“For four years Trump was president, nothing happened to me personally.” (Somali Community Leader rallying the Somali community to vote for Trump)
“We are gathering today with the community leaders, business leaders, and youth leaders of the Somali community and of the Muslim community in Minnesota to fully support and endorse Donald Trump and J.D Vance.” (Somali Community Leader)
“Somalis rip Minnesota billions of dollars every year. They contribute nothing and the welfare is like 88%. I do not want them in our country. We do not want them in our country. We have to build our country. Our country is at a tipping point – we can go one way or the other. We gonna go the wrong way if we keep taking garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. Her friends are garbage.” (Donald Trump, speaking on behalf of his “we”)
It is hard to believe Somalis in Minnesota overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, the very Donald Trump who, in his first presidency, introduced the now infamous travel ban from seven predominantly Muslim countries including Somalia. Why would a Black community overwhelmingly and publicly support an idiotic, white supremacist vulgar who loves obscenity and relishes in disparaging Blacks, if only to compensate for his severe inferiority complex in attributes Blacks are presumed to be superior?
However, anyone who knows Somalis sufficiently well (in particular the similarity of their clannish nomadism to Trump’s white supremacism in that both of them are exclusive by definition) would not in the least be surprised by their overwhelming support for the white supremacist Donald Trump.
For so long, Somalia was primarily a nomadic country. As a result, nomadic culture is deeply ingrained in each and every Somali, pervading each and every aspect of their personality, in particular their understanding of themselves and the world around them. Until very recently, a large number of Somalis (and, more importantly,a large number of Somalis who immigrated to America) lead nomadic life, constantly on the move in search of green pasture and water. As such, their allegiance was only to their nomadic caravan and their nomadic clan which, as a group, defends their caravan routes. In particular, they have no long-lasting attachment to any specific area and see others outside of their clan as potential enemies competing for scarce natural resources. Their view of “others” is so hostile that, whenever any two clans get close enough to be in sight of each other, clannish conflicts lasting for days, if not for weeks, and costing so many lives and livestock are the rule rather than the exception.
Though Somalia is one of the most linguistically and religiously monolithic countries in the world, Somalis are so clannish that, in Somalia proper, most of them identify themselves not as Somalis but by their clans as Hawiye, Darood, Isaaq etc. In fact, for a large number of immigrants from Somalia, the only reason they identify themselves as Somalis (instead of as Hawyie, Darood, Isaaq etc.) is because the countries they immigrate to require them to register as such. In other words, for a large number of immigrants from Somalia, Somali nationalism is a foreign concept externally imposed upon them by their host countries.
Yes, Somalia is one of the most, if not the most, linguistically and religiously homogenous countries in the world, more so than Japan, for example. However, in spite of its very high homogeneity or perhaps because of it, Somalia is one of the most internally divided, least cohesive countries in the world. As such, Pan-Somalism is foreign to most Somalis, let alone Pan-Africanism, not to mention Black nationalism.
Preaching Black nationalism (as opposed to white supremacism) to most Somalis in America is essentially like teaching algebra to children who just started learning how to count. They are not ready, at least yet. It will take them considerable time and a good dose of reality check to get ready. They do need a good deal of learning to realize that every opportunity opened to them in America required immense Black American sacrifice and that, were it not for that and still ongoing immense Black American sacrifice, they wouldn’t have been allowed even to ride a bus with whites, let alone become mayors, congresspersons, and senators representing whites.
If Somalis are successful in America, it is only because the road to that success was built by sweat and blood of Black America, however bumpy it may be. And, as recent immigrants, Somalis have absolutely no role in building that road to success. Had they not been selfish, ungrateful and, above all, short-sighted, what they could have done was play their part in making the road smoother for all Blacks, including themselves, which is a much easier task than building the road in the first place, against all odds.
Instead, what most Somalis did was align with white supremacists who are striving to make the road to the success of all Black Americans extremely bumpy and almost impassable, if not close it altogether. And, if these white supremacists succeed, the first to suffer are none other than the Somalis themselves. That was exactly what Donald Trump publicly and unambiguously – looking straight at the camera – told them from his oval office in the White House, surrounded by loudly applauding white supremacists he referred to as “we”.
