Wedeen Review

I found Lisa Wedeen's book to be very interesting for a few reasons. First, it's interesting to read an account of how a government might saturate as many different spheres of public life as possible. Her descriptions of the prevalence of Asad's portrait and other cult icons in shop windows and taxi cabs despite the lack of official requirements to display them was particularly interesting because it shows how a self regulating system of cult-like behavior can be constructed. Although I'm sure many Syrians are resentful of their government to at least a certain degree, seeing Asad's portrait must discourage any would be dissidents because how do you separate people who are playing along from true believers without putting yourself at risk?

I also found her book interesting because it focuses on areas that we have not previously explored and that are conceptually more challenging. The rentier state, for example, is much easier for me to decipher. Bribing people is, at its core, a fairly simple process: you figure out who might cause you trouble and give them some cash. Although the process of deciding who needs how much money and when might be an intricate and delicate process, conceptually it is not all that complex. How one might go about creating a "fearless leader" seems to be much more challenging in my mind, mostly because of the risk of overdoing it.

My third point of interest is exactly that, and perhaps better described as a point of amusement than anything else. The anecdote about soldiers claiming to have had dreams about climbing ladders of fire to kiss the face of the leader, for example, made me chuckle; everyone in the room must have known that they were all lying through their teeth. What are the odds that everyone just happened to dream of Asad? But the amazing thing is that everyone still participated, which begs a big question in my mind: when do people throw up their hands and say to one another "this is such nonsense...when can we stop playing along with this charade of a government?"