The Nasserist era, with its directed media, sought to distort any achievement in the royal era, and presented a single historical narrative, praising the achievements of the so-called 1952 revolution, and its charismatic leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and added to him traits and features, which deceived millions of simple people, who did not have a different media that would clarify the truth for them, or present a different vision. All media outlets, publishing houses, and the majority of cinema and art companies, and what was left of them, were nationalized. He was extremely careful not to collide with the Nasserite authority, with all its repression and tyranny, and its confiscation of any dissenting opinion, not to mention the violence of the police and intelligence state controlling the country. The idea promoted by Nasser advocates was that Abdel Nasser was an exceptional historical man, and that he was capable of implementing everything that intellectuals and writers aspire to, and what they wrote in their literary works and preached in their intellectual writings before July 1952 AD. This is the idea that Muhammad Hassanein Heikal emphasized and repeated repeatedly. He was one of the pillars of the Nasserist era and the godfather of its ruling system. He restricted the cultural and intellectual struggle against Abdel Nasser into two categories: “The Marxist movement that imagined that it had the right to create and create the next wave, and the Islamic trend that also imagined that it had the right and the capacity to create and create the next wave… And here we find that the great tragedy is that this revolution, which brought a political newness and social perceptions different from what was before.” It is neither an Islamic trend nor Marxism, nor an extension of liberalism that had gone bankrupt during World War II.[1]). Through Heikal’s previous statement, we realize the absolute tyrannical spirit and arrogance that the Nasser authority had, when it imagined itself that it had created, transcended, and achieved everything that intellectuals and writers dreamed of. Indeed, these creative people emptied what they had before July 1952 AD, and the inimitable Abdel Nasser came to provide solutions to all of Egypt’s problems. It is the theory of the inspiring leader, the one with the vision, decision, plan, and solution. The hostility against Nasserism was limited to two trends: the Marxists and the Islamists, and they had to be eliminated. It is as if he owned the nation alone: thought, people, and creativity, and whoever disagrees with him is detained, whether he speaks or remains silent. This is an attack on Egypt’s thinkers and intellectuals, and on their thought and creativity. There are intellectuals who did not join these two trends, and there were other trends, such as the Qatari movement and the movement of independent intellectuals. So how can all of these be confiscated, in favor of an intellectual unilateralism proposed by the Nasserist regime, and everyone must integrate into it, and whoever opposes is destined for arrest and exclusion. Indeed, Abdel Nasser arrested all of his political opponents, or forced them to stay in their homes. He then cooperated with the Marxists, after his rapprochement with the Soviets, and maintained his hostility and fierce fight against the Islamists throughout his era. As for the issue of the new revolutionary thought brought by Abdel Nasser, which formed the fourth wave of writers and intellectuals who were inspired by Nasserist thought ([2]It is a big lie, as Abdel Nasser had no direction when he launched the revolution, and Heikal himself was the one who wrote his book, The Philosophy of the Revolution, and that the ideas he proposed were extracted from the idea of Arab nationalism, which was sponsored by British colonialism early on, since the Great Arab Revolt, 1916 AD, and then the socialist solution derived from the international socialist system. This is confirmed by one of the historians of the Nasserist era, and one of its most prominent supporters, when he says: “Abdel Nasser was not the philosopher and theoretician of this revolution, nor was he the teacher who preached its principles and laid down its ideology. It did not originally have a specific ideology, or a revolutionary theory with clear features, but it formed its project through practical practice, trial and error. Rather, he was a brilliant student, drawing inspiration from its cultural and political heritage.” ([3]). We will notice that the conversation revolves around the person of Abdel Nasser, and on the other hand, all the elements of the nation, its intellectuals, innovators, and scholars are absent. He makes mistakes and is right, he practices and learns, and the people must bear it. There are no oversight bodies that are held accountable, nor a parliamentary system that monitors, but rather a chorus of hypocrites. Let us look at the consequences of the slogans that Abdel Nasser raised, and what he carried out on the ground, which was the nationalization of Egyptian national capitalism, and its transfer either to the public sector with all its bureaucracy and corruption, or to the military regime with its officers who came out of their barracks and controlled civil life, companies and bodies, and was accompanied by these media that deified the leader, and ignored the people in all their adventures and involvement in the Yemen war and in military coups and conflicts against Arab regimes, which were exhausted. Effort, wealth, energy and military equipment, and his slogans against the Zionist entity remained ink on paper and fanfare in the air. He did not fire a single bullet against them, and he was the cause of defeat due to his poor decisions, the corruption of his intelligence services, and the recklessness of his army leaders. The people, serious intellectuals, and everyone loyal to the homeland and the nation were aware of the dimensions of the disaster that Egypt was experiencing, and that it was inevitably heading towards a hellish scenario, as the dictatorship had reached its peak, and the military system controlled the components of civil society. The authority has adopted a strange path in creating an intellectual who will be loyal to it, and the program prepared for him will not be intellectual, political, or creative, but in another way: “With the violence of insistence – and mainly with the sword of Al-Mu’izz and its shining gold – the Egyptian intellectuals found themselves part of this great game. Those years extracted from their minds the germs of originality through a process of violent pasteurization: heating to the point of death, imprisonment and starvation, followed by severe cooling to The degree of death is a luxury and a blessing. After this sterilization, the intellectual is fit to be exported to the Egyptian street, as he is guaranteed results, free of disease, and because the pasteurized one has lost his self, it covers his inner emptiness, with the total self: You are dead because your self is exiled, but you are part of a people who move the world. This is what the newspapers that you edit yourself say.