On the Arab street

Photograph: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
By Yasser Mutwakil (ياسر متوكل)

On the Arab street |
Thursday – November 13, 2025

In the Imperial Core it's commonplace to refer to the general sentiments among the populations of the Arab world as – the Arab street. So allow me to use this term as well. Since the Arab spring of 2011 there's been much talk about democracy and a liberal future in the Middle East, but here in 2025 I thought about revisiting this chapter in recent history because it's clear to me and I assume most people that there's no real democracy movement in the Arab world, so why not? Well, for one the many revolutions that took place in 2011 across the Arab world, from Tunisia to Egypt to Syria were not really organic in nature: that is to say they were not really coming from the people, if this is our definition of "organic", and as usual these revolutions against what was then the contemporary order were lead and directed from above. Well, to be more precise certain formations and elements of the intelligentsia, the revolutionary elite were not happy with their social privilege and this, as usual, led them into rage and that rage was channeled through "popular movement", always in the name of democracy. But the interesting thing about the Arab world was and is that there's a clear difference between what the ordinary people on the Arab street want and the elite want. As usual the elites want to put themselves in charge and they do this by imposing a technocratic regime in the name of democracy and egalitarianism, but only egalitarianism among the bourgeois, but the populist horde, particularly perhaps in Egypt and Libya did not care for this talk about democracy, they didn't believe in or seek the humanist message and this is the essential reason why none of these countries, perhaps with the exception of Tunisia, can be called real democracies: the people didn't care for the empty platitudes of the then Obama administration, they wanted Islamic rule but the elites did not. See, this is always the case with revolutions: it's never the populist hordes that stab the King in the back, it's always the bourgeois and not because they care about the supposed interests of the working class, not because they are simply not content. Indeed, there's no one that despises the working class, the plebeian horde as much as the bourgeois, and there's also no-one more than them that seek to distance themselves so much from the plebeians, and indeed the bourgeois are also very aware of their past and the fragility of their social position, which is why they are very keen on their particular patois of being offended and politically correct, something I've covered in the past. So the same applied during the Arab spring: the revolutions across the Arab world came from above and they failed because of the apparent mismatch between the disconnected, urban, and cosmopolitan elite and the normal and ordinary person, the person that may be a plebeian sure, but the person that also has to clean up the mess afterwards, the person that is loyal to nation not necessarily out of love or even sincerity, but out of necessity, something that the bourgeois never fails to notice and never fails to mention. It requires a great deal of prudence to not be swept up in the popular hysteria, sure but it requires and apparently did require far more engagement in the lives of ordinary men by that same elite if they were going to be successful. After all, for most men order and justice represents the quality of being grounded and secure, and only a very wealthy and strong society can afford to ignore the imbalance in the scales of the celestial order and when you push men far enough they will resist. So democracy in the Arab world failed because it was doomed to fail: the fact is that there is no popular sentiment on the Arab street that favors liberal democracy, at least not among the majority, and the fact is to that most people that seek to impose democracy and liberalism really don't care for this system other than the fact that it happens to align with their own entitled rage. Yes, that is the hard truth and if you think I am wrong please provide good arguments.

    You may, if you're a liberal man, say that the Arab street runs both ways and that's certainly true but that so-called "enlightened" lane seems quite empty, and for a good reason because these people, the bourgeois, are simply too cowardly, but that's just as well and in keeping with their character. No, the fact is that most people in the Arab world and indeed in the world at large have no interest in some universal, humanist, and liberal experiment that renders their God, traditions, and ways of living rearguard, evil, oppressive, and simply wrong and until you, if you're a liberal man, realize this you can go on about the supposed superiority of the material order, but you will also continue to fail to see why your system, the liberal world order, is failing and failing fast: most men are quite frankly and clearly not interested in upholding the so-called "enlightenment" and for them this thing called "progress" seems to have arrived too late or never. Yes, there has been major technological leaps made in the past couple of centuries but the fact is that a world void of God, void of the light, and of meaning is a world lost in the ocean of cosmic and nihilistic flux; that world is really a dying world, right in line with the Kali Yuga.

    I don't believe that most people have bad intentions, but I believe that most people are governed by bad intentions and that's no less true on the Arab street. See, people may surely convince themselves of ideas, of the goodness of other men, and indeed even of their own goodness, but do notice that most men treat themselves harsher than how they would treat other men: this is for a reason and that reason is of course that deep down you know that you are lying to yourself. It's quite simply easier to imagine fantastical things about other men; doing so with yourself is harder but possible and that's often what ends up being labeled "narcissism". It's quite frankly not possible to believe in yourself and in your own goodness and continue in your right mind, and history has shown this. Why should the Arab street be any different? Well, as history did show, the Arab street was not different, but don't be sad this was always the case. Ever heard about the French revolution?

Reginald Drax – November 13, 2025.