Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
not just looking at biography. We're looking
at a seismic shift. We're tackling a figure who
quite literally redrew the map of the Middle
East and redefined what it meant to be Arab in
the 20th century. Absolutely. Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Gamal Abdel Nasser. And to really give you a
sense of the scale we're dealing with here, I
mean, the sheer magnitude of this man's presence,
we have to start at the end. You have to. The
funeral. The funeral, September 1970. We're looking
at the source material here, and the numbers
are just, they're hard to even comprehend. Five
to six million people in the streets of Cairo?
It's staggering. Just try to visualize that.
Five million people. That is a human tide. It's
a whole country. It's bigger than many entire
nations at the time. It wasn't just a ceremony.
It was an event that, you know, effectively shut
down the entire Arab world. The footage is unbelievable.
You see heads of state, grown men just weeping
openly in the streets. There's this moment of
collective grief that you so rarely see in history.
And that really brings us to the mission of today's
deep dive. We have a huge stack of sources here,
biographies, political analyses, historical records.
And our goal is to unpack the central paradox
of this man. Yeah. Because on paper, it really
doesn't make sense. It really doesn't. That is
the puzzle we have to solve today. How do you
reconcile the lion of the Arabs, this hero who
restored dignity to a region colonized for decades,
with the autocrat who built a terrifying police
state? Right. And how do you balance the transformative
social reforms he pushed through with the fact
that he led his country into some of the most
crushing military defeats in modern history?
It's the ultimate contradiction. He's the postman's
son who became a colossus. He's the dictator
who is genuinely, truly loved by the masses.
But we're going to get into all of it. The secret
societies, the assassination attempts where he
doesn't even flinch. The high stakes Cold War
poker and, of course, the tragedy of 1967. Yeah.
But let's rewind the tape. Let's go all the way
back to the beginning. Before the myth. Exactly.
Who was Gamal Abdel Nasser before the posters
and the statues? To understand Nasser the president,
you have to understand Nasser the boy. He was
born in January 1918 in Alexandria. And the most
critical piece of context here is his class background.
His father was a postal worker? Right. Abdel
Nasser Hussein, a postal worker. Which, you know,
in the grand scheme of things, sounds like a
solid, regular job. It was, but you have to see
it through the lens of Egypt in the early 20th
century. This was a deeply, deeply stratified
society. At the very top, you had the king and
the pasha class, the wealthy land -owning aristocracy
who were very cozy with the British occupiers.
Okay. And at the very bottom, you had the fellheen,
the peasantry, living in just crushing poverty.
Nasser was in the middle. The effendi class.
The effendi class. So he wasn't destitute, but
he was certainly not part of the elite. He was,
in every sense, a man of the people. And the
sources, they paint a picture of a pretty lonely,
transient childhood. Extremely transient, yeah.
Because of his father's job, the family was constantly
on the move. They went from Alexandria to Osud,
then to Catawba, then to Cairo. Always the new
kid. Always the new kid. Always the outsider
looking in, constantly having to adjust. But
there is a specific tragedy in his early life
that I think really shaped his psychology more
than anything else. The death of his mother.
Yes. Yeah. When he was still quite young, he
was sent away to school in Cairo to live with
an uncle. He was very close to his mother, Fahima.
They wrote letters constantly. Constantly. And
then all of a sudden the letters just stopped.
That's a nightmare scenario for a kid. You're
away from home and the one person you rely on
just goes silent. And the way he found out is
just heartbreaking. He didn't know the truth
until he went back home to Catawba for a school
break. So weeks later. Weeks later. He walks
into the house expecting to see her and finds
out she had died after giving birth to his third
brother. The family had hidden the news from
him. Why? To protect his studies. That was the
reason they gave. Wow. That kind of betrayal,
even if it was well -intentioned, that has to
leave a scar. A deep one. Nasser later wrote
that losing her that way was a shock, that time
failed to remedy. It created a wound that just
never really healed. And his father remarried
quickly, too. Before the year was out. So you
can imagine, it probably built this hardened
shell of independence around him. He learned
very early to keep his own counsel. To rely only
on himself. But even in the middle of all that
grief, there were signs of the political destiny
in the family's DNA. I saw a note that his brother
had a very specific name. Is al -Arab. Which
translates to? Glory of the Arabs. So even in
this postal worker's household, this nationalist
sentiment, this idea that Arab identity was something
to be proud of and fought for. It was already
in the air. So you've got this grieving, independent,
transient kid growing up in a country that's
technically independent but is really being run
by the British. When does that revolutionary
switch actually flip for him? When does he stop
being just a student and start becoming an activist?
