What Is Humanity If Even the Faarseebulaas Mock the Truth?
Excerpt
Empires and regimes fall. Tyrants vanish. And when the reckoning comes, Betelhem Tafese and the Faarseebulaas will face the truth they mocked. Will they eat back the contemptuous lies they vomit today against the truth-tellers, freedom fighters, and human rights activists? No regime built on deception, gaslighting, and blood can last — especially one that feeds starving people fairy tales and street-light shows.
Truth as Inconvenience: The Faarseebulaa Reflex
A woman laughed. Not at absurdity, but at Obbo Taye Danda’a Aredo — the man who just got re-arrested on 2nd day of this month, and whose pre-recorded interviews came out revealing the rotten truths of Abiy Ahmed’s regime.
Her words? He’s like a bull in town during holidays. Loud. Unruly. Dangerous. Best avoided.
What is humanity if that’s our response?
And then came the kicker: Why didn’t he tell us sooner? As if the timing of his truth-telling mattered more than the truth itself. As if earlier knowledge would’ve been folded neatly into her morning routine. As if she — and so many like her — weren’t already dodging the facts like they dodge cattle on the street.
What is humanity if we’ve grown more comfortable with the liar than the one who exposes the lie?
This wasn’t just mockery. It was a textbook case of Faarseebulaa reflex — when the truth becomes too inconvenient, shoot the messenger.
Taye didn’t just speak out. He exposed the inner mechanics of power. He revealed, plainly, that Abiy himself sparked the Tigray war, costing a million lives. That the crimes were not accidents of war but conscious state policy. Yet the Faarseebulaas didn’t react with horror — they frowned at his tone.
https://www.facebook.com/addisalem.belay.35/videos/691552333794685/
Faarseebulaa Psychology: Laughing with the Butcher
There’s a sickness in our society. A sickness where truth-tellers are derided, and the public lines up behind their oppressors. It’s not because they don’t know. It’s because they don’t want to know.
That woman, and many like her, embody what Faarseebulaas have become: apologists for power, gaslighters by default, and truth-phobic cowards who’d rather cling to fake peace than admit complicity in atrocity.
We’ve seen cultural leaders executed. Karrayyuu Abbaa Gadaa fathers gunned down. Voices of hope like Haacaaluu Hundessa and Battee Urgeessaa erased. Not because they did anything wrong, but because they dared to dream and speak.
We’ve all seen the footage, haven’t we? A man burned alive. Skinned. Conscious. The crowd not screaming — no — cheering. Heads on spikes. A regime that doesn’t just kill but choreographs it. Homes torched with families still inside, sons executed in town squares while their parents are forced to watch — and the whole horror filmed, edited, and broadcast as state-sponsored theatre, not justice. A spectacle meant to terrorize, not just punish. A sick deterrence tactic for the regime.
And yet… silence. Or worse, defense of the regime. Why? Because facing the truth would dismantle the illusion — and the Faarseebulaa cannot live without illusion.
What is it to be human if injustice doesn’t move us, if the sight of a charred body, or a culture elder executed in daylight, doesn’t crack open something deep in our soul?
We live in a bizarre theatre where facts are labelled fiction, and those who expose them are branded unstable, reckless, unhinged. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to be more offended by Taye Danda’a’s tone than the substance of his testimony?
This is beyond cognitive dissonance. This is full-blown denialism. Stockholm Syndrome with a national twist. We’re not just captives to a violent state — we’ve started to love our captors. We feel safer inside the lie than outside it, even as it devours us.
Because if you acknowledge the truth, you have to act. You have to face the blood, the screams, the bones. You have to admit you were complicit — not by action, but by silence. And that’s harder than swallowing any lie.
Cosmetic Tyranny and the Faarseebulaa Theatre
This regime doesn’t govern. It performs.
Past regimes, as brutal as they were, had ideological backbone. The Derg gave land to the peasants. The EPRDF built roads, power plants, schools. But Abiy’s regime? It builds mirages — neon fountains, vanity parks, resort lobbies passed off as policy.
And the Faarseebulaas? They cheer like trained seals. They applaud artificial lights while their neighbors starve. They parrot regime PR while journalists rot in prison. They share TikToks of artificial lakes while real rivers run dry with blood.
This is Faarseebulaa politics: betrayal disguised as patriotism. Delusion as defence mechanism. Loyalty without spine. A grotesque theatre of national self-deception.
We laugh. We make memes. We call the whistleblower a “bull”. We sidestep the shame with sarcasm and keep sipping from the cup of manufactured peace.
But here’s the thing: the pain doesn’t go away. It festers. And those of us who feel it — deeply, personally — are left screaming into the void.
Taye Danda’a might not have been polished. He may have come in like a wrecking ball. But wrecking balls are what you use when the structure is rotten. And this regime is rot — top to bottom.
This isn’t about one man’s courage. It’s about our collective cowardice. It’s about the truth we all heard, and how most chose comfort over conscience.
So I ask again: what is humanity, if not the refusal to stay numb in the face of injustice? What is humanity, if not the courage to stare truth in the face — however ugly — and say, this matters?
Because if that’s not what it means to be human… then maybe we’ve already lost.
The Coming Reckoning
Empires end. Regimes fall. Autocrats vanish — sometimes suddenly, sometimes slowly. But always, inevitably. And when the dust settles, there will be a reckoning.
A reckoning for Betelhem Tafesse.
A reckoning for the influencers, the trolls, the talking heads — the Faarseebulaas — who ridiculed the truth to stay cozy with power.
Will they eat back the bile they vomit today? Will they rewrite their tweets, reframe their podcasts, rebrand their shame with crocodile tears and belated awakenings?
Let them remember:
The Derg lasted 17 years and left land reform among some notables. The EPRDF lasted 27 and left a sign of what infrastructure development and functioning economy looked like, imperfect as the regime was particularly in human rights arena.
But this regime — built on eternal lies, corruption, fake parks, fake peace, and fake prophets — is running on fumes. The public’s patience is gone. The benefit of the doubt is buried beneath the weight of lies, false promises, and freshly dug graves.
History is merciless to fools who laugh at truth. This laughter won’t last.
So when the empire finally collapses — and it will — when the regime finally falls — and it will —what will the Faarseebulaas say then?
References
- A Video Clip Depicting Betelhem Tafese’s Derision of Taye Danda’a, ታዬ ደንድአና ቤቲ LTV, Facebook.
- OT Editorial, Digital Serfdom in Ethiopia: Faarseebulaa, Propaganda, and the Politics of Praise, 22 May 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
- Stockholm Syndrome, Wikipedia.
