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Good evening and welcome to the inaugural Middle East Centre webinar. My name is Eugene Rogan and as centre director,

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it's my great pleasure to be speaking to you tonight from the boardroom of the Middle East

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centre here in Oxford and what used to be the library reading room of Middle East Centre,

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which for decades was the venue where we hosted our five day seminar series.

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It's gonna be familiar terrain to any of our alumni who are joining us from abroad.

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And I'm delighted to welcome you all back and welcome everyone who is joining us for tonight's presentations.

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It is a pleasure and an honour to be joined by Dr. Alah elsewhere.

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Since the publication of his second novel, The Yacoubian Building in 2002,

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Dr. Onda has emerged as the most admired and widely read author in Arabic publishing.

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Yacoubian Building was, I believe, the most successful book ever published in the Arabic language,

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and each subsequent novel has proven a massive bestseller,

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Chicago, which came out in 2007, drawing on his personal experiences as a student in that city, and then in 2013, the Automobile Club of Egypt.

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And most recently got. And nor the so-called republic, which has yet to see light of publication in the English language.

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But his novels have been translated in over 30 different languages and have truly established him as a figure of global literature.

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Between his novels, Dr. Allah has until recently maintained a full time dental practise and written political commentary for the Egyptian press.

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Three volumes of his political writings are now available in English.

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There is his on the state of Egypt. What made the revolution inevitable, which came out in 2011, the revolutionary year for Egypt.

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Democracy is the answer. Egypt's Years of Revolution, published in 2015.

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And the subject for tonight's talks and the book that has given the theme to the entire terms of webinar series, The Dictatorship Syndrome.

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The book is available with a discount through the website where you connected to get your registration for this webinar tonight.

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And I would strongly urge all of you to take a moment to read the dictatorship's syndrome.

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Every now and again,

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we get a book from the region that is the kind of defining document that captures a political moment in the history of the region.

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To me, it's something like Samir Cáceres book Being Arab,

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which did a similar tour of the horizon for the Arab world in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.

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And I think this is an important book that's going to provoke so much conversation about our region and beyond.

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Dictatorship, of course, is a subject that has preoccupied Dr. Eila since his 2014 essay in Arabic.

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If that's not good. How do we produce dictators in a theme that holds relevance well beyond the Middle East on which we focus?

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This is not the first time, but the third, we've had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Onda to the Middle East centre community.

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He first came in 2009 after the publication of Friendly Fire and then again in 2015 after the English translation of the Automobile Club of Egypt.

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And I'm so happy to be welcoming you live from New York City, doctor, on that.

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Welcome back. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for inviting me and thank you very much for the wonderful introduction you made.

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Well, I think so warmly, I love. Now we go to work.

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And writing novels or newspaper columns, you are a dentist.

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Hence, we call you doctor. Other medical metaphors come to you so naturally.

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So explain for us in forensic terms, what do you mean by diagnosing dictatorship as a syndrome?

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Talk us through the book. Well, you know, that is in medicine,

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there is a difference between the disease and the central because the disease is this order of some organ or some system in the body.

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But when you have signs and symptoms which are repeated every time together.

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We call this syndrome. So I thought there the syndrome would be the right description for dictatorship because I made it a surge.

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And I noticed that there are many, many similarities between dictators and dictatorships all over the world.

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In the book, I'm not only talking about the Arab dictators, I tried to understand the phenomena in Africa and Latin America, in Europe.

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And interestingly to me, I found that the phenomena is repeating itself like a syndrome with the same signs and same symptoms.

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Sometimes dictators are seeing even the same sentences, you see.

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So there were sentences quoted, for example, by Bokassa, the African dictator, and the same sentence was said by a Sisi.

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And for me, this is very important because it's significant because it means that they think the same way.

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And that's why they say the same thing.

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Accordingly, I try to understand the phenomena and I try to explain how it happens and how we could cure the syndrome.

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And I think that it's in the way of diagnosing an ill and then subjecting that analysis to thinking about cures.

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That means your book has actually got a very positive message as well. Absolutely.

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The assumption is that the idea that the dictator as an individual could at some point impose himself on a nation of millions of people.

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This is not true.

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What happens is that some people, at some point, they are prepared to accept the dictator or sometimes they are waiting for the victims.

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And this idea was presented for the first time by French social order in the 16th century.

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And I explained this in the book. It's Yandilla.

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What she. They love what she wrote. Unfortunately, he died in the age of 31 and he wrote one single book.

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And this book is very important. The book is called In French Ludi Score Dila with Jude Death.