It happens remarkably early and it happens in
the streets. There's this famous anecdote from
the 1930s when he was a secondary student in
Alexandria. He's walking through Manchuria Square
and he just stumbles upon a clash. Police with
batons swinging, protesters shouting, total chaos.
And most teenagers would probably run the other
way. Exactly. But Nasser runs toward it. And
the fascinating thing is he didn't even know
what they were protesting about. Seriously. He
just saw the conflict. the authority figures
beating people, and he instinctively jumped in
on the side of the protesters. He actually got
arrested and spent a night in detention. Shoot
first, ask questions later. Precisely. It was
only the next morning that he found out the protest
was organized by the Young Egypt Society, and
they were calling for the end of colonialism.
But that moment, it solidified his path. He was
a rebel looking for a cause. And he found it
in nationalism. He wasn't just a street fighter,
though. He was a reader. A massive reader. And
you just have to look at his reading list. Napoleon,
Otto von Bismarck, Garibaldi, Ataturk. All nation
builders. He was studying men who built nations
out of chaos. He was studying the playbook of
the strongman. But there is one book, a novel,
actually, that is... arguably more important
than all the history books combined. Return of
the Spirit by Tawfiq al -Hakim. That's the one.
This book comes up so much in the research. It's
almost like a script for his life, isn't it?
It is eerie. The novel describes the Egyptian
people as disjointed and chaotic, just waiting
for a savior to unite them. A man in whom all
their feelings and desires will be represented.
Yes, a symbol. And Nasser didn't just read this,
he internalized it. He later claimed this book
inspired the 1952 revolution. He was, in effect,
reading the job description for the role he would
eventually play. So he has the inspiration. Now
he needs the tools. And in Egypt in the 1930s,
if you want to change things, you don't run for
office. No, you join the army. Right. The army
was the only real path for a young man from his
class to go into any kind of power. But the door
was initially slammed in his face. He applied
to the Royal Military Academy in 1937 and was
rejected. Remember that police record from the
protest? It came back to haunt him. They didn't
want troublemakers. They wanted a loyalist to
the king. So how did he eventually get in? He
needed WASTA influence. He enrolled in law school
for a semester, hated it, and managed to get
a meeting with the undersecretary of war. He
charmed him and convinced him to sponsor a second
application. And he got in. He got in. And this
is the pivot point of history, because the academy
is where he meets the cast of characters for
the next 30 years. He meets Anwar Sadat. He meets
Abdelhakim Amer. And we are going to talk a lot
more about Amer later. We are. That relationship
is central to the whole tragedy. But at the academy,
they're just young officers watching their country
be humiliated. And the breaking point, the moment
the anger becomes a plan, was in 1942. The Abdeen
Palace incident. Set the scene for us. This is
the middle of World War II. Right. The British
are nervous about Rommel's forces in North Africa.
They don't trust King Farouk. They think he's
too cozy with the Axis powers. So. To ensure
a pro -British government, they decide to force
the issue. They literally surround King Farouk's
palace with tanks. Wow. The British ambassador
marches in and gives the king an ultimatum. Appoint
the prime minister we want or abdicate. Gunboat
diplomacy, but with tanks on the front lawn.
Exactly. And the king, the supposed sovereign
of Egypt, he folded. He did what he was told.
And Nasser is watching this happen. He's an officer
in the army at the time. Yeah. And he's watching.
