Published: July 14, 2025
It was on this long, distant afternoon that I found myself on a two-way call with a friend via WhatsApp, someone who often dialogues with me on a range of issues, personal, political, and existential. Usually, our conversations are intense, ranging from the serious to the playful and often pivoting to the intimately personal. Yet lurking in those conversations, there is always a recurring concern about the trajectory of our country. After diving into the personal, the conversation moved to big-picture issues like a sudden jolt: the evolving political developments on the home front. It is about the rising ethnic trend holding our politics hostage, with key political figures orbiting their ethnic identities and building political alliances bordering on such a reactionary brand of politics. He argued that the growing ethnic crisis vindicated his pre-election analysis that the democratic transition from Weah to Boakai would reproduce the same old wine in new bottles and the same discredited governing logic, as elections in Liberia have become a meaningless ritual.
My friend and I hold radically opposed views about the last presidential election. While his take that without consequential, fundamental transformation, a change of government is both a futile spectacle and a game of musical chairs is analytically sharp, it obscures complexities and offers a romantic view of social change and history. But, true to my nature, I refused to dabble in idealistic puritanism. I take as my point of departure the dialectical understanding of contradictions and the identification of the principal contradiction at a particular historical juncture. Arguably, in 2023, the Weah regime was it. Consequently, consigning the regime to the ash heap became a revolutionary and ethical exigency. When a contradiction poses an urgent and existential risk to the Liberian polity, addressing it becomes the immediate task. For me, this is the hallmark of dialectical thinking.
However, it was his lament about the growing ethnic turn in Liberian politics that prompted me to push back more forcefully, fearing that we risk misdiagnosing the phenomenon. Like someone aware of historical stakes, the gentleman waxed lyrical about how this new turn has the potential to undermine national progress. The immediate negative impact, he identified, is that this reactionary politics has turned ministries and agencies into miniaturized ethnic cocoons. The consequence, we agreed, is legion and also normalizes a dangerous trend in society, where ethnic identities are weaponized against the ethnic Other and instrumentalized for both a piece of the national pie and a seat at the table. Here, politics is reduced to a narrow lens: sowing division and fomenting hatred, where the tribal Other becomes the imagined enemy. Despite our agreement on the adverse impact, I reckoned there was an air of presentism hovering around his passionate rage. Like someone possessed by epiphany, I posed the question: if you remove the tribe or the ethnic identities of these politicians, what vision of social change could they possibly offer, and what paradigm of development would they utilize to make that change possible? Our collective answer was nothing, and that nothing brought me to the conclusion that the hegemonic political force in Liberia is the figure of the shallow, a vacuous political subject whose rise is due to the ethnic turn in Liberian politics and years of national decline.
The Tribal Turn
But the tribal turn in Liberian politics is neither a novel phenomenon nor a recent pathology. Its backdrop can be traced to the 1980 post-coup era with the emergence of Samuel K. Doe as head of state of the republic. During this period, this reactionary form of politics became the method of politics of the two groups, who were fixated on extraction and primitive accumulation. The first group, the indigenous fringe of the erstwhile Americo-Liberian ruling group, exploited their tribal connections to save their skin, feather their nests, and dislodge progressive forces from the military junta. The progressive radicals had visionary aspirations for a new society built on the ideals of egalitarianism, non-domination, and redistributionist economic policies. This group, which included old guards such as Kekurah Kpoto, Byron Tarr, John Rancy, Edward Massaquoi, Edward Beyan Kesselley, and Jackson F. Doe, to name a few, weaponized their indigenous identities to curry favor from the junta and dissociate themselves from the excesses of the past. Arguing rather cynically, they contended that although they were officials in the deposed regime of the True Whig Party (TWP), they held no real power and could barely influence any public policy decisions, implying an insider-outsider dynamic rooted in exclusionary politics.
Alongside this group, a far more rabid band of tribal chauvinists emerged from the bowels of the military junta, largely making up ethnic elements of Doe’s Krahn tribal group, in figures such as Bai Gbala, Harry Nayou, Harrison Pennoh, etc.. These forces leveraged their tribal background to get a seat at the table and also constantly resisted the radical economic and social policies promoted by radical civilians in the regime. While the politics of the two counterrevolutionary tendencies were uncannily similar, it was Doe’s tribal folks who took such a dangerous form of politics to despicable heights, using tribal affiliation as the anchor for loyalty and protection. This set the stage for Liberia’s march to the tribal “dark ages.” Ethnic arithmetic and tribal calculations also gave rise to the cynical politics of survival and proximity. While this form of politics was encouraged by Doe and performed by the two groups— not only did it not augur well for the country, but it also laid the groundwork for the emergence of shallow elements and the politics of physical liquidation of bodies. The consequence of this was not just theoretical; it was also human and material, reflected in the razing of villages of supposed political rivals and the butchering of a section of tribal groups. This became the logical endpoint of a dangerous politics that turned the ethnic Other into the becoming-animal.
