What are you talking about?

How many patriots are ready to bear the idea that the people, the homeland, and the citizen are concepts that entered our minds and hearts as they entered our kitchen "croissants" and "baguette" bread and french fries; that is, in the passengers of French colonialism, we migrated his body and preserved his soul by preserving many of his habits, ideas and values?

Is it not strange for Arab patriots to condemn the people for their conception of nineteenth-century European thinkers, among them German Romantic Romans, and Russian writers such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, right-wing French racist thinkers best known by Maurice Barras (1862-1923) who more than praise, compliment and glorify the "simple" And, in his view, they are possessed by the "instinct of truth", and those who constitute "the repository of the true patriotic spirit", and "those who act in the face of those who are intellectual and university-educated have no characteristic except empty chatter."

How many of our politicians know that Louis Napoleon who ruled France under the name Napoleon III (1852-1870) was the one who invented modern political techniques, such as the sermons of glorifying the people and wooing the general public by visiting villages and countryside and receiving them in the palace, in an absolute break with the custom that prevailed before The French Revolution, that is, the custom of the people to court the ruler and seek to please him and visit him in the palace, not to receive honor but to perform obedience duties?

Using the language of the times, we can say that this image of the people is totally incompatible with its image in "Logiciel", which has dominated our minds for fourteen centuries. This program that we inherited from our forefathers and grandfathers does not see people in the Islamic community as a people, i.e. the gathering of the same master and the legislator who rules it, but rather the parish of its only hope is a good shepherd, a nation of believers who live in the shadow of the provisions of the Qur’an alone and the ruling approved by (the caliphate); but the value of each individual It is measured by the extent of his piety, faith and obedience to the guardian.

Some of us still strongly reject the modern software, we owe what it has carried and still carries a deep disruption in our societies, as it is difficult to reconcile two contradictory programs. But the battle was decided in favor of a renewal that did not and will not stop, and all nations are obliged periodically to a painful update of their programs, whether they like it or not, the source of change from within it or from external pressure.

The problem, then, is not the western and even colonial roots of the concept of the people, but what has become of use in our Arab world, but rather in the whole world that European civilization has printed over the past two centuries, with a character that will not be erased soon.

Let's dig under the membrane of the loose concept of the declared and the hidden, and we will discover how we were put to it in two directions on the opposite sides: one that exudes the remains of the old vision and the worst of us, and the opposite side exudes the delusions of the age and the most dangerous of us.

**

Days after my election by the Constituent Assembly as President of the Republic, following the victory of the glorious December 17 revolution, a specialist in constitutional law came from an ancient family to suggest - as requested by the interview - ideas on the next constitution.

The man sat in front of me while I was in the museum of Prince, the barbarity of camels that I wore before my appointment, and I continued to use it during and after I left power. He stared at me, a classy living class who did not hide his feelings, and then he took the initiative in a tone in which the pain overwhelmed all the subservience his class was brought up in front of any authority: "I never imagined in my life that someone like you would sit on this chair."

Poor guy! He could not bear the shock of seeing a man from the "public" - who does not hide or be ashamed of his origins - in the presidential seat, and could not for a moment control his class, racism, and regionalism that he was hiding, perhaps even from himself.

Suddenly I remembered a story that happened to my father, who was a student in the forties of the last century in the Al-Zaytuna Mosque in Al-Mamour, which he told me between mockery and anger that did not hide decades, according to which he asked in the seminar a well-known sheikh from the most ancient urban origins about a matter, and the Sheikh responded sharply and he paid attention to his Bedouin dialect: My son, why do you not return to your desert to graze beauty and leave science to its people?

The sheikh and his class were in those days dividing what we call the people today to the private and the public, and the latter is mainly composed of the displaced people to the capital seeking livelihood or knowledge, and they call them "the horizons", that is, they come from the far horizons, from the lands of drought and poverty.

