This analysis masterfully bypasses Western moralism to examine Nasser through a dialectical lens, grounding his authoritarianism in the brutal realities of anti-colonial survival. It provides a sophisticated autopsy of Pan-Arabism that values structural context over simplistic historical judgment.
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Gamal Abdel Nasser: Suez Crisis, Arab Nationalism, 6-Day War, His Impact | NPH! Ep.22Added:
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the No Politic here podcast. I am joined today as always by my co-host Isaac of the Overzelots channel. Mr. Zale, how are you doing today?
>> I'm doing amazing today. Mr. Chris, Mr. Chris Consler, thank you for asking. Uh had a really >> Sounds like your accent is so bad. It sounds like you're doing a racist impression of a Chinese person.
Sorry. Yeah, it I got to work on it.
Brit British is very hard for me. I will say >> British is very hard for everyone. It would seem a lot of people are not very good at it. And speaking of British, we've got a wonderful Brit episode that has a lot of relationship with Britain coming up about Gamma Abdul Nassa, which was voted for over on our Patreon. We offered two options. One was about the Nagba as like a series about debunking myths about Palestine or this kind of series where we're thinking that over the next few weeks, months, we may carry on depending on how this episode does.
We may pick it up straight away, we may leave it for a few weeks, but we started or decided to start a series where we're talking about leaders from the anti-colonial world, some good, some bad, talking about their legacies, their lives a bit. And we've decided to start with Gaml Abdul Nassa. And I also wanted to say visa v Patreon, we are both incredibly grateful for the support that we've already started receiving over on there and the massive influx of Patreon patrons over the last two weeks. Um, and yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for that first of all because it really helps and Isaac and I have both spoken about this a lot. We'd like to be able to do this more and your support is currently enabling that. So, if any of you want to go over and support the patron Patreon, become a member, become a patron even, and you get access to our bi-weekly bonus episode that is generally just us chatting or sometimes something that we're not so sure we should put out on YouTube. If you would like to or are interested in that, go over and check out the Patreon if you want to support. And Isaac, you got anything you want to add to that? Yeah.
No, just I share your appreciation for all of the patrons and everyone who's allowing us to do this full-time. I' I've even made the decision that like once this becomes more of a sustainable avenue, I will dedicate a lot more time to focusing on this as cuz it's very hard for me to just kind of balance this with the channel, especially when I have sponsorships and I have to like meet deadlines. So, uh, I'll definitely reel that back to allocate more time to the podcast because I just think it's a really good way to like entertain and also educate every week. And I it's just a it's just a a passion project of mine.
I like it a lot. It's also like I I don't know how you felt about reading about NASA. It's so interesting and it's just like I see a couple of articles and by the way, if anyone wants to see the articles we've used, those are freely available on Patreon. Our notes are available for paid subscribers. But some of the articles that I was coming across, I was like, "Wow, these articles seem really interesting and I'd love to read more." But it's kind of difficult, you know, when I do streaming, when we're doing the bonus episode, when I have like a somewhat of a life outside of this that it's Yeah. But honestly, your support is so incredibly appreciated and we're glad that it's going so well so quickly really. And so, yeah, I just wanted to thank you all.
And if anyone would like to support the show, please feel free to do so. Another thing that I think is really like a selling factor for the Patreon is we do provide bonus episodes that cover topics that you just can't really get away with on YouTube. So, we have one that's currently up there with friend of the show Spooky Scary Socialist where we talk about Hamas and we're able to kind of give our opinions about it in a more unadulterated fashion because we're not really worried about the toos. Uh I think we plan to do one on Hezbollah and other kind of forces that just would be risky would be a little too risky to do on this platform. Uh or we might like lose our our [ __ ] right? But uh >> yeah, definitely >> to to get to um what we're doing today and the video on Nasser and this series, this potential series on anti-colonial figures. I am very excited to do it. And the thing that I kind of wanted to preface with with was I want to make a cognizant effort to stay away from great man theory. That's one of the things that I was uh hesitant of going into it is because you look at a guy like Nasser or if we go down the road and we look at a guy like Gaddafi, there's so many amazing things you could say about these figures, but there's also things that you would want to put into the context of the time and place they existed and not really give the impression that we're just here to fan club these figures because that's not really what history is. That's not really what politics should be. It's more so to give the audience a kind of like a dialectical understanding of why these figures existed. Nasser was a product of his environment. He was uh immensely radicalized by two main things, right? It would be the forced imposition of a pro- British prime minister by the British British army to uh King Farooq of Egypt. Another was the Palestine war which he fought in. So I think through this series we can kind of dialectically explain how these figures came to be, why they are important without crossing the line into faulty historioggraphy where we just blindly fan for these people.
>> Yeah. And and on that topic um once again this is kind of a constraint of obviously you know this being a side project at the moment in some ways there are many unexplored aspects of NASA's life in this episode. There are parts which you know I have vague recollections of because I read many years ago. Notable example that's not going to form a large part of this episode is with regards to the Aswan Dam and its effect on people whose lives revolved around the Nile River and the consequences of changing its flow and things to that effect. Uh and also just generally I I guess something else that isn't really going to be mentioned are like kind of the relationships between different ethnic groups in Egypt. We just don't really have the scope or the ability to do that as of now. But this, I think, will still serve as like a kind of in some ways like a short biography of who NASA was, the world he interacted with, and what we've deemed to kind of be the key events of his life, which are his early life, the Suez crisis, Pan-Arab nationalism, and the six- day war. Like panarab nationalism is obviously a very broad thing. And in fact, I've written it down as panarab nationalism. But a really interesting aspect of NASA is there is actually kind of an emergence of a pan-African Arab Asianism as well maybe. Um it's like it's really interesting.
A little fact about this is Patrice Leumba, the uh anti-colonial leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, right before he died, laid out to NASA literally a few days before he was assassinated that his children were to be taken from the Congo to Egypt and be provided safety there. And that happened and NASA actually was able to provide that. And there was this short moment in which there were all of these anti-colonial organizations operating in Egypt and it really looked like the center of kind of like a bigger world.
And so, you know, we you you're right that we should stay away from this great man theory. NASA definitely had his faults and this is not like an entire endorsement of everything that NASA did throughout his life. But it is certainly looking at someone and saying, you know, my god, how different things would be if there were more people like NASA in some ways, >> especially when you look at what the opposing ideological poll in the region was. There was >> Arab nationalism, which was more more or less headed by Nasser. He was seen as the figurehead of it. that the opposing poll was the conservative pro-western monarchs of the region, specifically the Gulf. But yeah, it would be very interesting to just kind of analyze the situation in which panarab national national nationalism and Nasser existed and ponder what could have been if that was the route taken as opposed to the hijgemany being fostered up by the conservative monarchies which seem to have kind of won that ideological battle ever since the emergence of the petro dollar and their usefulness to the west.
So, the other thing I wanted to preface before we get into it, we are actually experimenting with like a different way of presenting these episodes where Chris and I had this idea of for each segment, we would produce or prepare a little blurb or a paragraph or just bullet point notes and we would kind of read it out in an organized fashion to give you guys some background for each segment so that we can kind of set the stage properly. and appropriately and adequately inform you about what we learned, what our research told us, how we want to structure this segment, and then we're going to kind of open the floor and have a back and forth discussion. We're just going to try this out, see if you guys like it, see if it leads to a more organized and an episode that goes into less detractions and and diversions.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, as well another thing to add, if anyone, if you guys enjoy this kind of idea, if there's any other leaders that you would like to see done, no doubt many of you will say, "Do uh do Gaddafi, do Gaddafi." Thomas Sankara is another one who's swirled around because I I've always been particularly interested, not least because he was assassinated on the 15th of October 1987, 13 years before I would be born. So I believe >> 15th of October indeed it is. Yes. So in many ways I believe that I'm sort of the reincarnation of Thomas Sankara 13 years later.
>> Do you I [ __ ] >> to clarify I do not believe that.
However, I am always interested when I find out like not when it's, you know, I I Google, oh, here's a cool thing that happened on the 15th of October, but when I'm reading something and it's like, here's something that happened on the 15th of October, 1936 or something or 1911 or 1912 or whatever. I always find that very interesting, thinking what was going on in the day I was born >> many years before. What was happening that day? What was the world like before I was there?
>> Thank you.
>> Was it good? Was it bad? Was it awesome?
>> Yeah. Well, if you weren't in it yet, it wouldn't have been as good as it is now.
>> No, no, no, no, no. There would certainly be a lot less of unentertained masses. But yes, if you would like, if there's anything specific you'd like to see, just drop a comment, leave us feedback, and let us know what you're thinking of the podcast. And I um again, thank you all. And with that said, should we get into the episode?
>> Yeah. Segment one was we're going to introduce his life and his rise in politics and his background. And I'm going to hand it over to you cuz you prepared the piece for this.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Feel feel free to interject with comments by the way because one thing that I wanted to note is quickly have you ever seen the photos of young Gaddafi with NASA?
>> Dude, first of all, Gaddafi was [ __ ] hot. I don't know if you've seen like young he looked like if you know Glen Quagmire how he has that like [ __ ] big jaw. I know this is like kind of going off the rails here, >> but if he was hot and not a cartoon, that would be Gaddafi.
>> Yeah, there are some very cool photos.
I'm looking at it right now. There's one of NASA doing a salute like this. Such a different world. It's hard to kind of imagine now, but those photos are certainly awesome. But with that said, anyway, let's get right into the episode.
>> Young Saddam Hussein was really hot, too. That's all I wanted to say. Okay.
>> Was he? I didn't know that.
>> [ __ ] dude. Are you kidding me?
>> Did you know that Stalin was born closer to Baghdad than he was to Moscow? And Stalin was uh sorry, excuse me. Saddam Hussein had a bit of a Stalin obsession.
>> Really? What? What? Stalin was in was born in Georgia. No. Am I getting that wrong?
>> It's closer to Yeah, it's closer to Baghdad than it is to I can't remember where he was born in Georgia, but it's a lot closer to Baghdad than it is to Moscow. It's kind of an incredible thought really.
>> Perhaps this perhaps this region of the world putting on my orientalist cap here. Maybe it births dictators. H >> hey man, >> that is not something I believe to CIA Chris over here, man. Mhm. But anyway, yeah, into the sort of story of NASA. So NASA is born in 1918. He's not born on the October the 15th, unfortunately. Um, but it's just at the end, well, heading towards the end of the First World War.
