The Ba’th Party began in the 1940s as a pan-Arab socialist movement but in Iraq, after 1968, it became a tool for Saddam Hussein’s one-man rule.
For The Ba’thification of Iraq, Aaron M. Faust examined a cross-section of documents found in the Ba’th Party archives following the U.S. invasion. He finds that Hussein retained the ideology but stamped a cult of personality across it; like Stalin, he anointed himself as supreme interpreter of the belief system he inherited.
Like any dictator, Hussein ruled with carrots and sticks, but the totalitarianism of his regime arose from a deeper ideological need to mobilize the population into true believers.
