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What is Baathism?
We keep hearing about Saddam’s Baathist party, with never any explanation what it is or what they believe. This may help fill the gap: Saddam’s Brain. It seems it’s basically an Arab version of Naziism, with a mystical vision of race, violence, and purity. It has some Leninist elements as well, like the parallel organization of state and party, and in recent years has tossed in a bit of Islamicism as well. “Flexibility” — change in position as demanded by the mysticism of power — seems to be one of its basic principles. Its founder, like Pol Pot, Abimael Guzman (leader of the Peruvian Shining Path movement) and Ali Shariati (a leading theoretician of the Iranian revolution), was an alumnus of the Sorbonne. Posted by Jim Kalb at April 04, 2003 10:29 AM | Send Comments
How far we have come … The same Sorbonne once produced men like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis Xavier. Posted by: Paul Cella on April 5, 2003 6:58 AMIt is interesting to think how Baathism metastasized into a radical political movement, rather than something less evil, something like Gaullism (well, Gaullism has fallen on hard times now, hasn’t it) or Christian Democracy. One explanation might be that the Arab monarchies really never got established as legitimate national rulers. Of all the Arab monarchies, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan appears to be the most viable, and it has suffered from one assassinated king, and multiple assassination attempts during the high days of Nasserism. But the Hashemites faired poorly in Iraq, and there seems to be no real constituency for restoration. Ergo, Iraq, like Germany, seems to be on the republican track once and for all. Although Pan Arabism is on the rocks, it seems to me that there is some room for a moderate party of the right in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Posted by: Bill Riggs on April 18, 2003 2:17 PMhow does your view of the baathists reconcile with free medical services and education through university? Posted by: retiree on February 4, 2004 5:43 PMDon’t understand. What’s the conflict? Posted by: Jim Kalb on February 4, 2004 6:38 PM |