More on myth-building

Following up on my post on myth-building in Iraq, I’d like to draw your attention to this post from Marc Schulman of American Future. In the post Marc notes the somewhat tailored portrayal of French President Jacques Chirac in the Arab press and remarks

Moral to the story: in the Arab world, perception is unconnected to reality. But we knew that.

This reminded me of a post from the Egyptian blogger of Rantings of a Sandmonkey a few months back. In the post the Sandmonkey, trying to make sense of what he sees in his fellows, describes what he refers to as the “Arab Parallel Universe”. Here are the seven rules of the APU as the Sandmonkey sees them:

  1. Arabs never make mistakes, and they rarely lose wars.
  2. The Zionists and the Americans are always to blame for everything that is wrong in the APU.
  3. If there is any credit at all that can be contributed to Arabs in any way, they will take it.
  4. Good leadership is inversely related to how US-friendly a leader is!
  5. Any media that is not the official state-owned media is filled with Zionist, Jewish, American, Christian, imperialist, anti-arab influences and they LIE ALL THE TIME!
  6. There is really no need for elections in the APU, because Presidents and rulers are presidents and rulers for life.
  7. The only viable alternative candidate to the current leader or president is this current leader or president’s son.

I think that it’s a bit excessive to characterize the APU as a post-modern assault on the West in general and modernity in particular. I think it’s something much, much older than that. I think that leaders in Arab countries know very well what works in communicating with the people who live in those countries and the power of myth-building in maintaining their own power.

And using myths to maintain power is a universal human quality as old as our species itself.

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