Obviously, a defining feature of the entire world at that time. There's a really interesting uh there's some really interesting commentary you can read of like people talking about the first world war and describing it as the deluge, like this cataclysmic event. And anyway, Nasser is born into this world.
He's born to a po a father who's a postal worker. He belongs to sort of a the petty bourgeoa as some people might say, but he's really lowerass. He's from rural. He has like a notableish family.
But throughout his young life, it's really interesting. So he attends some protests because at this time in the early 20th century, there's quite a revolutionary moment going on in Egypt, very close to his birth actually, like this kind of revolt against the British.
I think it's called the Urabi revolt in 1919. And the British crack down on it, but eventually they realize that they're going to have to make some changes.
British colonial rule is somewhat shaken. It's already been shaken a couple of times. There's a really tumultuous period in the 1860s where you have a quite a few uprisings very close to one another uh across a multitude of different British colonies. But anyway, the British come to the conclusion that basically they need to make some changes and they start to allow a little bit more political participation by Egyptians in uh a monarchy that is still ultimately ruled by the British. But anyway, Nasser attends the Al- Nah naha secondary school. And this is interesting because for any of you who are theater kids watching this, Nasser is a theater kid. He acted in a play of Julius Caesar. Um, and it actually matters quite a lot was because something I'll talk about a bit later on is and I really remember this cuz I studied the Middle East when I was in secondary school a little bit and they spoke about this in they love this. They always talked about the radio and NASA and the radio. The radio is really this catalyst where NASA is able to push out panarabist ideals across the Mena region and to appeal to broad amounts of people. In fact, it even goes out in Africa across parts of North Africa where people are exposed to what's happening in Egypt and it starts to build these sort of panarab pan-African connections to some extent. But anyway, throughout his time in school as well, he's reading anti-authoritarian works such as a tale of two cities by Charles Dickens and lay me lay it by Victor. Yeah.
>> Yeah. He would have it ripped a gamda.
would have loved that uh animated. No, it's not animated. The version with Russell Crow where he's singing. Have you seen that?
>> No.
>> No, I've never seen it, but I'm sure NASA would have loved it. He's a theater kid at heart.
>> But yeah, he's it's really interesting.
I saw someone commenting on this with regards to Edward say, how people often perceive these rulers, especially someone like Nassa or really anti- western imperial imperial figures as haters of Western culture and people who despise it. But people like Edward say and NASA himself actually love it. They devour huge huge amounts of uh western uh western culture, western philosophers and they really do have this regard for it. But the problem is is for many of them it also helps to inculcate in them alongside obviously they're also influenced by huge amounts of things currents within their own society. And I'm not sat here claiming that western uh philosophy is the only way to reach this path. But NASA really develops a hatred for colonialism because and I mean it's true. Egypt is humiliated.
Egypt has been cut off from the Ottoman Empire and the rest of the Arab world, the Middle East, North Africa, Arab world's a bad term for quite some time at this point. You know, the British enter in the 1880s. Napoleon conquers it. Actually, it's where orientalism kind of the study of the Middle East is sort of formalized. I don't know if you know this, but one of the specific things Napoleon does is he brings with him like a huge amount of when he conquers Egypt, he brings with him a huge amount of like cultural peoples, like people who are interested in literature, architecture, and things like that alongside his army. And so Egypt has experienced colonialism for a long time. And it's quite interesting because it kind of turns it into this incubator of uh anti-imperial ideas in the region. And this is a theme. And so throughout NASA's life, he grows this disdain towards colonial power and humiliation. And what he wants to push for is sort of dignity. And you know, throughout his life, he becomes a an army officer. He's aided by a change that the British make in 1936 where they kind of make the Egyptian military a little bit more meritocratic. And so, you know, it's not just based on lineage and things like that. And people who are from lower classes can get into it. And he alongside a considerable amount of other officers get into it. But there are some quite significant events that I don't even want to say radicalize, but push NASA to the belief that like the only option is some kind of military coup where they use power. I mean, you mentioned earlier those two events, right? the 1942 coup by the British. The British are worried in 1942 that King Farooq and his prime minister may end up welcoming the Germans, the Nazis as liberators of Egypt because they are so dis like have so much of a distaste or a bad feeling towards British imperialism.
You know, it's kind of this funny problem and how today people be like, "Oh my god, they might have had Nazi sympathies, but at the time you kind of see this whole thing of the enemy of my enemy is my friend." You know, it's actually why some >> Well, it's interesting because I mean, sorry to cut you off, but that's a logic that is it just seems like that logic, the envy of my enemy is my friend is always lambasted when it's displayed by someone in the developing world or an anti-colonial movement. But when, say, the Americans are secretly teaming up with the fascist Japanese when they're supposed to be fighting them to fight the Chinese communists, then no longer is that a bad excuse because they had to fight the communists. Or when they team up with Suharthto in in Indonesia, bloodthirsty monster, kills millions, invades East Teeour, does a genocide, then it's okay because they were fighting communists.
>> Yeah. I uh I always see like you'll see people post the mouthy, the Palestinian MUI and say, "Well, look, Palestinians, look, he had a a proclivity for Hitler."
Well, it's like not really. He was sub he was part of a group subjugated horrifically by the British for eons, >> and then he was propped up by them for a bit, turned on them, and sought an alliance with their enemy. It's a little deeper than him just being brainwashed or agreeing with Nazi style anti-semitism of the Jewish person as like this parasitic usurper and all of these strange Nazi philosophies that are very specific. That's a different outlook than an anti-colonial figure seeking an alliance with their oppressor's enemy. It's not to excuse it, but it's to explain it.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Nei neither of us are obviously fans of the MUI at all of course and but it's kind of contextualizing what it actually was.
But it's quite funny how you know you see this whole thing by Israel where there has literally been excuse me a concerted effort to make and push the notion that the MUI was uh like he I mean Benjamin Netanyahu has that really amazing quote where he claims that the MUI was actually the one who was responsible for the extermination of Jewish people in Europe that he gave the idea to the Nazis that the Nazis hadn't actually come up with that which is an incredible thing you know when we hear so much about Holocaust inversion and what have you when the leader of Israel is just making up nonsense like that to justify Israel exterminating Palestinians. But the to to draw back to this and actually interestingly enough that you mentioned it, the other key thing is the first Arab-Israeli war and the Nagba.
The Middle East is obviously connected.
Egypt is obviously connected to Palestine. It shares a border with it for goodness sake. Um and particularly Gaza is obviously a region. Gaza is the meeting place between Asia and Africa.
It is this important trade hub throughout history. And NASA serves in Palestine alongside many of the other free officers. NASA's actually wounded in Palestine. He keeps with him for the rest of his life a bloodied shirt and a and a neck uh like a handkerchief that from that is basically where he's been wounded incredibly close to his heart.
And a lot of people alongside NASA feel that they were kind of screwed over that their political elite are actually responsible for the Nagba. And it's really interesting cuz I don't know if you've ever heard this. This is some kind of like Tik Tok pro-Israel propaganda. Have you ever heard this thing that the Nagba is coined by Constantine Zurake who is an Arab nationalist? And the reason he coins it is because and uses the term disaster is because it wasn't a disaster for the Palestinians. It was actually a disaster for all the other Arabs. Have you ever heard this?
>> Heard that? Yeah. Literally like this morning some someone was making this argument on Twitter.
>> Do you know why he Do you know what what it's actually about? It's so funny to remove because I remember I asked someone who I was once having a debate with. I was like, "Can you talk to me about Zurich's book?" Because they've handpicked quotations from it. It's a complex book about Arab nationalism basically that >> that taps into a feeling that a lot of the free officers and people who fought in Palestine are actually havinging which is yes the Nagba is a catastro catastrophe because the Arab armies are humiliated and they lose horrifically but it's also a catastrophe as well because of what happened to the Palestinians. They never disregard that.
They know that the Palestinians are their brethren. And so there's like this whole thing of people trying to manipulate this. But basically, Zurich comes to the conclusion, as does NASA and many others like him, that the only option is to overthrow basically all regimes that were too close with the British and to overthrow imperialism, the men are over. And that is actually what they try to do and what NASA becomes very interested in particularly I I don't know if you know this but one of the things that they were really worried about specifically the Egyptians is the Egyptians managed to reach as far as Hebrron. Did you know that during the when they >> the war?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They like they had considerable territory.
>> Yes. So they reach up to Hebrron but they felt that they were undermined by first of all the Egyptian government who were reluctant to get involved in the first place sorry the Egyptian monarchy not even the government h they felt that they were under supplied and that they didn't have weapons and Abdul Razaki in the dig podcast uh the thou podcast actually mentions how there's kind of this thing of Yafa which is obviously one of the most important cities in Palestine probably could have been held if before the British had left the uh the surrounding Arab countries had actually tried to reinforce it so as to prevent it falling incredibly quickly.
But and the other key point actually which is I don't want to make this mistake cuz I made it in the notes. It's not the Czech arm deal, but obviously as many people will know during the 1948 Nagba and the Arab-Israeli war, there is an agreement between of a truce and during that truce, Israel breaks the weapon embargo and imports huge amounts of weapons from Czechoslovakia, which gives them the eventual advantage. And so there's kind of this thing of they feel betrayed over that people who've actually fought. Egyptians are wounded trying to protect Palestine. They are wounded trying to prot prevent the catastrophe which befalls the Palestinian people and which is inflicted on them I should say by the Zionists. And so this is obviously such an important shaping moment. And you know it's added to by how Jordan behaves where Jordan is just like yeah we're going for the West Bank and that's it.
They have the most professional the best trained army and all they do is go a bit into the West Bank and potentially make a secret deal with Golden Mayor because they want to enex the West Bank.