He wrote later that he felt ashamed that the
army hadn't reacted. He wished for calamity to
overtake the British. So that solidifies it for
him. It solidifies a core belief. The monarchy
is weak. Sovereignty is a joke as long as the
British are pulling the strings. And the only
force capable of restoring dignity is the military.
But before he could act on any of that, he had
to go to a real war. 1948, the Arab -Israeli
War. This seems like the moment he goes from
being a revolutionary in the canteen to a battle
-hardened soldier. It was his baptism by fire.
He was sent to Palestine, and he fought in what
became known as the Fallujah Pocket. His unit
was surrounded. Completely surrounded by Israeli
forces, cut off from supply lines under heavy
bombardment. But they refused to surrender. Nasser
was actually wounded. A bullet grazed his chest.
He became the hero of Fallujah for holding out.
And there's a really interesting human moment
in the sources. about a meeting during that siege.
It involves a rabbi. This is one of those anecdotes
that adds so much depth to the story. During
a lull in the fighting, the Israelis requested
a truce to identify bodies. Okay. And Nasser
agreed to escort an Israeli rabbi, Shlomo Gorin,
to the battlefield. And Nasser actually ordered
his troops to stand at attention and salute the
enemy dead. A moment of respect. A moment of
soldier -to -soldier respect. He saw the prayerful
actuaries on the bodies, spoke with the rabbi,
and expressed respect for their courage. It's
a moment of chivalry that stands in stark contrast
to the bitterness that would define the relationship
later. But coming home from that war, he wasn't
greeted as a victor by the state, was he? No,
the public loved the soldiers. The famous singer
Om Kulthum even hosted a celebration for them.
But the government was suspicious, and the soldiers
were furious. Why furious? This is a crucial
detail. Yeah. Nasser and his men felt betrayed.
They believed they had been sent into battle
with defective weapons. What does that mean?
Ammunition that misfired, grenades that didn't
go off. They blamed the king's corruption. claiming
the palace had bought cheap, faulty weapons to
pocket the difference. That is the ultimate betrayal,
sending your own soldiers to die so you can make
a profit. And whether the defective weapons scandal
was entirely true or, you know, maybe exaggerated,
it became the truth for the officers. And Nasser
realized the real enemy wasn't across the border.
The real enemy was in Cairo. So the timeline
accelerates. He gets back to Cairo and starts
organizing what becomes the Free Officers. And
this is a pretty diverse group. It's a big Ken
conspiracy. I mean, you had communists, members
of the Muslim Brotherhood, aristocrats, paupers.
A real mix. The only thing uniting them was their
hatred of the British occupation and their hatred
of the monarchy. Nasser was the mastermind, the
organizer. He was. But he was smart. He knew
a lieutenant colonel was too low -ranking to
command public respect as a head of state. He
needed a frontman. Enter General Mohammed Nagoub.
Right. Naguib was an older, highly respected
general, a war hero with the scars to prove it.
The Free Officers recruited him to be the face
of the coup. They essentially hired a boss. That's
a good way to put it. And on July 23, 1952, they
made their move. The revolution. Or the coup,
depending on who you ask. It was surprisingly
smooth. They seized the army headquarters, the
radio stations, the telegraph offices. Within
hours, they controlled Cairo. It was almost bloodless.
They called it the White Revolution. They did.
And what about the king, King Farouk? This is
the guy they've hated for years. This was the
first big test of the new leadership. Some of
the officers wanted to execute him, you know,
French Revolution style. But Nasser stepped in.
Nasser was the voice of reason here. He argued
that killing the king would just create a martyr
and invite foreign intervention. He pushed to
exile him instead. So King Farouk boards the
royal yacht. The Maroussa. Ironically, the same
yacht his grandfather had used to open the Suez
Canal. And he just sailed away into the Mediterranean.
That is poetic. So 1953, the monarchy is officially
abolished. Egypt is a republic. But now you have
a classic problem. You have the guy on the posters,
General Naguib, and you have the guy pulling
the strings, Nasser. That power dynamic is a
ticking time bomb. And it exploded almost immediately.