This term disappeared from the dictionary to replace it especially today - and has called itself the "elite" - with other terms to introduce the general Tunisians, or the poor of a specific region, such as: "bottom", "Haftarish", "Bulgar", "Alzarnat" and "Alabash" And "08". Finally, a disrespectful female member of the previous parliament came up with the word "from behind the blake", that is, from behind the road signs that refer to villages that are known only to those who are afflicted with birth and live in it.

In every Arab country, you find terms that exude the same contempt. The Egyptian term "overpowering" may have its effect, as it combines in one word three meanings that best describe the general public with the best description: the majority ... overpowered by its command ... prevailing, God willing, when it rises to its rights. In the past, the same "elite" defined those who are overpowered as sheers, drivers, and greats.

The funny thing is that you hear some people in Tunisia tell you about the majority they belong to by calling it “the noble people” as a matter of ridicule, because the vanquished imitates the majority - as Ibn Khaldoun mentions - even in his view of himself that he sees through the eyes of the dominant. Here is a blink, for example: In the context of the policy of opening the presidential palace to citizens, I created a program to visit school children every Sunday for the palace, and to host residents of the popular neighborhoods and countryside to lunch with me every Friday.

I remember the person in charge of the program slipping her tongue at a meeting when she described the Friday guests - using the French word - as "Le petit peuple", a term used by the French "elite" with the same scorn. She only maintained her position with an apology full of embarrassment, especially because she was doing her job with the "little people" with much dedication.

Language remains - past and present - the best evidence of mindsets and attitudes that are sometimes hidden with skill. The word "decent people" or "small people" - not to mention the most brutal and aggressive terms - refers to a people who are polluted by the "elite" and they throw it with all moral dirt, lending it publicly or secretly. With a set of characteristics that it envisions is part of its nature and nature, such as ignorance, laziness, lack of manners, roughness and dullness.

It is, of course, a fabricated image that exists only in a sick imagination, but the "elite" desperately needs to pledge and spread rumors even among its victims, and it is its only justification for its acquisition of the greatest amount of wealth, power and consideration, and the matter is not acceptable unless the situation of these "overpowering" is a result These characteristics are not the result of injustice, violence and repression of the minority.

**

And because we are in a world where there is nothing but its opposite, it is not surprising that we find a completely opposite image of the people that makes him the object to whom we owe loyalty, that we raise his interest above every interest, that we seek to serve him and develop his will, and that we see in him the source of all strength and the source of all We are legitimate, and we make him the symbolic being who enacted and enforces laws in his name, and we cry from time to time with the famous cry of Farhat Hashad: I love you, people.

And because this people ascended in the imagination of its companions to an object for which sacrifices (called the enemies of the people) are offered, and it is sacrificed for its soul and blood as martyrdom in the arenas of war or revolution; it is not an exaggeration to talk about it as the holy people, which today is the main concept in the popular goods throughout The world under the name of populism.

How does this pronounced organism emerge from every human defect that we know how many defects and shortcomings are? There is no answer except by saying that the system is not just an arithmetic sentence of its components, but rather something completely different, which allows the creation of a whole being whose parts are missing components. Possible, but this stereotype is also a fabrication, and it has origins and causes that believers may not want to know.

To properly handle any idea in the field of politics, examine the nature of its advocates. On the case, you will discover that you have three types of populists: dangerous, opportunistic, and naive. There is no doubt that Adolf Hitler is the complete model of the dangerous populists. From his excessive devotion to the German people and his reverence to him, he decided - and he sees him losing the war and ready to surrender - that his beloved beloved disappointed him, and he was not at the level of the image he weaved about him, and then there is no room for nothing but He killed him after he refused to commit suicide.

Thus, his minister, Albert Speer, ordered the destruction of all infrastructures in order to extinguish the German people from existence (and the good luck of the Germans that the minister refused to implement the order), it is an incomparable and anomalous disease! Of course, but see what many of our Arab peoples suffered from rulers, the word of the people was not leaving their mouths except for chewing and swallowing, and the best example is Gaddafi.