By 1983, these forces succeeded in purging the likes of Baccus Matthews, Chea Cheapoo, and Oscar Quiah (all from the Progressive Alliance of Liberia, PAL) from the government based on political gossip and trumped-up charges. Others, like Dr. H. Boima Fahnbulleh, Jr., and Dr. Togba Nah Tipoteh (all from the Movement for Justice in Africa, MOJA), had resigned based on policy disagreements. Dew Mayson was pushed out of the National Investment Commission (NIC) and sent as ambassador to Paris, while Marcus Gbobeh was humiliated and relegated to some insignificant job at the Capitol Building. The chaos that ensued was not accidental but a byproduct of politics that lacked vision and became devoid of radical transformation. Thus, with the removal and marginalization of key progressive politicos from the military junta, the aspirational principles of the regime were abandoned and replaced with more contemptible ideas about governance. The two anti-people groups—Doe’s Krahn tribal cabal and the indigenous fringe of the erstwhile Americo-Liberian ruling group— argued that Liberia’s problems were not rooted in historical socio-economic imbalances. Instead, it was simply that a fingerful of minoritized Americo-Liberian elite presided over the country for 135 years. That was the orientation of the social forces that consolidated power post-1980, dictating the national itinerary. What followed was neither a revolutionary reorganization nor a root-and-branch transformation of society but a mindless speeding into the cul-de-sac: the coup thus became a counterrevolutionary moment.
But what historical conditions led to the flowering of that brand of reactionary politics, and why did it spectacularly fail, leaving ruins, carnage, and decadence in its wake? History has proven time and again that politics devoid of radical imagination and progressive ideas always plunges a society into the cauldron of political and economic sclerosis, leading most times to crises that end in armed violence and perhaps even Balkanisationtion of the state in some instances. While tribal politics became prevalent during the Doe era, the Liberian state was on the verge of national collapse. This is because history has shown that social forces that lack historical vision and progressive ideas have never taken hold of a rotten state and advanced it into an epoch of modernity and enlightenment. This failure is due to the lack of a genuine historical understanding and a progressive vision.
The Rise of the Figure of the Shallow
Indeed, the combination of the defeat of the vision of liberation and radical politics, the expulsion of progressive forces, and the murdering of junta members with progressive sympathies such as Nelson Toe, Thomas Weh Sen, Henry Zuo, Robert Sumo, and Harry Johnson allowed for the two counterrevolutionary camps to gain and consolidate power in their hands. As history does not tolerate a vacuum, it also paved the way for the rise of a dominant political subject: the figure of the shallow. For it is such that no matter which dominant party one votes for, this figure governs. This political being is neither mythical, metaphorical, nor accidental. This dominant political subjectivity originates from years of national decline and decay propelled onto the historical stage due to the tragic-comic twist of Liberia’s postcolonial realities. This mode of being, with its venality, lack of radical imagination, inadequacy, and insatiable cravings for wealth and prestige, is a product of our prevailing postcolonial condition. It is not unique to a particular party or tribe but cuts across parties as well as trans-tribal. This subject engages in pilfering and plunder, frustrating both radical imaginations and the people’s democratic aspirations.
Its mode of politics is grotesque and obscene, as it relies on political performativity. This type of politics is deceptive and is devoid of substance. But this shallow being masks its emptiness in the cloak of national power. It is a grotesque creature that pretends to be an ally of the people—staging eating, kissing babies, establishing fake foundations, embarking on quick-impact projects, and scripting petitioning programs. During electoral campaigns, it dons modest apparel and revolutionary fatigues and chants national and continental freedom songs. However, when occupying public office, it is clad in gaudy costumes and drives a blue-light convoy complete with sirens. It may mumble words about development, albeit in broad and generic terms, but without any genuine concern for the postcolonial masses. It couches its relationship with them in deceit and in theatrics. The veil is pierced and removed when it exhibits its phony concerns about youth unemployment, the conditions of roads and hospitals, and living standards; yet, it works to keep the masses in the stasis of necropolitical conditions.
