A Story of Two Cults

After the devastating defeat of the 2024 presidential election, that felt so crushing, terrifying and personal and the chaos that has ensued since has led me as a Tigrayan American activist whose family has suffered so much loss during the Tigray genocide to make a seemingly obvious comparison between the cult of personality surrounding long time Eritrean autocrat Isaias Afwerki and that of President Donald Trump.

I think, though, before we dive in to the respective cults themselves, we have to grasp the pathology of both men. Starting with Trump as he is the figure the world is much more familiar with, Donald according to a slew of mental health professionals and any unbiased person who is exposed to him can tell you he is a narcissist in the most cartoonish way imaginable. But that alone doesn’t underscore the peril we are in, there are plenty of people with narcissistic traits, that are functional and competent in the real world. Its the psychopathy that often comes packaged with narcissism, that with many, but him in particular is so often overlooked.  There are so many signs to be spotted throughout the years not only of his lack of empathy or remorse but he’s seeming delight in the suffering of others, he once said that ‘he admires how Sadam Hussein killed people,’ and watched from the oval office with glee as capitol police were getting their heads bashed in by his followers during the insurrection making no attempt to call them off once it began. And more poignantly, with his immigration policies that included the kidnapping and torture of children. As well as the fact that he was found liable of the rape of a woman and credibly accused of sexual assault and abuse of countless others. On top of everything, he is suffering cognitive decline unlike anything I’ve ever seen, once pulling off quite cogent interviews devolving into the slurring 79 year old we see in rallies today.  It is amazing what people can dismiss for bigotry, power and tax cuts.

So, the way I see it, dysfunction begets dysfunction, and this man probably in deep emotional pain himself, began to lead what we know now as the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, which is heavily centered around white working class people but has seemed to take on a new life of its own and grown way beyond that to include disaffected liberals and even a growing number of Black and Brown people. There is just so much mass psychosis, so much puzzling inconsistency, for example Trump has run from the get as an anti-war candidate while most of his older followers are former supporters of George W. Bush and John Mccain, and eagerly supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because he’s not a traditional conservative and the masses don’t seem to care, I’ve seen far too much footage of the rallies and went to one and interviewed folks myself. And for the most part they were as out of touch with reality as I expected, but there was also plenty of decency, kindness, confusion and fear and I was beyond surprised that all of these things can exist in tandem.

But as anyone who is keeping up with this second Trump administration and has any working knowledge of history can tell you the degree in which this time is more dangerous. In the first go around they were relatively unfocused, this time he is more desperate, unhinged, senile, aggrieved and has secured a  political coalition driven by a set of far right policy goals outlined in the now infamous Project 2025. Which includes sweeping plans to torpedo civil liberties including the rights of those most marginalized (racial minorities, women, queer people, etc.), the immigration/asylum system, education as a public good, environmental regulation and most tragically the administrative state—-the basis of a functioning developed democracy. And all of that combined the with overt rise in authoritarianism unlike we’ve ever seen.

Then we have the odious Isaias Afwerki, and old tyrant who ran Eritrea into the ground along side his party People’s Front for Democracy and Justice. Eritrea has notoriously become one of the most repressive states in the world, often dubbed the North Korea of Africa. Everyone is forced into military conscription, and there is frequently jailing, torture and murder of political dissidents or those suspected to be.

He built one of the most brutal autocracies still running today as there is no parliament, constitution or budget and there has never been an election despite Eritrea becoming fully independent 1993 and absolutely no open dissent. And the demand for that kind of unquestioning obedience has extended to the Eritrean masses so much so that the public as grown to deify and revere him despite the brutality of the regime he has headed for decades. And that I would argue is the basis of the transnational cult.

But who is the man behind the madness? Isaias was born in Asmara in 1946 to a mother from Tigray as well as a father with deep familial roots in Tigray, which earned him the nickname ‘agame’ (slur for Tigrayan). And that chip on his shoulder helped pave the way for the unspeakable horrors to come.

He was active in nationalist politics but left to study engineering at the Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa in 1965, but eventually dropped out to join the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), and during this formative time he developed contempt for the media and reverence for the communist revolutionaries of China who he truly wanted to emulate. Additionally, stating once that, ‘almost all of us are Christians by birth, by culture, and by history,” and was known for a certain level of prejudice and distrust of Muslims, which many believe contributed to the dissolution of the movement.

Before long, upon taking power, Isaias began to reveal himself for what he is, ruthlessly outmaneuvering his opponents, taking them to kangaroo courts, disappearing, jailing and torturing people, including and especially those in the reform movement.

Many people, knew what Afwerki was and had concerns about him, but were suppressed by a rally-around-the-flag effect that came through the bitter fight for Eritrea’s liberation. The Eritrean public felt that he was the charismatic leader to free the people of Eritrea from the shackles of Ethiopian empire and his anti-democratic way of ruling was the price that had to be paid.

