Demystifying the Image

Abstract

While opposition to the Ethiopian monarchy was an immediate imperative of the Ethiopian revolutionary movement, self-professed “anti-feudalism” was but one part of the political-economic object of revolutionary critique. Originating from a country famous for its legacy of African independence, and against a monarch who was a global pan-African icon, Ethiopian revolutionary opposition to Haile Selassie would require not only a politics of dissent, but also an anti-colonial framing. This article centers anti-imperialism—specifically challenges to US neo-imperialism in Ethiopia—among Ethiopian student revolutionaries in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Examining organizational writing and direct action, as well as editorials in Muhammad Speaks and The Black Panther, this article argues that US-based Ethiopian students employed demystification as a signature revolutionary tactic. They attempted to reframe Ethiopian exceptionalist narratives as currency of US neo-imperialism, drawing on arguments strengthened by engaging Black Power concepts and thinkers. Demystification, while rooted in narrative modes and historical tropes specific to Ethiopian students' location in the United States, offers a concept to think through other oppositional movements as generative of global theoretical critique. Ethiopian students not only demanded the overthrow of the monarchy, but also joined anti-colonial appeals for the structural transformation of the world.