Brainwashing... Cold Style!
To become a person of ideas, you had to wear thick glasses, carry under your arm a book whose title half the people couldn’t understand, then sit in a cultural café surrounded, unfortunately, by a cloud of cigarette smoke, and talk about the future of the nation, while that poor nation sat outside waiting for its future, not knowing which door it would come through!
The thinker would simmer the idea in the capital, then the party would add some spices, the cultural magazine would wrap it up, and then it would be sent to cities and villages.
It was enough for just one magazine to reach a remote village for the village’s evening majlis to transform into a miniature intellectual conference: one became a nationalist, another a Marxist, a third an Islamist, and the fourth understood nothing but nodded his head out of respect for the group!
Today, however, the old kitchens have closed, or nearly so, and every citizen has his own private kitchen in his pocket: his mobile phone! This small device, originally intended so you could tell your wife, “I’m on my way,” has become a tool for managing Middle Eastern affairs, analyzing American politics, assessing Russian intervention, evaluating the Chinese economy, resolving the Palestinian issue, and then, before bed, shifting to explaining the causes of high cholesterol!
Today, the brother who doesn’t understand can immediately reply to the brother who thinks he understands, then a third person who knows nothing about the subject joins in, and within five minutes, all three become strategic experts!
Nevertheless, we shouldn’t lament too much the golden age of intellectuals. If their recipes had all succeeded, our nation wouldn’t have reached the state it’s in today, after decades of lectures, seminars, statements, and books that all begin with the phrase, “The Arab nation is going through a delicate phase!”
The tragedy proved greater than slogans, and the blood flowed more abundantly than statements, and people began asking questions that, if posed in the past, would have earned them someone pulling them out from under the table and slapping a ready-made accusation on them.
Thus, the questions remained in the refrigerator for years, while Arab blood was the only thing served hot.
Then Iran’s true face was revealed, a country that had long mastered the game of grand slogans: Palestine, resistance, unity of fronts, confrontation with arrogance.
Whenever we asked about its project in Arab lands, we were told: “Don’t bother yourselves with small details; the battle is with the enemy!”
Then the recent confrontations occurred, and Arabs discovered that some of the guns they had been told for so long were meant to defend the nation’s causes could be turned against their own countries and facilities.
The customer began reading what was written on the label.
He discovered that some of the merchandise sold to him under the title “Liberation of Palestine” actually contained a complete political influence project, and that some of those who shouted day and night in defense of the nation were, intentionally or not, opening its doors to another project—one that doesn’t settle for land alone.
Everyone now has a phone, and the phone has a camera, and the camera has memory, and memory in politics is a disaster!
The words you spoke ten years ago are still there, the speech you denied is still there, the tweet you deleted is still there, the video in which you said the opposite of what you say today is still there.
In the past, your mind was washed in a newspaper, a party, or a group; today, it can be washed in a 30-second clip, after which its owner comes out to tell you at the end:
In the past, the Arab mind had a limited number of washers; today, it faces a thousand washing machines, which forces it—if it uses wisely what God has given it—to compare, question, and doubt.
What is required is not to replace the old sheikh of the tariqa with the new sheikh of the trend, nor to flee from a party post only to fall into the arms of the million-follower influencer.