But by now virtually all Eritreans, both in the country and throughout the diaspora have stories, stories of women being assaulted upon military conscription, being tortured or jailed unjustly or someone close to you that has, a family member disappeared, being starved for political reasons, having every basic liberty you can imagine ripped from you. Yet, so many of those in the diaspora support the regime in power and defend what Afwerki has done.

Some may call that Stockholm syndrome, but I’ve always believed it is much more dangerous than that because the chaos and turmoil of that broken society is never just turned inwards it eventually leaks out. In this case in two ways, one was the repressive crimes defenders of the PFDJ regime have committed across the globe. According to Amnesty International , “ The long arms of the state, stretching through Eritrean diplomatic missions and members and supporters of the ruling PJDF party, closely monitor activities and unleash various forms of threats, attacks and harassment on Eritreans and non-Eritreans who are real or perceived critics of the government and its human rights record.”

There are plenty of specific events that underscore this, particularly the clashes we have seen quite recently between PFDJ supporters and their opponents. In the span of about a year, the world has bore witness to violent confrontations in Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US. And in Tel Aviv a Blue Revolution activist ( a movement that resists the current regime in Eritrea) was brutally murdered by an agent of PFDJ. We have a saying in the Jewish tradition, “whoever destroys a single soul, destroys an entire world.”

But what’s more is that if you close your eyes, you find little discernible difference between those working on behalf of Isaias Afwerki’s death cult, and those who took part in the violent attempted coup on January 6th. In the midst of the scramble to invade the capital, you can hear so many people repeatedly chanting “fight for Trump,” one even barging into Nancy Pelosi’s office with a baseball bat, calling for her odiously. And there isn’t a shred of doubt that a huge portion of them were fully prepared to murder people in the service of their dear leader, just as the soldiers of the PFDJ movement certainly have done and would gladly do again.

But the fuel that keeps the fire going in these types of cults is hatred for the other, in the case of MAGA it is largely the immigrant. You see that clearly with Trump himself as he has not only called Mexicans “rapists” but has said that “Immigrants are poisoning the blood of America,” that they are “blood thirsty criminals,” they are the “enemy from within” and they “have bad genes”. Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, and the author of the “Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” says, “What is jarring to me is that these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi statements.”

What drives the PFDJ movement, particularly this iteration of it, is hate for the Tigrayan. “Agame,” is a common slur that has proliferated throughout Eritrean society to describe Tigrayans who at point in history often took the roles within the lower echelons of Eritrean society such as maids and sanitation workers. But as Afwerki’s rule continued there was an intensive indoctrination campaign to blame all of the country’s ills on the ‘weyane’ (a term for Tigrayan).

  This grew exponentially, after the TPLF dominated Ethiopian government sanctioned the rogue state for training  and arming Somali militant groups like Al-Shabaab and thereby destabilizing the Horn of Africa. This has resonated so much with the mobs that they often something to the effect of “you made us poor, so we will destroy you for 40 or 50 years,” to Tigrayans in the midst of brutal or rapes and murders at the height of the genocide.

So what is the solution here? Well when it comes to taking down a dangerous cult the simple answer is deprogramming. And for those most deeply entrenched in MAGA, what that would look like varies greatly from individual to individual, for some long exposure to centrist political news can help, some can be aided by caring family members, and some even needed to hit rock bottom like being arrested and imprisoned for their role in January 6th. They need something to effectively make reality set in.

When it comes to those in the PFDJ movement the answer is much more complex as the party has been in power for decades, and the deep brokenness of the Eritrean people that has long preceded even Isaias’ rule has to be tackled with first the careful understanding of history. They begin with a fragile identity born out of colonialism and ruled by their Italian masters, then the English, and eventually the brutality of the People For Justice and Prosperity party that was formed under Afwerki’s leadership. There are massive psychosocial problems on a macro scale, that leads to things like nine out of ten women in the armed forces of Eritrea being raped throughout their service.

And that pain was tragically transferred onto the people of Tigray, during arguably the deadliest genocide of the 21st century where upwards of 800,000 were killed, 120-130,000 women were brutally raped, and all of the systems that sustained life were deliberately destroyed.  A healthy majority of that, committed by Eritrean forces. Including the well documented, Axum Massacre where Eritrean forces went through the historic city and shot and killed 800 civilians.

So one of the tangible first steps is to remove Isaias Afwerki and his party from power, and his old age is the perfect pretext to do so. There are rumors that he is grooming his son to take his place upon his death, but the people of conscious within international community have to do everything in their power to prevent that from happening. And then there needs to be investment into the fabric of Eritrean society (socially, psychologically, spiritually) so people within the country and perhaps the diaspora have the means to grasp the horrors of what Isaias’ rule has done to them, and grow to reject the movement. The toll of decades of torture and indoctrination cannot be reversed overnight but those who seek change need to take it one day at a time.