thousands of Iranians in the years before the Iranian revolution in 1979. By any impartial and objective standards, the shah of Iran was a vicious dictator whose hands were stained with the blood of Iranians, and a pawn, in the literal sense of the word, of the United States and the West. Two years ago I met his widow, Farah Pahlavi, at the home of some mutual friends in Cairo. I was impressed by her open, pleasant, and modest personality and struck by her sharp intelligence and superior education. We had a long talk and she told me she was writing her memoirs, and promised to give me a copy when they came out. She did send me a copy recently, published by al-Shorouk. When I started reading them, I was taken aback to discover that the former empress of Iran sees the late shah as a national hero who brought great benefits to Iran, and that she views the Iranian revolution as just a conspiracy by a bunch of riffraff and malcontents. Describing the last moments before the revolution forced her and her husband to leave Iran, she writes, “We were leaving with heads held high, sure of having worked ceaselessly for the benefit of the country. And if we had made mistakes, at least we had never thought of anything but the general good.” I was surprised at what she said and wondered how this cultured and intelligent woman could ignore or overlook the horrendous crimes the shah committed against his country. It may be that a wife’s love for her husband always blinds her to his faults, but here we are not talking about personal flaws but horrific crimes against millions of Iranians. It is even stranger that the memoirs are full of indications that the shah of Iran himself believed that he had done his country great favors, sacrificing his comfort and his life for the sake of the country.
That leads to the question: How do autocratic rulers in general see themselves? History teaches us that all autocratic rulers consider themselves great heroes and live in such a state of perpetual self-delusion that they are able to justify all their misconduct and even the crimes they perpetrate. This constant dissociation between the autocratic ruler and what happens in reality is a phenomenon that has been carefully described in international literature and is known as ‘dictator’s solitude.’ The dictator lives in complete isolation from the lives of his compatriots and does not know what is really happening in his country. After he has been in power for years, a group of friends and rich relatives forms around him and their extravagant lifestyle keeps them apart from the way of life of ordinary people, and so the dictator loses any awareness of the poor and has absolutely no contact with real life. An image of it is conveyed to him in reports by various security agencies, but these agencies always think it is in their interest to put a gloss on the bleak reality to avoid angering the dictator. They often compete with each other for the trust of the dictator and write conflicting reports. Sometimes they make up imaginary conspiracies they claim to have thwarted in order to convince the ruler of their importance. On top of that, the ministers who work with the dictator are not elected and hence have no interest in what people think of them. Their only concern is to retain the approval of the ruler who appointed them and who can dismiss them at any moment. They never confront the ruler with the truth, but always tell him what he would like to hear. In an autocratic system the ministers rarely venture to express their real opinions; they merely await the president’s instructions and they consider that whatever the president does or says or even thinks is the height of wisdom, courage, and greatness.
In this way the dictator becomes completely isolated from reality until one day he wakes up when disaster befalls the country or a revolution overthrows him. ‘Dictator’s solitude’ is a phenomenon that recurs When Will President Mubarak Grasp This Truth? 37 through history and it is one of the worst defects of an autocratic system. When the French revolution broke out in 1789 and mobs, angry and hungry, surrounded the palace of Versailles, Queen Marie Antoinette of France allegedly asked why they were demonstrating. When one of her aides told her they were angry because they could not find bread, the queen is said to have replied in surprise: “Let them eat cake.” This famous remark attributed to Marie Antoinette shows how isolated an autocratic ruler can become. Marie Antoinette was a strong and intelligent woman and in fact was the real power behind the decisions taken by her husband, King Louis XVI, but after years of autocracy she was living in a different and remote world.
I thought about this while following what was happening in Egypt when President Mubarak went to have surgery in Germany. Of course I wish everyone who is sick a speedy recovery but I do not think that the president’s illness is particularly special. Everyone falls ill and the president’s advanced age is bound to bring some health problems from time to time. But the regime’s scribes treated the president’s illness as though it were the end of the world and some of them even wrote that the country itself had fallen ill with the same disease, as if President Mubarak was the incarnation and embodiment of all Egypt. This cheap and disgraceful sycophancy continued throughout the time he was under treatment, and when the surgery was successful and President Mubarak came back to Egypt, the sycophants let loose with their chorus of pipes and drums. Some singers received orders to compose songs specifically to celebrate the president’s auspicious return. I don’t know how any real artist could allow himself to sing eulogies for a fee, like those beggars who go around the annual festivals of popular holy men. Have these sycophants thought what they will do when the president goes to Germany again for further treatment? Will they compose new songs for when he returns? Does President Mubarak believe this flattery? Does it ever occur to him, even for a moment, that these pipers and drummers don’t like him, but are merely defending the privileges they have acquired under his rule? Doesn’t President Mubarak realize that these sycophants have always clung to those in power and have shaped their own ideas and opinions to be in tune with the ruler? They were loyal socialists in the time of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, but when the wind changed and the state turned to the market economy they become some of the prime advocates of privatization and the free market.
What conception of what is happening in Egypt does President Mubarak have? Does he know that more than half of all Egyptians live below the poverty line? Does it bother the president that millions of Egyptians live in shantytowns without water, electricity, or a sewage system? Is he upset at the prevalence of unemployment, poverty, disease, and frustration? Does President Mubarak know that Egypt has hit rock bottom in many fields? Has he heard about the poor people who die standing in line to obtain bread or cooking gas? Has he heard of the death boats on which thousands of young Egyptians embark to escape misery, only to drown on the high seas? Has anyone told the president that for months thousands of civil servants and their children have been lying on the pavement in front of parliament because their lives are no longer tolerable? Has President Mubarak thought about civil servants who support a whole family on a salary of 100 Egyptian pounds ($18) a month when the price of meat has risen to 70 pounds a kilo? Of course I don’t know how President Mubarak thinks, though I imagine, based on the theory of ‘dictator’s solitude,’ that his conceptions are completely detached from the reality of what is happening in Egypt. The reality is liable to produce an explosion at any moment, and if that explosion takes place, God forbid, we will all pay a heavy price. I hope President Mubarak ends his many years in office by carrying out real democratic reform, amending the constitution to allow for honest competition between candidates and for free and fair elections so that Egyptians can choose new faces—people who are respected and willing to take responsibility for ending the ordeal Egypt has been through and to begin a new future. When will President Mubarak grasp this truth?
Democracy is the solution.
April 6, 2010
Does Rigging Elections Count
as a Major Sin?
Over the coming eighteen months or so Egypt will have parliamentary and then presidential elections. In the past the Egyptian regime has tried to use judges to conceal election rigging, but upright judges refused to betray their principles and their message was clear: “Either we supervise the elections seriously and scrupulously, or we’ll withdraw and let the regime alone take responsibility for the fraud.” This time the regime has decided from the start to abolish judicial supervision and has announced that it will not allow any international monitoring of the voting. All this confirms that the next elections will be rigged. Even now Egyptians are well aware that members of the