>> No. in in 1947, it's a fact they they made a deal with Goldenair that they were going to keep their fighting limited to the territory that they coveted, which was the West Bank, and they abided by that. You could even look at the books of uh Benny Morris. Uh he openly says this, yeah, the fighting was restrained to the West Bank. That's what they coveted. That's what they eventually annexed. And the you know there are certain things like there are settlement blocks and there was a war over part of Jerusalem but both of those both of those instances were not fleshed out in the Hasheite is Yeshu deal the 47 deal. So they were fair game. So in the grand scheme of things, Jordan, the Arab Legion, the strongest army in the region at the time, made a deal with the Zionists in 47 and abided by it and they neutralized the Arab army, the war effort. And these are obviously such important things to understand because alongside this long-standing humiliation or or perceived humiliation from the colon by the colonial powers of the Egyptian people, there is this catastrophe that people make major sacrifices for and feel like we were just betrayed by these governments who are just lackeyis of the west. And so this movement starts to brew inside of Egypt which is kind of led by NASA. It is all planned at his house. His wife has talked about how NASA was reg regularly welcoming guests. They were talking all night about what they were going to do. And it really was just his plan. And these are the free officers who eventually take power in Egypt in 1952. This is they're quite mixed. A lot of them are either from middle class or lower middle class backgrounds. There are a couple who have more left-wing tendencies. There are a couple who are have Islamist tendencies who are supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But they're all united by this one thing, which is this burning desire to rid Egypt of colonial rule. And in 1952, they end up doing that. Basically, there is a fire that breaks out on an um at the opera casino on the 26th of January, 1952. And then the Shepherd's Hotel, and then eventually looting and mass destruction follow. Over 750 stores are destroyed. And the looting and the all of the destruction is really targeted at the kind of like metropolitan liberal colonial elite that have moved into Egypt that have come to the country. And it ends in the death of 50 Egyptians, nine British people and apparently more than 500 wounded. And the day before there's actually an event where the specific Egyptian police force, the Ismila police force are cracked down on by the British in the canal zone which is part where a part of Egypt where the British are still maintaining a force in obviously where the Suez Canal is. Uh so Britain can protect it protect its interests in the region and that just adds insult to injury. You know, this is a culmination that basically comes to a crisis. And between this point and May of 1952, there are four changes of prime minister. King Farooq is basically cooked at this point. And the monarchy is in really really serious trouble. And so when the free officers think they've got wind of this uh of this coup coming in uh sorry the the uh Farooq uh they the free officers hear that Farooq potentially has got wind of the coup coming in they decide to go ahead it's actually depicted in have you ever watched the crown a British TV show neither have I but this is depicted in it I know that for a fact that NASA's uh the coup is depicted and anyway the free officers basically go through the country they seize the key power bases.
There's actually a bit of trickery where one of the free officers pretends to be one of the most senior military figures in Egypt and he keeps telling the commander of the Egyptian armed forces that there's no coup going on. He calls him multiple times and he keeps going, "Nah, nothing's happening." And I don't know if you cuz we both read Fawaz Gurgers's recent book, What Went Wally What Really Went Wrong.
>> Yeah. What really went wrong? That's about Mosed and also about NASA. And um it's a very good book, by the way. Very interesting. And after the coup succeeds, NASA is basically has just been driving around in civilian clothes, visiting all of the sites to check whether everything's going right and everything's okay. And they win. They seize power. And there's a little quote from there's a little quote that I really wanted to read from um uh from Anoir Sadat who's also a free officer and eventually succeeds NASA before being assassinated in 1981 after making peace with his >> All my homies hate Anoir Sedat. All my homies hate >> Sadat. Anoir Sadat is not he is not getting an episode in this or if he is it's not a good one. even though he scores a major victory, but there's a bit of question as to whether that's really him. The the six the Yamapur war in 1973.
>> Oh, okay. I thought you I thought you were going to say Kemp David for a second. I was like, what are you hold on a second no? Okay, >> but yeah. Um, so Anoir Sedat says on the radio, he says, "Egypt has passed through a critical period in her recent history characterized by bribery, mischief, and the absence of governmental stability. Accordingly, we have undertaken to clean ourselves up in the army and have appointed to command us men from within the army whom we trust in their ability, their character, and their patriotism. It is certain that all Egypt will meet this news with enthusiasm and will welcome it. I just love this little part about mischief.
That one of the key things they got to rid themselves of is just a bit of mischief. And I think I think this podcast could do with a bit of that.
Ridden ourselves of a bit of mischief.
>> We could be mischievous. I've I've been known to be mischievous.
>> Maybe I'm going to launch a free officer style coup against Isaac and take back the reigns of Canada.
>> Yeah, maybe. Yo, maybe you are the reincarnation of Thomas Sankara.
>> Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, >> I know, I know.
>> But yeah. Um, and then one of the key things is though is NASA isn't actually in power at first. They choose a guy called Muhammad Nagib. Nave. Nagib. It's just Nagib. Muhammad >> until 54, right?
>> Yes. And Nagib is chosen for one specific reason. Nagib is older. He's like a war hero in Egypt. He commands great respect. And a lot of the free officers like yeah they fought in Palestine, they achieved powerful things but you know ultimately they're not um they're not they're not respected in the same way that Nag is. So he's kind of chosen as the first ruler but he's the and this is kind of like a thing that's explored in Gurgas's work which we'll probably get into more in in your part I assume the Suez crisis right?
>> Um I mean if there's anything that you want to add to my part you definitely can. mine I I delivered I prepared a very short kind of introductory thing and then we can go back and forth.
>> Well, the point that I was going to briefly mention or kind of just set out is one of the things that sort of happens uh with Nagibb and this is mentioned a lot in Gurgas's book is how NASA and both Nagibb view the West.
Nagib is a little bit more willing to kind of resort to a relationship with the West at whatever cost. Whereas NASA is like, I want to be non-aligned. I want to be non-aligned.
And he really, really, really wants that. He wants this thing of Egypt rid of colonial humiliation, but also not going back to it. Although there are negotiations, secret negotiations between NASA and Israel that lead to >> Yeah. and he signs an agreement, right?
They signed some kind of agreement over water sharing with Israel and a few other countries.
>> Yes. So, the water stuff is a little bit confusing. They didn't actually sign >> the I think you're talking about the Jstone uh agreement, right? So, what ended up happening was it was part it was pertaining to Lake Tiberius and there was a plan I think unless we're talking about different ones, but there was a plan to share the water. the Arab countries didn't actually want to sign it because it entailed recognition of Israel, but then Jordan and Israel told the US that they would actually end up abiding by the terms of it and they did for years to come.
>> But point still stands point still stands. Mosha Sharet, Israel's uh temporary leader after David Bengurian randomly just [ __ ] retired and went to the negv for like a year. Mosha Sharet and Nasser kind of got along.
Nasser actually said that he respected Mosha Shred, which is really interesting.
>> Yeah, I mean Nasser is reading this.
It's so interesting because NASA is obviously this anti-colonial figure who really was, you know, I I think this is worth mentioning. There's always there's been this long-standing saying that there is no war against Israel without Egypt. And it's why so many people dis have such disdain for Anoir Saddat because obviously he signs this agreement with Israel and removes any kind of threat from Egypt to Israel and yeah uh you know but NASA also has relations. NASA's also attempts over and over again to build relationships with with uh you know with America like he really does. He spends a lot of time between 1952 and 1954 hanging out at the US embassy in Cairo, apparently watching Western films with diplomats who were there. And loads of these diplomats, by the way, which is mentioned once again in Gurgers's work, really like NASA because NASA is not a communist. NA they actually inform the CIA that they're going to do a coup in Egypt. And they're told, "As long as you're not communist, go ahead." And they do it. And they are not at all communist. He likes capitalism. He actually, this is a really funny thing as well that's kind of mentioned in this and it's absolutely true. The Middle Eastern countries actually had quite a positive view towards America for a long time. So, uh, the King Crane Commission is referenced here. If you don't know, if people don't know what that is, it's a basically a survey by two American academics who go over to Palestine and they interview people, survey them and ask them, "What are your opinions?" And the vast majority of them say, "Well, we'd like to be part of greater Syria."
Because obviously, you know, they have all these historical connections. But failing that, we don't want to be occupied by the British. We want to be occupied by the Americans. Because they view the Americans as having shed the yoke of British colonialism, which is kind of true. Obviously, they're a settler colony, so it's different, but they kind of view America positively and and NASA does, too.
>> It's funny because a lot of anti-colonial leaders do. Like Ho Chi Min had kind words to say. Castro at first extended an olive branch and purposefully filled his cabinet, his provisional government with anti-communists and more conservative members to appeal to the Americans cuz he didn't want to fight. But again, as soon as you start to actually threaten American either capital or hegemony, ideological hegemony or economic hijgemony, then it doesn't really matter if you're a communist or whatever you are, the boot is getting cracked down on you, >> right? Definitely. And to kind of finish up this segment of how NASA comes to power, there's kind of this vying.
Nagegeib is, you know, as I as I mentioned, he's the older guy. Nibb doesn't want to make as radical changes as NASA does. I think he's a bit more invested in reform. That none of them are, by the way, at all liberal democrats. Most of them believe in authoritarianism. And this is something that I definitely wanted to have a little discussion when we close up this section of their comparisons with our Benz and Mosed uh the free officers and how they did things a little differently and how I don't have a proclivity towards that but it is what ends up protecting this anti-colonial government the way their authoritarian tendencies in the way that Mosed and Arben couldn't protect themselves. But to just end this up, NASA is basically saved by one event. He appears on the radio on October 26th, 1954 to tell the Arab world about his successful negotiation of a final British withdrawal from the canal zone.
So the Suez Canal zone that we mentioned earlier, and then all of a sudden there's a shooting. Nasser is shot at and people hear the bullets ring out and it goes silent and people assume that he's dead. But then he comes up with this fire speech which I think if I remember correctly is freely available on YouTube. He says, "Let them kill me.
It does not concern me so long as I have instilled pride, honor and freedom in you. If Gamalabd Nassa should die, each of you shall be Gamma Abdul Nassa. Gamma Abdul Nassasa is of you and from you and he is willing to sacrifice his life to the nation for the nation." It's this >> it's incredible. I mean, goosebump style thing. Imagine, you know, if Karma's getting shot on the airwaves and he comes out with a speech and says, "We're all you're all Kia Star." Wow. I'm going to be inflamed.
>> We are Kier. We are Kier Starmer AI song >> in the >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're carrying the flame for him. But >> Oh, yeah.
