Samir Amin, ‘Libya Is Neither Tunisia nor Egypt’
Yes, Monthly Review is socialist, radical and in many ways editorially distasteful to me. But this article gives food for thought in differentiating Libya from Tunisia and Egypt.
Libya Is Neither Tunisia nor Egypt
by Samir Amin
Libya Is Neither Tunisia nor Egypt. The (Gaddafi) bloc in power and the forces fighting against it have no analogues in Tunisia or Egypt. Gaddafi has never been anything but a clown whose vacuous thought is reflected in the famous “Green Book.” Operating in a still archaic society, Gaddafi could get away with adopting successive “nationalist and socialist” discourses — with little real impact — and then embrace “liberalism” just like that. He did so “to please the West” (!), as if the choice of liberalism wouldn’t have effects on society. But he did it anyway and — no surprise — aggravated social difficulties for the majority. That created the conditions for the explosion that we have seen, the explosion immediately exploited by forces of Libyan political Islam and regionalisms.