Due to being a basic white USAmerican, my education regarding the wide variety of countries and occurrences throughout the Middle East is meager at best. Despite deliberately seeking out information about the struggles I did know about, I often felt as if I couldn't trust what I was reading in the media and didn't know where to start outside of it. As a result, I cannot claim to be an authority or middle east scholar that can judge if this text is a perfect historical argument and narrative. However, I can speak as someone who has lacked a foundation on these issues, and sought out a book that could meet me where I am. Fawaz Gerges' The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East very much does that.
Gerges mentions in the introduction that he wrote this book to offer an explanation to his students and others who wonder why there is so much struggle and instability across the middle east. Fitting with this goal, the text is accessibly written and does not contain excessive academic jargon just for the sake of it. This book also has enough repetition from chapter to chapter that it could be assigned in classes as a whole or in parts. The organization also helps with the flow of the book in general as it covers a massive amount of history and information in a few hundred pages.
A goal stated by Gerges was that he wanted to break from the paradigm of focusing on middle eastern struggles by looking solely at leaders of various states. This is one of the things that appealed to me most. While Gerges does speak in detail about various leaders and other authoritarian organizing, he also spends about half the book discussing grassroots and other movements of the people of these countries. If you've ever spoken to leftists, you will often find frustration in being lumped in with the wrong group. Anarchists do not appreciate being lumped in with liberals or authoritarian left movements, all of which are highly variable within themselves. Western media makes the same mistake with "the middle east," often lumping entire countries together. If we do get more focus on a single country, the movements inside are often not covered except for the most violent such as ISIS, leading to highly prejudiced assumptions about the rest of the public.
Gerges also stated a desire to break from the other end of the spectrum- the paradigm of blaming colonialism or western intervention for all unrest throughout middle eastern countries. It is undoubtedly something that has played a massive role over time, but one still ends up erasing individual differences and the diversity of movements throughout these areas by solely looking at the west.
Egyptian history dominates a decent amount of this book. We learn a lot about the history of leaders there, the Arab Spring uprisings, and so on. This decision seems to be in part because this history offers a decent window into how colonialism, authoritarianism, popular movements, and so on interact, which does require a lot of specialized info to fully understand. I'm not sure if it is also because Gerges' knowledge may be more specialized in regards to Egypt than other middle east countries. We also learn how central western support of Israel and the resulting Palestinian genocide are to struggles throughout the rest of the middle east. The mistrust of the USA and other western powers who aid in the destruction of Palestine also leaves the door open for other nations like China to become involved as alternatives. The reach of the book spreads out much more as the it progresses and we learn about governments and popular movements throughout Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and others.
A prominent and well supported argument throughout this text is that Western colonialists and local state leaders and actors seeking authority and control (rather than a functioning system that served its people) created breeding grounds for extreme Islamist movements to take hold. Even when more leftish leaning rulers- who created things like social programs to support the public- were in office, the corruption and authoritarianism that they implemented ended up souring the public view of these regimes and associating their politics with oppression. European colonialism, western invasions and wars, neoliberalism, and capitalism led the public to see "democracy" or western "aid" as mere smokescreens for exploitation. The problem being that, most of the time, the "democracy" offered by these powers wasn't democratic at all.
Consistently crumbling governments that did not serve the people made diverse Islamist movements more attractive. Some of these movements implemented social support and cooperative structures, showing the ability to do so without the corrupt state. At the same time, as some more oppressive fundamentalist movements became empowered, they often became more violent and extreme. It was wild for instance to read about how even Osama bin Laden eventually found ISIS to have moved in too extreme a direction for his tastes. Many extremist groups would start either in or adjacent to the government and then split off when the impossible task of altering authoritarian structures became clear. These struggles kept systems fragile and constantly crumbling. The religious elements throughout these histories exist in both dynamics of the oppressed and the oppressor in complicated ways.
When relating many of these issues specifically to the USA, Gerges does well showing how the "democracy" the USA claims to promote is a lie. Both Republican and Democrat leaders have behaved similarly in their violent and oppressive relationships with middle eastern countries. This is what makes many democrat/liberal reactions to Trump very frustrating to me at times. While Trump and the rest of his fascist regime are undoubtedly the worst, the utter silence from many liberals as soon as they get their candidate in office is abhorrent. The deportations and wars continue while they claim that their vote saved the day and everything is fine now and that just voting blue again will take us back to an imaginary land where immigrants are safe and muslims are beloved. At least when Republicans are in office, some of these people are willing to fight.
The remainder of the book is predominantly about the people's movements for liberation, where they have succeeded, and where and why they often fail. The structures people are up against outside of their countries, within their governments, and surrounding extremist movements are extremely difficult to resist. However, that has not stopped people from fighting. Gerges covers a lot of ground showing that there have been advancements even when faced with such adversity. He captures the resilience and passion of people often erased in these histories. This feels more important than ever regarding the new level of genocide being faced by Palestinians for instance. Gerges wraps up the text with ideas about ways forward which center the populace rather than authoritarian rulers or authoritarian Islamist groups.
Things I would have appreciated that this book lacked would have been some sort of graphic giving a timeline of events. Because Gerges skips back and forth in time a bit, I would find myself going back and rereading parts to remember what we'd covered. Now, it is worth noting that my somewhat impaired memory is below average, but I think having a reference graphic to quickly flip to could really boost the book's utility.
I also disliked his occasional characterization of movements in a violent/peaceful dichotomy. For instance, he describes the Arab Spring as a peaceful movement of people in the streets. In comparison to a revolutionary war with guns and bombs, he'd be correct. But, to portray them as if they were using a single tactic like marches and not a wider variety which included property destruction and so on is misleading. Like any successful movement, there were a wide variety of tactics involved that cannot be put into a binary box. There is no one right way to protest.
Overall this book gave me a good overview of many occurrences throughout the Middle East that I've craved to understand better. I have flags on almost every page to return to as a reference. I appreciate what Gerges has done here in making information about such struggles accessible.
This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.
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