Any day these last few weeks you could turn on the television and hear some media pundit promoting the idea of an Arab Spring. Arabs in their hundreds of thousands supposedly were going into some central public place to free themselves from tyranny. Democracy at last! Elections! Freedom! The media pundits compared what was happening to the storming of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is all too possible to see now that the Arab Spring is a Eurocentric fantasy resting on the inability to grasp how other societies actually operate.
Moammar Qaddafi and Bashar Assad are making sure to smash up their own cities, killing at random by way of exercising power. It is the same in Yemen and Bahrain, and might well replicate elsewhere, for instance Jordan and Algeria. The Iranian regime shoots and executes its people on a horrifying scale, and sees fit to support Assad’s repression in Syria while condemning the repression in Bahrain. Such cruelty and hypocrisy may look like evidence of bad character, but more to the point derive from the fact that the Arab and Muslim order does not have, and never has had, any agreed means of handing power over peacefully. Those in power or who want it have to be ready to resort to violence. At this moment rival forces — Islamists, secular Westernised folk, the military — are frustrated because absolute power so far has escaped their grasp, and now they have the chance to grab hold of it. Ersatz nations are dissolving as their constituent sects and tribes jostle with each other for supremacy.
What is passed off as a Spring, in other words, is really a repeat of the brutality that is the age-old instrument of everyone who has ever sought power in the Arab and Muslim order. The process is self-perpetuating, as vital as it is lethal. The would-be power-holder has only his family, tribe or sect to rely on, and he has to be rid of everyone in his way, exactly as Qaddafi and Assad and the rest of them are doing. So the former Tunisian and Egyptian ministers are already in prison. So the Egyptian security forces are already arresting dissidents and beating them to death in prison. As the French proverb puts it, the more things change the more they stay the same.
Finally a train of thought for the pundits and politicians: What induces the likes of Barack Obama and Tony Blair to keep on trying to breathe life into the defunct peace process? It defies history, custom and political reality to believe that a Palestinian state will abolish violence in the Middle East. In Gaza and the West Bank they too have only set up tribal or sectarian tyranny. Meanwhile Israeli Arabs are going about their business peacefully instead of holding mass demonstrations in some central public place. They’re the only Arabs living in a real democracy and maybe that enables them to recognize a phony Spring when they see it.
David Pryce-Jones - Spot-on. I would add one thought, though: So long as the Koran continues to be then end-all and be-all of Arab/Muslim society, there will be no Arab Spring. It is only when people separate religion and state can there be true republcan democracy, otherwise you are alway answering to an unanswerable God (and I say this as an observant Jew).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat the west does not get is that the western combination of a high level of personal freedom and a high level of order at the same time is not normal. It is something created by the west. In other places, order is imposed. The western idea is I can control myself. The other idea is someone has to control me and if they don’t I will create a ruckus. This is how the west was too. The idea that the common man could be orderly was a long time in coming. And not just the common man, everyone including the elites were drunken, disorderly, riotous, violent. I don’t mean every individual, but that such things were common. Now we expect that everything should be tame and if there is a crime, we are alarmed and we call a special body called the police to deal with it or any violence or uproar. As Pinker has pointed out, everyday life is much more peaceful than it used to be in past centuries. But everyone is not like that. That is why people have tyrants and people resent them and at the same time realize there is a need for them. Tyrants do bad things and people hate that. Tyrants keep order and people like that.
The less tyrannical the tyrant the more they are resented. This seems to defy logic but it is true. Mubarak’s great fault is that he was more liberal than his people. Even Ghadaffi is not as bad as we are told. That is why he enjoys a great deal of support. People are rightfully afraid of what may happen when the rebels take over. To many of them, these are not the brave “rebels” of western history, the french revolution, but dangerous people, who if they win may invade homes, take property, kill and rape. There is no guarantee that peace will follow if they win.
What about when the tyrant really is evil, like Saddam Hussein? Even there as we saw many supported him. They would rather have him than have outsiders take him out. When he left, they did not say now we can have a peaceful democracy. Just the opposite, it was time to bring out all the violence that he had been suppressing, as violent as he was himself. Now the christians can be openly attacked, while in the past Hussein protected them.
Most societies do not have the values that lead to the condition where peace is the norm, and it may be that we are losing those values. It is not money either, as liberals suggest, the values predate the wealth. It is the values that create the wealth, in fact.
Now we hear that Mubarak and his family are arrested. That is why tyrants cling to power. If you are thrown out, they won’t let you leave. They want to kill you. That in itself is a sign of why democracy is hard to come by in these nations. Every political enemy is a blood enemy, nothing is forgiven or forgotten. The US may become like that.
this is not an insult or slur on anyone, just comments on how people are. for some reason the west went in a different direction and some others did too. but it is not the norm yet.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid you all see the report documenting State Department’s broadcasting pro-democratic support into Syria?
Either Sec of State Clinton didn’t know this when she offered support for Bashar Assad as a reformer and thus is not a very good Executive at Dept of State.
Or...she did know it and was trying to confuse Assad by offering verbal support. Of course even if part of a misinformation campaign, such actions are detrimental to the protesters inside Syria and make the U.S. look like duplicitous self-interested fiends.
Either way it seems Sec Clinton is unqualified and not competent to be Secretary of State.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWith the war in Libya coming to a draw and the announcement that NATO is running out of munitions I can only suppose France and the U.K. saw THEIR OWN SHADOWS during this false Arab Spring.This would be the same military shadow they have been afraid of for years and which means a continuation of the war unless they get additional American support.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Dobey:
"To many of them,these are not the brave"rebels"of western history,the French Revolution,but dangerous people,who if they win will invade homes,take property,kill and rape."
I got news for you! The French Revolution was every bit as bad as you predict will happen in Libya.The invading homes,killing and raping took place on a large scale and only a Euro loving Liberal would think otherwise.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCall me cynical, but I can't grasp why we are supposed to give a hoot whether Arabs/Muslims have democracy, or whether they will continue to go around raping, mutilating, stoning and killing one another. Even if you analogize the world to a neighborhood, there are some neighbors it is better to avoid and best to ignore.
Instead our leading dreamers keep extending olive branches, making absurd speeches about the enormous contribution Arabs/Muslims have made to human knowledge and world culture, an on and on. Why don't we just say--in so many words--"a pox on all your houses. You are on your own. Take your benighted religion and inflict it on each other but not us. Kill each other as you please. Leave us alone and pretend you don't know us."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI just read Pryce-Jones' THE CLOSED CIRCLE and am very grateful for having read it. I recommend it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy did Mubarak not leave Egypt when he left office?
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