Alemayehu G.Mariam June 28th, 2010 Note: This is my fourth commentary on the theme, “Where do we go from here?” following the rigged elections in Ethiopia last month in which the ruling dictatorship won by 99.6 percent[1]. In this piece, I express deep anguish over the enormous problems and challenges faced by Ethiopia’s youth, and urge them to emancipate their minds and work collectively to build the “future country of Ethiopia” that Birtukan Midekssa, Ethiopia’s foremost political prisoner and first woman political party leader in Ethiopian history, dreamed about.
Own the Youth, Gain the Future
In 1935, Adolf Hitler delivered a speech at the Reichsparteitag (national party convention) in which he declared, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” By impregnating German youth with Nazi ideology and unleashing them on the world, Hitler believed he could perpetuate the Third Reich for a thousand years. Creating an indoctrinated and brainwashed youth is the impossible dream of all dictators and tyrannical regimes. The Soviets created the Young Pioneers and Komsomols to integrate youth into the party structure and tighten their control over the population. In China, Mao’s anchored his theory of “permanent revolution” in the mass mobilization of youth; and in the late 1960s he formed the Red Guards to implement his Cultural Revolution.