Saleh Mansour, the last of Saudi socialists

SAUDI ARABIA’s last surviving socialist, Saleh Mansour, passed away in Riyadh on Monday following a car accident. Cultural circles in the Kingdom received the news of the Saudi intellectual’s death with shock, sorrow and disbelief, according to the Arabic daily Makkah. Mansour, who was a writer, critic and social activist, was known for his socialist ideals in Saudi cultural circles. He was known to have stuck to his ideals till the last in a country that has little room or respect for communism. A close relative said Mansour’s poor vision was the cause of the road accident that led to his death. He was buried in Riyadh after funeral prayers at King Khaled Mosque in Umm Al-Hammam. “Mansour used to live among the working class people because of his strong commitment to the socialist ideology,” said Badr Al-Khorayef, a friend. Khaled Al-Suhail, a media person, said enamored by the charisma of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, many Arabs espoused socialism. In the 1950s and 1960s, Nasserism, which combined the elements of Arab socialism, republicanism and nationalism, was among the most potent political ideologies in the Arab world. The scale of the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War against Israel in 1967 damaged the standing of Nasser and the ideology associated with him. “Even those people who did not have any respect for Mansour’s socialist beliefs agreed that he was fully committed and sincere to his ideology,” Al-Suhail said. Al-Arabiya television channel met with Mansour in 2013, when he spoke of major societal changes taking place in the Kingdom: “Now we live in a concrete civilization where no one knows his own neighbor.” He added: “Saudi society before four decades was known to be more open and receiving. The last communists among us still believed in socialism and we pined for the days when Saudi Arabia was in isolation long before the advent of the radio and other modern communication means.” Mansour was known for his famous red tie and white shirt that symbolized his socialist ideals and which he started wearing after his visit to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. He was once asked why he chose to stick to the uniform, he said: “At least I’m saving some electricity and water for others.”