The figure of the shallow could have been Swift’s Lilliputian, Fanon’s false bourgeoisie, or Fahnbulleh’s psychologically unstable political being. It is none of them. But even with these figures, there is an internal logic and historical grounding, albeit perverse, that governs their actions. There is always an explanation for their method of historical betrayal. The reason could be coloniality, structural constraints, or unequal integration into the international division of labor. Or the tension between the subject and agent. However, this figure is formless, depthless, and devoid of any real substance. Tragic comedy, not in its literary iteration but in its philosophical mode, makes this figure hegemonic in the Liberian polity. Ethnicization, which involves resorting to primal irrationalities and regressing to the most reactionary imaginings, creates the groundwork for its emergence. Its shelf life is not due to deft maneuvers but as a result of the dual crisis of ethnicity and tragic comedy in the Liberian body politic.
Although morally and intellectually bankrupt, it is the leading political subject lording over a Liberian state reeling from the tripartite crisis of ontology, legitimacy and sovereignty. The Liberian state under this figure huffs and puffs about sovereignty, but it is not even mildly sovereign, as decisions on all forms of self-determination are made for it by institutions of the Washington Consensus and external, powerful, statist forces. Consequently, the state is unable to initiate fundamental changes to improve the lives of its people. Sovereignty becomes what it screams when it wants to distract itself from its failings and wallow in the delusion of importance. This figure has stripped the state of every feature of being. The state under its watch is an object of satire: a joke masquerading as a state. In this context, ontology refers to what the state claims when it pretends to be real and attributes agency to itself. Legitimacy is what it tries to claim when it deludes itself into thinking that holding regular elections gives it membership in the so-called club of “liberal” democracies.
Understanding this figure also involves wrestling with its dark politics and dominant logic of governance. And it must begin with counterfactuals: what if the postcolonial Liberian state, with the ubiquity of this depthless being, is about managing death in both its policy prospectus and grand declarations? What if national decay is not an aberration but the governing logic with this figure in charge? The state, under this figure, is necro-managerial: it manages death within acceptable limits to stave off radical rupture while simultaneously keeping it within acceptable limits. Thus, for example, policies on maternal and infant mortalities, eradicating healthcare challenges, and poverty reduction are not concerned about total eradication but statistical management.
Neocromangerial Governance of the Shadow
Here, tragically, both the state and multinationals have declared war on livelihoods and bodies, especially the masses of people residing in the ruins of squalid urban slums, those working on sites operated by multinational corporations, and those occupying the geographies of underdevelopment in the rural countryside. Masses in the first group from ghettoized communities such as West Point, Buzzay Quarter, Clara Town, New Kru Town, and Chicken Soup Factory, who are stripped of their human existence, occupy “death-worlds.’ They are the “becoming-objects” of national decay: market women, children with distended stomachs and emaciated bodies, young females with dreams who constantly must confront drudgeries, and young men who have taken to drugs to forget their social misery. Under these circumstances, one poses the question: What future is there for these people?
In this second group, the masses are the “walking dead” wrestling with conditions of bare life and existential insecurities as values are extracted through their labor. In these legal black sites that are concession areas, this archetypical subject (figure of the shallow) enters into a Faustian bargain with multinationals to drown labor resistance and protests against unfair working conditions, for decent wages, and against environmental violations in blood in exchange for material enrichment. In the neoliberal lexicon, deunionization is called deregulation of the labor market or investment incentives to increase FDI inflows and promote economic growth and stability. This pact explains why bodies have been violated, debased, and drained of blood and why national laws on labor protection and human rights are glossed over. This situation also explains why international soft law instruments, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, as well as international environmental law norms, such as the polluter pays principle, precautionary principle, principle of sustainable development, environmental impact assessment, and principle of intergenerational equity, are not implemented in those locations. This is the tragedy of Firestone, Arcelor Mittal, and Bea Mountain. In the last analysis, it reflects the tragedy of the extractivist mode of economic organization of society. It is also a product of unequal integration into the international political economy and can be termed as symptomatic of the poverty of imagination.
Finally, in the last category are the broad masses of the Liberian people who are constantly wrestling with uneven development or perhaps no real development at all. Most individuals in this group have surrendered to despair because hope for a better life remains elusive as they are trapped in a cycle of abandonment for generations. Those individuals do not have dreams, and they do not have ambitions. They are the discarded population –the ones whose lives mean nothing to the Liberian figure of the shallow dabbling in ostentatious display of wealth and engaging in conspicuous consumption in Monrovia, Western capitals, or even in Accra. Under these conditions, the dispossessed masses live for the moment and in the present. Everywhere, they are in chains. They are detached from any semblance of modernity, living with nature reminiscent of the Middle Ages. They are invisible and erased. They live in a different universe and are outside time in a temporality that is neither linear nor functional. Thus, Futurity is foreclosed. Here, too, they are confronted with the most sadistic form of structural violence and are knocked about from every corner by unfreedoms. In many ways, this sums up both the negative legacy of state formation and the totality of the human condition in the rural Liberia.