>> Yeah. Um then why this event is so cataclysmic is because the assassin is from the Muslim Brotherhood who are a powerful Egypt and perhaps one powerful group in Egypt and still are to this day. Something maybe we'll talk about in one day with an episode on Hassan Alban, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But anyway, NASA uses this to consolidate his power. NASA cracks down and crushes opposition. He arrests thousands of Muslim brothers, communists and people who he deems as a threat to his regime and Nagib is put on house arrest. And this is it. NASA I did hear this is not something me mentioned in Gurgers's book, but this is something that Trey talks about. It's not one man rule still. NASA still has to answer to the other free officers. He is the figurehead. He is the charismatic and incredibly popular leader of this revolutionary movement. But he is not the all powerful dictator. The only point that that ever happens in NASA's rule is in after 1967.
But NASA becomes loved. And I guess we can kind of as we're closing up this section, I don't know how you feel about the point I mentioned earlier, this thing of how if you read this book, it's really interesting because where Mosedh fails is that Mosed is too committed to democracy and he can't proof himself.
But the CIA know they can't get NASA because NASA's coup proofed.
>> This there's another parallel that you could bring up and this is a point that I've made before. Uh another example would be Aende versus Castro. So Aende in Chile, he was you can make the argument too democratic, too reliant on the democratic institutions and maybe he should have purged parts of his military that would soon depose him leading to his eventual suicide.
Castro, you know, Castro even warned him. Castro delivered uh or he gave him an a an AK-47. He told him, you know, you got you're going to be under attack.
He I think he even mentioned that Chile is up against something that Cuba has never even been up against, something like that. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he said that. Um my point here is again, you have to look at this dialectically. If you have a massive empire that is set on destroying you and you're a tiny country, you're just trying to assert your national uh sovereignty.
You need to take actions that may not be ideal. There's the primary contradiction there of imperialism versus anti-imperialism.
And that needs to supersede priority over the secondary contradictions of maybe the government is authoritarian.
Maybe the people within the colonized or imperialized country uh are not happy with the strongman authoritarian rule.
That would be a secondary contradiction.
We'll get to it eventually. But first and foremost, the country needs to prioritize its survival. This is a point that I think I heard from uh Gabriel Rockhill, who's a he's a American philosopher. He's a guy I like a lot.
It's really interesting how there's a couple of dialectical things in in in in this which is this like take take nothing away Nasser is a a really impressive figure like a really impressive figure but throughout his rule the security state does grow. he's quite paranoid and these kind of crackdowns undeniably factor into the fact that Egypt has basically I I think it's mentioned in here it's about a year and 340 days where Egypt has not been ruled by a military dictator since this point only after Hosni Mubarak is deposed and for 300 odd of those days they're ruled over by a handpicked prime minister picked by General Abdul Fata Elsisi Egypt's current ruler Egypt has been plagued by authoritarianism in fact there's a guy called Noah Feldman who's written a book called the Arab winter who kind of actually thinks that the Arab Spring went wrong because of I don't know if the slogan's actually behind me the people want that's a book by Gilbert Ashkar but anyway um the slogan ashab yurid akatam means the people want the fall of the regime it was the common slogan across the Middle East but his argument is that because the people were like oh we want there was this expectation that someone was coming to take down the corrupt regime and his argument is well they always thought it was going to be the army He his his by the way his book's not perfect. It really discounts a lot of things. So I think it's called from like Arab winter to tragedy or something.
From Arab Spring to Arab winter by Noah Feldman. It's okay. It's if some of you want to check it out and read a little bit into the Arab Spring it might be worth it but it's not a fantastic book.
Achars is probably better. If I could interject really quick just to make one more point. the the hyperfocusing on the supposed authoritarianism or lack of democracy in these anti-colonial movements has to be placed into the context of the siege that they are trying to survive. For example, violence, war, it brings those tendencies out of anyone. Liberal democracies are not inoculated from that. You can look in the Second World War, FDR, liberal bastion FDR. What did he do in the outbreak of the Second World War? He interned Japanese people.
He interned them on the on the basis of their race.
>> He got polio, too.
>> Based based polio.
>> Not very liberal of you, Mr. FDR. Should have had should have taken the vax.
Should have taken the vax, Mr. FDR.
>> Exactly. Even before Even before uh war broke out, this [ __ ] was sterilizing Puerto Ricans. His administration was sterilizing Puerto Ricans because he didn't want them to breed too much. That's genocide, by the way. limiting births in a group because you don't want them to reproduce because of the immutable characteristic that they are part of a certain race or group or national ethical religious group.
>> So even the Americans when they are not in a state of siege or war or whatever it may be are [ __ ] doing barbaric [ __ ] Their liberal god FDR, social democratic god is [ __ ] sterilizing Puerto Ricans and interning Japanese people. So, I don't really want to hear a [ __ ] thing about what Castro did or what Nass Nasser did or whatever. I don't agree with everything that they did, but I don't have to. That's a secondary contradiction.
>> Yeah. I still think and I think that that's the funny thing of people like, well, he was authoritarianist. We can actually talk about why that matters and stuff and like how interestingly, not someone we're going to get into this episode, but his actual torture. Do did I don't know if you know this, really births Sunni Islamist militancy. Um I mentioned this last Yes. Yes. A guy called Sad Kutub uh is tortured in the NASA prisons. He writes a lot about this. He's a Muslim Brotherhood figure and he it's start it's a start of like discussion around Islamic theology I believe and like the corrupt nature of rulers and how they can do these things to Muslims and how it actually means you have legitimacy to do as you please against them. uh that that may be a bad summary and I'm sure someone will be like no no no that's not the case but vaguely that's kind of correct as to why as to how like NASA's behavior does this and of course as I just mentioned you know it factors into the authoritarian thing and the final thing I actually wanted to kind of add to this is it's kind of funny how these like figures who are great men right are quite often defined by like semi-lucky events in some ways it's lucky that NASA is shot on air obviously it's not lucky you know you don't want to get shot it's not great I mean our guy Kirk didn't enjoy it. But the whole thing is is that you have these events. Margaret Thatcher, right? Not someone who I adore, but someone who, you know, a certain time in her life, you know, I I didn't know this, but apparently Thatcher when they asked they'd ask her like, "Oh, how how long do you think you'll rule?" And she'd be like, "Forever. Can you see yourself ruling into the 2000s?" And she was like, "Oh, maybe uh you know, 20 plus years of her being prime minister."
Brilliant. Brilliant thought. But >> she's a girl boss, bro. Her and Golden Mayor are like my favorites. I love them. Girl bosses. But yeah, thatcher is um Maggie Thatcher, our dear Maggie. Her career is defined by the Faulland. She's having a horrendous time initially and the Faullands happens and she has this massively successful moment where all of a sudden she connects with the British public in the same way that NASA went from this kind of a little bit of a background figure to all of a sudden incredibly popular according to Gurgess through this event. NASA's ideas were always very popular but it is through this event where NASA begins to connect because of this speech in particular in the same way that you know Castro no doubt like not as much of an expert here but no doubt gains huge amounts of legitimacy through the Cuban missile crisis in part well even before that the attack on the Monata barracks and then he was arrested and then he did this trial it's now come to be known uh history will absolve me and he lays out his revolutionary program but the reason that he was able to do that is because he didn't die in the attack he didn't die in the counterinsurgency. He was brought to trial. He wasn't executed or or you know like the like the other rebels were. And then luckily there was a mass amnesty campaign. We're talking back about luck. Uh mass amnesty campaign that severely shortened his sentence and he went to Mexico and was able to recruit and then go back to Cuba and launch the revolution. But if he was either killed in the Monata attack or if he was not fortunate enough to be the recipient of a mass amnesty campaign, none of that would have happened. So it is luck. All right. So we're going to get into the Suez crisis now, the 1956 Suez Canal crisis. And just to touch on what we've already discussed, he comes to power in a coup in 52, semiconsolidates power by 54. In that process, he finds himself opposed to certain factions, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood and domestic communists, which again, that's not something I'm a fan of. I would not, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for me to cheer on the suppression of people who share my ideology. Not a fan of it.
Uh but in the wake of that he gained some appreciation in the west because of that cracking down on communists because he was clearly not a communist and due to that he was uh somewhat pressured to take a side in the cold war but he didn't want to he wanted to be non-aligned. So you have this NATO sponsored Baghdad pact which is like an antis-siet supposed defensive alliance that he's presented with by the west and asked to join but he doesn't want to. He wants to uphold his non-alignment and through upholding his non-alignment he believes he's holding his independence his anti-colonial stature.
So when he refuses to sign the Baghdad pact and pick a side in the cold war, the west refuses to sell him weapons.
From there he goes and secures a massive arms deal through the Soviet Union through their satellite state of Czechoslovakia.
Then in 1956, the US and the UK attempt to punish him for this independence, for his uh Soviet arms deal, and for his recognition of China by withdrawing financial support for his uh premier modernization project, the Azwan high dam. NASA retaliated by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company and then using those revenues to fund that dam because the western powers pulled out. That would be the leadup to the Suez crisis before we get into it. Yeah, they were supposed to give him about $70 million.
The British, the Americans, and also the World Bank were meant to give him this money. And it would have been, you know, this was basically so he could electrify the country. He ends up managing to electrify 2,000 rural villages to provide electricity to places in Egypt that had never had it. He is carrying out, you know, land reforms. He's he's doing some really interesting stuff to basically they requisition stuff of people who are affiliated with the monarchical regime as well previous prior to this but I just wanted to quickly add the crazy thing about his non-alignment is it doesn't come from like a hatred of the west he makes multiple outreaches reaches in fact there is a diplomat called I'm just going to search his name because I I've kept pronouncing this wrong uh I think it's by bro Henry Byroade, Bowad, Broade, whatever it is. He basically uh he even NASA reaches out to the Americans after the Czech arms deal on May 22nd, 1955 and tells Henry Bouad Broade uh about it and he says, "Look, this can stop, but I'm going to do it if you don't sell me weapons." He's not doing it because he loves the Soviets. He tells He says over and over again, "There are no political strings attached. In fact, the Soviets don't like him. The Soviets call him uh reactionary uh they call him what do they call him?
A madly they the leading Egypt expert Ellen Vatilina called the free officers madly re reactionary terrorist anti-democratic and demagoguic. He's regularly called a fascist lackey of the west in Soviet media who does not have this amazing relationship with them.
They literally just mess this up. They they mess this up because NASA won't accept being humiliated. NASA will not accept a pact where he has no say. He doesn't want to be part of this Baghdad pact for the exact reason that we talked about in our NATO episode. Small countries, no power in these things. He says that. He says small countries have no power. Bigger states will bully you.