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You could, of course, easily translated to the discoursed of voluntary servitude.

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And he is presenting for the first time the idea of the dictatorship is immune to utter relish.

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It's not one sided religious that the people accept or are prepared at some point.

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And usually usually the deal is they give up their freedom and then in return they have protection usual.

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But you cast the people on the one hand almost as the victims of dictatorship.

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But there's also, in your analysis, a notion of complicity of the people in making the monster of the dictator.

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And in the opening of your book, you tell a personal account of your experience of going out with your father at the end of the 67 June war,

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confronting the crowds in that moment of crisis where they realised that they suffered defeat at that Nasser had led them into this defeat.

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And yet still, they saw Nasser as the necessary leader.

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They would not accept his resignation.

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Talk us through a little bit about how, even as a child, your eyes were open to this complicity between society and the dictatorship.

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Well, that's my father was, as I wrote in the book, was a writer,

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a lawyer and he was leftist and he very easily told me that despite the fact that NSA is achieving very good things for poor people,

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but it will never work because you need freedom first to protect the achievements.

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And that's exactly what happened after the death of Mossad. Just all their achievements fell apart.

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The comparison I tried to make is that Nozette was defeated miserably and the people took to the street for him to stay.

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And on the other hand, I mean, the comparison was Winston Churchill, who led Great Britain to a great victory in the Second World War.

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And then after that, he lost the election. And I concluded that in Egypt, by that time, there was this syndrome of dictatorship.

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And in England it wasn't the case. So people were capable to keep their critical thinking.

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They were careful to say that Churchill is a great man, but is not necessarily the right man now to be prime minister.

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That was not our case in Egypt. And I found a very interesting book by Dolfi Hakim, you know, whose who's dopier?

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Of course, you wrote that a ton of conscious.

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It is a small book, but it's really in the phenomenon into the syndrome.

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He said, I will never forgive myself, that I felt that this regime was lying.

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But I was attracted. I was seduced by the charisma of the dictator, by the propaganda machine.

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And I found this very important. And I tried to explain everything inside the central.

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I think one of the strengths of the book is that you don't pin the syndrome as a feature of Arab society, but you globalise it.

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You're constantly pulling examples from other parts of the world that have confronted

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dictatorship and where societies have been drawn into supporting and enabling dictatorships.

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But how do you view dictatorship in its Middle Eastern context?

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I mean, is this a particular problem of politics in our region?

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Well, there is a common mistake has been always done by some people as they are to put all the Arab

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nations on the same line and to try to analyse the situation in all sorts of nations on equal basis,

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which is the Arab nations. Of course, they share many things like their language, mostly religion.

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The history was colonialism and everything. But. Native societies are very different as far as the progress and the conscious may be concerned.

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Accordingly, you see, for example, in the Gulf area, that idea of the ruler as a public servant.

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It's almost doesn't exist. Of course, I have my full respect to the Gulf societies, but we're trying to understand.

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They believe that that is the head of the tribe or their father or their protector or the head of the family.

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That's how they see that order. That was not the case in Egypt because, as you know, we had a very early experience in democracy.

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We had the first parliament in the 19th century and read the first constitution in nineteen twenty three.

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And we had relatively liberal experience before the military coup d'etat, 1952.

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Accordingly, you refeeding to some model in the way and this you could see it easily.

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When Mubarak was overthrown by the revolution and he was brought to justice,

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that was an anger all over the Gulf states, at least by the royal families.

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First, they didn't understand how could you?

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And that was said, how could you put your own father behind the bars, you know?

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Second, I believe that Egypt's influence is extremely important in the region.

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So they felt threatened themselves as rulers because if this will happen in Egypt, it could happen in the Gulf area as well.

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So I think to understand the Arab societies, we should understand the background of each society because they don't have really the same background.

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Second, we have the problem of religion. It's a big problem.

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Of course, I'm not against the religion, but our interpretation of the religion, especially the Wahhabism.

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I know what you mean or what is a bit. Is pushing the people to obey the ruler.

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And the message is very clear on the Web is that you should obey the Muslim ruler even if he is corrupt, even if he is a criminal.

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It is brutal. You should obey. And, of course, this will have an influence on the attitude of the people.

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So the idea is that you learn through their religion to obey the shade or to obey the pope.

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In Egypt for the Christians. And then you will obey the dictator easily because you're totally prepared by the religion to obey.

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Well, I don't think that you are yourself naturally inclined to obedience.

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And I think that as a writer,

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you've always been pushing back at those elements of the government that have been autocratic or dictatorial in so many of your novels.

