The Dictatorship Syndrome

Alaa Al Aswany

• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912208593
• eBook ISBN: 9781912208609
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Politik

The study of dictatorship in the West has acquired an almost exotic dimension. But authoritarian regimes remain a painful reality for billions of people worldwide, their freedoms violated and their rights abused. They are subject to arbitrary arrest, corruption and injustice.
What is the nature of dictatorship? How does it take hold? In what conditions and circumstances is it permitted to thrive? And how do dictators retain power, even when reviled and mocked by those they govern? In this deeply considered and at times provocative short work, Alaa Al Aswany shows us that – as with any disease – to understand the syndrome of dictatorship we must first consider the circumstances of its emergence, along with the symptoms and complications it causes in both the people and the dictator.

1

The syndrome

I was a boy of ten when the 1967 war between Egypt and Israel broke out. Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) was in sole charge of Egypt and took oppressive and violent measures against any and every person who put up opposition to him. Notwithstanding his authoritarianism, Nasser had adopted revolutionary socialist policies,¹ had nationalised the large corporations and had seized the holdings of the large landowners and distributed them to the peasants. For the first time, the millions of poor people had been given the opportunity for free education, health insurance, jobs in the civil service and affordable housing. All of this ultimately resulted in Nasser gaining the sort of sweeping popularity rarely enjoyed by any Egyptian leader.²

At that time, the Egyptian people were buffered from what was going on in the world because the Nasserite propaganda machine shaped public opinion in Egypt in accordance with instructions from the security apparatus. Foreign radio stations, such as the BBC and the Voice of America, were subjected to continuous scrambling, and the authorities warned citizens against listening to them as they “broadcast lies and anti-revolutionary propaganda”.³ Nasser thought of himself as a world leader responsible for standing up to colonialism globally, and in line with his conception of Arab nationalism he had declared a union between Egypt and Syria in 1958. However, the overbearing behaviour of the Egyptian top brass caused Syria to revolt and secede from the union in September 1961. Then, in 1962, Nasser sent the Egyptian army to Yemen to support the Republicans against the Royalists and became bogged down in an absurd war that led to the deaths of thousands of soldiers and the exhaustion of the most efficient fighting units of the army. This whole debacle was kept hidden from the public in Egypt, and the Nasserite information machine still managed to convince us that our national army was the greatest fighting force in the Middle East and that one day it would crush the Israeli army within a few short hours and throw Israel into the sea as it liberated Palestine once and for all.

In May 1967, relations between Israel and Syria became tense. Nasser issued orders to amass huge military forces in the East of the country and announced the activation of the Joint Defence Agreement he had signed with Syria.⁴ He demanded that the United Nations withdraw its emergency forces from the Egyptian border, and then suddenly decreed that Israeli ships would not be allowed to sail through the Gulf of Aqaba. It all looked as if Nasser were gunning for a war with Israel. We Egyptians had not the slightest doubt that we would defeat Israel – so much so that many people started speaking about the spoils Egypt would take after the victory.

Back then, I lived with my family in Garden City, an elegant district of Cairo in which the residents were mostly the great landowners or businessmen who had been the most adversely affected by the new socialist laws. In spite of that, they all gave enthusiastic support to their country in the war. Pursuant to the regulations issued by the civil defence authorities, residents covered their windows with black-out paint to prevent enemy aircraft being able to target them. Brick roadblocks were thrown up and sandbags placed in front of the entrances to buildings in order to protect them from the anticipated bomb shrapnel. I can still remember the slogans written on the enormous cloth banners, which the Cairo Governorate strung up in the street: “If you sail up the Gulf, we’ll throw you to the wolf!” and “We’ll be drinking our tea in Tel-Aviv by the sea.”

My father, Abbas Al Aswany, was a famous socialist writer and lawyer, and he was among those most sharply opposed to Nasser. Although he was in agreement with all of the socialist measures that Nasser had implemented, he believed that they would not last long, because achievements had no value if not accompanied by freedom (his predictions in fact did come true, as Nasser’s achievements all crumbled like a house of cards almost as soon as he died⁵). I can still remember a sentence that my father never tired of repeating, “All the socialist achievements are worth absolutely nothing if even a single person’s dignity is impugned.”

The war with Israel broke out on the morning of 5 June 1967 and everyone was consumed by nationalist fervour – including my father, who described his stance to me in conversation, “I have not stopped opposing the dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, but today, as Egypt is waging war, I am supporting Egypt.”

