Gaddafi with Andrew

more expedient. But I happened to have some insight into these various Kurtish groups, having spent some time there and having contacts there, And so I went to the website of these various you know, big publications which are left or left leaning or even sort of liberal, and I saw these borderline campus takes on what's happening in Iran.

by foreign intervention. In Marsh of twenty eleven, the US, the UK, and France launched a military campaign through NATO under the UN mandate to protect civilians. The war toppled Gaddafi,

but killed tens of thousands and devastated infrastructure. In the aftermath, Libya fractured into rival governments, militias, and foreign backed factions, triggering yet another civil war in twenty fourteen, and despite a cease fire in twenty twenty, the country remains divided between competing administrations, while ordinary Libyans face instability, human rights abuses, and economic hardship. I think it's fair to say that the NATO intervention was a net negative for the country.

But in this same breath, I cannot agree with those who seemed to believe that Gaddafi's rule could have continued either that he was some force for good in the country. And in this episode, I really want to get into the y to identify and dissect the actions of the man Gaddafi. According to his biography and Encycopoedia Britannica, Murma al Kaddafi was born in nineteen forty two near Sirte, Libya. Sixty nine years later, he would be captured and killed

in Sirte, Libya. After spending his early years in at tent he graduated from the University of Libya in nineteen sixty three and then graduated from a military academy in nineteen sixty five. In nineteen sixty nine, at the age of twenty seven, Gaddafi pulled off a blood less coup to seize power from King Idris to First of Libya. For the next four decades plus, he would be the de facto ruler of Libya. He was both a passionate Arab nationalist and a Muslim in power, he tried to

push both of his ideologies. He expelled Western military forces, expelled remaining Italian settlers and Jewish communities in Libya, nationalized the country's oil industry, banned alcohol and gambling, tried to unify with his Arab neighbors occasionally by attempting coups in their countries, and stood against normalization with Israel. So a

very mixed bag so far. Until nineteen seventy seven, Gaddafi ruled the Libyan Arab Republic, but the culmination of his Cultural Revolution period from nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy seven would sideline his political and religious opponents, who would begin in to see him as unstable, huboristic, and authoritarian. That period would instead cement Gaddafi as the sole ruler of what he would rename the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiria.

As recounted in Libya The History of Gaddafi's Pariah State by John Oakes, Jamahiria was a term he coined in his Green Book, likely inspired by Mao's Little Read Book, published during the Libyan Cultural Revolution period. Jamahiria was his idea of a state of the masses governed by people's Congresses and popular assemblies. And if it's one thing that makes a political movement, it's empowering. It's slapping the people's and popular label on everything, regardless of any additional context.

So they had these democratic local assemblies called basic People's Congresses that met three times a year, and those congresses appointed executive people's committees which did most of the day to day stuff, and above it all was the General People's Congress. This period was simultaneously an effort to encourage popular participation through these congresses while suppressing descend through his

control over the secret services. It was clear that Goddaffi was still in charge even after he stepped down from his formal position as Secretary General in nineteen seventy nine and simply and humbly dubbed himself the brotherly leader and Guide of the revolution.

easily manipulated. Issues were often raised and rarely resolved, And of course, compounding those flaws was the fact that these people's Congresses had no actual power over the things that mattered in Libya, the oil industry, the armed forces, the security services, and foreign policy, where Kadaffi and his compatriots

still ruled. Gaddafi decided where the oil money went, and he directed some of it to a great man made of a project that would extract from the ancient and non renewable aquifer under the Libyan desert to supply the coast for some more stable water supply. Frustratingly for him, I could assume Kaddafi did not get what he wanted out of the revolutionary People's Congresses, so he created revolutionary committees to mobilize the people and safeguard their rule through

commandos that answered to Gaddafi directly. These revolutionary committees could arrest counter revolutionaries, establish revolutionary courts, and eliminate enemies of the revolution at home and abroad. The people he called stray dogs. All of this for the people, of course, and for the revolution so on. People his system had some degree of people power and people voice, but in practice he exercised near total control and suppression of opposition,

both within the country and outside the country. The same went for workplaces. Of course. He spoke about worker partnership and power in the Green Book, but it was a state controlled and state distributed economy in Libia, run by oil money, with very few worker run enterprises. There was also no real freedom of organization or strike in Libya, as independent unions were banned and Graffi explicitly rejected class

