Opinion A revolution without heroes

The absence of such figures in the Arab Spring is partly a measure of the pressures Arab intellectuals have lived under in recent decades,trapped between brutal state repression on one side and stifling Islamic orthodoxy on the other. Many were co-opted by their governments or forced into exile,where they lost touch with the lived reality of their societies. Those who remained have often applauded the revolts and even marched along with the crowds. But they have not led them,and often appeared confused by a movement they failed to predict.

The lack of such leaders may also be the hallmark of a largely post-ideological era in which far less need is felt for unifying doctrines or grandiose figures. The role of the intellectual may be shrinking into that of the micro-blogger or street organiser. To some,that is just fine. “I don’t think there is a need for intellectuals to spearhead any revolution,” says Sinan Antoon,an Iraqi-born poet and novelist. “It is no longer a movement to be led by heroes.”

To some extent,the intellectual silence of the current uprising is a deliberate response to the hollow revolutionary rhetoric of previous generations. The Arab nationalist movement began in the 1930s and ‘40s with idealistic young men who hoped to lead the region out of its colonial past,backwardness and tribalism. The Syrian political philosopher Michel Aflaq and other young writers found inspiration in German theories of nationalism,and envisioned their Baath Party as an instrument for modernisation and economic justice. But the party and its misty ideas were soon hijacked by military officers in Syria and Iraq. In Egypt too,Arab socialism soon became little more than a pretext for dictatorship. Arab nationalism reached its zenith — or its nadir — in Gaddafi,who saw himself as a godlike intellectual,imposing his delusional Third Universal Theory on Libya’s hapless people.

Inevitably,and perhaps unfairly,the current Arab tumult has been compared with the uprising against communism in Eastern Europe in 1989,the last great social upheaval of comparable scale. Intellectuals played a much more prominent role in those movements. The dissident Czech playwright Vaclav Havel wrote an essay,“The Power of the Powerless,” that became a kind of blueprint for how to survive with dignity in a totalitarian country,and later emerged as a champion of his country’s Velvet Revolution.

It may be that the connecting role these figures played is less needed today. It may also be that the ideological platforms of earlier revolutions are obsolete,given the speed of communications and the churn of new perspectives.

“Let the killing of Gaddafi be a lesson to the revolutionaries as much as to the rulers,” one Arab Twitter user wrote. “And let revolutionaries everywhere remember that Qaddafi came to power by making his own revolution 40 years ago.”