Saddamism

Saddamism (Arabic: صدامية, romanized: Ṣaddāmiyah), also known as Saddamist Ba'athism (Arabic: البعثية الصدامية, romanized: al-Baʿthīyah as-Ṣaddāmiyah), is a Ba'athist political ideology based on the political ideas and thinking of Saddam Hussein, who served as the president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. It espouses Arab nationalism, Arab socialism and Pan-Arabism, as well as an Iraq-centred Arab world that calls upon Arab countries to adopt Saddamist political discourse and reject "the Nasserist discourse" that it claims collapsed following the Six-Day War in 1967. It is militarist and views political disputes and conflict in a military manner as "battles" requiring "fighting", "mobilization", "battlefields", "bastions", and "trenches". Saddamism was officially supported by Saddam Hussein's government and the ruling Iraqi Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and promoted by the Iraqi daily newspaper Babil owned by Saddam's son Uday Hussein. Saddamism has often been described as an authoritarian and totalitarian ideology that aimed to control all aspects of Iraqi life, and has been accused by critics of incorporating "Sunni Arab nationalism, confused Stalinism, and fascist zeal for the fatherland and its leader", as well as enabling Saddam to generate a cult of personality revolving around him. However, the applicability of these labels has been contested. Saddamism's far-right nature contributed to the inter-Ba'athist rivalry with the far-left neo-Ba'athists and the Assad family who held power in Ba'athist Syria.