struggle despite claiming to be a socialist. So in the Return of Momar Kadafi by Tunisian academic Hatem Gussemi, he hadized the cult of personality that was forged over the years of Gaddafi's rule that has resurfaced up to today. His opponents often pointed the good that he did for the country, establishing basic social services, free health, gain, education, howies in and land distribution, accessible loan programs, women's rights

and so on. And with that welfare state came naturally some base of popular support for people who had little to nothing before. Other fans of Gadaffi point to what I like to call hype moments and aura. So there was a time when he was in the UN General Assembly and he was supposed to be a short time to speak, and he just went on and on and on and on and on and on, and he tore up the UN chatter, hyperments and aura, right, and yeah, that's like something that a lot of people point to.

He was also, at one point in time the Chairman of the African Union, and he wanted to keep that position permanently, and he was proposing a whole United States of Africa. Like he had a whole period of African solidarity, which we'll get to.

on Twitter. Right. He was a big poster and people have somehow attempted to like construe this as like he was a leader of enlightened feminist regime like in Iran, which I don't know.

Internationalists Al jaz right elsewhere. He had policies that included the bannon of minority languages, the bannon of minority names, the discourageon of cultural expression, and sometimes denying citizenship to groups outside the Arab identity. So naturally, many of these minorities took part in the twenty eleven movement, and after Gaddafi's fall there was a revival of language, cultural institutions and publications. However, the NTC and those that followed have

continued to ignore the minority plight. Minority groups are still struggling for constitutional recognition, representation, and equal rights in a country that is, of course still divided, and some minorities have chosen to boycott the national political process entirely in favor of pursuing local self governance. Also, minorities were not

the only people being persecuted in Gaddafi's Libya. On the political front, despite coal and himself a socialist, Gaddaffi was really all over the place ideologically now internationally, he may have backed the Palestinian struggle, the Irish struggle, the African American struggle, but he was consistent in suppressing actual leftists in Libya. Marxis dot com identified some of these repressive efforts in their article on Gaddafi quote Gaddaffi was very

clear in expressing his anti communism. In nineteen seventy one, he sent a plane full of Sudanese communists back to Sudan, where they were executed by Nimi. In nineteen seventy three, the regime published an official document to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Gaddafi's rise to power under the title Holy War against Communism End quote quite the center. Later on, however,

he would get more chummy with the ussry. But Gadaffi was no marxisilantist, and communists and leftists and workers were not legally capable of organizing independently in Libya. Aside from them, you also had the murder and torture of civilians and journalists, the assassinations of rivals and Libya and around the world.

It was not the free speech utopia that Kadaffi tried to paint as instead of emboldening the left to sermons, he emboldened these tribal groups and set the foundation for the Libya that we see today.

them from the roof. Two top security officials came and took command, ordering the shooting to stop and promising to address the prisoner's complaints if they returned to their cells and gave up the guards they had hostage and the following day, shots fired from eleven am to one thirty five pm, a mass slaughter of approximately one thy two hundred of the sixteen to seventeen hundred prisoners in Abu Salins.

The families who suffered a blow were among the first on the streets of Benghazi twenty eleven, but those families were not originally told that their loved ones had been killed. Some of them continued to visit the prison for weeks, months years after, bringing gifts for their relatives who were already long dead. In the twists and turns of Gaddafi's ideological development or lack their of, following the fall of the USSR, Gaddafi would also pursue economic liberalization. He started

opening up to the West, ever so slightly. They were still progress and a brief hickup, but by two thousand and three, free market advocate Chukri Ganim was appointed Prime Minister. Before long, three hundred and sixty state enterprises were privatized. By two thousand and seven, Libya was laying off as many as a third of the government workforce four hundred thousand public sector workers, and according to a New York Times article from twenty eleven, the IMF had actually praised

