Look at how charismatic he was! I hate to say it, but he reminds me of Saddam Hussein that way. Saddam was a horrible and evil man, but you had to admit, he sure had great charisma. But then so did Stalin and Mao, eh? The difference is that Saddam was a bad man and Nasser was a good man.
Nasser was a leftwing populist. He instituted land reform in Egypt and doled out lands to the fellahin, ending feudalism in Egypt. In the Marxist republic of South Yemen in the 1970′s, young Communists often had posters of Nasser in their rooms. He was a great secular Arab nationalist. Nasser came to power as part of a progressive coup (called The Revolution) led by the Free Officers Movement that overthrew the monarchy.
From 1950-1970, a number of similar coups led by like-minded officer units overthrew monarchies in other Arab lands, notably Iraq and Libya. Saddam and Gaddafi were legacies of this era. The Muslim Brotherhood played a vital role in the revolution, but relations between the two quickly soured and Nasser repressed the MB during his term.
Under the Great Abdul Nasser, Egypt stood up!
He took on the former British and French colonialists and launched a couple of wars against Israel, which I am proud of him for. In 1956, he took on Israel, Britain and France in an Arabia versus the West contest. Such a contest was replayed in 2003 with the Nazi like US War of Aggression Against the Iraqi People. The rebellion against this invasion is ongoing.
Some people never learn.
And 44 years after this speech was televised, the war between military secularism and religious orthodoxy continues. The more things change, the more they stay the same.