Moralizing dictatorship? the latest mirage of fake kabyle democrats

DICTATORSHIP DOES NOT NEED ADVISORS; IT HAS PUPPETS.

Ferhat Mehenni’s response to the latest plea for a “moralization” of the Algerian power.

In Algeria, there is an entire repertoire of opinion pieces that return, at regular intervals, to lecture the ruling power on what it should do to moralize itself. The vocabulary varies depending on the authors and the eras—people alternately speak of “audits” rather than trials, a duty of “lucidity,” the necessity of “freeing speech,” national dialogue, and the release of prisoners of conscience as a prerequisite for any “resuscitation of public life”—but the structure of the argument never changes.

This type of discourse is unique in that it denounces the system without ever naming it as an irreconcilable adversary. It appeals to “independent” personalities acting “discreetly,” to circles that “advocate moderation and reason,” and to an outgoing generation summoned to make one last gesture before leaving the stage. It demands reforms, but ultimately addresses the very same interlocutor: the power itself, which is politely asked to agree to reform. This is the entire ambiguity: what remains, in practice, an offer of dialogue with the apparatus one claims to criticize is dressed up as a democratic demand.

This ambiguity is not a stylistic accident. It is a sign that there is no genuine democratic opposition outside the system in Algeria. Those who present themselves as such, whether former elected officials, media figures, or “think tanks,” always end up falling back into the same gesture: soliciting power, suggesting a method to it, and hoping to be associated with the maneuver rather than fighting it from the outside. They are not counter-powers; they are, knowingly or not, cogs in the same system, tasked with giving it a presentable face at regular intervals. Puppets, even if they are unaware of being so themselves.

It is to this recurring discourse—and to its latest version, published in recent days and picked up in several columns—that the opinion piece by Ferhat Mehenni, published below, responds point by point. The President of the Kabyle Government in Exile and, by extension, of the Federal Republic of Kabylie, names no one. He doesn’t need to: the architecture of the argument he dismantles speaks for itself.

Opinion

Regarding proposals to moralize the Algerian dictatorship by pseudo-Kabyle opponents: naivety or hypocrisy?

Since the 1990s, the opposition consisting of “Kabyle democrats” has continuously lavished the holders of the Algerian dictatorship with advice on humanization, democratization, and respect for human rights, with the aim of preserving the “nation” and ensuring a bright future for Algeria, both internally and externally.

This advice, which often masks individual job-seeking offers, evidently sins either through naivety or hypocrisy. The regime has no lessons to receive from anyone: it has its own codes, objectives, and vision for its own future. It has analysts and experts in its service who are far more effective than all these dime-store democrats. In reality, these advisors fantasize about the effectiveness of their recipes. They seek to be co-opted by the system as “brilliant seconds” rather than working for any real benefit to the future of a nation they do not even believe in.

Thus, when they advise regionalization, federalism, or regional autonomies, they do not realize that they are only expressing Kabyle fantasies of a fraternal, pluralistic, democratic, and—cherry on top—secular Algeria, which the regime couldn’t care less about.

So, enough joking around. There is no possibility of reforming the country from within, and even less of having it accept the absurd idea of a “national refoundation.”

There is no solution for Kabylie and the Kabyle people other than emancipation from Algerian colonial tutelage.

To the wise, a word is enough.

— Ferhat Mehenni