Naguib was a true believer in democracy. He wanted
the army to stabilize things and then go back
to the barracks. He wanted elections, a free
press. A return to civilian rule. Yeah. And Nasser
in his inner circle looked at that and said,
absolutely not. Why? Were they just hungry for
power? Partly, perhaps. But they also genuinely
believed that if they opened up the system too
soon, the old order, the corrupt feudal lords,
the politicians who served the British, would
just buy their way back into power. So they needed
a transitional dictatorship to cleanse the system?
That was Nasser's view, yes. So how did Nasser
win this? Naguib was the popular one. This is
where Nasser proves he's a Machiavellian genius.
In 1954, Naguib tried to force the issue by resigning.
He thought the people would beg him to stay.
And Nasser called his bluff. He accepted the
resignation. Then Nasser used his control of
the trade unions and the impulse of the street.
He organized strikes and chaotic protests that
effectively said, without the military, there
will be anarchy. He manufactured chaos to present
himself as the only solution. Exactly. He outmaneuvered
Naguib, he isolated him, and eventually he placed
him under house arrest. By late 1954, Nasser
was the undisputed leader. But just as he grabs
the ring, just as he consolidates power, he almost
loses his life. The Manchee Incident. October
1954. This feels like a scene straight out of
a movie script. It's the moment that transforms
him. From a military dictator into a messiah
almost. Nasser is delivering a speech in Alexandria
to celebrate the British Withdrawal Treaty. It's
night. The lights are on him. Thousands are watching.
A gunman appears. A gunman from the Muslim Brotherhood
stands up in the crowd and fires eight shots
at him from close range. Eight shots. And he's
a stationary target at a podium. Glass shatters.
Yeah. Panic erupts. People are screaming, trampling
each other. But Nasser, he doesn't duck. He doesn't
run. He stands there, gripping the microphone.
And then he speaks. As the shots stop, he screams
into the mic -improvised raw emotion. I have
the quote right here. It's chilling, he shouts.
And then the clincher. The crowd just erupts.
From panic to hysteria, they start chanting his
name. In that split second, surviving that attempt,
he became untouchable. He showed he was willing
to die for them. And he did not let a good crisis
go to waste, did he? Not at all. He used the
assassination attempt as justification for a
massive, ruthless crackdown. On the Muslim Brotherhood.
Exactly. He accused them of the plot, which was
true, and arrested thousands. He set up the people's
tribunals. He executed leaders. He imprisoned
their chief ideologue, Sayyid Qatbi. It was the
consolidation of the Mukhabarat state. The intelligence
state. Yeah. But it wasn't just force. He was
smart. He knew how to use soft power. The arts,
you mentioned Kulthum earlier. Yes, the arts
were a huge part of this. He had the biggest
singers in the Arab world, Umm Kulthum, Abdel
Halim Hafez, singing these epic songs that praised
nationalism and the revolution. He controlled
the press. He curated his image perfectly. So
he secures the home front with an iron fist.
Now he looks outward. And this leads us to 1956,
the Suez Canal. This is the defining moment of
his career. This is the high stakes poker game.
The context, of course, is the Cold War. Nasser
wants to modernize Egypt. His dream project is
the Aswan High Dam. To control the Nile, generate
electricity. Yes. And he needs it badly. The
U .S. and U .K. initially offer to fund it. But
Nasser's playing both sides. He buys weapons
from the Soviet bloc because the West won't sell
to him. And the U .S. doesn't like that. The
U .S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,
decides to punish him. He abruptly withdraws
the funding offer for the dam. And it's a public
humiliation. So Nasser is furious. He's on a
plane returning from Yugoslavia when he finds
out. And he decides to hit back where it hurts.
He decides to nationalize the Suez Canal Company.
Which was owned by British and French shareholders.
And he's going to use the tolls to pay for the
dam himself. And the way he launched this is
so spy novel, the code word. De Liceps. Ferdinand
de Liceps was the French builder of the canal.
