Eritrea’s Chosen Trauma and the Legacy of the Martyrs: The Impact of Postmemory on Political Identity Formation of Second-Generation Diaspora Eritreans

In the collective memory of Eritreans, the liberation struggle against Ethiopia from 1961 and 1991 symbolizes the heroic fight of their fallen martyrs against Ethiopian oppression. After independence, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front did not fulfil its promises of a better life for all Eritreans, but rather created an autocratic regime that disregards the rule of law. Astoundingly, this government, which has ruled without constitution and never held elections and is infamous for its human rights violations, is still adored by many second-generation diaspora Eritreans who grew up in democratic countries in Europe, the Americas and Australia. Our paper examines political identity formation processes of diaspora Eritreans and is based on a social media analysis, an evaluation of Eritrean government media outlets, long-term observation among Eritrean diaspora communities and recent fieldwork among Eritrean diaspora and refugee communities in Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK. We hypothesize that the mindset of second-generation diaspora Eritreans is influenced by collective memories of the armed struggle transmitted through generations and by a government-constructed narrative of Eritrean nationalism. We engage with bodies of literature exploring the political importance of collective trauma in post-conflict societies and apply two theoretical notions, ‘postmemory’ and ‘chosen trauma’ to explain how the government’s narrative of Eritrean history produced a culture of nationalism through the glorification of the martyrs that strives in the diaspora. This narrative and the trauma experienced by their parents, including the “survivor’s guilt” of those who fled the country rather than participating in the armed struggle created experiences of postmemory among the second-generation diaspora that have influenced their worldview. Today, Eritrea is one of the most diasporic nations worldwide with about half of the population living abroad due to adverse living conditions inside the country which have caused a mass exodus during the past two decades. At the same time, the Eritrean government has formed strong transnational organizations with the purpose of controlling the diaspora, organizing them politically and extracting a diaspora tax and other donations from them. We demonstrate how Eritrean pro-government activists abroad utilize US-born artists with Eritrean roots who have recently discovered their Eritreanness such as actress Tiffany Haddish and the late rappers Sandman Negus and Nipsey Hussle to instill long-distance nationalism and government support among the second-generation diaspora youth. These artists have reproduced the country’s collective memory of the armed struggle and Eritrean nationalism in their music and in their cultural performances. They travelled to Eritrea to connect to their personal roots, but were nolens volens used by the government to create a distorted view of the reality on the ground and to improve its own image. We conclude that the Eritrean transnational institutions and pro-government political entrepreneurs have perfected mechanisms to politically mobilize the diaspora, including the second generation, which grew up in democratic environments, but has partially internalized the collectivist ideology of their country of origin.