And so he's like, I want to go my own way. I want Egypt to be proud and have dignity.
But his avoidance of hitching his boat to the Americans and the West, it it was mirrored by his similar reluctance to just throw himself into the Soviet camp.
It's not like he was telling the West to to shoe while he was inviting the Soviets. He was telling both of them he didn't want to pick a side in the global cold war. He wanted to be independent and unaligned and uphold his anti-colonial stature. That was what his goal was. But again, the West in their typical greedy fashion wanted more, wanted more than he was willing to give.
So it everything that we just mentioned transpired. And then you get to the point where Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal Company to a uphold his dignity in anti-colonialism and national sovereignty, but also to then have a source of revenue to fund the Azwan dam, which has been derailed now because the West cut funding. So he nationalizes the Suez Canal, which is a British and French joint venture. And this obviously angered Britain and France who immediately began plotting to overthrow him. They plan to invade Egypt and take back the canal, but they needed a pretext. That's where Israel comes in.
The three forces came up with something called the protocol of Sevra, which is a plan in which Israel would invade Egypt unilaterally. Britain and France would then issue a slimy ultimatum demanding that both Egypt and Israel retreat from the canal zone, allowing an Anglo French occupation force to step in. This ultimatum was designed to be rejected.
Both countries knew Nasser would never surrender his sovereignty or allow an imperial occupation force onto Egyptian territory. His rightful refusal would then be used as a justification for an invasion.
Is there anything you want to add before I keep going?
Uh, one thing I learned, Anthony Eden, British Prime Minister at the time, had an addiction to methamphetamine, uh, because he had a previous >> He was clvicular maxing.
>> Yeah, he was clvicular maxing. He was he was speed maxing cuz he had >> Oh, yeah.
>> a failed gall uh bile duct, which I I assume is something to do with acid.
Bile duct.
>> No, bile duct.
I don't >> Yeah, something to do with that. A bile duct operation. And at that time he was indict he was addicted to amphetamines.
And so this was kind of like a speed addict commanding quite possibly one of the most moronic operations that he was literally told by the Americans we will not get involved in. And he still did it. So I like that little feature, that little quirk of this. Anyway, uh bombers stationed in Cyprus launched a massive bombardment on Egypt while paratroopers landed in Egypt and laid siege to the city of Port Sed, killing over a thousand civilians. All the while, Nasser stood his ground and alongside civilian guerrillas, his army fought the invaders.
The invasion ultimately came to an end because Dwight Eisenhower forced Britain and France to withdraw, threatening to undermine their economies, particularly by targeting the British currency and applying heavy political pressure. He essentially told them that he would boot them out of NATO. And then he said that the US Treasury would dump a bunch of sterling holdings and just tank the British currency based. But don't give him uh don't give him too much credit.
Don't give him too much credit. And we'll get to why. Uh Eisenhower was furious because France, Britain, and Israel acted without informing him. And also he was concerned that the Soviets had come out in support of Egypt, giving them the moral high ground in what was clearly an illegal invasion of a developing country. Eisenhower's anger wasn't rooted in anti-interventionism because he literally had just overseen the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran and in Guatemala just the years prior. So it's not like he had this principled aversion to [ __ ] with smaller countries. But regardless, he pulled the strings. The three colonial states pulled out and Nasser came out of this w with a military setback of course but a clear political victory. The blatant neoc colonial aggression of the tripartite attack combined with Egypt's steadfast resistance culminated in a mass political triumph.
He secured full sovereignty over the Suez Canal and he emerged as the undisputed pan-Arab and third world hero. Israel, this is funny, Israel, in defending its actions claimed that the invasion of Egypt was actually a response to Palestinian guerrilla fighters launching attacks from Gaza because of course they always have to be the [ __ ] victim.
>> And this framing was meant to portray Israel's actions as defensive rather than aggressive.
>> But what's Go for it.
>> Do you know Do you know there are a couple of other funny things? Do you know NASA kept being described as Hitler on the Nile? Yeah. All over. And also, I'm sure you remember this. This is from Joseph Msad's piece, Zionism's internal others, I believe. He mentions how the Israelis kept claiming that Egyptian tanks came across the sewers that were adorned with SWAT stickers.
>> They kept claiming this. There was no evidence. They just kept saying it. And they just kept claiming this as like a justification. And the French the French's justification was that the NASA had had the audacity to back, you know, the FLN in their struggle against I don't know, the mass killing of Algerians. I guess that's a, you know, outrageous and that's what normal liberal countries do against, you know, barbarism, the barbarism of evil NASA.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, what's often left out of this Israeli portrayal of their action as defensive is that Nasser had previously enforced a policy of curbing Palestinian infil in infiltration from the Egyptian controlled Gaza Strip into Israel until Israel conducted a raid in Gaza in 1955 and killed dozens. After that, >> yeah, after that, Nasser abandoned his restraint policy and instead incorporated Palestinian fighters into his broader military strategy in in an official capacity.
>> If I remember correctly, a lot of Hamas figures were affected by the Rafa massacre that occurs at that time. The just massacre and it may also >> Do you mean would be Hamas? Would be Hamas. Yeah. Would be Hamas would be Hamas figures like the early figures of Hamas were impacted by it. Yeah. Yeah.
were impacted by what happened in also another key point is it might actually be the first ever documented use of human shields by Israel. Uh apparently the Israelis took human shields and they sent them to go and like out to go and basically so they could evade Palestinian snipers. I think if I remember correctly I'm sure that that's correct, but yeah, it might actually be the first ever documented use of Israel taking human shields. So a wonderful echo of the present. It's interesting because I'm I had to study this for my upcoming video where I go over every uh war that Israel claims is defensive and I show that actually no, Israel instigated all of these. Uh but in my studying for that, I read the this book by Avi Schlame. I was telling you about it earlier. It's called Israel and Palestine and it's from 2009 and he wrote it when he was still a liberal Zionist. So it's really interesting. You could see the language that he chooses to use when he's describing Palestinians who are just trying to cross into Israel and retrieve their husbandry, their their houses, their belongings, meet with family.
And the way he would frame them, I guess this speaks to the subconscious framework paradigm in which you operate from when you accept the premise of Zionism was he would call them infiltrators or he would call them disparaging things like that that kind of gave the impression, the implicit impression that they shouldn't have been doing that. They were seeping into the borders of Israel. They might have had a good reason to do so, but they're infiltrating. So, it's it's very interesting. I know this is I guess a tangent and I'm always the one saying we can't go on tangents but it's um yeah it's it's really interesting because when I had to study about this and read about this you see how even a figure like Avi Schlame who is now an anti-ionist and calls for a single democratic state he had to he spent years working his way out of this like mind matrix that is Zionism and I guess it speaks to >> the ability that that can happen for a lot of people and we have to be relentless and >> uphold our goal of changing minds because if it could happen for him, it can happen for anybody.
>> Well, I mean, it's also a service to the dearly departed Charlie Kirky. Charlie Kirky literally went out and did change my mind. So, that's excuse me. Excuse me. But Charlie carried that kind of flame from Crowder by doing debates on campus. So, I think that, you know, we're kind of carrying a legacy that is hard and and and and informed by the man that was Charles Kirky. Uh, >> he did carry the flame. On a quick side note, have you seen the videos of uh Erica Kirk recently where she's dressed like a sort of bro gorilla commander?
>> What happened?
>> I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it.
>> When she's like, "Comedians are doing white face of me." And I was thinking, "Oh my god, like Drewi."
>> I I couldn't believe it. my I I got a message like uh whenever this was I was like because obviously girlfriend living in Canada we sleep at different times so she sent me a message and she was like you've got to see this new video of Erica Kirk and it's like wow this lady she was looking crazy she looked like she could be hanging out with NASA and the panarab nationalists from some and the pan Asian nationalists you know from wherever cuz she looked like a guorilla fighter commander >> the fit >> Mhm. Mhm.
>> Mhm. Dripped out. dripped out to say the least. But yeah, um I guess is is that kind of your pre-repped bit done with or do you do you want to kind of hop into the final point we had?
>> Yeah, no problem.
>> Obviously obviously, you know, connecting this present past and NASA, there's obviously so many connections.
You know, we're talking about the Middle East. This it's all it's all connected.
You know, I've I've come up with a genius point there. But it's really interesting, you know, kind of looking at the sewers because obviously there's a fundamental difference which in part even taps into our last episode. Part of the reason that the US is so apprehensive is one, first of all, they're worried about the reactions of countries that they're allied with in the Mena region, obviously now, something they don't care at all about.
I think they're too over reliant on the UAE now. And they kind of are like, well, we've got the UAE and that's kind of fine maybe. And they're kind of like Jordan's going to do nothing and blah blah blah blah blah. But you know at this time they're kind of restrained by the Soviet Union because the Soviet Union has given some statements about like we'll protect Egypt and you know potentially you could have ended up in this nuclear standoff. Uh and obviously they didn't but there's kind of like this overarching threat that kind of end up ends up with the US restraining allies and people have been calling what's happened with Iran the Suez moment. This the the like the US is Suez moment as if it's full circle you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean you have some aspects where the US's normal allies who followed it into Iraq, Afghanistan are like no this is moronic.
And I mean the US is humiliating itself.
Oil is spiking. Its best option is to continue blockading the straight of Hormuz which is obviously a catastrophic idea when you know oil is spiking and it doesn't know what to do. And realistically like some people seem to push back on this. Categorically, by the way, Iran's military is degraded. And I'm not saying they don't have the ability to fight back, but when you sustain a mass bombardment campaign, when you lose senior military figures, your military is degraded. But yet, it looks like and currently Iran is scoring the major political W. Iran Iran's economy will be troubled by this. No doubt it's already an economy in in major trouble. But there are these similarities. But where it seems to end is the allies of America can't restrain it. They can't restrain this kind of like cristo fascist entity that's gone like fully off offthe-wall insane, you know, but to pull back to NASA, this moment obviously catapults him hugely. It kind of destroys the I think they try and one of the the pre-Bagaghdad pact is something called MIO, like NATO, the Middle East defense organization.
