"Digital Gulliver: Why Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi's Satire Resembles a 21st-Century Version of Gulliver's Travels"

 "Digital Gulliver: Why Al Nadim Al-Raqmi's Satire Resembles a 21st-Century Version of Gulliver's Travels"

Introduction to the Chapter

When Jonathan Swift published "Gulliver's Travels" in 1726, he was not merely presenting an adventure story for children, but offering a scathing critique of European society under the guise of fantasy. Gulliver was not a traditional hero, but a mobile mirror reflecting the absurdity of the world around him. Each journey revealed a different face of human madness: pettiness in Lilliput, ugliness in Brobdingnag, scientific insanity in Balnibarbi, and savagery in the land of the Houyhnhnms.

This is precisely what Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi does, but in the twenty-first century. He is the Digital Gulliver who roams the worlds of Arab and international politics, not aboard a ship, but via the X platform and his blog. Each of his texts is a new voyage into a different world: Shablanga, Greater Israel, Trump's Washington, besieged Tehran, and even Mars.

This chapter analyzes the deep parallels between Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi's project and Swift's timeless masterpiece, arguing that what Al-Nadim does is not merely ephemeral satirical writing, but a continuation of a global literary tradition reproducing itself in the digital age.

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I. Multiple Worlds as Mirrors of Reality

In Gulliver's Travels

Swift did not create a single world but a series of worlds, each representing a different aspect of human society:

World What It Represents

Lilliput Political pettiness, trivial conflicts (the egg-breaking dispute)

Brobdingnag Exposed human ugliness, seeing humanity at its true scale

Balnibarbi The madness of science detached from ethics

Land of Houyhnhnms Savagery beneath the mask of rationality

Gulliver moves between these worlds, each time discovering that human brutality takes different forms.

In Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi's Texts

Al-Nadim also creates multiple worlds, but they are not distant islands—they are different dimensions of reality itself:

World What It Represents

Shablanga Local corruption, absurd bureaucracy

Greater Israel Zionist expansionism, Arab complicity

Trump's Washington American political absurdity

Besieged Tehran Great power conflict from a peripheral perspective

Mars Pipe dreams, escape from reality

The difference is that Al-Nadim needs no sea voyages. His world is the internet, and his journeys are his texts.

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II. The Narrator's Persona as a Moving Mirror

Gulliver: The Ordinary Man in Extraordinary Situations

Gulliver is not a superhero. He is an ordinary man, of average intelligence, inclined to believe what he sees. This quality makes him a reliable narrator, not because he is always truthful, but because he reflects what he sees without filtering. When he describes Lilliput, he does not mock it directly but describes it precisely, and it is the reader who discovers the satire.

Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi: The Ordinary Voice in an Extraordinary World

Al-Nadim also adopts the voice of the ordinary citizen. He does not speak as a condescending intellectual but as a citizen describing what he sees. In the text "Awards for the First Commenter," he does not mock readers directly but describes his situation: "After more than 800 satirical texts have yielded absolutely no interaction from any of his readers thus far." It is the reader who discovers the tragedy beneath the satire.

Direct Comparison:

Gulliver Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi

Traveler visiting strange worlds Writer roaming the worlds of politics

Precisely describes what he sees Precisely describes what he reads and watches

Reader discovers the satire Reader discovers the satire

Ordinary man in extraordinary situations Ordinary citizen in extraordinary times

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III. Exaggeration as a Tool for Revealing Truth

Exaggeration in Swift

Swift uses extreme exaggeration to reveal truth. In Lilliput, the conflict over breaking eggs from the larger or smaller end symbolizes the trivial religious conflicts in Europe. In Balnibarbi, mad scientists try to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, alluding to the madness of science detached from reality.

Exaggeration in Al-Nadim

Al-Nadim uses the same technique:

The Exaggeration The Truth Exposed

Shablanga hosts the G7 summit Media inflation of local events

A village mayor calls the Chinese and Russian presidents Political dependency, illusory dreams

Regular flights to Mars after the wheat season The gap between ambition and capabilities

Israel celebrates Iranian missiles as scrap iron Commodification of war, dehumanization of conflict

The goal is identical: pushing prevailing logic to its extreme end to reveal its absurdity.

