Yemenis and understanding the political reality

During that bright political moment, the foundation of the structure of political awareness was shaken and its foundations were destroyed, concepts and visions disappeared, influence dominated, thinking was obscured, and indifference took hold. After the national reconciliation in 1970, the Yemenis neglected the hostility of Imami thought towards them and the change in its strategy that penetrated the joints of the republic, and their preoccupation with the political conflict between this and that.

When the revolution of change broke out in 2011, everyone was racing to reach power, including Al-Houthi, who was plotting plans and measures to pounce on everyone, and exploiting the disturbed political awareness of the elites and society to achieve his goal, as happened in his ill-fated coup.

The real shock that we are paying the price for today is that most Yemenis, politicians and the general public, considered that event to be merely a positive political act that would work to turn the page on Islah, for example, and things would return to normal once its mission was accomplished. Even those who allied with it maliciously paid the same price. What is more dangerous than all of this is that the Yemenis’ understanding and comprehension of it at the time was extremely negative and superficial to the point of paving the way for it and enabling it to expand, which has been going on for a decade now.

If you ask us today, after the threads of the game have been exposed, the scope of the conspiracy has expanded, the plots and grudges have become widespread, and the homeland has been lost in the midst of this dangerous slide: Is the political awareness of the Yemenis capable of absorbing the reality of the situation, and able to determine a position and side with the option of restoring a real homeland, or is it still immersed in the same context of indifference and adventure with a position stemming from a limited awareness and a flawed political vision that has brought it many disadvantages and failures?

If we look closely at the Yemenis’ understanding of their political reality, we will realize the magnitude of the catastrophe and be horrified by the level of widespread confusion and rampant superficiality that complicates reality even more and prolongs the period of remaining in the mill of loss. Since the image of this understanding is like this, we will find that the Yemeni political mentality is classical, full of absolute loyalty, extreme fanaticism, blind dependency, and vulgar submission without paying any attention to thought, logic, and the scale of scrutinizing awareness, and relying on false slogans that are repeated without the slightest intervention or measurement in revealing its identity.

Hence, the four characteristics are what destroyed the structure of understanding and left behind a rude and arrogant herd that insists on claiming to possess the heart of the truth and its ability to distinguish what harms it and what benefits it, and to build its positions in light of these imbalances that disrupted the level of understanding and made the Yemenis stumble blindly in the midst of a turbulent political reality.

When this understanding is certain that Al Houthi has the right to power, that he is a national hero who supports Gaza, that standing with him is a duty against the Zionists’ targeting of the Yemeni infrastructure, and that his raining of shells and attacks on Taiz is a legitimate act at the same moment that Sana’a is being bombed.

Equating the Imamate with the Republic and equating a legitimate state with a militia gang is a crime under the pretext of corruption and the deterioration of the situation. Accepting waves of extremism and societal isolation at the expense of religious moderation and individual freedom is reactionary. Destroying national values and symbols of struggle and belittling revolutionary constants is a dilemma. Tolerating corruption and crime and overlooking injustice and usurping the rights of others is a lack of responsibility.

There are many examples that are difficult to enumerate, confirming that the Yemenis’ understanding of the political reality they are living in is a problematic and troubled understanding based on reactionary, sectarian, regional, and fragmentation motives, extremist religious ideology, tribal fanaticism, partisan organization, personal loyalties, mercenary work, and individual interests, and the fabrication of foolish justifications that reinforce the dimensions and paths of this understanding, and its reflection on establishing its multiple images as a tangible reality that understanding creates and reinforces its presence more than understanding being a separate process subordinate to it, as is customary in other countries and peoples that emerged from this crucible, and were able to determine their destiny and achieve their will with their awareness, experience, culture, and expertise in drawing the features of their political choices.

Hence, the complex political reality is not the knot, but what is more complex than it are the endless differences in understanding it and realizing its reality, which obstruct the state of finding solutions to dismantle it and remove its dangers. Therefore, the differences in understanding it were not limited to the general public - who lack participation in this reality - but rather they leaked to the active elites and political leaders who lead the representation of reality and try to appear as responsible for it; we will find that their political actions, proposals and programs suffer from the same defect, and when they are called upon by international and regional powers to present their points of view and proposals, you find them in crisis, lacking any logical vision and clear, frank and serious understanding based on national responsibility and republican values, but you find them living the same crisis that their followers are living.

Therefore, we must smash the face of this major problem in the Yemeni issue by changing the stereotype of media discourse that was the biggest contributor to its creation, whether it is an official government discourse, a private one, an elite individual discourse, or a popular one on social media, to develop political awareness, purify its falsehood, and establish fixed comprehensive lines that must be adhered to as part of a national political identity that precedes any political action, any orientation, and any practice, such as the republican principle, criminalizing foreign employment and mercenary work, believing in a state of order and law, rejecting fanaticism, extremism, and militarization, rebelling against the values of the state, and respecting its institutions, and emphasizing individual freedom, pluralism, democracy, freedom of expression, and thought. These foundations must constitute an essential reference, based on which we can understand our political reality and social behavior. Without that, we will remain revolving in the same circle of the historical, social, and religious complex system and the scattered past that made us waste all opportunities to build a civil state with pluralism, freedom, development, stability, and peace, or a civilized, democratic society free of fanaticism, regionalism, and sectarianism.