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There is the figure of the dictator in the background and Yacoubian Building.

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It's the big man. And he figures there's a shadowy puppet master behind the scenes in Chicago.

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You have the visit of the president and the way you portray the president is very clear

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about the feelings you have for the abuse of power that the president had come to represent.

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If one goes to your Wikipedia page and it looks at all the long list of the awards that you've received,

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it's really noticeable how unloved you are by the thought of publishing elite in your own country.

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So I think that you've been pushing back on dictatorship all along.

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But is there something then that that's been actually encouraging your creative writing?

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Did you find that you were inspired by dictatorship in your writing?

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Of course. Of course.

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Because you you write because the distance between what happens and what should happen becomes too much to be accepted, you see accordingly.

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That's how you you get inspired.

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And I know through friends that in some societies that society of prosperity and equality and people don't have almost any problem.

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The inspiration for literature becomes less, you'll see.

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Of course, I would like my country and the Arab world to be okay.

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I'm not saying that we should suffer from dictatorships so that they could write if we will have democracy.

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I'm quite sure I will have some other topic to write about. But it's true that I have been inspired by the injustice, especially the injustice.

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No, it comes through so clearly in both your fiction and in your non-fiction.

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The column that you would write for at Shorouk and as material, your you know, you used to sign your articles, Democracy is the Solution.

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And we always thought that that was in reference to the Muslim Brotherhood who were saying that it's Islam that's the solution.

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But, Doctor, I know he's putting democracy forward, but no, in light of the most recent book, The Dictatorship Syndrome.

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I mean, it's almost as though you're trying to answer that the solution to dictatorship is democracy.

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And is this where your thinking has been evolving in your non-fiction writing?

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Yes, of course, I think that democracy is a very, very important idea.

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The people of the regime in Egypt and I must say that we have the same regime since 1952, was different versions.

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Probably the current version in the most brutal one.

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But we have had the same regime. You know, you drink coffee and you drink coffee.

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There was milk or sugar without sugar. But basically, you drink coffee.

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So we have been drinking coffee, you know, too long. Since 1952, you know.

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So they say all the time there is an argument which that the regime is presenting that we are not prepared for democracy.

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Not now. You know, I must remind you here that Nozette said when he arrived to power, the officers said that we are going to stay only for six months.

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And then after that, we got to make elections that will organise elections and then we will go back.

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We will leave the politics, you know. And they haven't done this for 70 years.

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On the other hand.

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I have a real problem with the political Islam, and I think for many reasons, and you will find this in my writings and also in my novels.

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I believe that Islam is a great religion.

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But the idea of when you present Islam as a model for a state, you present a fake history, which never happened.

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Unfortunately, the political Islam shift, they recruit the young people who didn't read history and they don't want to read this.

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There was no is an Islamic state based on religion in our history.

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Never happened. You know, what happened is an empire like all the old empires, which were based on my sect and your conspiracy.

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And you could find this easily in a double ibsa and Adonal my way.

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Even in Dallas and the fact that you presented Donatello's marnia as an Islamic state.

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This is a big lie, you know, because what happened is that the Ottoman colonialism was even worse than the British colonialists.

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And we could go to a very famous historian. Yes.

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Oh. Describes the first day of ultimate occupation to go.

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They killed 10000 people who were not soldiers kidnapped.

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It the 17th century. Yes. Study a century either.

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Yes. So the idea is that all this all what is presented in the political Islam is a fake history.

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Just to to use the religious feelings of the young people and to make, you know, to present the kind of simple history which is totally fake,

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that everybody is against us, that the West and the West is one one single thing for them, that the West is against us, is against Islam.

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We should make that we had to conquer that those people who are against Islam.

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And accordingly, I think it's totally feetfirst.

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Second, the groups of political Islam and I'm talking here about the Muslim Brothers and the Salafi people,

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the Senate people existed after that, the boom of the oil.

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You know, before that, there was more Salafi people. But the Muslim Brothers, they joined every time the dictator.

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They helped the dictator against the democratic force beginning from 1952.

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That's this, the same cycle. Muslim Brothers had, the dictator said, to get rid of love and democracy.

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And then at some point they asked NLD to pay the bill and he refused and he put them in prison.

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And then after that, they said that released them.

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And so this is exactly what happened of the Egyptian revolution.

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The army used their Muslim brothers against the revolutionaries.

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And then at some point it was too much. They send them to prison.

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Cause I'm not justifying any Masek. I'm not justifying any violation of human rights whatsoever.

