Nasser's Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution With a New Preface

by Joel Gordon

This essential book explores the early years of military rule following the Free Officers' coup of 1952. Enriched by interviews with actors in and observers of the events, Nasser's Blessed Movement shows how the officers' belief in a quick reformation by force was transformed into a vital, long-term process that changed the face of Egypt.
Under Gamal Abdel Nasser, the military regime launched an ambitious program of political, social, and economic reform. Egypt became a leader in Arab and non-aligned politics, as well as a model for political mobilization and national development throughout the Third World. Although Nasser exerted considerable personal influence over the course of events, his rise as a national and regional hero in the mid-1950s was preceded by a period in which he and his colleagues groped for direction, and in which many Egyptians disliked-even feared-them. Joel Gordon analyzes the goals, programs, successes, and failures of the young regime, providing the most comprehensive account of the Egyptian revolution to date.

Genres: Egypt, History, Middle East, Politics

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Joel Gordon is Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History and Popular Culture at the University of Arkansas.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a little rough going at first, but the last bit is really well written. it would be nice if he wrote another book covering the years of Nasser's rule after the mid-1950's.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nasser's Blessed Movement covers the period of time documenting Gamal Abdel Nasser's rise to power in Egypt. The book is more academic than story. Its intended audience is people with more than a passing interest in the region. Gordon begins his book documenting the political environment in Egypt during the 1930s and 1940s documenting the primary political actors and political ideologies swirling about Egypt in the decades prior to 1950's. The book follows through the Free Officers take over in July 1952 up through Nasser's assumption of power in 1954. The introductory chapters covering the political atmosphere are excellent and the conclusion to the book is also quite well researched and written. There are moments in the body of the book were he becomes bogged down in details. Some will appreciate that approach more than others.

[Andrew Daniels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good, but the author assumes reader knows a fair bit, I did not. I knew who Sadat, Nasser, Suez Crisis, Free Officers were, but only have heard the name of Salim, and never heard of Nagib. This assumes a bit more knowledge than I had, I maybe needed to read another book on this period first.

At one point, the author says well, the events of Egypt-US interaction are well-known (i.e. so well known the author doesn't need to explain this ! Except he does....)

[Yousif Elbeltagy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up in a household that viewed 1952 with scepticism and never called it a revolution but a military coup; I still agree with that sentiment. While my dad was a Nasserist (no longer), I know fully understand my grandpa's hatred for Nasser. Abdelnasser purged the socialist/communist movement in Egypt. If anything, I learned more about the depth of the socialist movement in Egypt and left this book with a list of Egyptian Socialist figures that I must learn more about since they've been purged with history.

The Free Officers might be the first centrist revolution, they had absolutely no ideological drive. They didn't purge the Pasha class, they didn't fight the foreign occupier and clamped down on workers and socialists on a daily basis. They didn't even latch onto any political movement; they removed the King and then free-styled everything else. We are an apolitical dictatorship because of this mess. The pre-existing political parties and monarchy are to blame as well. Our failed experiment with liberal capitalist democracy prompted this problem. Pre-1952 Egypt is modern-day Jordan, a weak rump state. It's the first political movement that openly declares being centrist, apolitical and non-ideological! Then what are you even doing here? Just replacing one dictatorial regime with another. While I'm not mourning the death of our liberal-capitalist experiment (good riddance), I fail to see what angle the Free Officers approached this with.

They didn't want to establish an Islamic or Socialist state, nor did they want to revive democracy and give the establishment another chance. They wanted power but were unsure how to go through with that. However, I could find one reason the coup happened. Palestine. Our defeat in Palestine in 1948 is mentioned a lot in Nagiub and Nasser's memoirs. The "humiliation" of Egypt and the Egyptian army in Palestine and the weak response from the King played the most pivotal ideological reason for the coup. It isn't an overstatement to say that Palestine is the key to the liberation of Egypt and the region as a whole.

Egypt fundamentally reeks of a scared society. A scared nation that seemingly can never do anything 100%, we must half-ass everything. The King, Wafd, Muslim Brotherhood, Socialists and the Army. All of them don't have enough of a revolutionary spirit to try and mold the state into their vision. The Egyptian people, for their part, seem to be such passive players, accepting whatever situation they're dealt with. While I don't want to say we're a hopeless society, I can't help but shake off the idea that we aren't politically serious or ideologically driven enough to go through with a political revolution that fundamentally changes the situation for the better. This desire for "stability" and fear of "change" keeps driving this apolitical regime that we've had.

We are a nation that is unwilling to explore the true depths of its potential.

PS: I bought this book when I was 16 but I'm glad that I'm reading it now. Great work and a brilliant amount of details.