But this figure of the shallow is not insurmountable; it may possess power, influence, and wealth. It is at the center of national life. To eliminate it, one must first understand its influence on national life and its mode of operation. One must also analyze how this entity continues to sow cynicism and bastardize the political, keeping the people on the edge of despair, leading them to wrongly internalize the mindset that in a country such as Liberia, dreaming of a life of dignity and hoping for a better future equates to succumbing to naïve thinking. For this mindset of total surrender to despair, one miserable and pitiful life is exactly what the figure wants. This condition allows it to strive, extract, and accumulate. Without this feeling of exhaustion and lethargy and the mind of the oppressed, as Biko taught us, this figure would not thrive.
Towards a New Humanism
Given this background, it is evident that the Liberian state is a hollow entity, and the ruling subject uses spectacle, theatre, grand gestures, and the humiliation of the poor to maintain its grip on power and distribute morsels to guarantee loyalty. But both Liberia’s ethnic turn and the archetypical dominant political subjectivity represent a march away from progressive politics and the radical imaginary that centers the people and recognizes their agency. Thus, its prevailing politics of death and death-making is the basis of our problem and has amplified the crisis the country has been engulfed in, despite the so-called post-war liberal democratic breakthrough. Based on this sad state of affairs, a new vision and politics that alter the master-slave relationship between those who govern and the governed are an urgent imperative if the country is to meet the demands imposed on it by history. This means falling back on traditions and politics rooted in our collective history that promote inclusive development.
This perspective aligns with what Fanon called building a “new humanism,” which is the kind of politics that fosters human flourishing and addresses national, social, economic, and existential issues. Whereas the figure of the shallow rules is characterized by political theater, the new humanism is about centering dignity and a form of mass politics that embraces a vision of development and transformation from the ground up. This approach, which organically develops its development pathway, is a corrective for Liberia’s underdevelopment. It avoids mimicry of prescriptions from global centers of power to provide a path out of the morass of underdevelopment and backwardness. This approach allows people to enter the rendezvous of history and embark on a journey to build a better country, where they are both architects and historical agents of such a transformation.
It should be a radical project grounded in the historical realities of the people and based on their own experience. With that, it becomes a project of delinking, first and foremost, believing in the potential of the people, as it sets out to address the national question, holding forcefully that true social transformation can only be led by the people. This organic approach to nation-building emphasizes that politics works best when it uplifts people, centers them, and allows them to lead lives of dignity. It rejects the nihilism that is laden in governance narratives about Liberia. It represents a march forward with the people, who for more than a century, have been both thingified and consigned to “zones of nonbeing,” but now emerge as constructors of a new economic and political imaginaries. This viewpoint refuses the rentier economic logic and extractivism, which reduces the country to the export of raw material that is fueling the fire of income deflation.
This also represents the radical politics of refusal and mass flourishing, inspired by freedom dreams and ethical ambitions. It refuses resignation and surrender, holding that true, genuine progress occurs when the vision emerges from the people. It goes to great lengths to reject the neoliberal agenda, which has led to the drive of development of underdevelopment and the draining of values from our country. This economic orthodoxy is hugely responsible for Liberia’s relentless spiral into the abyss. It inflicts violence on bodies—psychologically and physically—those of the masses demanding fair wages from multinationals and those of the people wallowing in damnation. This has also created an abnormal psychotic condition among the masses of people. The consequence is that the people have internalized suffering and trauma, as the state plays its role as the armed vanguard for multinational corporations and international financial institutions that condition their external credit facilities and development financing on brutal austerity policies (that wipe out social safety nets), asymmetric trade liberalization policies, privatization of natural resources and public utilities, deregulation of labor and financial markets, etc. Thus, building a new humanism represents both a counterproject and an end to the neoliberal catastrophe and the reign of the figure of the shallow. In the final analysis this would mark a new beginning. This will be a time in the history of the country when change from below fosters national cohesion.
About the Author: Kiadii is a Liberian activist who writes and comments on current affairs in his homeland. This piece is part of his broader project under the theme: “Groundings Through Praxis: Putting Analyses and Theories at the Service of the People.” He can be contacted at [email protected]
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