Nasser gave this big speech in Alexandria, and
he told his military commanders that when he
said the name de Lesseps, they were to seize
the canal offices. So he says the word. In the
middle of this long speech, he starts talking
about the history of the canal. He says de Lesseps,
and boom, the troops move in. The West must have
absolutely lost their minds. It was panic. For
Britain and France, this was just theft of their
property. For Israel, it was a threat because
Nasser blocked their shipping. So the three of
them get together. They hatch a secret plot.
The Protocol of Sevres. It was a conspiracy.
What was the plan? Israel would invade the Sinai.
Britain and France would then issue an ultimatum
to separate the combatants and land their own
troops to protect the canal. Taking it back,
basically, the tripartite aggression. Correct.
And militarily. It worked. The Israelis swept
through Sinai. The British and French paratroopers
landed in Port Saïd and bombed the Egyptian air
force. It was a military defeat for Egypt. But
we remember it as a massive victory for Nasser.
Why? Because Nasser won the political war. President
Eisenhower in the U .S. was furious. He wasn't
in on the plan. He hadn't been told. And he did
not want a colonial war distracting from the
Soviet crackdown in Hungary, which was happening
at the same time. So he steps in. He threatened
to crash the British bound if they didn't withdraw.
He forced them out. So Nasser emerges from the
rubble, having stood up to two empires and Israel,
and he's still standing. He became the victor
against imperialism. His popularity went supernova.
We were talking about the high tide of pan -Arabism.
He wasn't just the president of Egypt anymore.
No, he was the leader of the Arab nation. And
he had a new weapon, the transistor radio. Voice
of the Arabs. Exactly. He built a powerful radio
transmitter and beamed his speeches into every
village, coffee shop, and living room from the
Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. He could destabilize
governments with just a speech. He could. The
masses listened to him, not their own kings.
And this euphoria leads to a really fascinating
experiment in 1958, the United Arab Republic.
Yeah. Two countries, Egypt and Syria, actually
merging into one state. It sounds crazy today.
But the momentum was unstoppable. Syrian leaders,
fearing a communist takeover in their own country,
rushed to Nasser and basically begged for a union.
Was he for it? He was hesitant. He knew it would
be messy, but he agreed. He became the president
of the UAR. When he visited Damascus, the crowds
were so dense his car couldn't even move. But
there were enemies everywhere. There's a story
about King Saud of Saudi Arabia trying to take
him out during this time. Yes. King Saud was
deeply threatened by Nasser's popularity. There
was a plot to shoot down Nasser's plane as he
flew back to Cairo from Syria. But it was foiled.
By the Syrian security chief, Abdel Hamid Sarraj,
who was a diehard Nasser supporter. Nasser actually
waived the bribe money given to the conspirators
in front of a crowd in Damascus. That is a flex.
A moment of absolute triumph. The union with
Syria, it didn't last. It was a bad marriage.
It collapsed in 1961. The Syrians felt like they
were being colonized by Egypt. How so? Nasser
centralized everything in Cairo. He sent his
trusty hatchet man, Abdel Hakim Amr, to govern
Syria. They imposed Egyptian -style land reform,
which angered the elites. They imposed the police
state, which angered the liberals. And a coup
ended it. A coup in Damascus ended the union.
That must have been a bitter pill for Nasser.
It broke him. He took it personally. He felt
he had lost half his nation. This is when his
health really starts to decline diabetes, heavy
chain smoking. The stress was eating him alive.
He became more paranoid, more insular. Let's
pause the geopolitics for a second and look at
what life was like for the average Egyptian under
Nasser. Because we've talked about the police
state, but there was another side to the coin.
There was. And we have to be fair here. For the
fellahin, the peasantry Nasser was a hero for
very tangible reasons. He broke. The feudal system.
He broke the back of it. Before Nasser, a tiny
percentage of families owned almost all the arable
land. Nasser passed laws limiting land ownership
and redistributing the rest to the farmers. He
gave them dignity. He gave them land, which meant
dignity. He also made education free, from primary
school all the way to university. He guaranteed
government jobs for graduates. He built hospitals.
