The defeat of June 1967 came as a major shock, because it “exposed the fragility of the political organization and governance institutions together, and all of this required thinking about rebuilding the state. Abdel Nasser admitted in one of the meetings of the Supreme Executive Committee (of the Socialist Union) that events had proven that there was no sound system, and that a new system must be searched for. He proposed the establishment of an opposition party within the Socialist Union led by Abdel Latif Baghdadi and Kamal al-Din Hussein, provided that it would be an actual opposition within the framework of the National Action Charter, but the idea was “I met with opposition from committee members.”[1]). This was the result after a decade and a half of totalitarian dictatorial rule, which possessed power, politics, people, wealth, decision-making, thought, and trends, and the result: the fragility of the regime and its institutions, and the thinking of the head of the regime to create an opposition to it, provided that the regime creates it as well. Abdel Nasser imagined that just as he created power, he could also create the opposition, and the surprise would be that the members of the committee negotiating with the leader rejected his proposal, because they only knew totalitarianism as a model of governance, and dictatorship as a path and approach. This required an in-depth analysis by one of the Marxist thinkers, who were horrified by the scale of the loss at the level of the nation, people, and the capabilities of the people, and they realized that the issue is not in slogans, nor in the orientations of authority and the philosophy of governance, but rather a structural crisis that is ravaging the nation and the nation, and all that Abdel Nasser did was limit himself to partial formal reforms from above, without reforming the roots and foundations, but rather established an authoritarian, oppressive security rule, which became the inheritance of the Egyptian state after that, through the tools of administrative repression. The fierce, or misleading ideology, through control of the media, education, culture, and arts, in addition to a huge arsenal of legislation and laws hostile to freedom and democracy, supported by a system of torture, arrest, imprisonment, exile, and intimidation.[2]). There is no meaning to any justifications or justifications offered by the regimes regarding internal enemies or external enemies, who must be confronted with additional security measures (emergency laws, terrorism, and the like), as they are all means of the tyrannical ruler’s control, accompanied by promotional media about the importance of these exceptional laws for security, safety, and development, and in reality they are directed against the opposition, and to silence mouths. The military and security state established by Abdel Nasser was a model for the oppressive Arab regimes to follow, which raised the slogans of nationalism, socialism, and Arab unity, along with freedom and patriotism. If Abdel Nasser announced that he took responsibility for the defeat of 1967, he preserved the pillars, structure and personalities of his regime, after getting rid of some elements. The farce was evident in the reduced sentences received by the leaders of the Air Force, who were responsible for the destruction of Egyptian aircraft in June 1967, as they were members of the Socialist Union. Student demonstrations took place in February 1968, for the first time in opposition against the regime and its head. The people became aware of the deception, so Abdel Nasser was forced to issue the March 30 statement, which was subject to a referendum in May 1968, maintaining the Socialist Union as a form of government that mobilizes the masses, and that the problem was in its misapplication and not in the single party. The statement decided to hold elections from the bottom to choose the members of the summit. The irony was that the elections came with the same opportunistic elements that caused the Defeat, so that Abdel Nasser himself expressed his disappointment, and saw that the state should rely on the organization, not that he should rely on it.[3]). This is the problem of tyrants. They see themselves as above the people, accountability, politicians, leaders, and the army, and that the problem is not with them, but rather with the group that is lower than them. Did Abdel Nasser expect fair elections to be held in a regime that falsifies elections? Did he expect the opportunists to step down from power? He could have isolated them or prevented them from running, by virtue of his absolute powers, but he did not do so, because he simply wanted them, as they were in control of the state. He brought them, and rules through them. As for the writers, they felt the enormity of the loss, and the Nasserist project suddenly collapsed before them, and the situation became crying and wailing over the lost land, and over the crude propaganda that placed the regime and the authority in the ranks of the great powers, and the truth became disastrous, evident in the bitter sarcasm expressed by the people’s jokes, within what is called sarcastic public rhetoric. When crises intensify and calamities increase, the Egyptians resort, as they are accustomed, to political humor as their weapon of laughter. To overcome their worries, sorrows, and oppression, it is present in their most difficult living conditions, through which they express their suffering and criticism of wrong political practices, mocking tyrants, and thus the people had their means of expression against everyone who insults them and reduces their prestige.