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This is something that I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to explain my position against the political Islam.

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You know, and of course, your position is well known. And you were very outspoken in your publications on your views about the Muslim Brotherhood

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and about Mohamed Morsi's presidency and for motherhood to bring this experiment to an end.

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But, of course, you've got a lot of criticism for that as well. And I think that you have always, in a sense,

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I expressed to your views openly and freely invited criticism both from those who represent the kind of

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military secular elite and those who represent the religious opposition like the Muslim Brotherhood,

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which leaves you in a very uncomfortable place in Egypt. No, I don't.

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I really don't care because I think that, you know,

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edness talking about I said that all there is to say always what you think and to do always what you say.

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I try to do that. So I have been always attacked by both sides.

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The people who are Sisi supporters and the Muslims.

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Why? Because they cannot tolerate. And they have the same mentality.

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They can not tolerate anything against their propaganda.

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So the propaganda of the Muslim Brothers is that Morsi was the first elected ruler of Egypt and he was overthrown.

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This is not exactly what happened, but it's the first.

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May I may. May I express my will be the first ruler elected or chosen by the people who was Muhammadiyah.

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And then after that, there were such that rule, 1924, free elections after the Constitution.

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So, one, it is not true. Second, they said that he was a seven present.

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Very good. A civil president should not have tens of thousands of militants who could use violence to attack his opponents at any point.

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What she did that she did that in the Supreme Court.

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What she did that against the media city. You know what?

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She was a member of a very mysterious underground group with militants.

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And yet you could get back to Mussolini. Western Union was not military.

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Mussolini was almost any form of the black church, as you know.

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I can not say that Mussolini was a civil prison.

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This is not true. Third, do you believe that when the army is killing the people in the street?

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And when the Army is doing is committing a Masek every month during 2011,

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do you believe that the army will allow the results of any election if they don't like the results?

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Could you imagine that the army was getting the people in the streets in Egypt

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overnight will be democratic and he will accept the fact that more she won.

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Number four, there is a problem that it is a case against the elections of Morsi and there were many violations.

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And these case we have three judges who just resigned not to see the case.

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Why? Because if they said that Qaddafi won, it means that Sisi has no place in power.

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So they didn't want to do that. Nobody talks about that. And Morsi, when he came to power, I and other people accepted.

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Right. Despite the fact that, of course, I don't believe that it was free elections at all.

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But anyway and then he made a constitutional decree November 2012.

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Nobody took some of it according to criticise it.

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Yes, no small criticising. He is this is destruction of the idea of democracy.

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Definitely. I mean, somebody will according to this decree.

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Well, bottom line is, will make the Egyptian law.

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And he will put his presidential decisions above the law.

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What kind of democracy is this?

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Well, a lot of good doctor dictatorship for just a minute, because your views on the Morsi presidency, I think, are familiar to us.

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And I want to give us our audience chances. Well, I should say your audience.

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Then I'm going to ask probably another question to Dr. ULDA before we'll open up to your questions so that we can broaden the conversation to please.

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If you'd like to ask a question, go to the Q and A bar on your screen and type in your question.

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My colleague Michael Willis will be bringing your questions back to us in just a moment.

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If you wish to be named, put your name on the question. If you want your question to be anonymous but anonymous, text your question.

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We will respect your wishes, but I'll be handing the floor over to you, to your audience in just a moment.

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But let me come back to your book, because you end the book with a chapter on prevention of dictatorships and growth

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and you focus on charisma and idols and religion and chauvinism and conspiracies.

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I look at you now and your new life in Brooklyn, and I'm just wondering,

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are you making any suggestions or giving any advice to American voters in November's

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elections by your prescription for coming out of dictatorships and drug?

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What do you expect me to say? Of course, I'm against was the club,

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and I think Mr. Trump is very dangerous and I could see many signs of the dictatorship syndrome happening in America.

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You know, people who don't care really about their freedom and they need that here, too.

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They need somebody to protect them from the immigrants and all this stuff.

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And, of course, you have Trump has been useful because I think because the experience of Trump has showed that

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the democratic system in America has serious problems and those problems should be fixed.

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You see why? Because Trump is a god of class, a citizen.

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Which was not the case for Bob, of course, or any other.

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He's classy. He is, as we say, in French comedy for his very rich is white Protestant, you know, has been.

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He has very good contacts, you know. And you see how many times the local stops before drunk.

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You go to Wooler committee, for example, report.

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You go to many things. And this guy hasn't presented yet his tax returns.

