Protection Rackets and Culture of Fear

culture of fear: This dichotomy is no surprise. That culture of fear was exactly what the dictators fed off of and nurtured. Most of them ran their countries like Mafia dons operating protection rackets. They wanted their people to fear each other more than the leader, so each dictator or monarch could sit atop the whole society, doling out patronage and protection, while ruling with an iron fist. But it will take more than just decapitating these regimes to overcome that legacy. It will take a culture of pluralism and citizenship. Until then, tribes will still fear tribes in Libya and Yemen, sects will still fear sects in Syria and Bahrain, the secular and the Christians will still fear the Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia and the philosophy of rule or die will remain a potent competitor to one man, one vote, according to The Chronicle Herald. But you would also have to be blind and deaf to the deeply authentic voices and aspirations that triggered these Arab awakenings not to realize that, in all these countries, there is a longing particularly among young Arabs for real citizenship and accountable and participatory government. It is what many analysts are missing today. That energy is still there, and the Muslim Brotherhood, or whoever rules Egypt, will have to respond to it and If there is one thought that summarizes the strength and weakness of the Arab awakenings, its the one offered by Daniel Brumberg, a co-director of the democracy and governance studies program at Georgetown University, who observed that the Arab awakenings happened because the Arab peoples stopped fearing their leaders but they stalled because the Arab peoples have not stopped fearing each other. You would have to be very naive to think that transitioning from these primordial identities to citizens would be easy, or even likely. It took two centuries of struggle and compromise for the U.S. to get to a point where it could elect a black man with the middle name Hussein as president and then consider replacing him with a Mormon. And that is in a country of immigrants. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.