When I was young, the global political landscape was populated by giants. At least that’s how it looked to an impressionable kid growing up in a household in which news in whatever format was consumed in large amounts. The names that emanated (from the radio initially, then starting in 1957 from a tiny screen of a black and white TV set named after the biggest river in
Nasser came to power as a result of a political coup in 1952 and he died at the young age of 52 in 1970, only three years after the defeat the Egyptian army suffered in the six-day war.
It has been 40 years since he died and this is a bit of an eternity in our here-and-now culture. To those for whom the name
So why am I producing a program tonight about Egypt that harkens back to Nasser? The most obvious reason is that the Middle East and the conflicts that have shaped it are not abating. There are anchored in clashes of interests, major miscalculations at a time when history was shaped without much forethought about its consequences. (Some would say that not much has changed since.)
It’s a region that breeds radicalism. Nasser contributed to it by his galvanizing promise of pan-Arab unity coming together in a struggle against colonialism. However, the problem with radicalism is that it promises a good future so as to get rid off the bad past. The end result is that without exception radical leaders over-promise and under-deliver.
