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Radio War Nerd EP #156 — Nasser & Arab Left-Nationalism (Patreon)

Published:
2018-11-09 17:39:12
Imported:
2026-06
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Recorded November 8, 2018

The War Nerd looks back at Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's leader from the mid-1950s until his death in 1970, to try to understand who this fascinating, likable and unjustly forgotten figure really was—and to understand what happened to Arab secular-left nationalism, which Nasser once represented. Indeed, Nasser's brand of modernizing, secular-left nationalism was once seen as the inevitable future of the Middle East. That made Nasser a hero to Arabs across MENA, and a lot of serious enemies in the West . . .  

Afterwards, Ames and the War Nerd discuss surprising new realignments between Damascus and the Gulf monarchies minus Qatar . . . Amnesty's appalling report attacking Houthis just as the Saudis and UAE stepped up their massacres of Yemeni civilians . . . and a new article by Ames exposing collaboration between Bellingcat/neocons and a leading online ISIS recruiter . . . 

Reading: "Nasser: The Last Arab" by Said Aburish

"ShamiWitness: How Bellingcat & Neocons Collaborated with the Most Influential ISIS Propagandist on Twitter" by Mark Ames

Total time: 2:24:37

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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JoR

Great episode. Towards the very end of the Nasser discussion John stated "what might have been if my country (USA) and America weren't so stupid." unfortunately the only thing I can think of is "was it stupid"?. From a purely objective point of view, for an imperial power like the US or even Israel, Nasser and his vision was a genuine threat. If course he wasn't a communist but like you guys said he was an independent modernizer. The Sinai is an obvious example, but worse for them Nasser could act as a catalyst or inspiration for arabs across the middle east to modernize and make their own nations independent. From their perspective, who knows where that would stop: the rest of the Muslim world (Indonesia, Pakistan and to a certain extent India, North Africa, Nigeria). Like brzezinski said, "what do a bunch of screaming Muslims mean compared to the liberation of Central Europe?" obviously this is a stupid statement on the surface, but I bet that establishment foreign policy powers would say something similar "what does the threat of radical islam that arose in place of Nasser mean in comparison to the protection of western business interests across the area". Quite depressing stuff, but if the powers at be were given a time machine and were able to see the impact of their actions against Nasser, I think they'd do the same every time

JoR

Sorry meant the "suez canal" was an obvious example, as in how how nationalized it and the Egyptians effectively ran it

Doug Cartel

speaking of "cloth in the wound" it's also an issue when you have to inject epinephrine into somebody's thigh

Ali Syed

Really enjoyed this episode. i have been following Derek Davison's podcasts on the Ikwan and Nasser / Baath Party etc and that is a great deep dive into secular versus Islamist rivalry, and the convoluted alliances, that have played out in Egypt and the larger ME. Growing up in Pakistan of the 60s and 70s I can recall the promise of the secular/socialist leaders, but the middle class / property-class / land-lords /industrialist backlash against socialism and land-reform was significant, and the coups that were followed by Islamization were not totally unwelcome. Cut-throat neo-liberal capitalism came into the bargain in the 90s, just to add fuel to the fire of violent Jihadism. Interestingly, socialism such as it is, has survived in western Europe and the U.S - medicare, medicaid, social security, public schools - all targets of the right-wing zealots. These ME discussions seem like preludes of things to come.

Jimothy Realname

Brown Moses is a moderator on the Something Awful forums, and you might be pleased to know that whenever someone mentions him in the context of being an imperialist running dog, he always shows up within minutes (as though he has an alert set up) to defend his own honour.

MoldyTolge

He was probably using stupid as a pejorative, but I agree with the substance of your post. Its foolish to view imperial machinations and strategy as a result of ignorance, not malice.

MoldyTolge

Goons, goons everywhere. If I remember correctly Ambassador Stephens of Benghazi fame was also a SomethingAwful poster.

Jason Thompson

Just to offer one secondhand perspective... I know there's many Arab leftists who love Nasser (Asad Abu Khalil, angryarab, especially). And I agree that Nasser sounds amazing. OTOH, my best friend, who is Arab and progressive, especially about Palestine, sorta dislikes him. Basically, on the few times we've talked about it, she said Nasser talked a big game on Palestine but failed, and I think she dislikes his lionization.

Jason Thompson

BTW, there's a 1960s-1970s Thomas Disch short story called "Casablanca" which imagines what happens to some American tourists in Cairo when the US, Europe and Russia are annihilated in a nuclear war. The story's racist but the basic point that "American exceptionalism would INSTANTLY vanish" is pretty cruelly spot on.

Spencer Davis

Miles Copeland's "The Game of Nations" has some great (and deeply critical) insights on how the American intelligence apparatus viewed Nasser throughout his reign. Speaking to the "bloodless coup," he says The coup itself... was not without farcical overtones: one of the principal officers failing to seize the communication centers because the alert message arrived as he was out seeing a film with his wife, Nasser's car getting stopped by a policeman on the way to the rendezvous because one of his taillights was out, Nasser almost getting swept off the street by one of his own units because his identity of the Free Officers had not been revealed to the commander, news of the coup leaking to King Farouk's security police because the mother of one of the leaders saw her son take off in the middle of the night "in a suspicious way," as she said, and called the police because she "thought he might be getting into trouble," and so on. I highly recommend the book as it casts Nasser as a proper player in the Cold War, trying to play off each of the heavies while genuinely trying to get a third-way going. It also is evidence towards Adam Curtis' point that the CIA (and all of it's equivalents) are really not the shadowy, all-knowing geniuses they would like everyone to believe.

Spencer Davis

There's also a bit after the coup where the Free Officers try recruiting a newly assigned CIA agent to help them convince Nasser into building a nice, big, 30 noose gallows for some good ol' counter-revolutionary public hanging. Nasser tells them "No, and I don't want to hear about it again," and leaves them kicking the sand saying "phooey, you're no fun."

xnfec

Was Miles Copeland the father of the drummer from The Police?

James

It would be nice to get a link to the bit about Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Syria partnering against the Muslim Brotherhood.

radiowarnerd

Thanks for the recommendation. It's astonishing that cops in Egypt in the 1960s were using that broken tail light thing.