[4]). As for the regime, it justified the reasons for the defeat by external conspiracy. In its opinion, the most important thing is to preserve existence, the regime, and the leader. This was evident in the demonstrations led by members of the Socialist Union, including university professors, intellectuals, and writers, demanding that Abdel Nasser continue. One of the members of the National Assembly even danced during the session, rejoicing at the leader’s departure at the request of the masses, and his remaining at the helm. The declared policy of not acknowledging defeat (the setback) appeared, and this simply meant that the leaders underestimated the people. The oppressed, fearful one. Writers felt how deceived, insulted, and responsible they were, and these three conditions might be one of them calling for revolution or rebellion, but taken together they only produce a state of nihilism coupled with negativity and indifference.[5]What was written by the authorities’ writers did not succeed in what is called battle or resistance literature. In expressing the collective psychological crisis, his texts came as a direct and rhetorical shock, as the terrible truth was exposed by defeat and was too harsh and complex to be successfully addressed in any literary or artistic work.[6]All of this is the result of the continued violent repressive tools of the regime, despite what was said about holding the intelligence services accountable for their practices, but the situation remained as it was: strict censorship of publishing, and the persecution of creators and writers if they uttered anything that contradicted the authority, of martyrs claimed by Zionist planes, of army commanders who received light sentences, and of an authority that remained in place without accountability or condemnation. Heikal justified the human rights situation by saying, if this issue is opened, that we must look at “what happened in the era of Abdel Nasser in comparison to other eras, eras that preceded him in the royal era, eras that coincided with him in all Arab countries, and eras that followed his era in Egypt and in all Arab countries. I claim that the human rights record in Egypt at the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, despite everything you may say, or I say, or others may say, is better than the records of many others… knowing that the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser It was a time of continuous battles, against forces that wanted to control the region, and Gamal Abdel Nasser was their main enemy, just as he was the greatest enemy of Israel.”([7]). Anyone who contemplates what Heikal said will find a clear acknowledgment of the state of human rights, and will also find justification, and an urgency in justification, that this is a natural matter. It happened before, it happened during, and it happened after that, in many countries, so there is no harm in it. Leader Abdel Nasser was fighting battles against the nation’s enemies and those conspiring against it, and he has the right to take any measures. This is not surprising for a figure like Heikal, who was basically an authoritarian man, but what is surprising is that those who lament Nasser and his experience repeat these words to this day, as if the nation will not advance unless its best sons who oppose the direction of the ruling authority are thrown into prisons. Is it possible to justify a mistake with a mistake, given that killing and torture are common in various regimes of government, and was the result the renaissance of the nation, or its defeat? Did the nation benefit from its soldiers, or did it throw them into the furnace of conflicts? How can we believe the slogan “Raise your head, my brother” and the freedom that Abdel Nasser sang about while he oppressed his people? How beautifully a young contemporary Marxist described the Nasserite era when he said: “For fifteen years prior to June 1967 AD, the national self swelled and swelled. In the newspapers of those years, you will not read about a small state striving for liberation, progress, and building itself, amidst operations of looting from within and siege plots from without, but you will read the propaganda of a regime that moves the world and makes everything in it. A regime that has completely eliminated all its problems, and has cast off all its concerns. He devoted himself to planning the future of the world. He developed the theories of revolution and surpassed them, and created revolutions in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the countries of the West.