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You know, it's unbelievable. And it is unbelievable that a president is sitting president has a lawyer who admits

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that he made negotiations with two prostitutes and then the lawyer is in prison.

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But Mr. Trump is OK. And you could imagine easily if Obama was caught with a prostitute.

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What good to have you see. No, I just go through the list again.

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You talk you focus on charisma. I think about Trump and the way he appeals to his crowds, those big rallies.

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You talk about religion and I think about its appeal to the conservative and evangelical Christians.

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You talk about chauvinism. And I think about his appeal to the old right of white supremacists.

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You talk about conspiracies and I think about Q And on one of the things about your book that for a reader who is American

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but works on the Middle East is I can see that you are diagnosing a syndrome that really has a universal applicability.

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And I think in this moment, we shouldn't sit back and go, oh, this is a critique of Egypt and those Egyptians have got to clean up the house.

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I think we all have to wake up and think about what it means to confront dictatorship

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and not to be a society that enables or becomes complicit in the syndrome.

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Thank you very much. This is really what I had in mind when I wrote the book.

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It's not just about Egypt. It's not about the Arab world. It's everywhere.

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And you'll find the same thing and the same phenomena. And I tell you, for example, in France is not is no different.

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You have that extreme right in the front as you learn.

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And they are presenting themselves as the protectors of the French people against the immigrants, the Muslims, the terrorists, you know.

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And of course, you can not with this propaganda. There was a statistic that the last 10 years.

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85 percent of the victims of the terrorist attacks were of people or Muslims or coloured people.

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So the white victims, of course, any any single victim.

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For me, you know, is is it a big drama? But I'm just talking about how the propaganda could work.

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You know, we I'm talking we as non-white Muslims, we have been victimised by terrorists, you know, much more than anybody else.

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And we are accused of being terrorists in the same.

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I could go on with you at great length, but I can see a Q and A boy that's beginning to fill up and I know our audience

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is going to grow increasingly impatient with me dominating this conversation.

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So I'd like to invite my colleague, Michael Bidis,

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who has been monitoring the questions that the audience has been giving us to join us now and to share the questions from the audience.

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Michael, over to you. Thank you, Eugene. Yes, lots of questions coming in.

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But, Doctor, I love the first one coming in. Do you think people have been brainwashed for a long time to obey their leader?

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We'll take easily to democracy. I'm sorry, I didn't hear.

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Could you repeat the question, please?

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And the question is, do you think that people who have been brainwashed for such a long time with the lack of freedom,

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lack of a justice system will take very easily to democracy?

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No, no. But this is this is our our duty to try to you know, I tell you, of course, I write novels as an art.

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I'm not writing novels, you know, for any political will.

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But I try and I think any anybody who's intellectual who could give to the people somehow thinking about their conscious,

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about understanding what is happening should must do that.

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But it is not easy. Yes. Thank you very much for the question. You know, we have been brainwashed.

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We have had a terrible propaganda and we learnt to rely on our father and our father.

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Unfortunately, we had many fathers, none of them. To me, it was a good one.

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We begin by Mohammed Naguib and then Nauset and then Sadat.

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And then Mubarak. And then Sisi. And we learn to deal with those dictators as if they were our fathers.

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You know, I had a debate on Egyptian TV after the revolution with the prime minister of Mubarak and he resigned after the debate.

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I met your feet and I was surprised. Of course, I was supported by all the people of the revolution and many people.

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But I was surprised that people I didn't I didn't insult the prime minister.

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I didn't say anything, which is not adequate.

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But I just practised my right as a citizen.

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I asked head, what did you do that? What did you do that way?

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Where are the people who killed the protesters? You know, you're protected.

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I mean, a discussion that could happen in any democratic country or which is happening every day.

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And I found some people or I would say maybe people who didn't like that.

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And they said, how could you talk to your father this way?

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And I said, listen. My father died, you know. And he's not my father.

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And yes, we need time and we need efforts to get the people back to the conscience of the world.

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Yes. Which leads in very nicely to the next question. You described the syndrome or the disease, as you said, and more more of a syndrome.

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What is your prescribed treatment for this syndrome? Well, the treatment exists.

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I wrote the treatment in the book. But I could just briefly say, what is the treatment?

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The first element of the treatment is to understand that Central is not to be seduced by a hero.

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The idea of the hero is very dangerous. And why?

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Because the hero will be above anything. According you could see that the countries or the people who have had democratic experience,

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they resisted the EU, even if he was a real hero and you could see what happened with Churchill.

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What happened was the one who was a real hero, you know, so we should not accept the idea of the hero.

