Battle of awareness against the dynasty

In all ages of tyranny, the real fear of tyrants has not been the armies that threaten them, but the words that expose the fragility of their power and reveal their falsehood. The tyrant does not fear weapons, because weapons can be met with force, but what he fears is the truth, because it is irresistible, unsilenced, and unavoidable.

Truth destroys the myth of the invincible leader, and exposes the tyrant who claims to be “holy” or “savior.” Tyranny only persists in the darkness of ignorance, where oppression turns into imposition, myth into truth, and silence into sacred law. When the pen begins to expose this falsehood, tyrants rush to break it, because they know very well that the fall of the free word means the beginning of their demise.

It comes as no surprise that the first thing tyrants do every time is to gag mouths, persecute journalists, and tighten their grip on the media. The weapon they use is not just bullets, but systematic falsification, misleading propaganda, and reshaping the masses’ consciousness to serve their survival. The Houthis, like any authoritarian regime, are not only waging a military war, but also a dirty ideological war, a war against reason and light, where ignorance becomes a deadly weapon, superstition becomes a sacred belief, and obscurantism becomes a state project. They do not only seek to silence their opponents, but to reshape minds and redefine reality. They want a society that sees itself only as a slave, where people only recognize the illusions of their authority that are fueled by darkness, where free speech becomes a crime that must be punished, and independent consciousness becomes a threat that must be crushed.

Targeting journalists was not a random incident, but part of a systematic policy aimed at eliminating the truth. For a tyrant, a journalist is not just an individual holding a pen, but an existential enemy, because he has the ability to shatter the sacred image that tyranny builds around itself. The Houthis did not stop at imprisoning and killing journalists, but also subjected them to the most severe forms of torture, not only with the aim of physically harming them, but with the aim of killing the word before it is written, and extinguishing thought before it is born.

Hundreds of journalists were killed, imprisoned, forcibly disappeared, some emerged from death camps paralyzed, others whose fate remains unknown. These were not just men fighting in a military arena, they were fighters in the field of truth, and the war of tyrants against them was a war on consciousness itself.

Al Houthi realizes that his battle is not just a battle of weapons, but a narrative battle, a battle over who has the right to shape history. Authoritarian regimes do not only seek to suppress the present, but also to rewrite the past and marginalize any narrative that does not serve their survival. Therefore, the conflict with him is not merely a political or military conflict, but an intellectual conflict, a battle over who has the right to write reality.

Tyrants may be defeated militarily, but they continue to live in people’s minds as long as their ideas are not defeated. It is not enough to overthrow the tyrant; his ideology must be overthrown, the myths on which he relies must be destroyed, and the myth of the “divine shadow” on which he builds his authority must be dismantled. Al-Houthi does not fear military battles as much as he fears the intellectual battle, because he realizes that an idea, when it spreads, becomes a fire that consumes his authority from within. It is a weapon that cannot be silenced, and a new consciousness that cannot be enslaved.

A bullet may silence a voice, but a pen can revive a thousand. Tyrants may kill a few writers, but they cannot kill the idea they planted. In the end, tyranny collapses before the weight of truth, just as empires that thought themselves immortal have collapsed. True power lies not in the armies that guard tyrants, but in the minds that refuse to submit to them, in the word that cannot be killed, and in the consciousness that cannot be enslaved.

The real battle with the Houthis is not only on the battlefields, but on the fields of thought. Weapons may kill the body, but they cannot kill the idea. Bullets may silence voices, but they cannot erase the truth. The Houthis will not fall merely because of their military defeat, but rather when their ideas are defeated, when their lies are exposed, when the project built on myths and blood collapses.

In the end, words are mightier than bullets, and history is not written on the barrels of guns, but in the minds that refuse to live in darkness.