[8]). Therefore, the poets had no choice but to symbolize, and here is Amal Dunqul adopting a mask from one of the pre-Islamic stories, which is the story of Zarqa al-Yamama, the wise woman who always warned her people against the invasion of enemies, so they continued to playfully and terrified. Dunqul addresses her about defeat, as he contemplates the bodies of the dead, and the enormity of the calamity, with the loss of land, the breaking of the banner, and the humiliation of the soul: O holy clairvoyant… I have come to you… contemplating. With stabs and blood, I crawl in the coats of the dead, and over the piled-up corpses with broken swords, dusty foreheads and limbs. I ask, oh blue… about your ruby mouth, about the prophecy of the Virgin about my severed forearm… while he is still holding the flag flying at half-mast from the images of children in helmets… lying in the desert. He explains the crisis of the people’s absence from politics, and tyranny with power and prestige. The people became like slaves, tending to sheep, absent from decision-making councils, and those in power do not remember them except during battle. The children of the people who are absent are like the farmer, the worker, the employee, and the educated. They must carry weapons to fight, in implementation of a decision taken by the tyrannical ruler in a moment of vanity and arrogance. He does not care about blood, and his only concern is displaying the loudness of his voice on the radio, and putting his pictures on the covers of magazines. Dongul says about the people: And here I am in the hour of persecution, when the pikemen… and the archers… and the knights fail. I have been called to the field! I am the one who has never tasted lamb.. I am the one who has no power or responsibility.. I am the one who was excluded from the boys’ gatherings and was invited to death.. and I was not invited to the gatherings!! Speak, O holy prophetess![9]The scene was full of bitter sarcasm, as writers have their pens suppressed and they are authorized to express people’s concerns, while people are creative in opposing them with their jokes and jokes. At the end of the Nasserist era, we can imagine the image of writers and intellectuals in a very dark painting, in which we do not find a single glimmer of white or light colors, but rather heads stacked side by side, within mass blocs cheering for the redeemed leader. These blocs include writers, intellectuals, creators, and scholars, participating in the chanting, and on the other side of the painting, there are bars and walls dyed bright red. The reason for this is due to the militarization of Egyptian culture, with military slogans such as: command and obey, execute and complain, write to be hypocritical, wear the sector of the highest rank, what is inside you is not important, even if you are seething with opposition and rejection; This explains the absence of cultural gatherings in the form of associations and organizations compared to the movement of culture in the royal era, and any movement of culture must be through the state agencies, and under its supervision and follow-up by its men.[10]). The creator remained subservient to the state, and there was no union or union for him that could express his demands. Rather, he was an employee within the functional bureaucratic system that Abdel Nasser had established, controlling people’s livelihoods, and making the intellectual and the ordinary man in the street forced to prefer safety, either through eloquent silence, or with sarcastic jokes whose authors are difficult to know, or with texts containing the opposing opinion, and whose creator bears the consequences of what he has written.
[1]) The July Revolution, its pros and cons, p. 219. It is noteworthy that the author is a Nasserist in thought, position, and vision.
[2]Structural crisis or renaissance problem? Mahmoud Amin Al-Alam, Complete Works, Egyptian General Book Authority, Cairo, 2015, vol. 1, pp. 651, 652.
[3]) Previous reference, pp. 220, 221.
[4]) Humor…the Egyptians’ Invincible Weapon, Ali Suleiman, Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed newspaper, London, 2/71/2014 AD. https://www.alaraby.co.uk/society/2014/2/17/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D9%83%D8%AA%D8%A9-%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AD-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B0%D9%8A-%D9%84%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D9%82%D9%87%D8%B1
Among the jokes that spread at that time: Abdel Nasser went into hiding to check on people’s conditions, and he heard an employee telling his colleague that his salary ends on the tenth day of the month. His colleague asked him, “How do you live the rest of the days of the month?” He told him: “I live on the curtain.” Gamal Abdel Nasser issued a decision the next day to nationalize the curtain.
[5]) Literary and critical doctrines among Arabs and Westerners, p. 45.
[6]) Previous reference, p. 47.
[7]) Abdel Nasser, Intellectuals and Culture, p. 291.
[8]) Intellectuals and Military, p. 156.
[9]) The Complete Poetical Works, Amal Dunqul, Madbouly Library, Cairo, 3rd edition, 1987 AD, pp. 121, 123, 124.
[10]) Intellectuals and Military, p. 420.