We all felt so strongly that everybody had to play a part in the battle, even us children, that I set up a small ‘information clearing house’ on our balcony. Our neighbours in the building opposite were an Italian family consisting of a grandmother (Marta), her son, his wife and their children. I loved ‘Auntie Marta’ and used to chat away with her in French as she watered the mass of flowers on her balcony. On the morning the war broke out, Auntie Marta smiled and greeted me sweetly. She told me how much she loved Egypt and hoped that we would defeat Israel. I used to translate for her the military communiqués we heard broadcast over the radio. I told her that we had downed 23 Israeli planes. A little while later, I informed her that the number had risen to 46, and then 87. When I informed her that we, according to the latest communiqué, had brought down 200 Israeli planes, she shook her head and said, with some emotion in her voice, “Listen, my boy. Your government is lying to you. I lived through the Second World War and it is impossible for so many planes to have been downed in one day.”

Naturally, I was irritated by this attitude, and so I stopped translating the military communiqués for Auntie Marta. The Nasserite propaganda machine succeeded in convincing us that we had inflicted a crushing defeat on Israel. Our nation had the wool pulled over its eyes for two whole days, but on the third day Egyptians woke up to the news that Egypt had agreed a ceasefire and had submitted a complaint to the United Nations over Israel having attacked the Egyptian army as it was withdrawing from Sinai. This horrible shock was tantamount to an earthquake for the Egyptian mindset, and I don’t think we have recovered from it to this day.

On 9 June, the fourth day of the war, the magnitude of the disaster became clear. Israel had destroyed the Egyptian air force in the first hours of the war and had gone on to occupy Sinai, the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. This was a humiliating defeat in Egypt’s history,⁶ and I can still remember how my father’s friends gathered in our building, unable to believe what had happened, with some of them even bursting into tears like children. In the middle of this catastrophe, the state television announced that our leader, Nasser, was going to address the nation. My father was in an awful psychological state and was angrier than ever at Nasser who, in addition to being a tyrant, had now brought disaster and shame upon Egypt. That evening, Nasser appeared on the television looking forlorn and exhausted and announced that Egypt had been the victim of a great colonialist conspiracy, that the colonialist powers considered him to be their enemy and that they did not realise that the whole Arab nation was inimical to them. He then confirmed that he was “prepared to bear the whole responsibility for the setback” (as he euphemistically referred to the defeat) and went on to state that he had taken a decision that he hoped Egyptians would support, which was that he was going to resign from his position and would thereafter serve Egypt as an ordinary soldier. The moment he finished making his speech, millions of people rushed out onto the streets all over Egypt, calling for him to stay in power. I sat next to my father as we watched Nasser on the television, and when he heard the shouts of the throngs of people on the street calling for Nasser to stay on, my father could take it no more. He took me with him in the car and drove around the streets amid the demonstrations, and then he suddenly stopped the car and asked one of the demonstrators, “Why are you out here demonstrating?”

The man replied, “We don’t want Nasser to go.”

My father asked him, “You do know that Israel has defeated us and occupied our land?”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Nasser is the one who brought about this defeat, so he has to go.”

At this point, the man looked at my father with something akin to panic, and said, “But sir, if Nasser goes, who’s going to hold us all together?”

“Do we need someone to hold us together? Can’t we do that by ourselves?” My father shouted angrily, and then drove away from the man.

Two days after the mass demonstrations, Nasser announced that he was submitting to the will of the masses and withdrawing his resignation. He was in power for three years more, until he died.

To this day, Nasser’s abdication threat arouses differences of opinion among historians. Opponents of Nasser believe that the demonstrations calling for him to stay were organised by the security apparatus, and those who support Nasser consider the demonstrations to have been the natural reaction of the masses. As far as I saw with my own eyes, people thronged out onto the streets without being directed by anyone, and I will never forget the expression of panic on the face of that man, who had no idea how the country could remain united if Nasser were to give up power.

When I was an adult, I recalled that conversation between my father and the demonstrator, and I had a deeper understanding of it than when I was a child. It seemed to me that the view of that demonstrator (and of the millions like him) was odd, almost unfathomable. It goes without saying: if individuals are responsible for their own mistakes, how much more so a leader who causes such a terrible defeat for his country? How could Egyptians not hold him accountable and instead call for him to stay in his post? I compared this strange state of mind to what happened in Britain on 8 May 1945 when Winston Churchill announced the surrender of Germany and the victory of Britain in the Second World War. The British viewed Churchill as their hero, but in the first elections after the war (in July 1945) they did not give their votes to him, and he was not re-elected as prime minister. The British people realised that the man who was best able to lead them in war was not necessarily the one to lead them in peacetime, and they elected a new prime minister who would bring new thinking to the process of rebuilding post-war Britain.

Why did the Egyptians want to hold on to their defeated leader, whereas the British decided to replace their victorious leader? The facile answer to this question is to say that Islam, the religion of the majority of Egyptians, is so out of step with democracy that it makes Muslims more receptive to authoritarianism. However, this simplistic argument falls apart immediately when we recall that dictatorships have been in place in Argentina, Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Chile and many other non-Muslim countries. If religion is not the reason, then why did the Egyptians behave differently to the British? Why did Churchill’s victory not sway the British to re-elect him, and why were the Egyptians more concerned about Nasser staying in office than about their defeat and the occupation of their country?

