The White Savior’s Job Audition: Why “Rasmus the Clown” needs to go back in his box and leave Ethiopia

Social media can be a dumpster fire. It can be cruel but every so often, it’s just. In his cringingly obvious efforts to gain attention at the expense of truth, writer Rasmus Sonderriis has earned himself the name “Rasmus the Clown” on X…and the name has stuck.

Ethiopians — far from the U.S. State Department’s vision of simple souls who need to be led around by its proxies — are pretty damn sophisticated in their political thinking, and they know a con man when they see one.

Unfortunately, Rasmus still won’t take a billboard-size hint to leave Ethiopia alone, and so he doubled down on the Abren website about a week ago and put out a new excerpt from the book he’s flogging. Abren can do as it pleases, but that it’s willing to legitimize his views by giving him space, alas, raises the stakes.

There is a lot in this column here that you might dismiss as reflections of a personal feud, but I wouldn’t waste the space and the time on that. I’m writing this piece because the clown has stopped being funny, and his ideas are now becoming dangerously toxic. He needs to leave Ethiopia.

I’ll get to that book excerpt in a moment, but a bit of background is needed.

Declaration of interest: Rasmus and I used to be colleagues and friends. We’ve never actually met in person but have had several online conversations. And he used to be a good investigative reporter. He was, in fact, a correspondent to Ethiopia once upon a time. He read through my draft of The Hyena War and made a couple of helpful suggestions, while I took a look at his early version of Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong. Had he ended his book before more recent events, he would have had a useful account that might have become a classic of journalism on Africa. But he didn’t.

Not long after he moved back to Addis, he began expressing online his delusional perspective that Fano is no better than the TPLF. Our own relations soured as he felt it necessary to troll almost every Amhara Genocide and pro-Ethiopian democracy advocate he can find, from Neamin Zeleke to Mesfin Tegenu (two gentlemen for which I have enormous respect and admiration).

He challenged me to a debate — repeatedly — and couldn’t get it through his head that two white guys debating the evolving catastrophe of an African nation without any African perspective represented would be utterly tone-deaf, disrespectful to Ethiopians, absurd, and downright callously stupid. He attached more importance than it deserved to a veiled passing reference I made in a column about violence… an over-reaction that gave me a key insight into how he thinks.

Because for Rasmus, it’s all about Rasmus.

Like an adolescent taunting in a schoolyard, he tossed the word “coward” around after I didn’t take up his debate challenge, and he couldn’t appreciate that what is happening in Ethiopia is the issue, not any manufactured spectacle that could help raise his X following. So, on more than one occasion, I had to send him the “do it yourself” meme card shown here.

There is also the fiery hot sun blazing hypocrisy of a guy who seems to spend all his time trolling Amhara advocates when he has yet to write a single critical article of Abiy Ahmed’s government or any investigative piece on what is happening to journalists, evicted residents in Addis, the growing crisis with Ethiopia’s borders, etc.

Which brings us to his excerpt on Abren, “Why I am no fan of Fano.” Catchy. And whether Rasmus chose his own title or Abren did, it tells us more than the author probably wished us to learn. Note the I here. We are not told why we should care what a Danish-Chilean writer thinks, but the presumption is that we should. He needn’t justify having an opinion, but nowhere in this article is there any deference to Ethiopian views, nor is even one Ethiopian source quoted.

The overwhelming impression you get, despite this being published on Abren, is that it’s not written for any ordinary Ethiopians at all.

How could it be? Ethiopians have always been more familiar with the circumstances of the ongoing conflict than he is, so you have to wonder who his audience is. It’s the same way that Rasmus keeps attacking Amhara advocates and occasionally attaching himself like a barnacle to posts by institutions and human rights organizations. Easy targets.

My own conclusion is that Rasmus is eagerly waiting for DW or France 24 to give him a call and add him to their pundit rolls, and he just might get there with this kind of excerpt.

Let’s take a closer look then at what he’s selling, especially as it turns out to be surprisingly sloppy. There is little of the fact-based homework that you can find earlier in his book. He tells us “there is a kernel of truth in that the scapegoating of Amharas has been the staple of various ethno-nationalist discourses for decades in Ethiopia.” Really? Only a kernel? Are you kidding? And if you’re willing to concede this, why not back it up with a few references?

“This has even seeped into the world press,” writes Rasmus. “For instance, a recent BBC article describes the Amharas as ‘historic rulers of Ethiopia.’” Which BBC article? Moreover, why isn’t Rasmus bothering to contradict this with hard facts? He could have mentioned that Yohannes IV was Tigrayan, that during the Zemene Mesafint, the notorious strongman in power Mikal Sehul was also Tigrayan, that many emperors were Were Sheh, the Yeju Dynasty of Oromo, and that Menelik’s ancestry is a hotly debated topic and that Haile Selassie could claim partial Oromo heritage. Why doesn’t he? One can only conclude that he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

He writes: “The characterization of Amharas as oppressors is inaccurate and incendiary.” Not just inaccurate but downright slanderously wrong. Because as any Ethiopian historian with integrity will tell you, after Menelik chose Addis as his capital, it was the nobles of Shoa who called the shots, and they were not all necessarily Amhara, any more than all the power players in Washington all come from New York or Maryland.

