Although Cairo received the French philosopher as a supporter of the liberation movements

Researcher: Sartre sparked the press attack on Nasser

• Nasser mediates Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

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• Sartre expressed ambivalence in his position on the Nasserist revolution.

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An Egyptian researcher residing in France revealed that the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was the one who ignited the press campaign against the late leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Egyptian press and cultural circles in the seventies.

The researcher indicated that the flame of the beginning was an article by the great writer Tawfiq al-Hakim, which was commissioned by Sartre’s companion on the cultural journey and life, Simon de Beauvoir, and then Sartre grabbed the thread to convince the wise man that the article should be a book with the same title, "The Return of Consciousness". Egyptian intellectuals expressed their surprise. Because of Sartre's relationship with the campaign, given the hospitality with which Nasser received him in Egypt, and Nasser Sartre's consideration of "the philosopher of revolutionary change."

incitement

The director of the Middle East Studies Center, Ahmed Youssef, said in an episode of the "discussion" program on the "France 24" satellite channel, last Tuesday, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Nasser’s death that “The return of consciousness” published by Tawfiq al-Hakim, in which he attacked Abdel Nasser was originally an idea Sartre's companion Simone de Beauvoir, the Wise, commissioned it to write it, to be published in the magazine (Modern Times), and that Sartre picked up the thread from it to suggest to al-Hakim to publish it later in a book to have a greater and wider impact than the press circle, which represented a bomb in the Arab world, when it included Violent criticism against Abdel Nasser, who and his memory were sacred in the Arab world, ”Beauvoir described Al-Hakim’s article as“ seeing heart pain, but it is an unavoidable surgery. ”

Al-Hakim’s book “The Return of Consciousness”, in which he criticized Abdel Nasser, and the July 1952 revolution, and considered it a response to his book “The Missing Consciousness,” which observers described as the law of the Egyptian Revolution, was the beginning of a broad and continuous campaign against Nasser, and the achievements and line of July 1952, in which a group of writers participated, most notably Tharwat Okasha, Jalal al-Din al-Hamamsi, and Saleh Jawdat, and a group of interviewees responded to them, the most prominent of whom was the late journalist, Hassanein Karroum.

The assertions that Sartre was linked to the campaign attack on Nasser raised a state of surprise in Nasserite circles because of the strong relationship between the two men.

Amazing position

"The position of Sartre and Simon Beauvoir, the attacker of Abdel Nasser, is surprising. Nasserite Egypt welcomed them with open arms, and Egypt considered Sartre the philosopher of revolutionary change in the world at that time, and included Sartre and de Beauvoir's visit, which lasted 16," the historian of the popular resistance, journalist Muhammad al-Shafei, told Emirates Today. One day, a tour of the village (Kamshish), which was witnessing, in the Egyptian language of Nasiriyah at the time, a battle between the peasants and feudalism, and the name of Sartre and Beauvoir were published in Egyptian newspapers and magazines, as they were supporters of the Third World.

He continued, "The meeting between Nasser, Sartre and Beauvoir lasted 3 full hours. It included a tribute to the achievements of July, such as the High Dam and agricultural reform. It also included an expanded discussion of the reality of human rights in Egypt, after Sartre raised questions about it."

Why, after all this, did Sartre exhort the wise man to attack fiercely on the whole experience.

The impact of al-Hakim on Abdel Nasser

Al-Shafei said: “As for Tawfiq al-Hakim, it was the most prominent influence in the formation of Abdel Nasser, as the book (The Lost Consciousness) on (the historical hero who saves Egypt) was one of Nasser’s motivations to participate in the July Revolution.”

On the other hand, Al-Hakim was considered from the book of the revolution, and Abdel Nasser Al-Hakim was awarded the Medal of the Republic in 1958, and the State Appreciation Award in 1961, and he received it at “any time and without setting a date,” according to what Al-Hakim said in a press interview with Al-Ahram on March 15, 1965.

Nasser also provided protection for Tawfiq al-Hakim, when Abdel Hakim Amer objected to his book "The Bank of Concern", and protected him again when he clashed with the Minister of Education, Ismail Al-Qabbani, and the matter reached the dismissal of the minister because of this clash.

It is worth noting that the attack on Jean-Paul Sartre, who took a position in support of the Algerian revolution, due to the duplication of his positions, is not new, as the Egyptian journalist Aida Al-Sharif criticized him in her book "A Witness to a Quarter of a Century", and revealed his discomfort with Gazan children carrying the Palestinian flag while they received it. On his visit to Egypt, he was also criticized by the American-Palestinian thinker Edward Said, who declared that Sartre was not "sympathetic to the Palestinian Nakba," and that Said had a bad impression on him in the only meeting that brought them together.

The

- The position of Sartre and Simon Beauvoir, the attacker of Abdel Nasser, is surprising, as Nasserite Egypt welcomed them with open arms, and Egypt considered Sartre the philosopher of revolutionary change in the world at the time.

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