The question kept repeating itself in my mind, and I could find no convincing answer for it until I came across Étienne de La Boétie. He was a sixteenth-century French philosopher who died young, leaving behind a short essay that was published posthumously: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.⁷ In this essay he presented the following notions.

First: liberty as the natural disposition of humankind. La Boétie states that animals are born free and that their natural disposition impels them to defend their freedom with all the power they possess. We cannot dispossess an animal of its freedom without causing it pain. Every animal fights valiantly to defend its freedom, and not only do most animals prefer death to servitude but the elephant, for example, will keep fighting the hunter, and when it feels that it is on the verge of defeat resorts to a last stratagem whereby it dashes its jaws against the trees and breaks off its tusks, as its last effort to buy off the hunter in the hope that the sacrifice of its tusks will serve as a ransom for its liberty. Any animal will go this far to conserve its liberty. Humankind is born free like the animals, except that we sometimes give up our freedom willingly and accept a submissive life under the rule of a tyrant.

Second: the tyrant is an individual. La Boétie states that a tyrant is no more than an individual who could scarcely command the obedience of an entire people if the people did not grant him their obedience by their own consent. Hence a dictatorship – a country ruled by a head of state with complete power over the policies of state, the armed forces and security agencies, who crushes political opposition and eliminates forms of dissent – does not come about by the will of the tyrant alone, but is a human relationship in which two parties are necessary: the tyrant who decides to subjugate a people and a people who have accepted such subjugation.

Third: voluntary servitude. The moment a population waives certain freedoms and submits, by conquest or deception, to the will of one individual, that individual becomes a dictator.^* This is where we see the argument between natural disposition and custom: the natural disposition that impels a person to defend their liberty (as with an animal) and the custom that people acquire through long submission to the will of a tyrant. Custom gets the better of natural disposition, and generations of people arise who are completely habituated to the idea of authoritarianism, as they know nothing else. This acclimatisation to authoritarianism is likened by La Boétie to a horse that resists being trained and refuses its rider until it finally submits and not only gives itself over to guidance but starts to prance proudly beneath the saddle and bit, both of which are symbols of its servitude. This is similar to the generations who grow up under the rule of a dictator, who neither understand the meaning of liberty nor feel the need for it – because a person, as La Boétie states, does not miss something they have never possessed. However, there are fortunately some individuals who long for liberty because, even if they have never been blessed to possess it, they are still capable of imagining it, and it is these individuals who will reject servitude and strive to free themselves.

After the death of Nasser, the great Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim wrote a book titled The Return of Consciousness (1974)⁸ in which he condemned himself for having supported Nasser and for having ignored the many clear signs that showed that the decisions taken by Nasser were erroneous, were emotionally driven and had brought about the catastrophes from which Egyptians are still suffering to this day. Al-Hakim likened himself to a man who has lost his consciousness to the charismatic tyranny of Nasser. Al-Hakim may well have been describing the situation of millions of Egyptians when he wrote:

[Nasser] put such a spell on us that we did not even realise we had become bewitched. Perhaps it was his special magic, as they say, or perhaps it was the dream itself which gave us such hopes and promises. Or maybe it was even more that wonderful image of revolutionary achievements which he wove for us and which turned us into instruments of that far-reaching propaganda with all its drums, pipes, anthems, songs and films and enabled us to see ourselves as a great industrialised state which was leading the developing world in agricultural reform and was the leading force in the Middle East. It was the face of that worshipped leader which filled the television screens, which peered down on us from tents erected for political rallies and in assembly halls and as he orated for hours on end, telling us how we had been and what we had now become with no space for discussion or review, no space for comment or correction. All we could do was believe and clap until our hands were raw.⁹

For the first time I could find a convincing explanation for the way Egyptians clung on to their defeated leader. People who submit to a dictator lose their yearning for liberty and behave in the manner of the sick who seem to be bewitched, hypnotised or unconscious. The Egyptians were struck down with the plague of submission to a dictator and they clung to him after he had brought about defeat, whereas the British enjoyed the sort of psychological wellbeing that made them elect a prime minister other than Churchill, the man who had led them to victory. It might be suggested that people ruled by a dictator can be compared to those suffering from a mental ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Author’s note
• 1 The syndrome
• 2 Symptoms of the dictatorship syndrome
• 3 The emergence of the good citizen
• 4 The conspiracy theory
• 5 The spread of the fascist mindset
• 6 The dislocation of the intellectual
• 7 Dictatorship and the predisposing factors for terrorism
• 8 The course of the syndrome
• 9 Prevention of the dictatorship syndrome
• Notes
• Acknowledgements