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Anybody in power is a public servant and he is working for us.

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And, of course, the conscious and the religion, the religion is very dangerous and we should be careful.

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I'm not against the religion, but I'm against the religious concept which presents or prepare the people to accept dictators.

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Which I then the follow up question to that. Thank you.

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Is the whole idea, therefore, of the benevolent dictator coming from Frank Demona is you don't believe that that is a syndrome.

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There are no benevolent dictators. It is something like, you know, we'll know what that was.

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That was a very famous that that happened in France is that it could be translated that enlighted the logic of the dictator is good.

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And it's something like the honourable thief that is that is a contradiction inside the term, you see.

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And of course, I'm not saying that all dictators were a big failure.

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Probably we have our Arab dictators have failed more than any other dictator in every everything.

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But, of course, you have some dictators who began was big achievements.

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I must tell you that when Hitler arrived to power, there were eight million unemployed in Germany.

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And after a few years, there was no one single German who was unemployed.

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But look what happened me.

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The problem is that you begin with achievements and then there is something called lost solitude, you dictator that solitude of the dictator.

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And it's a category of fiction writing in Latin America.

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The dictator becomes totally disconnected because he uses all the time what he wants to hear.

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And he's disconnected from reality. And then at some point, I wrote that in the book, there is that fatal, that terrible decision.

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The terrible decision, for example, for Hitler was to attack the Soviet Union, for Mussolini, it was to take Greece for possession.

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He was to support the terrorist terrorist attacks.

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For now said, was 1967 for Saddam Hussein with the invasion of Kuwait?

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You will find always in the ad. Even if he began, which could happen was good achievements.

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But at some point, he will have a fatal decision. And this goes in history without one single exception.

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Thank you. Next question comes from aliens I eat and she says.

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Going back to the possible treatment, the role of education,

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do you blame a lot of what has happened on the lack of a good education in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt?

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Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you very much. But I would just move the question a little bit and modify it, and I'll tell you.

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Do you think the dictator is interested, really, to give good education to the people?

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I would say no. I have many, many. I have really evidence that they don't care.

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They want to give the good education for the elites and the elites are related to the religion,

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but they understand dictators or even they feel that the good education is a threat.

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Which is true. Accordingly. Again,

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it's the duty of the intellectuals and the educated people to try to educate the people who didn't have the opportunity to get a good education.

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But I don't think a dictator would educate really the people.

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If he does, that is going to be very dangerous to.

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Thank you very much. Well, I have a question about what extent your own personal experiences need yet influence your thinking about dictatorship.

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How much of it is a product of your life? I was born and raised under a dictator.

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I now I will. We didn't see any. The book is your wardrobe. I get it.

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My generation. I don't think any any other person saw any democracy.

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But as I told you, this version is the most aggressive version of this image.

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So I was banned from writing in there under Mubarak just two months before the revolution.

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But as soon as Mr. Sisi arrived to power, I was banned from writing any TV appearance, banned from publishing, banned from everything.

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Of course, I'm a dentist and I still practise dentistry. So I was asking myself if Mr. Sisi at some point will arrest my patients and they

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were lucky enough to be arrested because they just gave to fix their teeth.

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But I got some point I had to go to.

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I teach creative writing in America. And then was my new novel, which will appear in English in April.

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I was brought to a military court, a military court in Egypt because of the novel.

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And of course, I was not in Egypt and I didn't send any lawyer for two reasons.

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First, it won't change anything because the military court, that decision had been taken already.

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And second, I don't recognise the fact that a novelist could be brought to a military court because of involvement.

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So this is the most aggressive version of the Seeb regime.

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Thank you very much. Question on the role of social media, has it made dictatorship worse?

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Well, no, I don't think so. I think that social media has been has been a headache to daughter dictators.

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And the evidence is that it is banned in many countries.

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Some forms like what's happened value, but also they make a kind of propaganda against the social media.

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My personal experience is that I have a Twitter photic number, three million and four hundred thousand followers.

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And this is three times three times the circulation of all the Egyptian newspapers together.

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You know, accordingly, it's very hard to ban me or to stop me because thanks to the social media, without the troops should be there.

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It would have been impossible. So I think, of course, they tried to use that dictator,

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that dictatorships try to use the social media and they send officers to get

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training out of control and stop and have to make egging on some accounts.

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But then to add, the social media has been very useful against the dictator.

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Other dictators, of course. Thank you.

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Switching to map the monarchies, do you think it's a distinctive type of dictatorship or is it really the same as the Repub,

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the Republican notions of dictatorship? Is it.