>> Uh it's it's kind of similar to that.
they're they're all basically done. Uh these countries now suffer with this major issue of NASA is really really popular and he's popular amongst the masses. And of course NASA's done something that is not so nice if you're a if you're a monarchical ruler. If you're someone like I don't know the hashite kingdom of Jordan, >> you got a population who all of a sudden is like, "Hey, this NASA guy is pretty cool." And what did this NASA guy do?
Yeah, >> he did a he did a a a coup against a western back monarchy and so >> exactly catapulted to this kind of leader of the Arab world in many ways.
>> I guess actually using the term Arab world is somewhat correct here because his popularity is >> actually you know what it's not because obviously using the term Arab world is wrong for the Middle East because there are huge amount of ethnic groups and also >> well I mean even technically like the term Middle East is kind of problematic too. I mean, for the sake of conversation and just relaying a point uh in a way that's understandable, you kind of have to to a degree come into contact with somewhat problematic language. Like I've heard people say to use >> swano or swana, southwest Asia, southwest Asia, North Africa >> and I agree with that. Like like the sentiment behind it, I agree that that would be like that's like decolonial language. But also, when you're trying to like get a point across, it can be very hard for people who don't understand yet and don't know. And then when you're using all of these words they might not be familiar with, it could kind of distract from the broader sentiment of your point, which is genuinely decolonial. But again, I don't have I don't have a horse in this race.
>> When I'm writing, I exclusively use the term mena. I don't use the term Middle East, but sometimes when I'm talking, I accidentally slip in Middle East. I do it quite a lot. I'm going to be honest, and I apologize. A lot of people were telling me, "Please use the term swan or mena in one of my recent videos, but I'm kind of using it because of >> Yeah, I've just used it because of it's not great." But I understand.
>> Arab world, Middle East, like problematic terms. I've had Kurdish friends of mine tell me like, "We don't really appreciate the use of that term."
And to that, I apologize. But it is um >> it is something you got to work on, I guess. Like, just be cognizant of it.
>> It's always those cheeky Kurds cuz that is exactly who's told me the same thing.
Those damned curds.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Curds. Well, of course, it's it's a real sore point and you know, so many >> uh it it's not even really an exclusive Arab thing. You know, the Iranians, the Arabs, the Turks >> pretty pretty well. No, no, no, but the Arabs, Iranians, and the Turks have all been pretty unc unkind in that and and cruel and and in in many ways genocidal towards the Turks throughout different periods of time. And so, yeah, I I I kind of appreciate >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Yeah. They've they like, you know, Saddam Hussein perpetrated what is undeniably genociding.
>> Oh no, Turks as well. Excuse me. Yeah, they're just part of it as well. Turks have obviously perpetrated plentiful crimes against Kurds. But anyway, to pull back so kind of for this next section, it's a bit broader. It's a bit more like kind of difficult to pinpoint.
It's just kind of NASA's Arab nationalism. NASA is this just just this figure who unites. I read this wonderful article in uh I think it's Jatalia uh which if anyone's interested if if you look it up and it happens to have something about the Middle East in pretty high level stuff normally pretty pretty pretty top stuff but it's called beyond panarabism suez and afroasian solidarity in Abdul Nassa's Egypt and it starts with two quotes which I just want to read it was the abortive Suez adventure of 1956 that united all Africa and a uh Africa and Africa with Asia and the Arab world to give a great spurt forward to national independence. Africa was never the same after the sewers.
Kenyan independence activist and later vice president Oinga Odinga not yet a huru London Haidderman 1967.
And then this is another. When we saw that NASA could nationalize the Suez Canal, resist the French and the British, and win, we said to ourselves, this is someone who can really help the UPC, which is the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon. And this comes from Martr Mumi, who is a Union of the Peoples of Cameroon, activist, uh, victim to colonialism, moni.
But yeah, this article is really interesting because it just kind of mentions it mentions in part limitations. It mentions how there are like there's a bit of ignorance. There's a bit of racism and and and not necessarily and all of these ideas don't necessarily translate to every Egyptian.
Not every Egyptian is just like instantaneously, yeah, that's a cool idea. But NASA does something here which I mentioned earlier. So in 1953 they have launched something called Salt Alab, the voice of the Arabs. Apologies if I got that wrong. It's a Cairo radio station and in July 1954 they decide to start programming in different African languages. So they move to Amharik Sudin dialects and Swahili so they can start to tell and connect parts of the Arab world. NASA starts talking about Egyptian issues. He starts telling people all about what's happening there.
They talk about connections, the struggles that they're all sharing. And all of a sudden people start from these countries start flocking over. I mentioned the case of Lumumba. I mentioned all of these things happening with people uh you know all of these organizations who swell around who come because they view NASA as like this figure who may be able to help them.
It's not Soviet. It's not American. It's something different. It's something that is in the Middle East. And no doubt maybe there's some animosity in part because of how the early Marxists were a little bit uh and maybe to this day a lot of people would make this argument are a little bit high-nosed. Um I don't know how to describe it. Snobbish towards >> elitist. Yeah, they're elitist.
>> Yeah, there there is there is a word it's hnazic in German, but I don't remember what it means. It's like a >> conceited. Conceited is the word.
>> Not all of them, but like I mean that's that's definitely like a strain of Marxist. Yeah, that's any anyone really, but >> yeah, >> I don't take offense. I point taken.
>> No, no, and I'm not saying all Marxists are this way. Is is a thread within some people. But anyway, the ANC declare its support um for NASA. The Mandela says, "As an African country, we are closely involved in this in Oh, sorry, no, this is from the ANC journal. As an African country, we are closely involved in this invasion of Africa. As members of the liberation movement, we are closely involved in this attack on a liberation movement. As opponents of national oppression and colonialism, we are involved in this oppressive and imperialist war. Egypt was, this is what Mandela himself said, Egypt was an important model for us, for we could witness firsthand the program of socialist economic reforms being launched by President Nasa that we in the ANC someday hope to enact. At that time, however, it was more important to us that Egypt was the only African state with an army, navy, and air force that could in any way compare with those of South Africa. And yeah, they they just they host things like this Cairo conference, which is uh part of the AfroAsian People's Solidarity Organization. Um Egypt declare their support against the French and in favor of the Algerians. They also come out in favor of the Palestinian right of return. Um it's it's really interesting.
This is kind of like an underappreciated story and you kind of see this kind of really interesting accent uh like aspect excuse me of panarabism that is broader that is bigger that even if there are these failures and these things that NASA is imperfect on there is a message in this that you know he stood up and spat in the face of western imperialism and the funny thing is is you know he didn't do it from like this real position of like I am world number one leftist or anything. He did it from this position of like, hey, I just want dignity for the people of Egypt. We've been humiliated by colonialism. I'd actually work with you if you're willing to treat me as an equal. And it and it's not good enough because he will not dance the correct tune. That is the problem. And and and you know, >> I guess you kind of long for this lost world of which is probably not right.
You know, there were so many imperfections and so many problems and issues, but you kind of look at this and you're like, my god, what what what what has become of this? What has become of the world now with what's happened in Gaza? You know, you see Abdul Fata Elsisi, the only thing they can do is not accept Palestinians all being ethnically cleansed from Gaza. Do you honestly think NASA would have sat there and accepted a genocide in Gaza? No. No, he would not have.
>> No. And there's definitely things to be said about his governance in Gaza. There were a lot of Palestinians who do not did not approve of it, did not like it until they got a taste of Israeli occupation and then they were like, "Oh, [ __ ] Okay, we prefer Nasser's administrative rule to whatever the [ __ ] the Israelis have in store for us." But uh one of the points I wanted to make here because you when reading that quote from Mandela, you touched on how Mandela praised Nasser's socialist policies and I feel like we should fill in the audience because we informed them that in the beginning he was anti-communist and now we kind of throw this out there that he was enacting socialist policies.
So I feel like we should kind of bridge that gap for them and explain what kind of transpired in between those two points. So it yeah he comes to power and he's consolidating power he's uh this crushing descent of that descent the communists were a part of and then you know through his aspirations to see panarab nationalism he's approached by the Syrians to start a union the what's it called the >> United Arab Republic >> United Arab Republic so he's asked by the Syrians to join He at first is hesitant because he sees panarabism as more of like a moral support thing as opposed to an actual like merged union right away. So he eventually does join, but he imposes these wishes and demands on the Syrians where essentially he's in charge. The union is ruled from Cairo, which is kind of strange because Syria and Egypt don't share a border. But regardless, those are his demands. the Syrians accept and it very quickly falls apart because what ends up happening is Cairo ends up running Syria as like an Egyptian province. So, doesn't work very well. It fails and then Nasser blames that failure of the union on what he deems reactionary sentiments, reactionary tendencies. So, as a result of the failure of the union, he moves drastically to the left. He starts doing land reform, socialistic policies. He actually declares that what he's doing now is Arab socialism, which is funny because in the beginning he starts from he starts, you know, clamping down on domestic communists, not very outwardly left-wing guy. He's a nationalist and, you know, people can appreciate him for that. I certainly do. But it's funny because he saw the dissolution of the uh union with Syria as a result of reactionary tendencies and he argued that the region had to get more progressive before they could try again and and really uphold uh Arab nationalism. So that's how we get to the point where he's now instilling socialist policies and he's moving over that way, which is sad that it took that long. you know, he had to [ __ ] uh crack down on communists in the beginning when he ended up getting close to it. More of a socialist road down the end. But I digress. Yeah. Um, if people really want to know, so Abdul Razaki has a piece on this which I only got to read a tiny bit of, but he basically explains what an orthodox Marxist would disagree with.
They would basically see it as a form of economic reformism or state capitalism because mostly NASA did not call for the abolition of private ownership and inheritance and it also did not require the nationalization of all means of production. He basically envisaged a state instead of the individual controlling the kind and quantity of commodities to be produced.
uh and the state rather than the individual would determine equal distribution on the basis of a society's welfare and regulating the employer employee relationships and there are actually a lot of problems that are birthed from this and Egypt has Egypt has a huge Egypt is actually really screwed today in part because of this and neoliberalism mixed together so when the neoliberalism occurs under Anoir Sedat basically the Egyptian military gets private businessmen basically get involved in everything. The Egyptian military is already involved in everything. The Egyptian military is a lot like the IRGC that it's basically a big business controlling most of Egyptian affairs to this day. They they they're very involved under under NASA and they have a lot of control over state like the state has huge control over companies. But unfortunately like cronyism, lackeyis, uh, and basically how you have, you know, a state that becomes neoliberal and the state sells off what it owns to private individuals >> when you've been doing this kind of stuff. It's catastrophic.
