David Bell

What is wrong here?

Yeah.

Where King Abdullah had been too frightened to confront the Mutawa directly, Mohammed bin Salman simply ignored their protestations and used his father's absolute power to crush any opposition.

The public was wildly supportive of his actions, and conservatives found themselves alone.

Perhaps MBS's single most important quality was his ability to understand how the youth of Saudi Arabia felt.

It wasn't just the morality police.

Regular citizens knew it was impossible to get anything done through the government without bribery.

The poor majority of the country were forced to watch while a handful of princes siphoned away the oil money that was supposed to be funding social programs and infrastructure, right?

Like, people are pissed about this.

And so...

MBS has a lot of support as he sets about dismantling his enemies, the forces he saw as holding Saudi Arabia and his own ambition back.

He later said this of his decision to crack down on the religious police.

I am young.

I don't want 70% of the Saudi population to waste their lives trying to get rid of this.

We want to do it now, right?

And this is, we're going from like the genocide and the orchestrating internal fights with his family where he's the bad guy to like,

No, he's in the right side of this thing.

These guys suck.

It's a broken clock situation.

Yeah, the only thing that will get rid of them is a strong, he's effectively the king, not literally, but is a strong regent who's being like, fuck it, that's not how we do things anymore.