(Nasser and Fidel Castro)
Forty years after his death, no Arab leader has been able to fill the role left vacant by Gamal Abdel Nasser.
A GOOD PIECE
By Lamis Andoni
Al-Jazeera
"Forty years after the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the late Egyptian president, his position remains unfilled: No other leader has emerged as a symbol of pan-Arab unity and the struggle for independence from Western influence.
Nasser, who was the president of Egypt between 1956 and 1970, wielded great influence on the Arab intelligentsia and masses alike. His weekly speeches brought Arab streets to a standstill as the people listened, mesmerised, to his every sentence broadcast on Egyptian radio.
His words resonated in the alleyways of neighbourhoods across Arab cities and towns - at times in defiance of pro-Western governments in countries such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, whose regimes viewed him with fear and suspicion.....
But, he was very much the product of an era - an era that helped him to loom large in a way that no leader from the South can in our time of pervasive US hegemony and the delegitimisation of resistance movements.
The 1952 revolution against the Western-backed Egyptian monarchy that eventually brought Nasser to power reflected a broader Arab and international trend towards rejecting European colonialist powers and the regimes they installed to maintain their influence in their former colonies.....
Nasser's emergence was not unique or isolated from the emergence of other nationalist leaders who challenged Western control over people and natural resources.
Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese prime minister, engaged in a fierce battle against the Belgian colonialists, while Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, the prime minister and then president of Ghana, fought against the global capitalist system's attempts to control his country's wealth.
In Cuba, revolutionaries battled and defeated the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista - offering new friends and models to Arab revolutionaries, including Nasser....
Younger generations of Arabs are not as captivated by Nasser's legacy as their parents and grandparents. Some do not understand the nostalgia that has poured forth in Arab newspapers on the occasion of the anniversary of his death. They feel that they have inherited defeat and that the glory of the past has brought neither victory nor democracy.
That is partly because the rulers that followed dismantled many of the achievements of Nasser and other leaders of popular movements from that era.
But it is also partly because Nasser and other pan-Arab leaders failed to establish democratic institutions and were themselves guilty of repressing - to different degrees - dissent and opposition.....
And while Nasser remains a great inspiration, his legacy must also teach us that we should not place our hopes in the emergence of a larger-than-life leader to be our saviour."
By Lamis Andoni
Al-Jazeera
"Forty years after the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the late Egyptian president, his position remains unfilled: No other leader has emerged as a symbol of pan-Arab unity and the struggle for independence from Western influence.
Nasser, who was the president of Egypt between 1956 and 1970, wielded great influence on the Arab intelligentsia and masses alike. His weekly speeches brought Arab streets to a standstill as the people listened, mesmerised, to his every sentence broadcast on Egyptian radio.
His words resonated in the alleyways of neighbourhoods across Arab cities and towns - at times in defiance of pro-Western governments in countries such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, whose regimes viewed him with fear and suspicion.....
But, he was very much the product of an era - an era that helped him to loom large in a way that no leader from the South can in our time of pervasive US hegemony and the delegitimisation of resistance movements.
The 1952 revolution against the Western-backed Egyptian monarchy that eventually brought Nasser to power reflected a broader Arab and international trend towards rejecting European colonialist powers and the regimes they installed to maintain their influence in their former colonies.....
Nasser's emergence was not unique or isolated from the emergence of other nationalist leaders who challenged Western control over people and natural resources.
Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese prime minister, engaged in a fierce battle against the Belgian colonialists, while Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, the prime minister and then president of Ghana, fought against the global capitalist system's attempts to control his country's wealth.
In Cuba, revolutionaries battled and defeated the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista - offering new friends and models to Arab revolutionaries, including Nasser....
Younger generations of Arabs are not as captivated by Nasser's legacy as their parents and grandparents. Some do not understand the nostalgia that has poured forth in Arab newspapers on the occasion of the anniversary of his death. They feel that they have inherited defeat and that the glory of the past has brought neither victory nor democracy.
That is partly because the rulers that followed dismantled many of the achievements of Nasser and other leaders of popular movements from that era.
But it is also partly because Nasser and other pan-Arab leaders failed to establish democratic institutions and were themselves guilty of repressing - to different degrees - dissent and opposition.....
And while Nasser remains a great inspiration, his legacy must also teach us that we should not place our hopes in the emergence of a larger-than-life leader to be our saviour."
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