Culture is one of the most important sources of state power;
Therefore, the state must use its culture to build the awareness of its people and motivate them to strive to achieve great goals, the most important of which is liberation, achieving independence and building the future.
But does the authority's control of culture lead to an increase in the power of the state and its use in defending its identity and expressing its historical experiences?
To provide an in-depth answer to this question, the state needs to evaluate its cultural production, and study the political environment in which this production took place.
This evaluation constitutes the beginning of the society's launch to express itself culturally, and to provide the foundations upon which the cultural strength rests.
The relationship of culture with power is one of the most important factors that can restrict the process of cultural production.
We can provide a lot of evidence for the validity of this rule by studying the experiences of many countries, but we will be content here to present some aspects of the Egyptian experience.
Secular dictatorship
The authority’s control over culture after 1952 was linked to a monopoly process that was used to impose Westernization, dependency, and submission to tyranny. This ministry in 1958.
The security and intelligence services had a decisive role in this choice, which depended primarily on loyalty to the leader, the ability to glorify him, justify his actions and decisions, distract the people from their basic issues and work to subjugate him intellectually.
Causes and motives for glorification
During my studies at the Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University, I noticed that students belonging to the left glorify Okasha’s wealth in an exaggerated manner. They almost raised him above humans, and attributed to him qualities that the heroes and makers of history do not enjoy, and they see that he achieved great cultural glory for Egypt, and that the writers of his time enjoyed all This increases their creativity.
When Tharwat Okasha's memoirs were published, the leftist writer Salah Hafez demanded that it be taught in schools;
In order for the students to know that in this world there is something called cultural issues, and he described these notes as an epic;
Who is the wealth of Okasha who took charge of shaping the cultural life in Egypt and had this great influence?
Tharwat Okasha was one of the Free Officers who carried out the “July 23 Movement, 1952,” and considers himself one of its makers, but he believes that this revolution ended in 1956 after the referendum on the constitution, and Gamal Abdel Nasser assumed the presidency. Specific features are the centralization of power, a system that collects all power in the hands of the President of the Republic without anyone else, and without real constitutional accountability to the people.
Culture in an authoritarian regime
Tharwat Okasha defends this system, saying, "This authoritarian regime was not a heresy invented by Abdel Nasser, but was one of the current regimes, and Abdel Nasser never claimed that his style of rule was democratic in the liberal sense."
This is Tharwat Okasha's description of the system in which he took over the management of the Ministry of Culture and its institutions, a system in which there is no place for dialogue or participation, or multiple visions, and does not allow opposition.
Tharwat Okasha presented a description of Gamal Abdel Nasser that raises him above humanity;
Perhaps this was the role that Tharwat Okasha was destined to play in that period of Egypt's history;
This role - in short - is to subject the people to the control of the leader, and to build his image in the minds of the masses, through various cultural discourses and practices.
Okasha attacked some writers who denied Nasser and criticized him after his death, describing them as having supported Nasser with all their hearts in his life, and glorified him to the point of "deification", as he put it.
Tharwat Okasha opened the way for those writers who diverted Abdel Nasser to control the Ministry of Culture, and then became indignant with them during the era of Sadat, when they began to deny Abdel Nasser and his policies, describing them as having no principles, and that they were always ready to “deify” every ruler in order to preserve their interests. .
Dictatorship of the Ministry of Culture
Tharwat Okasha took over the Ministry of Culture twice from 1958 to 1962, and from 1966 to 1970, bringing the term of his ministry to 8 years.
In his memoirs, he describes himself as running this ministry, saying, "I realized that one of my first tasks is to gather around me a group of intellectuals with excellent qualifications to carry out the tasks I assigned to them, and this was not an easy matter; I claim that I have succeeded in all those I chose and selected, some of them disappointed me, but it suffices me that I have jumped with a constellation of the right competencies at the right time; I paved the way for them to work together as a team in harmony and harmony.
Creating cultural awareness
Okasha worked to select this elite of intellectuals very carefully according to clear criteria in order to be able to control the direction of the ministry in the new era.
The security and intelligence services had a decisive role in this choice, which depended primarily on loyalty to the leader, the ability to glorify him, justify his actions and decisions, distract the people from their basic issues and work to subjugate him intellectually.
It was this constellation raised by Tharwat Okasha that formulated the Egyptian cultural awareness, set the conditions for publication, and obtaining state prizes that were merely rewards for loyalty and glorification of the leader, and had no real value because they never depended on scientific evaluation and real literary criticism.
The glory of Tharwat Okasha, in the eyes of the left and the secular liberals, was that he entrusted them to the Ministry of Culture, and they became the arbiter in determining the title of “intellectual,” and on whom to release it, so this bright title became the preserve of them;
It is granted only to those who accept it and follow in some way their positions and thoughts;
Even if he presents junk quotes from Western literature.
Ministry of Dependency to the West
In light of this policy, many practices that spoiled the cultural life in Egypt occurred:
Many Egyptian scholars who presented scientific and literary productions that the whole nation is proud of were excluded because they lack the conditions of the intellectual set by Tharwat Okasha and his constellation, the most important of which is hostility to Islam.
