usual pseudo-refutation of this analysis is the reference to the large Amhara and Tigray masses wallowing in poverty in the countryside.”

Following Mekonnen, I argue that the left must cautiously navigate around the two opposing ideological battlegrounds that have co-opted the language and performativity of “anti-imperialism” or “decolonization.” This language works to impede wider radical investigation of the Horn of Africa and its various contradictions.

As Lenin and the elder Eritrean and Ethiopian revolutionaries from the 1960 and 1970s advocated a dialectical understanding of the National Question, so must the left as they seek to understand Ethiopia and the Horn. What is the national question of Ethiopia? Voices from the revolutionary Ethiopian student movement of the 1960s and 1970s echoed much of V. I. Lenin’s point on the National Question that nation-states should be based on “voluntary ties, never compulsory ties.” Lenin insisted upon the “right of every nation to political self-determination,” which includes the right to secession. Following Lenin, Tilahun Takele (pseudonym name for a member of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP)), argued:

“How could Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, of all people support the right of nations to secession when they were, on the other hand, the most committed advocates of the unity and integration of the world proletariat? The answer is simple. Briefly, it is precisely because they wanted to promote the genuine, equality and fraternal unity of the proletariat of all nations, the general unity of the oppressed toiling masses of all nations.”

What are examples of the two opposing voices on The National Question that are attempting to get leftist legitimacy and credibility online? The first example uses the facade of decolonial positioning to cover for the attempted imperialist intervention against Ethiopia and also absolve TPLF of its violent aims to continue the settler-colonial legacy of Abyssinian king Yohaness of Tigray. The second one gives cover to neoliberal Abiy’s vision, a vision that aims to continue the settler-colonial legacy of Abyssinian king Menelik of Amhara without addressing the grievances of the oppressed nationalities.

We can see an example of the first camp in a popular event that occurred on December 8, 2021. Haymarket hosted a webinar called, “What’s Happening in Ethiopia,” with panelists Ayantu Tibeso and J. Khadijah Abdurahman, and facilitated by an anti-China Hong Kong “leftist,” Promise Li, who is a member of Lausan Collective.

Haymarket attracts pro-TPLF academics, such as Andom Ghebreghiorgis, with similar pro-Amnesty International politics and NED connections. One of the panelists referenced Wallelign Mekonnen by aiming to manipulate the “Nations and Nationalities” discussion toward vilifying the Amharas and the Eritrean state, while simultaneously giving cover to the Washington-backed TPLF as the vanguard of the oppressed nationalities. In other words, the discussion was intellectually dishonest, both in its inability to acknowledge Ethiopia as a settler state that has primarily benefited the Amhara and Tigray ruling classes, and in its echoing the U.S. State Department propaganda that is running interference for the TPLF while demonizing the Eritrean state.

An example of the second ideological camp can be seen at an event that occurred on September 11, 2021. The People’s Forum NYC hosted a webinar on “Imperialism, Ethiopia & Conflict in the Horn of Africa,” with panelists Simon Tesfamariam and Elias Amare, who are part of the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) camp and co-leading the #NoMore social media campaign. Simon and Elias echoed the usual Abyssinian pejorative slur of “Ethnic Federalism” and discredited the Nations and Nationalities argument by attributing it to “tribalism,” and saying that “tribalism is a problem throughout Africa.” The term “ethnic federalism” is not one of facts to the current Ethiopian constitution as there is no ethnic federalism but mult-national federalism in name, which has not been implemented during the last 28 years under the TPLF regime and now under Abiy as well. They also ridiculed the radical assertion around Nations and Nationalities, equating anyone that supports that line with being a “tribalist.” In the same vein, Tesfamariam attempted to discredit the voices who put critical anti-colonial framing on the formation of Ethiopia, which challenges the mythological narrative of a 3,000-year-old independent Christian African state. Further, on his Twitter account, Tesfamariam deployed Abyssinian slurs “ethnofascist” and “tribalists” to de-legitimize the historical grievances of the oppressed nationalities.

Why are Eritreans like Simon Tesfamariam and Elias Amare, who support the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), so keen on dismissing the real struggles of oppressed nationalities in Ethiopia, a position that is in contradiction to the spirit of the Eritrean revolution? Under the direction of Isaias Afwerki, the PFDJ has taken a line of concentrating on the primary contradictions, which is imperialism and the management of the region via proxy actors like TPLF. In fact, for the past 18 years, the Eritrean state had been the home of oppressed nationalities’ liberation fronts (OLF, ONLF, etc) struggling against the Washington-backed TPLF regime. However, after the 2018 peace deal, and after the re-igniting of war in the region in 2020 by the TPLF, the rhetoric in support of the oppressed nationalities has been abandoned.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly with #NoMore

“We have the Marxist-Leninist weapon of criticism and self-criticism. We can get rid of a bad style and keep the good.” -Mao Zedong

