“The Enemy Within.”
“Enemies of the people.” When I hear these words I have an atavistic reaction. I grew up hearing those words applied to my family and others like them. At school, I had to study a textbook that mentioned my family, by name, as “feudalist, capitalist oppressors of the people.” I grew up in Nasser’s Egypt, where my family was targeted on account of its political prominence and large landholdings. President Nasser, faced with setbacks internally and internationally, followed the playbook of autocratic regimes throughout history around the world: he deflected public discontent by accusing “internal enemies” of being responsible for the failures of his own regime.
The other imperative of such regimes is to silence dissent. That is done by installing a pervasive atmosphere of fear and distrust. In Nasser’s Egypt, even between parent and child in our own bedrooms, we whispered. People were arrested and disappeared into prison for years or months for a random remark. For fear to effectively paralyze dissent, for autocensorship to work, repression must be both ruthless and arbitrary. No one feels safe. No law can protect you. The power of the ruler is absolute.
It was Nasser’s Egypt that I fled at the age of twenty. Later, when I immigrated to the United States, over forty years ago, it was because my husband and I wanted to raise our children in a free country where they would never know that fear. For us, America was the land of freedom, of justice, of laws and due process.
Today in America, I cannot believe that I am hearing the same words, watching the same playbook. “The Enemy Within.” “The Deep State.” The xenophobia. The crackdown on dissent. The emasculation of the legislative and judiciary branches. The flaunting of the courts. The intimidation of the media and the persecution of universities, those two bastions of independent thought. Using the formidable powers of the government to concentrate all power and influence at the top, in the hands of of a handful of men.
How does ambient fear succeed in silencing dissent? Even someone who does not feel vulnerable in their own right might fear potential repercussions on a family member or friend, for example the son or daughter whose career might be negatively affected. No one feels safe. The secret to universalizing fear as a deterrent is arbitrarines in the application of repercussions: surely the young student at an elite school, a permanent resident who came to the U.S. from South Korea as a child of seven, surely she had every right not to expect to be arbitrarily hunted down by ICE for deportation simply because she participated—not even led—in an anti-war demonstration. The intention is to teach the lesson that no one is safe.
And today, just as it was with Nasser back then, as with any charismatic leader, there is an irreducible core of true believers who will see no evil, bear any price, countenance any outrage, because their leader can do no wrong in their eyes.
But this is the one optimistic note I will strike: as with Nasser, as with Stalin, as with all-powerful cult figures throughout history, the secret is that the emperor has no clothes. When Nasser died, it was all of a sudden as if a pall had been lifted, a strait jacket had been released. It took his successor Sadat only a couple of years to turn the ship of state around in the opposite direction and undo everything Nasser had done over nearly twenty years.
Trump has only been in power for two months. This is still America. There is still time, before fear is completely installed. There are still laws, there are still pockets of free speech. This is still America. Let’s act like it.