Awarding prizes to hypocrites who falsify people's consciousness and glorify tyrants to the point of "deification", while many of Egypt's true scholars and writers were forced to emigrate or remain silent.
This means that it was not the Ministry of Culture of Egypt, but the Ministry of Dependency and Tradition to the West
There are intellectuals who encouraged and attacked the regime and criticized it in several aspects, but the Minister of Culture used to take with them a method of ignoring sometimes and scaling roles until he returned completely and changed the opposition. He must pay her for it, knowing full well that they would be unable to do so without Okasha's support and consent.
insulting intellectuals
This does not mean that the constellation that enabled Okasha's fortune in the Ministry of Culture only enjoyed privileges, grants, gifts, prizes, and fame, but that some of them were insulted and humiliated.
He confessed several times in his writings and interviews his sharpness, nervousness, and love of solitude;
Perhaps because of his superiority over his constellation, whose hypocrisy and subordination he knows, and that no one is able to confront him, Tharwat was following the same army style that he was raised on and learned in running the Ministry of Culture and subjugating the intellectuals.
If Tharwat Okasha accepted the position out of fear of eternal rest, what about the constellation he gathered, and enabled it to control the ministry, its organs and institutions?
The truth about freedom of creativity
This is the freedom of creativity defended by those who controlled the Ministry of Culture, thinking that they are creative when they quote from Western literature, and that they present a cultural production worthy of criticism or evaluation, while most of it was just a poor reproduction of the ideas of Western and Oriental writers, which does not express in any way About the people, not about the ideas and culture of the region.
And because Okasha's wealth subjugated and humiliated them, they compensate for this by arrogance over the people, accusing them of ignorance, and inability to understand their creativity.
Tharwat Okasha narrates in his memoirs that when Gamal Abdel Nasser offered him the position of Minister of Culture, he was not comfortable, but Abdel Nasser said to him: Come to your office, with God's blessing, and do not worry about self-comfort, because I can achieve it for you!
When Tharwat asked his friend Youssef Al-Sibai about the meaning of Abdel Nasser's words, he said to him, "Hurry up, Tharwat, for you do not understand the concept of the word "comfort" in the language of the people of Upper Egypt, because it means "eternal rest", and I do not think you welcome it now! It is clear that Youssef Al-Sibai was Expert "Behazar" Abdel Nasser and the connotations of his words.
When Tharwat spoke to Abdel Nasser from his office on the phone, Abdel Nasser said: I am confident that you can form a close link between the movement of intellectuals and the revolution movement to create an effective unity from it.
Everyone is afraid
The question that arises now: Why was Tharwat Okasha afraid of taking up the post of Minister of Culture?
I simply think that he was aware that the security and intelligence services are the strongest in the authoritarian regime as he described it, and that they are the ones who control the culture, monitor every movement, and interpret every word, and that they always look at culture with suspicion and suspicion, so he knew that he would be under good supervision, and that he would be entrusted with It is a mission that has no room for error.
And if Okasha's wealth accepted the position out of fear of "eternal rest", what about the constellation he gathered and enabled it to control the ministry, its organs and institutions?
Certainly, their thoughts were trembling with terror and fear that a word they wrote would be interpreted in a way that does not conform to the whims of the authoritarian regime, and this means that everything that was produced, and the Ministry of Culture provided opportunities for publishing and radio for it, expresses the system and achieves its goals in subjugating the people, distracting them and falsifying their consciousness.
Some of these intellectuals claimed false heroism later after the end of the Nasser era, claiming that they often used symbols and allusions to refer to critics of Nasser and corruption in the apparatus of his rule.
This claim is very weak and clearly false;
As the agencies did not allow a mere signal that could be interpreted in any way as an insult to the leader, Minister Tharwat Okasha - despite the halos of glory surrounded by the leftists - was nothing but a mere employee frightened of "eternal rest";
If he did not perform the role that the leader wanted, who was not interested in science or culture, but all that concerned him was building his image, promoting his speech, and subjugating the masses to him.
The state has monopolized culture, and the secular left has decisively monopolized the Ministry of Culture whose policy the leader has drawn up, and the minister has been responsible for controlling the movement and controlling cultural production.
The culture of fear and the path to liberation
This is how a culture of fear was formed that was based on glorifying human weakness, helplessness and submission to the ruler. helplessness, weakness, and futility of resistance;
And that he has to live with poverty, injustice and oppression.
If that constellation feels that there is someone who can present literature that encourages resistance and struggle, and glorifies heroism;
He is directly accused of terrorism, and that he wants to restrict the freedom of their creativity that was laid by Sarwat Okasha.
And the intellectual - according to their conditions - is the one who produces entertainment, who rebel against the values of society and innovates in the use of sexual connotations, and he has to glorify and defend the leader even when he is subjected to the defeat that caused the destruction of homes, the extermination of thousands of men, and the occupation of Jerusalem and Sinai.
In order for the nation to be liberated, it must revolt against the culture of fear, powerlessness, weakness and dependency to open the way for real intellectuals who express its true identity, thought, spirit of its children, its civilizational distinction and its right to life.