And I mean, >> by the way, just as a quick note, we're not talking about Sedat today or like Egypt now really, apart from, you know, brushing on it. An interesting aspect of um Saddat is apparently allegedly one of the reasons that he signs a peace agreement with Israel is because Egypt is economically screwed and they need American aid and America under NASA keeps trying to condition the aid on them forming relationships with Israel. So, it's not really that hard to believe. I if I had to guess that's in preventing Palestine but I don't remember 100% as to whether that is in there but I know that I've read that at some point the point about Saddat but yeah just to just to pull back to the sort of panarabism there's a point where he ends up invading uh Yemen basically because there is a military coup there which leads to the fall of the Zadi Imamate. He ends up in opposition to the Saudis. He's there for 5 years and at one point it starts costing the Egyptian excheer half a million pounds a day. It ends up actually isolating NASA more than it does scoring these major victories. He comes out massively and more and more against what he deems to be the reactionary Arab monarchies. And look, there is definitely truth to what he's saying. They are nowhere near as bad as they are now. And this is a mistake that people make because I know that I was guilty of this for the longest time.
These monarchies are different to what exists now. The children of a lot of these regimes behave very differently in relation to Palestine, particularly the United Arab Emirates. She say Zed was not all like this. Not to advocate for him or be like awesome character. He didn't even want military bases in his country. Neither did Kuwait. Uh you know, people had different opinions at this time. S had different opinions. But yeah, the basically his coming out against them in many ways isolates him regionally. Even if he's still liked by the population because of what he's succeeded in, because of what he's done, he's kind of in this bind because he's isolating himself regionally from the regional powers basically and they're just drawing themselves closer to America because they're like, "Well, that's where our protection and our money is. we're never going to be able to be like NASA and always be popular and loved because we can't do things like that go fully against American interests. And so yeah, it's kind of this difficult situation where that culminates in I guess the next part of this which is which you were covering the six- day war.
>> Yeah, sure.
So, the Six-Day Day War, if we're going to call Nazareth participation in the Suez crisis a major political triumph, a win, then his participation in the Six-Day War could be argued to be the opposite. In the leadup to the 1967 6-day war, Nasser took part in a strategy known as brinksmanship. This was more or less a political move, not really a military one. Essentially, he concentrated his troops in the Sinai Peninsula and closed the Straits of Thran and expelled UN peacekeepers in a move that amounted to puffing out one's chest at an enemy. Most historians and even Israeli intelligence at the time agree that Nasser didn't actually want war. He was trying to save face at a time when Israel had been incredibly aggressive in border skirmishes with its neighbors, especially Syria, which Egypt had a mutual defense pact with at the time.
The conservative monarchies in the region were also mocking Nasser for being supposedly too soft on Israel and for supposedly hiding behind UN forces.
This situation escalated when he received what's up.
>> I'm just laughing. I'm just laughing hearing that from the uh the Arab monarchies.
>> Oh, dude. Right. I know. It's [ __ ] ridiculous. Actually, >> too soft on Israel, eh?
>> Yeah.
>> If only they could see their children, >> bro. Yeah, dude. They rolling in their graves, man. Not that they were great themselves, but whatever.
The situation escalated when Nasser received faulty Soviet intelligence claiming that Israel was about to launch an attack on Syria and he felt obliged to posture and preserve his image as the leader of Arab nationalism. Though historians like Avi Schlame argue that Nasser never even actually believed the Soviet intelligence and that his real motive was securing his credibility at a time when it was being challenged.
Nasser also had a third of his troops bogged down in Yemen. The aforementioned uh intervention in Yemen where he went to prop up the Yemeni Republicans and aid their coup effort. Uh and just the Egyptian army, Nasser, they were in no position to fight a full-scale war.
American, Israeli, and British intelligence all concluded that his troop concentrations did not indicate an imminent first strike. Even Israeli figures like Yetac Rabbin and Manakim Bean later admitted that they knew his buildup in Sinai did not mean he was going to start a war. Regardless, Israel took the opportunity and capitalized on it. They struck first and destroyed the air forces of both Egypt and Syria, preventing the Arab states from gaining air superiority. This led to a quick Israeli victory and the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Sinai, and East Jerusalem.
Unable to admit defeat, Nasser took part in a massive disinformation campaign with other Arab leaders. They broadcasted false reports across the Arab world, claiming that American and British aircraft carriers were participating in the attacks alongside Israel. This lie led several Arab nations to sever diplomatic ties with the United States, but in reality, it only postponed the inevitable reckoning for Nasser. On June 9th, he went on TV, announced the devastating defeat, and tendered his resignation. Tens of millions of griefstricken Egyptians and Arabs poured into the streets, refusing to accept his departure and demanding that he stay. He ultimately resign uh rescended his resignation, but he was never the same again. He spent the final years of his life initiating the grueling war of attrition in an attempt to bleed Israeli forces and ensure that the Suez Canal did not become a permanent border until he died of a heart attack. in 1970.
His death was met with an outpouring of grief with an estimated 10 million mourners in Cairo.
So that's all I have prepared for the actual 6-day war, what went down, what transpired. But I think it's worth talking about how pan-Arab nationalism, you could make the argument it too died when Nasser died, >> right? Yeah. I I I mean there's never been a figure like NASA again. You know, >> yeah, >> Saddam Hussein tries to tap into this kind of stuff. The place where he really tries to find it is by being like are evil. The um the Islamic Republic are are trying to spread their evil ideology all over the Middle East. and I'm, you know, protecting the rest of the Middle East, the Middle East, North Africa region, the Mena from uh, you know, the evil the evil Müller regime.
But he obviously wasn't doing that. He does manage to secure huge loans from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And probably there is some support for this because these countries have Shia populations.
Countries like Saudi Arabia has a sizable Shia population. Bahrain, another GCC state, has a sizable Shia population. And so they were a little bit fearful of potentially what Iran could represent. But ultimately, you know, Saddam Hussein is a figure that is not like NASA. NASA is this almost unique figure. And reading about him is so interesting because, you know, I'm not I'm not claiming to be the world's lead world leading NASA expert, but >> having like reread about him recently, you kind of just think about this world that's gone really and like all of these things that came with him. You know, a key part of NASA's rulers, I'm sure you might know. Do you know >> Kum Kum or Kulam? I it's Ktham. Anyway, she is an Egyptian musician. She is incredibly famous. Her songs are beautiful. Lots of songs about Palestine and stuff and things to do with like uh events. She was a big believer in panarab nationalism and she was deeply affected by the loss of the six- day war. But an interesting little fact is well a couple of interesting facts.
First of all, uh, Omalum's music was banned because she originally sung for the monarchy after the free officers coup. And Nasser is alleged to have said, "What are they crazy? Do they want Egypt to turn against us?" Because he knew how important she was. And he used to appear on the radio after her music had come on because she was such this wonderful singer. And you know, you think about the these times that are kind of gone and what might have gone differently, what might have happened, but You know, I do think probably that panarabism as it was died with NASA. There have been pangs of it. Again, there have definitely been pangs.
>> You know, I made I I said like you could make the argument that panarab nationalism died with Nasser. You can make that argument, but I actually do think that it was fading before his death. Like there was the secession of Syria from the United Arab Republic.
There was the draining civil war in Yemen. there was uh the devastating loss of Arab land in 1967 and by the time of Nasser's death countries were in the region they were firmly divided into you know distinct states prioritizing their own national interests there wasn't really this pan internationalist crossborder sentiment that maybe there would have been closer to the su the Suez crisis and his uh successor Anar Sedat he moved further away from you know regional ambitions and toward like an Egypt first strategy. Uh he stripped the celebration of the free officers revolution of its panarabra meaning and in 1971 he changed the country's name from the United Arab Republic to the United Republic of Egypt. Sedat expelled socialist advisers. He aligned Egypt with the US and he broke the broader Arab consensus by signing a separate peace treaty with Israel at Camp David. He also moved closer to the Gulf, the monarchies in the Gulf. And we spoke about this before we pressed record today on this episode, but I would argue that this the final nail in the coffin of pan-Arab nationalism was the rise in prevalence of the pro dollars, pro oil economy coming out of the Gulf. Because what that ended up doing was it took these countries that were already ideologically opposed to pan-Arab nationalism. They were more, you know, concerned with upholding their monarchies and their pro-western conservatism. But what it ended up doing was it gave them a bunch of money due to their uh oil sales, their position now with maintaining the petro dollar. They were very important American allies. And now what you have within the swana the that region of the world West Asia is you have this kind of line now where you have on one side the conservative monarchies pro-western monarchies that are getting disproportionately rich off of their oil sales and benefiting from their position in the global economy where whereas you have the other side of these countries that you know would be more pro pan-Arab and they're economically ally not as strong because they're not benefiting from these lucrative agreements with the the West. They're not benefiting from petro dollars. They're not benefiting from massive oil sales. So now you have on top of these ideological divides of pan-Arab nationalism on one side and conservative monarchy on the other. You have class contradictions, class divides now within that region. And it's very hard to mend those gaps and create like a regional panarab nationalism when there's just too many contradictions.
Now >> the funny thing is is there are actually like what I was about to say >> was the the the you know there have been pangs of this maybe maybe maybe coming back. One of those is the um one of those that I think about is the um Arab Spring, the Arab uprising. And some people like it's a CIA backed operation to destabilize the Middle East, North Africa. And it's like no, not really.
Largely these were people in the in the region showing a a kind of tiredness and a shared united struggle against authoritarianism and tyranny and this shared desire to be ruled and to have some dignity once again to have something that was accountable to them.
And you know it spread it started in Tunisia. It went across so many different countries. It hit the Gulf. It hit even hit Saudi Arabia. You know it Shia provinces it hit Bahrain. It hit uh Egypt massively. It hit Tunisia, as I said, Morocco had protests as well.