How did the #NoMore form online and what is the social, political and class structure behind it? The #NoMore campaign is an online diaspora projection or formalization involving the PFDJ in Eritrea and the Amhara region, plus Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa, in political alliance against the TPLF. The sporadic social media campaign came at a time during the violent occupation of the Amhara region as TPLF was making gains militarily and attempting to advance to Addis Ababa. The Twitter accounts that support the campaign are led by the three dominant ethnic and political bases in both Eritrea and Ethiopia, represented by Hermela Aregawi (Tigraya), Simon Tesfamariam (Tigrinya) and Nebiyu Asfaw (Amhara). The #NoMore campaigns and protests have attracted very large crowds in the United States. But the large crowd is primarily Amhara because this is the main group that forms the Ethiopian diaspora in North America. The Amhara population also numbers 20 million in Ethiopia, and are the second largest group after the Oromos, who number over 40 million people.

Despite the claim to represent all of Ethiopia, the Oromos and other historically marginalized groups are hardly part of the social media campaign. The same can be said with all of the Eritreans and Somalis. Both the Amhara and Tigrayans, due to their dominant grip of Ethiopia over the century, enjoy the settler-colonial privilege with scholarships, visas and aid to live in the diaspora. This is the reason why they are the dominant voices of what we call “Ethiopia”—online and offline.

The good aspect of the #NoMore campaign is that it is significant to witness Eritreans and Ethiopians engaging each other and sharing a common struggle. That itself is historic. That the campaign focused on the crimes of the TPLF on Eritrea, Amhara and Afar region is the best thing about it. What is problematic is the shifty co-option of “anti-imperialist” rhetoric. While the leaders of the #NoMore campaign are vehemently critical of Washington’s foreign policy, if at least temporarily, their opposition seem to only demand that the leaders Isaias Afwerki and Abiy Ahmed have a seat at the table—presumably with the imperialists. They should be calling, instead, for the destruction of the table.

The bad aspect of the #NoMore campaign is its deployment of reactionary rhetoric and symbolism: The foregrounding of the imperial Abyssinia flag, the exaltation of feudal Abyssinian monarchs, the romanticization of the “Battle of Adwa” and the pushing of the propaganda that “Ethiopia is 3,000-year-old independent state.” This social media campaign has alienated the Oromos and other marginalized communities.

The ugly is that the National Question—the goal of decolonizing the settler-state of Ethiopia, and the overall need for a wider class struggle of the masses in the Horn of Africa—has taken a back seat in the #NoMore campaign. In fact, the articulated electoral strategy of “Vote Republican” should demonstrate that this is not a sincere anti-imperialist campaign.

How Can the Left Get It Right?

It is important for Western leftists to focus on imperialism and not take a hardline position on the internal politics of Ethiopia by not being sensitive to all the contradictions. The PFDJ is able to recognize the primary contradiction being the imperialist lackey, TPLF, in Ethiopia, but fails to recognize the other internal contradictions (the National Question). This is where the TPLF has a lifeline. For the PFDJ to not acknowledge the secondary contradiction is also to not have the correct analysis on the ways that the Abyssinian ruling class exploits these contradictions to further their settler-colonial agenda. These secondary contradictions are weaponized to exacerbate the primary contradiction. We see, for example, how the TPLF is using the plight of the oppressed nationalities to mask their settler-colonial ambitions. PFDJ representatives dismiss the oppressed nationalities as just “tribalists” and “ethnofascists,” a move that alienates the historically oppressed nationalities.

Failure to actively engage the contradictions of the National Question also gives legitimacy to Abiy, who, in addition to espousing more neoliberal policies than TPLF, has denied the historical grievances of Oromos and others in Ethiopia.

The left should oppose imperialism, but without ignoring the Ethiopian National Question. Tigray was never a part of the oppressed nationalities, but benefited from the fruits of settler colonialism. Tigray region’s political struggle with the Amhara region dates back to the period of Ethiopia’s creation in the late 1800s. The ideological struggle in the present is over who is to be the face of the Ethiopian settler-colonial state.

The left or anti-colonial forces in the past also got it wrong when they gave solidarity to slave-owning Menelik with the “Battle of Adwa,” legitimizing the conquest of the oppressed nationalities; to Selassie during the fascist Italian invasion of Ethiopia by helping to restore his feudal rule; to the pseudo-Marxist Derg regime, which hijacked the revolutionary momentum in Ethiopia; and to Meles Zenawi under the banner of state developmentalism.

The modern left must not make the same historical mistake in not being sensitive to the decolonial question of Ethiopia.

The left must heed to words of the Eritrean and Ethiopian revolutionaries of the 1960s and ’70s. One noted Ethiopian voice from that time is Tilahun Takele, who stated: “We believe that the recognition and support of the right of secession by revolutionary Ethiopians, especially those from the dominant nations, will foster trust and fraternity among the various nationalities.”

Filmon Zerai is an independent blogger who provides leftist commentary on the Horn of Africa. His views have appeared on CapeTalk, Sputnik International, BBC and other outlets. Zerai also is the founder and producer of the Horn of Africa Leftists podcast.