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No. What we the. A dartboard is different than the king in the West.

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The king in a democratic country, as you know, is just a symbol.

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And he's not ruling or she's not ruling the king in the heart of what is a real ruler.

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You see. And you see, for example, that in the kingdoms in the Arab world, they leave a space for know discussion about Libya.

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But there is the red line. Before the king or the royal family.

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And the king is ruling, I'm not against any kingdom, but against a ruling king because a ruling king is a terrible dictator.

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I would say if any country they would like to keep the king, he should be or he should be a constitutional king, not just a ruler.

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Thank you. Question from Otto Barot here in Oxford,

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particularly about the role of censorship and the threat of retribution and how is it affecting how you think it affects Jemera?

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And also how has it affected the way that you have written and discussed these actions?

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Personally? Well, the idea censorship means simply that something is banned and something is allowed.

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And that was the case under Mubarak. We don't have censorship anymore in Egypt because nothing is allowed.

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Accordingly, we don't have censorship. We have the regime controlling everything.

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Every single words either written or said on TV in Egypt has been approved by an office.

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So we don't have censorship. We have no we have no freedom of expression at all.

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Under Mubarak. We didn't have the freedom of expression. We had the freedom of talk.

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Because, as you know, the freedom of expression, is it democratic to.

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You write something, you accuse somebody in power, something should be done in the parliament.

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No. Or even by a court or whatever.

392
00:46:16,410 --> 00:46:27,680
This is a freedom of expression. What we had under Mubarak was the freedom of talk in the sense that Mubarak was telling us, we are writers.

393
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:32,250
You write whatever you want. I will do whatever I want.

394
00:46:32,250 --> 00:46:38,580
Now, we don't have freedom of expression at all and we don't have freedom of talk.

395
00:46:38,580 --> 00:46:52,560
And if you just push if you like something I wrote against Sisi, you could be in trouble if you ate something like your understanding.

396
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:58,650
What is happening in Egypt. It's even worse than other laws.

397
00:46:58,650 --> 00:47:06,560
So why? Because the regime has become like a wounded tiger.

398
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:10,220
And if you read a little bit about the animals,

399
00:47:10,220 --> 00:47:20,510
a wounded tiger is much more dangerous than Tiger was not wounded because the tiger is not wounded, has self-confidence.

400
00:47:20,510 --> 00:47:29,000
So he's not going to attack everybody. Once the tiger has been wounded, it will attack everybody because he doesn't have self-confidence.

401
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,210
And that's exactly what is happening by the regime.

402
00:47:32,210 --> 00:47:41,210
Mr. Sisi is almost every months, every month he talks all the time he has conferences or the Taliban.

403
00:47:41,210 --> 00:47:47,600
This is a typical dictator attitude. But every boss, he is repeating the same sentence.

404
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:55,230
What happened in 2011, refeeding to the revolution will never happen again.

405
00:47:55,230 --> 00:48:01,710
Thank you. Question from Emma, Emma. All the details, as you reference in Egypt and elsewhere, are men.

406
00:48:01,710 --> 00:48:06,580
How does gender play a role in both the construction of dictatorship and response?

407
00:48:06,580 --> 00:48:10,450
A good citizen. Thank you very much.

408
00:48:10,450 --> 00:48:18,530
And the biblical question and again, all the questions that wonderful. You can not be progressive, partially.

409
00:48:18,530 --> 00:48:25,630
And that's a subject is like a dictator will never believe, really, really.

410
00:48:25,630 --> 00:48:34,410
And the rights of the woman and he will never believe in the rights of the by dualities.

411
00:48:34,410 --> 00:48:39,930
Why? Why? Because this is his Colchis.

412
00:48:39,930 --> 00:48:51,210
He could pretend to do some reforms on the surface and here you could get back to Suzanne Mubarak as an example, you know,

413
00:48:51,210 --> 00:49:01,620
but they pretend you cannot be a dictator who is abusing the people, who doesn't believe that the people have the right to decide.

414
00:49:01,620 --> 00:49:06,750
And on the other hand, you would support the equality between men and women.

415
00:49:06,750 --> 00:49:11,730
This would never happen. It's a it's a package of conscience.

416
00:49:11,730 --> 00:49:21,390
And then when you're a dictator, get back to to the relation between Mussolini and the church, between Franco and the church.

417
00:49:21,390 --> 00:49:32,700
You know, the dictator is our father and he doesn't like or he doesn't accept any attitude by any woman against the principles of our family.