>> Libya, >> Libya, yeah, Libya, Syria. And and and by the way, you know, um as much as the Americans and and other malign actors did >> cause problems in those countries. In the case of Egypt, you know, they hijacked genuinely >> genuine revolutionary sentiment by pouring in weapons and destabilizing the country into a brutal civil war that set the country back, you know, no doubt decades because Syria was ultimately a threat to was one of the last remaining threats to American hegemony and Israeli hijgemony in the Middle East. And you know, just as we've spoken about over and over again with Iran, there is real upset with the government there and a lack of accountability and and and the lack of democracy and brutality and all of these things. But no doubt the the Americans, the Israelis are trying to destabilize it and not with the best interest of people at heart, but rather to the to make their own ends. And you know, I think when you look at this, there's of course like NASA's not panarabism. It's not because I'm not maybe it's because I'm not Arab and of course that's something to think about but to to me I'm more of a believer in that everyone is united that realistically we're all contradictory human beings with something that is missing inside of us that makes us not feel complete and that is a shared experience from wherever you are in the world and the divides between us of course there's like cultural things that matter but those things can easily change and can easily go away depending on where you live in the world you know how easily you accept will change change culturally based on where you live and the amount of time you live there. But anyway, uh and part some parts people never let go because they want to maintain their cultures and that's totally fair enough. But um I believe that we're all all united. Whereas NASA's real argument was basically that Arabs needed to rule themselves, but you can see where it comes from because it it is this anti-colonial thing. And the reason that the Arab world the the the and I say here well I the Middle East, North Africa, excuse me, not the Arab world is divided is because of colonialism, you know.
>> Well, I was going to say I'm an internationalist first and foremost. I'm an internationalist. I agree with you. I don't think that >> I think we should all have a panhumanist ideology if anything. But I see in pan-Arab nationalism or pan-Africanism or even like the aspirations of bolivar in Latin America to have you know joined together in the face of a common enemy.
I see parts of my internationalism in these movements but I see it on on a smaller scale and I understand that to be a a result of necessity. Pan-Arab nationalism like pan-Africanism etc is first and foremost situated in a dynamic of oppressor and oppressed. It's a defensive posture. It's a defensive uh strategy. So it's easy for me to say we should be internationalists and we should all have each other's back. But when you are a region of the world that is constantly being targeted and you're being exploited, it makes sense to band together with people that share common grievances and fight against that in at the very least in the short term. So if a lot of these movements said that they wanted to stop with pan-Arab nationalism or whatever, I would have criticisms of it because I think you can go further and you can really enact a more internationalist bend. But I understand that in the meantime that's that's necessary. You need to band together to protect yourself from the vultures and the imperial corps. That's why with Gaddafi like he was pan Arab nationalist but he was also a pan-Africanist like he wanted to unite Africa as well right with the currency the gold dinar the the United States of Africa was a thing that he threw threw around.
I think I think he did I mean like Nassie, you know, I I I think he's multifaceted and complex and that some of the things he did were not so great in Africa. I was I was talking about interventionism in I believe Ethiopia uh a potential upcoming guest was talking about this kind of stuff. Yeah. And apparently um stuff relating to Mali as well currently has a bit of a is in some ways like an after effect of Gaddafi.
And I think this is the point, you know, you when you read about NASA, you hear a lot of stuff that's either really down, really up. And this is not like, you know, an endorsement of, as we said, an endorsement of everything. It's more of an interest and an intrigue of thinking about someone who mattered so much, who maybe not all Westerners know as much as about. No, no doubt every Arab listening to this will be like, "You missed this thing. You missed that thing. NASA's NASA's awesome." And and or like not NASA's awesome, but like you missed this really interesting aspect of it. And we probably did. But uh the the point of this episode was kind of like to think about him.
>> It's to examine.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I have a an Egyptian friend and I spoke with her and she even said like Nasser there's a lot of cool things about him. There's a lot of things that we don't like either. And I was like yeah like it's it's good to it's good to to keep that in mind and not necessarily, you know, portray this series where we examine like anti-colonial figures as as though they're, you know, necessarily the most moral people in the world. It's not really a moral series. It's an amoral series. We're not looking at the morality or the immorality. We're just >> I thought it was the most moral series in the world.
>> And with that and with that, that's amazing. I want to end it on that, dude.
That's incredible.
>> No, no, no, no, no, no. I I've still got I guess I guess I guess the thing I've been thinking about as well is I don't know how you feel about Arafat. Like, so I I I've got an I have some interesting feelings. First of all, learning about him. Wow. Arafat's interesting like a great representative to the Palestinian cause. As I learned more h don't love everything about him. In fact, I'm kind of a bit like with what's emerged with the Palestinian Authority, a bit of a sort of [ __ ] Arafat. But if you talk to Palestinians, they kind of have a more complex relationship with Arafat how they feel about him.
>> Arafat? Yeah. Well, I think he was a man who was negotiating from a position of weakness and he made a bunch of concessions and at a certain point the the power and the notoriety got to his head and he you could make the argument there were times where he prioritized that as opposed to the cause. But ultimately I think like this is looking at a guy who was negotiating from his knees extending all of branches trying >> and you know didn't work and you you have character degradation throughout that process. that's kind of normal. It could that could be seen. But I I again I try not to apply like a a morality on these figures and just examine like the situation in which they live.
>> Try and take like a more Marxist approach. But yeah, >> I I think in perhaps if this series continues and we do more like kind of big figures from places and what they represent, you know, if we're doing someone like Saddam Hussein, I I'll probably have a bit more specifically to say about like >> him or >> Yeah. Yeah. A little bit to say on that.
It wasn't so nice. Uh it wasn't one of it wasn't one of the finest hours of the uh >> of the of the bists or I mean the half al-Assad bash al-Assad al-Assad people like that maybe one day an Ahmed Alshara episode golani but yeah it's I don't know I when you were talking previously I was really reminded by this quote by uh France France Fenon from the wretched of the earth they will not manage to divide the progressive forces which mean to lead mankind toward happiness.
by brandishing the threat of a third world which is rising like the tide to swallow up all of Europe. The third world does not mean to organize a great crusade of hunger against the whole of Europe. What it expects from those who for centuries have kept it in slavery is that they will help it to rehabilitate and make mankind victorious everywhere once and for all. But it is clear that we are not so naive as to think that this will come about with the cooperation and the goodwill of European governments. And then I just kind of like dot dot, you know, ellipsis. To achieve this, the European peoples must first decide to wake up, shake themselves, use their brains, and stop playing their stupid game of sleep of sleeping beauty.
>> Another banger from the goat. Another banger from the goat.
>> Yeah, I I love I love Fenon's book. May maybe one day we'll do like an episode called like the thought of France Fenon and talk about him. Uh and maybe guys if you if you join the Patreon maybe one day we can run a [ __ ] book club where we don't have to do anything else but just read books and do this podcast. So in inshallah you will donate and watch.
See I'm even getting I'm even doing some uh doing some I'm doing some cultural appropriation.
>> He's quirked up. My boy is quirked up at the moment.
>> Yeah.
>> I heard about Lawrence of Arabia and I was like, "Hell yeah."
>> I watched June and I was like, "Wow, this guy is sick." I haven't seen June, by the way. Any of them?
>> No.
>> Have you seen it?
>> No. No. No. No. I don't care.
>> My friend jokingly saying, "Oh, you think you're the Lissan Alib," which is like I think the savior from the film.
>> Oh, yeah. No. I I I I can't really get behind like sci-fi movies. I've always been like that. It's been hard for me.
>> Really?
>> Yeah.
>> There's some pretty good ones.
Terminator 2 Judgement Day is pretty good.
>> Yeah. I I can't tell if you're joking if you're >> Terminator 2 Judgement Day. Terminator 2 Judgement Day is actually pretty decent as a film.
>> Okay.
>> I liked I liked Mickey 17. That's a recent one, I guess. Right.
>> I've not seen that.
>> Okay.
>> Uh is it Bong June?
>> Yeah.
>> Parasite. Yeah. Yeah. I saw the Korean film.
>> I saw No Other Choice, which was pretty good. Uh but that's not that's I think it's Pop Jan Wuk maybe. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Uh, but yeah, I'm quite I like some sci-fi films. Do you not watch Star Wars as a kid?
>> I did, but I I it's so long ago that I don't remember, but I know it's it's supposed to be an analogy for Vietnam, right? Which makes it based.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I I mean, I I did watch it as a kid, but I I've never seen it as an adult. It's like the Lord of the Rings.
I used to love Lord of the Rings, but I watched the Lord of the Rings so many times as a kid that I still remember it.
And I was so obsessed with Lord of the Rings, everything. And my dad read them to me when I was a kid. Planet of the Apes.
>> Do you like Planet of the Apes?
>> I love Planet of the Apes.
>> I love >> I've never seen any of the Planet of the Apes. Not even like the 60s one.
>> Oh, I I have never seen that one. But the new one, bro. [ __ ] It's so sick.
>> You just like monkeys in movies. You and your girlfriend were watching that. What was it called?
>> Primeate.
>> Primeate. Yeah. I I I probably an awful wicked film.
>> It's great. Incredible. I love chimpanzees, bro. They're so sick.
I only watch I only watch films when my girlfriend's here. So I haven't seen a film since Waltz with Basher. So bit of a sour taste in my mouth of the last film I watched.
>> You should watch the Apes.
>> Yeah, I'm sure that'll leave a better taste in my mouth.
I have been writing a script on What's with Bash though.
>> So >> [ __ ] yeah.
>> Maybe there'll be a comeback to YouTube.
So I stream every day on YouTube pretty much. Um, and with that, should we close up the episode?
>> Let's do it. Uh, all right, guys. Thanks so much for watching the episode. Let us know if you liked the way that we structured it where we kind of presented a piece and anchored each segment, kind of delivered the the background and everything. And then we, you know, opened up the floor and discussed. Uh, we're working on going on less tangents and digressions because I know like when we watch back the episodes, like that's something that we do a lot and we're trying to work on it.
>> So, let me know if you noticed that this is more organized, if you like that we are restraining from going into more digressions and keep being faking cute and awesome.
>> And on that note, let's give a shout out to our producers. Uh, I can read some out. I'm going to say thank you to Demon Lemon Mink Peterson Sofh Speckies >> Space.
>> Oh, Space. Thank you, Space. Thank you, Space, for supporting the channel. Thank you for making this possible. Jammo, Riker G, >> Cedar Down Under, Clara Mella, Stormdaughter, Ashley the Oxalottle. Oh, that's the animal, right? The little like fish looking >> Yes.
>> Hell yeah. And Zanie, thanks guys.
Appreciate Thank you all so much for everything and supporting the channel as
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