They started out as royalists fighting against the new republic. If asked, they self describe as a national movement that strongly subscribes to the principles of Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism, both being explicitly right wing ideologies. They have friendly relations to islamist reactionaries and arguably are islamist themselves, as is apparent in the treatment of women in Houthi controlled areas of Yemen.
(note: pan-Islamism, sure, but Arab nationalism, complicated)
As others have said, they're more or less national liberation forces, compared to the Gulf-West-backed compradore-capitalist-aligned opposition
By the way, this sort of critical support has precedent in Stalin's "Foundations of Leninism", regarding the national question
And yeah, their treatment of women is not up to par, though I'd argue that was the result of economic impoverishment, which would not allow the conditions for social progress beyond religion, which is a feudal superstructure (if 'in vino, veritas', then 'in poverty, one finds God')
An excerpt on the "National question", regarding critical support:
The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such "desperate" democrats and "Socialists," "revolutionaries" and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism.
For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptians merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British "Labour" Government is waging to preserve Egypt's dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are "for" socialism.
That being said, there is land reform in Ansrallah's Yemen, like that happening in Burkina Faso, to prove that they not only want out of western-Gulf-backed imperialism militarily but economically, as a self-sufficient nation-state, which reflects back to South Yemen's socialist policies (though its power lays up in the North)
On Land Reform
Yemen under the Ansarallah is a country where the power and wealth of landowners are actively diminished in an almost Marxist-adjacent fashion. In May of 2022, the third phase of the agricultural revolution was initiated by the Higher Agricultural Committee, which resulted in the expropriation of farmland across the entire country. In Yemenâs western Tihama region, 104 thousand hectares of land was expropriated for farming. And while this is just one example of Ansarallahâs economic plan, the same story is unfolding in regions such as Dhamar, Saadah, and elsewhere.
The agrarian revolution has also led to a revival of Yemenâs 600-year-old coffee culture. âThe Coffee Revolutionâ is an initiative directly linked to the wider agrarian renaissance that aims to boost coffee cultivation through proper education of farmers and general oversight of farms and markets. A stimulant such as Qat, native to Yemen for decades, is slowly being phased out and replaced with coffee crops. An announcement was made back in February of 2022 by the Governor of Saadah Muhammad Jaber Awad and Shura Council member Abdullah Al-Qasimi, that all qat trees are to be replaced with coffee and almonds, a project that is still actively ongoing today.
On Qat specifically, Zaid Ali Basha within his research argues that the stimulant grew across Yemenâs population much in favor of Salehâs kleptocratic dictatorship and what he calls âqatlordsâ, the landlords reaping profits from Qat cultivation. Qat usage and misusage were not mitigated because they created a âpolitically disengaged citizenryâ that had surrendered to the state. An opioid for the masses if there ever was one. So long as the people were âhappyâ due to an active and daily consumption of a psychoactive stimulant, the state was able to repress, oppress and exploit the people for decades to little opposition.
The dire conditions that have been imposed upon Yemen have forced the Yemeni people to rely solely and squarely on national and local produce instead of an economy over-reliant on foreign imports that have proven unsustainable and have become weaponized by the enemies of the country: âwoe to a nation that eats what it does not plant, and wears what it does not weaveâ is a common Arabic saying that beautifully ties together what Ansarallahâs economic plan is all about.
What Ansarallah has managed to establish while facing war, starvation, and a crippling blockade, is a system that could best be described as akin to Yugoslavian worker self-management but without the overtly socialist aesthetic and tone. In fact, this system was what Ibrahim Al-Hamdi was trying to establish with his five-year plan but never realized before his death in 1977. The state in Sanaâa does not control farmland, nor does it dictate the output of agrarian produce. Farmland and output are controlled by the cooperatives, which are wholly owned and administered by Yemenâs peasantry.
South Yemen was Marxist-Leninist until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Al-Qaeda and Saudi backed Saleh killed hundreds of socialist officials in the 1990s and so a lot of them joined the Believing Youth movement founded by Hussein al-Houthi.
Although Ansarallah is in northern Yemen, its politics were influenced by the inclusion of the Marxist-Leninists of the previously existing People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.
Meaning some portion of Ansarallah's political cadres would be Marxists who converted to Shia Islam.
Unfortunately most of this website is gone now as it only exists on the archive web. A Timeline of Yemeni History
Abdulmalik Alejri, senior member of the Ansarallah Politburo:
"The death of Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Zindani brings to mind the era of global jihad led by Salafi Jihadism and the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s against what was then termed the communist threat. The result was that they handed America and the capitalist West a victory without war, as then-US President Reagan borrowed a phrase from his predecessor Nixon. In the context of the Cold War, Afghanistan, that distant corner of Central Asia, transformed into a hub of Islam, and Kabul became a destination for Arab mujahideen, while Palestine, with Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Prophet's Ascension, was within arm's reach, yet failed to attract Arab mujahideen to jihad or to the allure of the virgins. Ironically, when America occupied Afghanistan, Kabul ceased to be a hub of Islam and a destination for jihad.
At that time, Western capitalist intelligence agencies and their Arab allies succeeded in portraying Marx and socialism as a threat to religions, whereas the truth was that they posed a threat to exploitative capitalism, and Marx's battle was fundamentally against capitalist exploitation. Marx's legacy fundamentally did not prioritize religions, and all he wrote about them was few and scattered texts. His most important work, "Capital," in which his genius shines, explained the structure of capitalism, analyzed its internal mechanisms and contradictions, its capacity for expansion, crisis generation, and self-renewal. Even according to his adversaries, Marx's legacy remained the primary reference for analyzing capitalist crises, with his ideas resurfacing with each historical cycle of capitalist crises.
Marx believed that the Enlightenment had overthrown the exploitation of the church and that the real looming danger was capitalist exploitation, even suggesting that religion could play a positive role in mobilizing against capitalist exploitation. I don't understand how some perceive Marxism and communism as a threat to religion while finding no risks in liberal capitalism, even though the Enlightenment movement with its liberal tendencies was the one that battled the church, and the French Revolution raised the slogan "Hang the last king with the intestines of the last priest," while the slogans of the Bolshevik revolution called for overthrowing the bourgeois government. Naturally, this is just a question of amazement, as the issue as a whole is not as simple, and civilization cannot be reduced or approached solely from the angle of combating religion.
The real danger to religion is such exploitation of religion to serve the battles and projects of America and the imperial West in the region, and those involved should take heed from the dramatic end of the Afghan jihad."