[4]). As for the relationship of writers with the July Authority, the reality indicates that the majority of creators and artists continued their artistic production after July 1952 AD, after they became aware of the nature of this regime, so their relationships with it ranged between silence, symbolic opposition, or alliance with it, and they compared the atmosphere of freedom they enjoyed in the royal era, and the outcome of matters after 1952 AD. The majority of writers and intellectuals from the right and left chose to go along with the ruling system, after some of them went through the experience of imprisonment, detention, and torture. They helped the authority to formulate its theses or ideologies in form and process, specifically scientific socialism, while mixing it with the nationalist theses raised by the Nasserite media. Some intellectuals volunteered to lay down Islamic roots for socialism. It is noticeable that the writers who did this were from the royal era, who were accustomed to the climate of freedom and the pluralism of visions, sects and movements, yet they accepted bias towards the authority, fearing its oppression, and benefiting from its benefits and advantages. On the other hand, there is a generation that was born with the July Movement, and was convinced, sang, and believed in its slogans, and justified its mistakes. It did not know any other authority, thought, or leadership, so it joined its ranks, even if a small number remained tweeting outside the system, preserving its intellectual independence. The result is that writers went along with power in its various fluctuations, and many of their writings came in response to the political authority. They adapted art and literature in order to serve his project, and they formulated poems, plays, and novels that promoted Nasserist thought, in tune with the loud media clamor, and for fear of the censor’s scissors that would turn into a whip or a guillotine if the writer rebelled in his text, which led many to resort to symbols, masks, and gestures in order to express their expression. Their political visions, even if the so-called generation of the sixties were loyal in supporting Abdel Nasser, and were members of the Socialist Union or the Youth Organization)[5]). What is striking about the Nasserist experience is that, as a result of the pressures of the Soviet Union, Abdel Nasser released from prisons the most prominent intellectuals and writers who had been arrested for various reasons, some of which were related to his opposition to the regime in articles and literary texts, or to their adoption of different intellectual trends. The Marxist tendency with its various doctrines prevailed among them, and they held many positions in the state: ministers, advisors, and managers. They enjoyed a comfortable life, and chose to abandon their ideas and did not believe. With it, they focused on preserving their stay in power to the maximum extent possible. They even contributed to drafting what is known as the General Charter of 1964 AD, to be the theoretical book of the Socialist Union, and they did not realize that they had established what is called the technical intellectual (technocrat), who places himself at the mercy of power, abandoning his intellectual convictions.[6]). This situation continued after that, to be a model for writers in the following decades. You, writer, must go along with authority, adopt its discourse, and color with its colors, in order to benefit from its giving. On the other hand, a strange class of young writers was formed, some of whom were talented, most of whom were weak in talent, or had no talent at all. They were able to obtain full-time grants that were granted by the Nasserist Ministry of Culture, and they could continue for years, in addition to appointing many of them to positions in the ministry. Thus, there became a group of employed writers, like those in other professions, who met in certain cafes, exchanged stories, gossiped, and talked about the working conditions that brought them together or the grants. They won the full time, and they rarely touch on literary work. They are envious or competitive, hateful figures who strike in every direction except creativity. Rather, they make those who talk to them feel that they are noble writers who advocate great principles and express the essence of the blessed revolution.[7]They remained in their jobs, rose in them, and assumed the helm of leadership in successive decades, relying on their being writers. Some of them published one or two books, which were the result of articles or texts scattered in government newspapers and magazines, collected in books, and praised their authors. On the other hand, other roles appeared for intellectuals and writers, from those who moved away from power, and were content with creativity without opposition or rebellion, in what is called the wise intellectual, who speaks general wisdom, and the intelligent person must understand its meaning, and link it to reality if he can, which is a trick that appears to be neutrality and independence, but its core is passivity and isolation.[8]).
These are a group that chose to take a middle position. They do not hypocrite or isolate themselves, but rather speak out according to what the circumstances require, convinced that the writer does not lack means, so he can use symbols, traditional stories, and imagination.
[1]) Muhammad Hassanein Heikal Remembers: Abdel Nasser, the Intellectuals, and Culture, Youssef Al-Qaid, Egyptian General Book Authority, Cairo, 2013, pp. 82, 83.
[2]) Previous reference, p. 84.
[3]) The July Revolution, its pros and cons, Dr. Raouf Abbas, special publication on Google Book, p. 257. https://books.google.com.kw/books/about/
[4]) Intellectuals and the Military, Salah Issa, Madbouly Library, Cairo, 1st edition, 1986, p. 156.
[5]) The Intellectual and Authority, Dr. Abdullah Abu Haif, Political Thought Magazine, Arab Writers Union, Damascus, 2006, pp. 102, 103.
[6]) Previous reference, p. 105.
[7]) Literary and critical doctrines among Arabs and Westerners, p. 48.
[8]) The Intellectual and Authority, p. 106.
