Dictators hijack Baathism's ideology

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 8/10/03 | CAMERON McWHIRTER

[optimistically_conservative]

I thought this was an interesting historical piece on Baathism and pertinent to our further dealings with Syria and the ME in general.

[McGavin999]

Interesting. Like communism, it sounds good on the drawing board but is totally impossible in real life. Won't work, can't work, didn't work.

[goldstategop]

It was a mixture of pan Arabism and socialism. There is no single Arab people and socialism doesn't work period. No more improbable scheme has ever been devised that went as much against human nature as Baathism did.

[xzins]

This is a misinformation piece.

Baathism has always been socialism in Arab robes.

This is hidden in the text of the article but it finally comes out: But from its beginnings, the party suffered from internal squabbles. Baathist nationalists thought the party should take over one country and work on socialist reforms there before uniting with other states. Baathist regionalists, though, argued the countries should unite first, then work on reforms. This bickering eventually tore the movement apart

National Socialism, by the way, is what the acronym NAZI stood for....Technically, the word NAZI was the acronym for the National Socialist German Worker's Party

[jennyp]

Alan Godlas, associate professor of religion at the University of Georgia and expert on Islamic and Arabic movements, said the Baathist vision was to create a unified democratic Arab state, with state control of the entire economy. "The intention was not to form dictatorships," Godlas said.

<snicker>

[jennyp]

The ideology grew out of discussions among intellectuals in the cafes of Damascus, the capital of French-occupied Syria, in the late 1930s.

Let's see... French-schooled intellectuals gave us the Baathists, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ho Chi Minh. Anyone else?

[Post Toasties]

Baathism, like most socialist ideologies, is susceptible to power being usurped by a strongman or oligarchy.

[hellinahandcart]

When you have to read through fifteen paragraphs before you first encounter the word "socialism", it ain't a historical piece, it's a propaganda piece. Cameron McWhirter leaves out WAY too much, and I can only assume that's deliberate. If he knows who Aflaq is, he knows how much Aflaq admired Hitler, and that the Ba'ath party was modeled directly upon the Nazi party.

The party wasn't "hijacked by dictators". It was a plan for dictatorship and repression from the very beginning. How the hell else does he think "the state" could run the entire economy?

I am forced to conclude that...McWhirter probably sends fan letters to Castro, and dreams of dancing with Kim Jong Il (just like Maddie Albright).

[hellinahandcart]

This is funny, too:

Alan Godlas, associate professor of religion at the University of Georgia and expert on Islamic and Arabic movements

I would bet money on two things:

His name is pronounced "godless".

It's not his real name. ;D

[xm177e2]

I thought this was an interesting historical piece on Baathism and pertinent to our further dealings with Syria and the ME in general.

This article is a damn lie. No description of Ba'athism could possibly be complete without mentioning its Nazi roots.

Ba'athism is not an "ideology of peace," it has its roots in Nazi ideology. Passing it off as secular pan-Arabism is like passing off Naziism as secular pan-Aryanism. I don't think Godwin's law applies here, because Ba'athism really is descended from Naziism, I'm not just throwing out the word "Nazi" here as hyperbole.

[xm177e2]

When you have to read through fifteen paragraphs before you first encounter the word "socialism", it ain't a historical piece, it's a propaganda piece.

Yes, especially because Ba'athism is not Sweden-style socialism, it's German-style National Socialism, in which the entire economy is meant to be nationalized. It's not short-work-week-high-taxes-high-unemployment socialism, it's dictatorship socialism.

[xm177e2]

Baathism, like most socialist ideologies, is susceptible to power being usurped by a strongman or oligarchy.

I think it demands a strongman/oligarchy. It is not supposed to exist in a democratic form.

[xp38]

The headline seemed to me to have echos of what some western communists say about the USSR....that Stalin hijacked their wonderful system.

[hellinahandcart]

What was the title of that Saddam bio you were reading, from the mid-1980s? As I recall, it went into Baathism in great detail, and it seemed to me that Saddam was the fulfillment of that system, rather than a hijacker of it.

People did not matter as individuals, only in a collective and abstract sense as "the People". The State "represented" the People by repressing individuals who either had or hadn't stepped out of line. It was better if the citizenry came to see the State as a capricious and all-powerful god who must be appeased at all costs. That made it easier for the State to represent the People.

Saddam was "representing the People" when he kept donated medicines locked away in warehouses. It was better for The People if the sanctions were lifted than if their diseases were cured; therefore, the death and suffering of innocents was for the common good, and completely justified under Ba'athist ideology.

[Stultis]

Let's see... French-schooled intellectuals gave us the Baathists, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ho Chi Minh. Anyone else?

Dunno for sure, but I'd bet there are a few limb hacking African dictators in the mix as well.

[Stultis]

because Ba'athism really is descended from Naziism

This is my understanding as well, although I'd bet it was Italian facism that caught the attention of pan-Arabists initially. Italy had never been a true nation since the Roman Empire. Mussolini and the fascists were able to create a nation out of what had been for hundreds of years a squabbling assemblege of fiefdoms. This is exactly what the pan-Arabists wanted to accomplish, and they decided fascism was just the ticket. Problem is -- despite the failure of fascism, and other forms of socialism, in both Europe and the Middle East -- they never have managed to quite shake this conviction.

[hellinahandcart]

There were several articles about Michael Afflaq posted this winter, but this is the only one I could locate (from my bookmarks, since the archives weren't cooperating with me):

Saddam's Brain: The Ideology Behind the Thuggery

[Fzob]

MICHEL AFLAQ was born in Damascus in 1910, a Greek Orthodox Christian. He won a scholarship to study philosophy at the Sorbonne sometime between 1928 and 1930 (biographies differ), and there he studied Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Mazzini, and a range of German nationalists and proto-Nazis. Aflaq became active in Arab student politics with his countryman Salah Bitar, a Sunni Muslim. Together, they were thrilled by the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, but they also came to admire the organizational structure Lenin had created within the Russian Communist party.

In the early 1930s, Aflaq and Bitar returned to Damascus, where they played at being radical intellectuals. They did some teaching, contributed to magazines, and prowled around the cafe's preaching revolution. Once back in Syria, Aflaq rejected all Western thought and for the rest of his life denied that Western ideas could have any relevance to the higher civilization of the Arabs.

In 1940, Aflaq established a study circle in Damascus called the Movement of Arab Renaissance, which in 1947 transmogrified into the Baath party, Baath meaning resurrection or renaissance. Aflaq and Bitar ran unsuccessfully for parliament three times each, but they began to win a following among educated, mostly lower-middle-class men in Syria and to a lesser extent in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. By the mid-1950s, the Baath party had become a major force in Syria, thanks in part to its merger with the Arab Socialist party, and Aflaq became secretary general and chief ideologist. Intense, ascetic, and by some accounts effete, he was not cut out for politics. In 1966, he lost an intraparty power struggle and left for Lebanon, then Brazil.

Baathist Party Roots

 

[sauropod]

Think it was "Kingdom of Fear" or some such. Don't have it in front of me right now. It was published before the Gulf War.