The Aswan Dam, the Helwan Steelwork. The social
contract was clear. You give up your political
freedom and in exchange, the state will give
you bread, education and pride. But the price
of that political freedom was steep. Very steep.
The press was nationalized. Dissent was crushed.
The prisons were full of political prisoners.
And we we have to address the uglier aspects
found in the sources regarding anti -Semitism.
Right. The sources mentioned a 1964 interview.
Yes. In an interview with a German newspaper,
Nasser publicly cast doubt on the number of Jews
killed in the Holocaust. He also allowed the
distribution of anti -Semitic tracts like the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But he claimed
his fight was with Zionism, not Judaism. He did,
and he did have Jewish advisors. But these actions
and statements are a matter of historical record
and remain a stain on his legacy. So we have
a very complex picture here. A man building schools
while denying history. Restoring dignity while
taking away liberty. But everything, the reforms,
the rhetoric, the charisma, it all crashes into
a wall in 1967. The Six -Day War. The NOXA. The
setback. This is the tragedy. By May 1967, tensions
were boiling. The Soviets gave Nasser a tip off
that Israel was massing troops to attack Syria.
Was that true? No. It turned out to be baseless
intelligence. But Nasser felt he had to act to
maintain his credibility as a protector of the
Arabs. So he moves troops into the Sinai. He
does. Then he makes the fatal escalation. He
expels the U .N. peacekeepers who had been there
since 56. And he closes the Straits of Tehran
to Israeli shipping. Which Israel had explicitly
said would be an act of war. Yes. Nasser crossed
a red line. Now, many historians believe he was
bluffing. He didn't really want a war. He thought
the U .S. would restrain Israel or that he could
negotiate from a position of strength. He was
playing brinkmanship. But his army. Let's go
back to Emmer, the friend from the academy. This
is where loyalty over competence destroys nations.
Field Marshal Emmer had turned the military into
his own personal fiefdom. He promoted friends,
he ignored training, and he grew wealthy. The
army looked good on paper. It looked impressive
on parade, but it was hollow. Nasser knew Emmer
was a problem. He called him a state within a
state. But he couldn't fire him without risking
a coup. So you have a President Luffing and a
field marshal who is incompetent facing an Israeli
military that is prepared and mobilized. And
Israel did not wait to be attacked. On the morning
of June 5, 1967, they launched Operation Focus.
The airstrike. An all -out airstrike on Egyptian
airfields. The Egyptian pilots were literally
at breakfast. In a matter of hours, the entire
Egyptian air force was destroyed on the ground.
The war was lost before noon on the first day.
Effectively, yes. But the tragedy is that the
Egyptian leadership didn't tell anyone. They
broadcast victory marches on the radio. While
their army was being routed. Meanwhile, Amr panicked.
He completely lost his nerve. He issued a withdrawal
order that was so chaotic it turned into a rout.
Soldiers were retreating without cover, strafed
by Israeli planes, dying of thirst in the desert.
And in six days, it's all over. Egypt lost the
Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Jordan lost
the West Bank. Syria lost the Golan Heights.
It was a total, absolute humiliation. It shattered
the myth. The Lion of the Arabs had been defeated
in 130 hours. And Nasser's reaction. He goes
on TV on June 9th. This is a surreal moment.
He appears on television looking broken, aged
10 years and a week. And he tells the truth,
mostly. He admits the grave setback, and then
he resigns. He takes full responsibility. He
says he's handing power to Zakaria Mohedin and
returning to the ranks of the ordinary citizens.
He takes it all on himself. And then the twist
that no one expected. Logic dictates that the
people should be furious. They just lost their
land, their sons, their army. But instead of
riding against him, they ride it for him. Hundreds
of thousands in the streets. Porting into the
streets of Cairo in the dark, chanting, no, no,
we are your soldiers, Gamal. They refuse to let
him go. Why? Is it Stockholm Syndrome? Or just
pure desperation? I think it's the fear of the
void. He was the father figure. They felt that
without him, the country would collapse completely
or the colonial powers would return. They clung
to him. So Nasser agreed to stay. But the sources
are clear. The man who stayed wasn't the same
man. He was a ghost. And what happened to Amir?