He who studies the history of political movements that started from the sanctification of the people - such as fascism, Nazism, communism, or our Arab "revolutionary" regimes in Syria, Libya, and Iraq - cannot help but remember the famous saying of al-Asma’i: "From love, what was not killed!"

Opportunist populists are less dangerous. Who today in Europe and the United States stands behind the continuing glorification of "overcoming" and the fierce attack on the corrupt political elite that stole their authority with its representative democracy? Who calls them to turn the tables by calling for the people to exercise their sovereignty without the media, that is, without parties, elections and parliaments?

In an exciting book, Italian thinker Giuliano da Inpole describes the real actors. You will not discover workers, farmers, and unemployed people from the poor, but rather businessmen with billions, professors in the most prestigious universities, experts in information networks (Big data), and an enormous army of electronic flies charged with destroying rumors through rumors and false news and raising the level of hatred against "enemies" The people. "

This explains how someone like Donald Trump in America, like Victor Urban in Hungary, or the Five Star Movement in Italy came to power. Beyond the mourning mourning of the oppressed "people" in its struggle with the unjust "regime", you will ultimately find nothing but an old phenomenon that clearly shows that "defeat" is nothing more than the fuel of a battle between an empowered elite and an elite that seeks empowerment. Look at what happened from the 1950s to the 1970s in our Arab countries, and you will only see the same phenomenon in the garment and language of that era.

The rule that history has established is that behind the images of the profane and sacred people, the struggle of an old and elite "elite" struggle justifies the preservation of its interests and an ambitious new "elite" that wants as much power, wealth and consideration as possible. In both cases, ordinary humans come out - whether despised or glorified - with an empty hand and nothing in it.

Finally - not least - the naive idealists come. In the same shallow, ill-intentioned way in which the despotic elite abolished all the virtues present in an overwhelming number of people, these populists with the same shallowness - usually in good faith - abolished all the defects and shortcomings of the same people.

Take, for example, how they envision solving the problems of representative democracy, and today it is in a critical situation in all countries of the world and not only in Tunisia, Lebanon and Iraq, where its parliaments give the ugliest images of them. They argue that the solution is in direct democracy, which will enable the people to regain power confiscated by corrupt parties and their "monster" parliaments.

It is natural for populists to place the flaws of representative democracy on the rules of the game rather than on the players, and their imaginary people are made up of - if not all - of individuals with a high level of rationality and knowledge of their own and the interest of society, who are able to make the best decisions in problems they have mistakenly tasked some corrupt and incapable of solving. Their allowance.

They perceive that the transition from the norms of representative democracy to the rules of direct democracy (whatever forms will be taken) reduces the risk or even abolishes any role for the demagogic, misleading, and deceived politician of the politician, resigned citizen, corrupt financier, and foreign intervention. As if all of these humans are mechanical secretions of representative democracy, and the fact that they are the necessary players alongside the honest politician, honest fighter, committed journalist and smart voter.

They believe that players who have exhausted representative democracy will evaporate as soon as the rules of the game are changed, and that they are an integral part of the game under a law: there is no life without death, no market without thieves, and no game without cheaters. They will then continue to play with the same spirit of fraud, and will skillfully exploit all the loopholes of the new rules to strike direct democracy, which may be only a passing stage of chaos that paves the way for the return of tyranny.

**

The bottom line is that we find ourselves - and we turn the concept of the people - in front of two imaginary images of it. No sane person believes at the moment that the majority of ordinary people deserve the contempt of the empowered elite, or that it deserves the deification of the elite seeking to be able.

The question that imposes itself after all this talk: Is there an objective people who were distorted by these stereotypes and can we know without adding to the two delusions a new illusion? Yes; this real people exist and we can get to know them accurately, especially as it makes our modern history under our eyes. It is what I call the people of citizens ... and for the rest of the conversation.