| Fair enough. Start by reading about the history of Yemen and the last Zaydi Imamate, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom, which was overthrown in the 1960s. The Mutawakkilites operated a caste system, in which Zaydi Hashemites (people who can trace their family tree back to the 3rd Imam of Shi'ism) were considered racially superior, and black-skinned Yemenis (the search you want here is "Akhdam") were untouchables. This whole system was abolished, and the country that hosted it (North Yemen, later the Yemen Arab Republic) was annexed into greater Yemen. Notably --- given your previous comment about the legitimacy of Houthi violence against Sunnis --- Yemen is a Sunni country (Zaydi Islam sits somewhere between Sunni and Shia Islam, and historically the Zaydis and Sunnis have gotten on reasonably well in Yemen). The Houthi movement is named for Hussein al-Houthi. He was the son of Badreddin al-Houthi, a famous Zaydi scholar, but was not himself a cleric. The movement has two basic principles: the restoration of a Mutawakkilite-style Imamate (first in Yemen and then globally), and the marrying of Zaydi theological ideas with Khomeinism: specifically, the violent overthrow of the existing order. The Houthis are modeled on Hizbollah and trained in and supported by Iran. If you want sourcing for Houthi treatment of Yemen's Sunni majority, you'll easily find that at the UNHCR web site. Regarding my claim that they're a fascist movement: * They're a mass movement led by a charismatic strong-man leader * They have an explicit racial hierarchy * They're xenophobic to the point of having restored chattel slavery of Africans * They're right-wing authoritarian theocrats * They glorify violence * They are a reactionary response to the liberalization of Yemen that occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s, after Yemen got punished by the rest of the Arab world for supporting Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War * They operate a cult of tradition harkening back to a centuries old Imamate that ruled the area, including notions of permanent warfare, marytrdom, and machismo. Whether you work from Stanley Payne's definition or Umberto Eco's, the Houthi movement is an according-to-Hoyle fascist organization. I've given specific enough details that you should be able to Google these points and find sourcing on the first search page. I recommend reading things from before 2023. Everything you'll read after 2023 is, of course, hostile to the Houthis because they're trying to spark an international crisis. But that wasn't the case before October 7th, and people were raising alarms about these people long before they decided to pretend they were helping Gaza. Again: it is wild that people find themselves sticking up for these people. They're not anti-imperialists. They're not on your side. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to them. |