It ended in Greek tragedy. Nasser accused Amir
of plotting a coup to take over after the defeat.
Amir was arrested. Shortly after, it was announced
he had committed suicide by swallowing poison.
Or was suicided. Many believe he was given the
choice, suicide or execution. Either way, Nasser
lost his best friend and his territory in one
terrible stroke. The final years, 1967 to 1970,
sound agonizing. The War of Attrition. It was
a grinding, low -level artillery war along the
Suez Canal. Nasser was trying to rebuild the
army from scratch with Soviet help. But physically,
he was dying. Living on painkillers and cigarettes.
Working 18 -hour days trying to fix the unfixable.
He eventually accepted the Rogers Plan, a U .S.
initiative for a ceasefire, just to buy time
for the missile defense systems to be built.
And the end comes during Black September in 1970.
Yes. Civil war erupted in Jordan between King
Hussein and the PLO, Arabs killing Arabs. So
Nasser throws himself into mediating it. He called
an emergency summit in Cairo. He was shouting
at leaders, negotiating truces, just exhausting
himself. He managed to get a ceasefire signed
on September 27th. His final act. The very next
day, September 28th, he was at the airport saying
goodbye to the Emir of Kuwait. He felt dizzy.
He went home, lay down, and had a massive heart
attack. He died a few hours later. He was only
52. 52. Incredibly young for a head of state.
And that brings us right back to where we started.
The funeral. The shock was total. The headline
of a Lebanese newspaper summed it up perfectly.
100 million human beings. The Arabs are orphans.
And the funeral was just mass hysteria. The coffin
was on a gun carriage, but the crowds broke the
cordon. They were swarming the coffin, weeping,
chanting, there is no God but Allah and Nasser
is God's beloved. It's incredible. Even his enemies
wept. Even his enemies. Because he represented
a time when the Arab world felt big. when it
felt like it mattered on the world stage. So
let's try to land this plane. We've gone from
the postal worker's son to the broken idol. When
we assess the legacy, how do we balance the books?
Well, it really depends on what you value. If
you value national dignity, independence, and
social welfare, Nasser is a hero. He ended the
British occupation. He built the dam. He educated
the poor. He gave Egypt a voice. He made the
fellahin feel like citizens for the first time.
But if you value democracy and human rights...
Then the verdict is harsh. He institutionalized
the military dictatorship that has plagued the
region ever since. He destroyed political life.
He created a culture of fear with the secret
police. And his foreign policy led to the loss
of Sinai. A defeat that haunts the region to
this day. And the economic stagnation of the
late 60s erased many of the early games. Yet
despite all of that, during the Arab Spring in
2011, almost 40 years after he died, people were
holding up pictures of Nasser in Tahrir Square.
That's the nostalgia. They aren't missing the
secret police. They're missing the sense of purpose.
They're missing the idea that Egypt could lead
the world. And he wasn't personally corrupt.
Not in terms of money, no. He lived simply. He
died without a fortune. In a region plagued by
kleptocracy, that purity of intent, even if the
results were disastrous, it still resonates.
It really is the paradox of the charismatic leader.
He loved his country, but he loved it so much
he felt he was the only one who could save it.
And that brings us to the provocative thought
we should leave the listeners with today. Was
Nasser's charisma his greatest asset or was it
his fatal flaw? Did his sheer magnetic power
blind him and the Egyptian people to the rot
within the system? Did they trust the hero so
much that they stopped checking the math? Until
the Israeli Air Force was over Cairo and it was
too late. That is a heavy question. History rarely
gives us clean heroes, does it? Never. It gives
us men like Nassar Colossal, complicated and
tragic. Thank you for guiding us through this
massive chapter of history. It's a lot to process.
It is. Thanks for having me. And thank you all
for listening to The Deep Dive. We'll see you
next time.