And yet Rasmus goes on to write this mealy-mouthed qualifier: “However, as already mentioned, it is fair to say that Amharas generally identify with and are identified with Ethiopia.” What makes this phrase particularly insipid is that it essentially says nothing while carrying the implication that something is inherently wrong with being identified with Ethiopia. I know Afar who identify with Ethiopia. I know ethnic Oromo who identify with Ethiopia, and yes, Tigrayans who identify with Ethiopia.

His target is Fano, it’s the theme of his whole piece. But he knows he has to work his way through a thick forest of rationalizations before he can reach his goal. He tells us this:

“The Ethiopian judiciary has no history of being independent. Still today, it is safe to assume that both the jailing and the freeing of politicians, and probably of journalists too, takes place on orders from the executive. Thus, without examining the details, I will not vouch for the fairness of detentions and trials of politicians and journalists. Some of them may well be innocent by normal democratic legal standards. However, whenever I have cast a glance at their cases, there is direct or indirect advocacy for violence.”

WOW. After you move past the first sentence, this whole paragraph would do wonders as an apologia for regimes in Hungary, Myanmar, Putin’s Russia, Iran, take your pick.

And note the slippery euphemistic language and passive voice? Not “Abiy Ahmed’s government has tossed journalists and politicians into prison,” but “probably of journalists, too, takes place on orders of the executive.”

Don’t name them! They might be reading! Stick to your bottom line and protect that precious journalist visa. This is why I’ve suggested that Rasmus is essentially that chicken that Abiy wants to serve up in burgers. He risks nothing. And if Abiy spares the clown chicken, he’ll make a great Judas goat, the useful government apologist worth granting an exclusive interview or shilling for the regime.

After all, the guy who once poked holes in TPLF’s arguments now believes that it’s okay to round up journalists and politicians because according to him, “there is direct or indirect advocacy for violence.”

Last I checked, people were entitled to due process and legal representation, bail, etc. no matter what the charge was.

But knowing he has to live and work in Ethiopia for now, Rasmus does his best to have it both ways. He concedes the massacres in Wollega. He concedes the mass kidnappings of Amhara university students. There is even this interesting admission: “As for the accusations of civilians being killed by federal troops in Amhara Region,” he argues that “there is no doubt that the war in Amhara, like the one in Oromia, can be dirty.” So far, he’s essentially conceding that ordinary Amhara are fully justified in fearing and loathing their government.

But then comes more pretzel logic. He mentions (but doesn’t bother to give us a link) to the Reuters investigation into Korree Nageenyaa, and then writes:

“Fano supporters have used this to paint a picture of a government that operates with callous disregard for due process. This is a fair point, but it shatters a core tenet of Fano’s case for war, namely that the leading Oromos in the governing Prosperity Party are on the same side as the OLA. If this does not hold true, it is in fact the Fano insurgents who are helping the OLA by keeping the federal army overstretched on two fronts.”

This is ridiculous, especially as the Fano supporters are right, in that ethno-nationalists within the PP and the OLA have the same goal, the disempowerment and extermination of Amhara. In the 1970s and eighties, the Derg did not hesitate to brutally imprison and execute many of its own supporters within the army and government ranks. Using the logic of Rasmus, Ethiopians should therefore have been cheery and upbeat about the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people whom the Derg slaughtered, easily filling up those containers of bones and skulls in the Red Terror Museum.

But even more offensive is the false equivalency that Rasmus is determined to keep peddling. To him, Fano is “no different from the war with the TPLF.”

Here, it’s necessary to touch again on the unpleasant personal side. Because it’s important to keep in mind that despite Rasmus once being a correspondent to Ethiopia, he wasn’t there during the war with the TPLF.

You can find video of Sheba Tekeste with University of Gondar researchers finding bones of the Amhara victims — you won’t see Rasmus in it. You won’t see Rasmus tagging along in the background when Jemal Countess took his unforgettable photos for what became his “Tears of Wollega” exhibitions. Nor was Rasmus with Jemal and me when the two of us walked like stunned astronauts through landscapes of cruel destruction in Lalibela and Dessie, the result of all the looting and vandalism by the TPLF.

My point is that while doing great summation work for his book based on secondary sources and in some limited cases, some investigatory work on the contexts of the Hyena War, he wasn’t fucking there like the rest of us.

He didn’t earn any place to make such a sweeping, asinine generalization about Fano, let alone a comparison of Fano to what the TPLF is, the evil that TPLF stands for, and the barbarisms that Fano committed. Speak to the thousands of IDPs in Dessie and Afar and the victims of Mai Kadra first before you toss out such stupid assertions.