418
00:49:32,700 --> 00:49:39,460
This has been repeated. Sisi is the last one with it said.

419
00:49:39,460 --> 00:49:43,150
Thank you. Next question. A few questions coming through about the role.

420
00:49:43,150 --> 00:49:50,190
Do you think the military play in all of this, particularly obviously in Egypt, but elsewhere as well?

421
00:49:50,190 --> 00:50:00,470
The military should defend the country. This is only road. And any military which is exceeding this rule is very dangerous to everybody.

422
00:50:00,470 --> 00:50:06,020
The military is an organised force to defend the country.

423
00:50:06,020 --> 00:50:11,660
We have in Egypt as your I think you know, that the military has.

424
00:50:11,660 --> 00:50:18,110
We don't we don't have state reliable statistics. And this is not a sign of any dictatorship.

425
00:50:18,110 --> 00:50:27,290
You would never have reliable statistics in a dictatorship because the dictatorship that the people are lying all the time.

426
00:50:27,290 --> 00:50:36,070
So you don't know. But we know that the military has projects in every field in Egypt.

427
00:50:36,070 --> 00:50:50,070
I don't understand how the military could have projects to sell your fish or to sell tomatoes or to sell fruits or to make you know,

428
00:50:50,070 --> 00:50:54,970
so the military should be if there will be a democracy in Egypt or in any country.

429
00:50:54,970 --> 00:51:00,280
The military should do the role of the military, which is to defend the country.

430
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:05,530
Nothing more. Thank you. You're welcome.

431
00:51:05,530 --> 00:51:11,050
Well, I think we've come to the point of the evening where we have to bring things to a close.

432
00:51:11,050 --> 00:51:17,500
I say that with a heavy heart because looking at my screen, I can see we have 43 questions stacked up on the queue in a line.

433
00:51:17,500 --> 00:51:23,920
So this it really. This is a conversation that we could be taking late into the night.

434
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:29,560
It tells you something about the degree in which you engage your audience and you have provoked their thought.

435
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:37,420
Our thought, indeed. We're going to continue with this exploration of the dictatorship syndrome over the next seven weeks.

436
00:51:37,420 --> 00:51:42,030
And I will invite you to come enjoyed in the audience in future weeks to see.

437
00:51:42,030 --> 00:51:50,470
My pleasure. Yes. I think you'll find that this is truly one of the books for our times and it will be a great deal of discussion.

438
00:51:50,470 --> 00:51:54,280
So for that, thank you. Is very, very indebted to you.

439
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:59,830
We have taken the decision to keep these webinars to one our firm so that our audience,

440
00:51:59,830 --> 00:52:04,090
which has been huge and very appreciative, will patient us through to the end.

441
00:52:04,090 --> 00:52:11,800
But I'm going to close this with one hour strictly. And so my apologies to all of you whose questions we didn't get to.

442
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:16,300
I hope that you'll be with us next week and we'll get another chance to air your questions then.

443
00:52:16,300 --> 00:52:21,670
I do want to remind you that we will have next week webinar at the same time,

444
00:52:21,670 --> 00:52:27,890
where we will visit the themes of the book as they apply to the case of Iran are

445
00:52:27,890 --> 00:52:33,670
Yum items all day from Princeton and Chavous Ronge Badami from St. Andrews.

446
00:52:33,670 --> 00:52:42,830
We'll be speaking on authoritarian or revolutionary reflections on the nature of the state in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

447
00:52:42,830 --> 00:52:48,650
And that event will be chaired by Professor Edmond Hertzke. So I really hope that you will all join us then.

448
00:52:48,650 --> 00:52:53,800
But I would like to close with a final word of thanks to our speaker tonight.

449
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:58,090
I know it was wonderful and was wonderful to have you back. Thank you so very much.

450
00:52:58,090 --> 00:53:01,600
Thank you, Jeanne. Thank you. Thank you.

451
00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:05,970
All the people, my friends, all made it possible or made it happen.

452
00:53:05,970 --> 00:53:14,080
And thank you for the audience. And I hope we could meet after the Colvard 19 problem.

453
00:53:14,080 --> 00:53:17,830
We could meet freely, physically. Thank you, Jim.

454
00:53:17,830 --> 00:53:21,260
It has been very, very interesting and useful to me.

455
00:53:21,260 --> 00:53:31,100
I must tell you that my meeting, any meeting would weather with the leaders to me and I think to any author is very useful.

456
00:53:31,100 --> 00:53:36,400
So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And on that note, thank you all for joining us.

457
00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:38,691
And good night from Oxford.