The distinction between “Moroccan regime” and “Moroccan people”: an analytical framework that has become obsolete?

For years, Algeria’s official discourse—both presidential and governmental—has upheld a clear and consistent position: the dispute is not with the Moroccan people, but with the regime that governs them. This principle sustains a deliberate distinction between societies and state apparatuses, in line with an Algerian diplomatic doctrine that favors solidarity among peoples and opposition to expansionist state policies, rather than to civil societies themselves.

Yet the evolution of Moroccan social discourse—especially on social media and within certain opinion segments—today poses a significant analytical challenge: a substantial portion of hostile rhetoric directed at Algeria—insults, identity-based attacks, and talk of the “Eastern Sahara”—does not emanate from Moroccan officials, but from sizeable segments of Moroccan society itself.

This reality compels a reassessment of the geopolitical wisdom of indefinitely maintaining the “people vs. regime” distinction in the Moroccan case.

1) A Marked Popular Hostility: Mere Reflection of the Regime—or Ideological Adherence?

The fact that most hostile narratives against Algeria arise from ordinary individuals rather than official institutions merits close scrutiny. This hostility manifests in multiple forms:

• Insults and invective against Algeria and Algerians;
• Propagation of expansionist maps encompassing Western Sahara and portions of Algeria’s western territories;
• Negationist discourse targeting Algerian national identity;
• Normalization of the idea that borders ought to be redrawn in Morocco’s favor.

It would be analytically naïve to read this as a purely spontaneous popular phenomenon. Moroccan society operates within a context where the state has, for decades, exercised extensive narrative control, particularly through schooling, official media, and cultural production. This is not evidence of an inherently hostile populace; rather, it is the outcome of structured ideological–educational engineering.

2) The Moroccan School: A Longstanding Vector of Directed Identity Formation

Moroccan curricula have long enshrined the myth of a “historic Moroccanity” extended in scope, nurtured by a selective reading of precolonial history. Expansionist cartography, introduced to children at an early age, has become a cognitive normality.

This process is more than doctrinal:

• It shapes the perception of reality;
• It models political emotions;
• It forms an entire generation convinced that Morocco has been amputated from its “natural” territories.

Thus, it is not the people—conceived as an autonomous entity—that generate these narratives, but the product of a methodical ideological architecture deployed by the Moroccan state since the 1960s.

3) Digital Diffusion: Accelerator of the Expansionist Doctrine

Social networks do not create the doctrine; they release and amplify it.

Moroccan speech hostile to Algeria does not depart from the state’s narrative frame; it is its echo, its reappropriation, and at times, its intensification.

Popular virulence, therefore, is not independent of the regime: it is the regime—through education and communication—that manufactures it, and the digital sphere that reveals and accelerates it.

4) Should the Conceptual Separation “Regime vs. People” Be Maintained?

The argument warning against rigidly maintaining this separation belongs to a defensive logic: preserving, artificially, the image of a “brotherly people” while large popular segments embrace the regime’s expansionist narratives may:

• Weaken Algerian public vigilance;
• Diminish awareness of the ideological threat;
• Obscure accurate identification of hostility vectors;
• Sustain a myth detached from current geopolitical realities.

From a doctrinal, analytical standpoint, once a society adopts the regime’s narratives, full dissociation between the two becomes untenable in strategic assessment.

Yet it remains crucial to avoid wholesale essentialization: the observed hostility is not the innate expression of an entire people, but the result of systematic political and scholastic conditioning. Algerian strategic prudence must account for this phenomenon without sliding into ethno-national generalizations.

5) Toward a Realistic and Vigilant Algerian Doctrine

A balanced approach might entail:

a) Recognizing the sociological reality:

A significant segment of Moroccan public opinion today subscribes to expansionist theses.

b) Identifying the cause:

Not a “natural” hostility, but a long-term state-produced ideological construct.

c) Adapting Algerian strategic communication:

Without collapsing the distinction between people and regime, it is necessary to state openly that:

• Moroccan society has been molded by an expansionist project;
• The danger emanates not only from elites, but from popularized representations.

d) Strengthening national vigilance:

Inform the Algerian public about the conflict’s multiple dimensions: official, ideological, and societal.

Conclusion: An Analytical Adjustment is Needed

To assert that the distinction between the Moroccan regime and the Moroccan people has entirely lost its meaning may be excessive if it devolves into a sweeping judgment over millions. However, to affirm that the distinction is no longer sufficient strategically, and that the Moroccan populace is now imbued with state-driven expansionist narratives, is a grounded analysis.

Algerian vigilance should not rest upon a romantic or naïve vision of automatic solidarity among peoples. It must be anchored in a clear understanding of an evolving reality: Moroccan expansionist ideology has become a socially internalized political culture, no longer merely the discourse of elites.

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By Belgacem Merbah

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