Libya's economic reforms. So while twenty eleven conditions were so unbearable for so many workers, especially young people, there's no wonder that some of them fought with nothing to lose. The last aspects of Gadaffi's rule that I want to touch on was his complex relationship with Western powers billionis rule in the seventies and eighties. He did style himself for an anti imperist revolutionary and that is the image

that our people uphold of him to this day. Libya funded an armed revolutionary and militon movements worldwide, from the African National Congress or the ANC, to the Palestine Liberation Organization or PILO, to the Irish Republican Army or IRI. He aligned himself with the so called radical camp in the Middle East, including Bathist Syria and Iran, and Western

governments accused Libya of supporting international terrorism. Libya was considered a rogue state, but as noted by Syrian anarchist Mazen Kamalamas in an interview with Jose Antonio Guitairez, quote, even when Gaddafi was declaring himself an anti imperialist long ago, it was just a lip service. While he engaged as an authoritarian in trivial terrorist acts that never meant to

support the libertarian objectives of the victims of imperialism end quote. Still, Reagan called him a mad dog, and the US bombed Libya in nine teen eighty six after attacks in a West Berlin nightclub were attributed to Libyan agents. Those bombans narrowly missed Gaddafi himself, but they killed his adopted baby daughter. Libya was also blamed for the nineteen eighty eight bombing of PanAm Flight one O three over Lockerby, which led to sanctions both the United Nations and the US, which

isolated Libya economically and diplomatically. In the nineties, however, with four of the USSR, Libya began solely shifting toward cooperation. They handed over the suspects in the Lockerbie bombing, and sanctions began to loosen as they attempted to normalize relations. Western intelligence services soon started cooperating with Libyan intelligence against Islamist militon groups, including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is a thorn in Gaddafi's side. The early two thousands

had Libya renownce its weapons of mass destruction program. Following the invasion of Iraq, the US and the UNS have equently lifted sanctions, and diplomatic relations were a store fully with Western countries. Gadaffi hosted Tony Blair of the UK, Nicholas atco Zia France, and met with Obama as well, and many of these meetings with Western leaders produced multi billion dollar energy and business deals BP Royal, Dot Shell, Excellent, Mobile, Chevron,

Total Energies. They were all get in pieces of Libya's wealth as Libya began adopting one neoliberal economic reforms like currency devaluation, trade liberalization, and more openness to foreign investment. Libya was also able to cooperate closely with Western intelligence during the war and terror, including assist in the CIA and MI six in rendition and torture as uncovered by

Human Rights Watch. So by the mid two thousands, Libya had mostly reintegrated into the Western their global system, and the West, for their part, simply ignored Gadaffi's continued human rights abuses. The conter terrorism cooperation, the oil and gas contracts, and don't forget the brutal African migrant control were all too valuable for America and Europe.

we went to make our feelings known. And the Oxford Union is very silly institution, right, which prizes itself on free speech, and really it just does kind of class reproduction for the most part, right, And of course, like there was not freedom of each for people who are going to be rude to someone who was in charge of a state, even if they were being rude on behalf of the thousands.

valuable than people. It's the revolutionary rhetoric. Yeah, like with a sad right, Like you can murder your own people with chemical weapons so long as you pretend to give us a shit about Palestinians, even though you've spent decades using your weapons to kill your own people and never once use him to actually help the people of Palestine, to actually protect.

get what he wanted. And so to West, being opportunistic, we're just waiting for an opportunity. They were done with playing his game, and that opportunity came when the people organically rose up against Gaddafi in twenty eleven, not long after NATO intervened. In the years since, Libyans have suffered and died with no end in sight. It shouldn't be uncontroversial to say this Gaddafi was not a true antime perialist. I don't think it's possible for a statesman or a

government to be truly anti perialist. Government is fundationally exploitative internally and when turned externally, that drive exploitation is what we understand as imperialism. All the markers of imperialism worthy of condemnation, be it economic exploitation, cultural dominance, military violence, et cetera, is carried out under the label of governance when done within its own borders, when done against, for example,

the non Arab minorities in Libya. I think what's missing from now popular anti imperialist narratives is that connection, that analysis, and a gap in the analysis is what's creating this false consciousness that leads people to come to conclusion that anti imperialism means that XYZ government is anti imperialists and good and ABC government is imperialists and bad. That's not how the world works. States are never going to be liberatory.

They're not able to produce a liberatory framework. At their best, they function as a welfare state. At their worst, you get mass suppression and cults of personality. Sometimes you get a combination of both, as with Libya and Giaffi. And that's my message for today. Please stop lionis and leaders, stay woke. Yeah, and all power to all the people. Aber Andrew Sage. This is it could happen here. Peace.