In 2003, a British writer and journalist named Alan George published a book that was aptly titled "Syria: Neither Bread Nor Freedom." While some regimes provide their people bread without freedom and others safeguard freedom without providing bread, the regime George discusses in his book denies its people both. This regime model is often accompanied by a concerted effort to obstruct thinking, to prevent the mind from functioning, making comparisons, and drawing conclusions.
For instance, Saddam Hussein adeptly sought to convince Iraqis and the world that he was leading the country from one victory to another, while Moammar al-Gaddafi excelled at proving that "the masses" ruled Libya, not him. Later on, those who revolted against the regimes of Assad, Saddam, and Gaddafi were portrayed as enemies of an upward march that could have led us to the pinnacle of reason and freedom if it were not for imperialism.
Today, Nicolas Maduro is making his own dazzling contribution with his insistence that the people have chosen to grant him a third presidential term. Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s successor, has ruled Venezuela since 2013. As for those who doubt that he has won and accuse him of rigging the elections, they have simply been manipulated and misled by the imperialists.
Indeed, Maduro’s record is brimming with achievements: he has pushed nearly eight million Venezuelans (out of 30 million) seeking bread and employment out of the country. Those who have already fled left millions more behind, and many among them have voiced their readiness to flee if Maduro is re-elected.
When it denies accusations of election rigging and accuses imperialism of fabricating them, the regime wants to say this: "the masses" are keen on being led by a man and live under a political system that is starving and exiling them. This narrative is not very different from that which the Iranian regime adopted when it rigged the 2009 elections to ensure that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would serve a second term, which the imperialists tried to prevent by infiltrating Iranian society and conspiring to concoct what was falsely proclaimed as the "Green Revolution."
Of course, none are more eloquent than the North Korean regime’s account of "the masses" as a masochistic unit that supports, with unparalleled enthusiasm, the leader preventing them from contacting and communicating with the outside world, after having starved them and stripping them of all expressive and non-expressive freedoms.
Undoubtedly, there are many examples. However, they all converge around a single truth that is difficult to repudiate: these are the worst of all regimes. Regardless of political orientations and ideological programs, they are the regimes that derange the minds of their people and then assume that the world will believe them, thereby deranging the minds of the world as well.
According to the image propagated by these regimes, "the masses" adore only those who oppress them. On top of this devotion, they take to the streets in their hundreds of thousands, Houthi-style, to pledge their allegiance and loyal support. While "the honorable people of the world" are expected to adopt and replicate this image, skeptics are nothing but a cog in the imperialist machine.
The fact is that this has always been, and remains, the primary and most important function of what is known as anti-imperialism. The chants of university students - in whom we find a mix of benevolence, naivety, and a sense of urgency in helping those in need - have achieved little, and the same is true for the appeals of "intellectuals" who urge us to embrace our pre-Western past. As for the oppression of millions that is coupled with deranging their minds, it remains the most significant and consequential manifestation of anti-imperialism.
While some great philosophers had urged us to dare to think with our own minds, not in accordance with other influences and sanctities, and other philosophers encouraged us to draw our thoughts from our experiences and senses, this theory advocates ignoring both philosophical demands and building our thinking on anti-imperialism, the only compass that should guide reason and the only key that unlocks the doors to the future.
It is true that Arabs are right to be angry at the US, the power most associated with imperialism, due to the blind support it has given Israel. However, this fury should not lead the angry to give up reason, a resignation that had been gathering momentum for decades before the Gaza war.
Nonetheless, we must acknowledge that this theory and the regimes associated with it are doing one thing right; the minds of many, including the victims of this theory and the victims of its regimes, have been captivated by fantasies.
No doubt that there are well-intentioned people who seek to bring anti-imperialism together with the values of modernity, democracy, and human rights. However, this has never happened in the past, and, for many reasons, is highly unlikely to happen in the future. The fear is that there is no room for those people in this space brimming with tyrants and deranged madmen.
Since the sinister October 7 operation, and Israel continues to wage its genocidal war on Gaza and to burn southern Lebanon, mass derangement has taken hold of a substantial number of people. Their minds are being stuffed with fantasies about the Jewish state; it is "weaker than a spider web," caught in a crisis and awaiting its collapse, which we, in turn, are awaiting with it. Meanwhile, the October operation has supposedly put the Palestinian cause "on the table," as we await a victory to come out from beneath the tunnels and give us the liberation of Palestine...