Besides his slander of Fano, I find his core argument, lazily parked near the end of the article, to be the most dangerous. In his condemnation of Fano, he breezes along with the typical white savior trope that there are “war crimes on both sides that call for justice.” But then we get this:

“And there is the zoom-out of a political scenario that calls for respecting state monopoly on violence. The minimum requirements for taking up arms is that the established government is illegitimate, that the rebellion has broad popular support, that a sound context analysis is in place, and that a better alternative is within realistic reach. The Fano insurgency meets none of these conditions.”

To which I can firmly say, No. Bullshit. To begin with is the bizarre contention that the state should have a “monopoly on violence.” Since he and I are both inheritors of Enlightenment values mapped out by the minds of Western Europe, I’d like him to explain how he got there, because I sure as hell am not ready to let the state reserve that kind of “monopoly” for itself.

The whole reason why police forces in America repeatedly get themselves into trouble is because we now recognize that use of force and violence are not equivalent. Force is to be used sparingly and in contexts where the users have to justify legally what they do. But the Abiy regime and its partners in murder have no justifications, nor do they plan to give Ethiopians one — at least, not one that doesn’t earn bitter laughter in response.

But let’s examine his other criteria: “that the established government is illegitimate, that the rebellion has broad popular support, that a sound context analysis is in place, and that a better alternative is within realistic reach. The Fano insurgency meets none of these conditions.”

I’m already aware of Rasmus’s argument for the first, as he’s pushed it online in X posts, that the Abiy government won the election, therefore it’s legitimate. While that was once true up to a point and a free election is the cornerstone of democracy, it does not imply that voting citizens give their government a blank check. The normal recourse when citizens can’t get satisfaction between elections or through their parliaments is to hit the streets and protest. But the government doesn’t mind arresting and killing those who publicly voice their disapproval… or even who want to simply go to church.

So, despite Rasmus wanting to hand a “monopoly” of the use of violence over to the state, I say any government loses its legitimacy on the spot once it demonstrates a recurring pattern of violence against its own citizens.

Rasmus demands that any taking up of arms must require “broad popular support.” To which I ask, Who gets to decide that? When Jews rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto, the fighters were a minority among the hundreds of thousands penned up by the Nazis. In the first years of the French Resistance, you could have fit the active members into a large conference room, and they certainly didn’t reflect the commitment in 1941 of the French in the Occupied Zone as things got rolling. So, were these two legendary rebellions unjustified?

Let’s move on then to his final two criteria: “a sound context analysis is in place, and that a better alternative is within realistic reach.” Keep in mind, he states these are minimum requirements for taking up arms.

I don’t know what “a sound context analysis” is but again, I would ask, Who gets to decide that? I could ask the same thing of his demand for a “better alternative within realistic reach,” but it’s important to demolish the fatuous logic behind this deceptively vague phrasing.

His notion that you need to have a built-in guarantee of success and a political conceptual framework ready to justify your resort to arms just boggles the mind. To return to the example of the French Resistance, many of those brave fighters knew they were going to their deaths when they set out on a mission; the Nazi grip on France was total. They did it anyway. And given that like Fano groups and supporters for Ethiopia today, France was greatly divided between conservatives and Communists, liberals and right-leaning patriots, it’s asinine to expect a monolithic political conformity and microwaved ideology in response to totalitarian repression.

As any veteran soldier will likely tell you, especially one for guerrilla movements, what is within “realistic reach” for the tactical situation can change daily, sometimes hourly.

I would love to introduce Rasmus to a couple of Burmese folks I know and have him explain how he thinks the students-turned-fighters against the Tatmadaw aren’t justified in their struggle. Please, by all means, let’s see how this argument goes down with those fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Go tell them they’re not entitled to use their rifles.

If you bother to look at the great freedom fighters and intellectual exponents of liberation movements, many of them like say, Frantz Fanon, did not take up the idea of using violence enthusiastically. Fanon was repulsed by violence on a visceral, personal level. But he recognized there was no other way to free Algeria from French colonialism.

The very fact that Fano units adopted a code of conduct speaks to a desire to try to keep, as much as possible, this conflict from being what Rasmus labeled “a dirty war.” And in passing, I also scorn his choice of label. Dirty doesn’t begin to cover what the Hyena War was with the TPLF. I for one will not forget the bodies I saw in a lonely field, nor the burned-out tanks, nor the rape victim we interviewed, nor the IDPs nor those in Mai Kadra. But it’s not about him or me or what either of us considers “dirty.”

It’s about having empathy for a people being relentlessly crushed and respecting the courage of those willing to lift the weight and bear the burden of their heroic commitment.

I would hike through the grass and mud any day with Fano fighters if given a chance to talk to them, to interview them, to see what their lives are like and what sacrifices they’ve made. I have far more respect for the Fano recruit who picks up a rifle to defend Amhara villagers who could be massacred than the guy who sits comfortably in Addis, tut-tutting over “violence” and how it’s a luxury leather bag only to be opened from the offices in Arat Kilo.