“I do not want them in our country. We do not want them in our country.” (Donald Trump, speaking on behalf of his“we”)
And yet, so many Somalis in America are too eager to tell White Americans that they are Somalis but not blacks, even though White Americans see them as nothing but blacks. Since they do not see themselves as blacks and, since they are narrow minded because of their nomadic background and upbringing, they do not give an iota for any issue affecting all blacks in America, explaining why one of their community leaders tried to justify his support for Trump saying “for four years Trump was president, nothing happened to me personally”.
Somalis in America turned out in droves to vote for Donald Trump for the second time, only because he “promised” them he will bring peace to Somalia, even though they know full well that he will create havoc to Blacks in America. They are now complaining that “Trump broke his promise” to them, instead of blaming their nomadic naivety for trusting a white supremacist, a fraudster, and a felon, all three in one.
Obviously, Somalis in America have not fully realized that white supremacists conquer only the divided and that, besides sadistic cruelty, their greatest power is treachery and deceit, false promise being one them. They have yet to learn that expecting anything good for blacks from white supremacists who are proud of enslaving blacks and who are now striving to bring slavery again through “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) is akin to expecting a pigeon from a serpent’s egg.
Somalis took Donald Trump in, even though he openly told them he is a vicious snake by publicly reciting his favorite poem – “The Snake”. As if on prophesy, the poem was written by the Black American civil rights activist Oscar Brown Jr. to forewarn gullible Blacks from ever trusting the white supremacist. The Somalis are now complaining that Trump “gave them a vicious bite” and his reply with a wide grin is “Oh shut up, silly Somalis. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”
Because of their nomadic background, Somalis tend to instinctively follow any one who shows them a green pasture, without questioning that the green pasture may very well be an optical illusion – a mirage. As such, they became easy prey for the con artist Donald Trump. He is now openly calling them “garbage” as some of them openly called Black Americans “garbage”, by insinuation, if not word by word.
Somalis Black identity and their pride in their African heritage was further eroded by their close, subservient association with Arabs. The Arabs made Somalia a member of the Arab league, not because they considered Somalis as Arabs, but for geopolitical expediency, especially with regard to Black Ethiopia However, Somalis saw in this membership only what they wanted to see and began to seriously believe in the “Caucasian fiction” and think that, like Arabs in Western Asia and pseudo-Arabs in North Africa, they belong to the “Caucasian race” and, therefore, have nothing to do with Black and Blacks. They publicly say “they are not Black”, as if they have the dire need to declare so because others see them for what they really are. Obviously, they do not know, rather do not want to know that “Caucasian” is nothing but non-existent umbrella race artificially created by white supremacists to hoodwink white wannabe “browns” into supporting the white supremacist cause against Blacks.
Somalia, as a country, has always been the problem child of Africa aligned with neocolonialists and anti-Black, white wannabe Arabs. A large number of Somali Americans are now the problem children of Black America aligned with white supremacists.
Finally, speaking of Trump’s garbage, who is the real garbage of America singularly responsible for the exponential decline of America in all metrics of socio-economic development, overwhelmingly voting for, if not worshipping, the garbage of all garbage – Donald Trump? The answer lies in the drug-infested rural communities and small towns of America where the “deplorables” of Hillary Clinton are overwhelming majorities, and this answer is best expressed by none other than Trump’s favorite surrogate, Vivek Ramaswamy.
If Somalis are garbage, it is only in the sense that they voted for the ultimate garbage, in conjunction with “deplorable garbages” of white America whose only solace from their utterly deplorable state is joyfully listening to the white supremacist vulgarities of Trump and gleefully watching the humiliation of “non-whites” under Trumpism.
Unfortunately, Somali Americans may not be the only problems for Black unity in America. After Somali Americans, the next problem children for Black America may very well be the Oromos and Tigres who emigrated from Ethiopia and who are as clannish as the Somalis, if not more. For the clannish Oromos and clannish Tigres of Ethiopia who (in conjunction with the west) are primarily, if not solely, responsible for havocking Ethiopia, just as the clannish Somalis havocked Somalia, Ethiopianism is an anathema let alone Pan-Africanism, not to mention Black nationalism. Like the clannish Somalis, the clannish Oromos and the clannish Tigres identify themselves in America not as blacks but by their ethnicity as Oromos and Tigres and are more than willing to do the white supremacists’ bidding with regard to Africa and Blacks in general. As such, they are willingly exploited by white supremacist America, for exactly the same reason clannish Somalis are willingly exploited by the same – to “dilute”, so to speak, black nationalism with these white supremacists stooges, if not to eradicate it altogether.
Mesfin Arega
mesfinarega.com
mesfin.arega@gmail.com