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IV. Satire of Official Language

Language in Swift

In Gulliver's Travels, the official language of the Lilliputians reflects the pettiness of their power. Their self-descriptions (the mightiest empire in the universe) contradict their actual size. This contradiction between language and reality is the essence of the satire.

Language in Al-Nadim

Al-Nadim mimics the official language of the state:

· "The G7 Economic Summit"

· "Air defense system against ballistic missiles"

· "Closure of airspace to air navigation"

This grandiose language describes a village. The contradiction between the enormity of the language and the triviality of the subject reveals the absurdity of official discourse itself.

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V. Presence and Absence: Who Are the Absent?

The Absent in Swift

In Gulliver's Travels, ordinary people are absent. We see kings, nobles, scientists, but peasants and workers have no voice. This absence is a silent critique: only the elite speak for society.

The Absent in Al-Nadim

In Al-Nadim's texts, the ordinary citizen is also absent. Shablanga plans for Mars, but no one asks about the peasants' conditions. Israel celebrates missiles, but no one mentions the dead. This absence is a moral critique: who pays the real price of war and politics?

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VI. Why "Digital Gulliver"?

We can now answer the question: why does Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi deserve the title "Digital Gulliver"?

1. Building multiple worlds: Like Swift, Al-Nadim creates fictional worlds that reflect reality.

2. The ordinary narrator: Like Gulliver, Al-Nadim speaks in the voice of the ordinary citizen.

3. Revealing exaggeration: Like Swift, he uses exaggeration to uncover truth.

4. Parody of official language: Like Swift, he mocks the discourse of power.

5. Prominent absences: Like Swift, he leaves gaps that reveal tragedy.

The fundamental difference is that Gulliver's ship was the eighteenth-century means of travel, while Al-Nadim's means of travel is the internet in the twenty-first century.

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Chapter Conclusion: Digital Literature as an Extension of World Heritage

This analysis demonstrates that what Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi does is not merely ephemeral social media posts, but an integrated literary work employing the same techniques used by the great satirists in the history of world literature.

Al-Nadim is not Swift. He cannot be. The temporal and cultural gap is too vast. But he does what Swift would have done had he lived in the internet age: he uses the available medium (the internet) to critique power by exposing its contradictions through imagination, exaggeration, and parody.

In this sense, Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi's project can be read as a new link in the chain of global satire, extending from Swift in the eighteenth century, through Orwell and Voltaire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the digital space in the twenty-first century.

Swift was the Gulliver of his age. Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi is the Gulliver of our age.

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Postscript: What This Comparison Reveals

This comparative reading reveals something profound about the nature of satire itself: it is not bound by medium, language, or era. Satire is a mode of thought, a way of seeing the world that can be expressed through eighteenth-century prose fiction, twentieth-century dystopian novels, or twenty-first-century social media posts.

The tools change—ships become smartphones, islands become hashtags—but the function remains constant: to hold a distorted mirror to society and force it to see its own reflection.

Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi's satire, like Swift's, works through:

· Defamiliarization: making the familiar strange so we see it anew

· Scale-shifting: magnifying the trivial and miniaturizing the grandiose

· Logical extension: taking premises to their absurd conclusions

· Voice: speaking from the margins to the center

These are not just techniques; they are weapons. And in the hands of a skilled satirist, they can penetrate defenses that direct criticism cannot.

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Epilogue: The Gulliver Paradox

There is a paradox at the heart of Gulliver's Travels that resonates deeply with Al-Nadim's project: Gulliver journeys to strange lands to discover truths about his own society, but by the end, he can no longer bear to live among humans. He has seen too much, understood too deeply, and can no longer participate in the ordinary delusions that make society function.

The satirist faces the same fate. To see clearly is to be condemned to perpetual alienation. Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi's anonymous existence, his distance from the worlds he describes, his refusal to participate in the normalcy of political discourse—these are not accidents. They are the necessary conditions of his vision.

Gulliver became a stranger in his own land. Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi is a stranger in the digital village he so brilliantly satirizes. And that strangeness is the source of his power.

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This chapter is part of a comprehensive study on Al-Nadim Al-Raqmi's satirical project

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