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"The annals of history," Nasser has written, "are full of heroes who carved for themselves great and heroic roles, and played them on momentous occasions. It seems to me that in the Arab world there is a role wandering in search of a hero." Nasser volunteered to be that hero.
At first shy before crowds, he became their adored leader, gained the power to select the targets of the mob. to attract more people to join it, to manufacture its slogans, to brandish its raw, brutish power, to intimidate his adversaries. Yet if he were to abate that fury or convert it into a disciplined, responsible community, it would abandon him—the role would seek another hero. In the pungent Arabian Nights image: "He is a man born of a horse who has become the rider of the horse," and he could be unseated.
Teaching to Riot. So dangerously did Nasser play his game, so recklessly did he challenge the West that he was driven more and more into inextricable commitments to the Russians. Each time he said to Western diplomats: "But you forced me to do it." Doubtless he would justify his flight to Moscow last week in the same terms. The West has never figured out quite how to deal with him, having tried persuasion, flattery, gifts, threats, boycotts, bombs. Usually the West has asked of him what his ambition cannot allow. He was asked to restrain himself, which was asking him to be against his nature, against his basic elements of strength, against his repeated successes. And for a long time the West made the mistake of trusting his word.
A gambler in a hurry, Nasser has missed few tricks in conspiracy and demagoguery. Every sleazy political fugitive in Asia and Africa finds a place on his international bandwagon. He has so far converted Islam into his personal political instrument that the Nasser-appointed rector of Cairo's 1,000-year-old Al Azhar University, who is the nearest thing to a Moslem pope, seems to spend much of his time looking up Koranic passages to justify Nasser's policies. Nasser's hold on the Arab unity movement is further tightened by some 3,000 Egyptian schoolteachers who have flooded the Arab-speaking world, helping to spark pro-Nasser riots in Jordan and to turn the people of oil-rich Kuwait and Saudi Arabia against their rulers.
In the illiterate Middle East, radio propaganda is Nasser's strongest single weapon. If he himself is no Hitler, he has a palace full of little Goebbelses. His controlled press freely advocates assassination, as did Cairo's Al Ahram last week: "Chamoun will have no better fate than that of Nuri asSaid or any other traitor who betrayed his country." And Nasser's Damascus radio shamelessly spread the lie early last week that Lebanese rebels had killed ten U.S. marines.