Throughout his tenure as president of Egypt, Nasser managed to transform the Egyptian public into an audience. Whether in his official processions in the streets of Egypt, on his visits to factories, schools, universities, and companies, or in the mere photographs of him that were ubiquitous in Egyptian society, Nasser was a spectacle to see, a human landmark whose presence in a geographical space would turn it into a Mecca for glances, gazes and stares. Abundant in Nasser's biographies and accounts are descriptions of the passion that would sweep people – men or women, children or adults – upon seeing him. That a few of those encounters were non-verbal – where Nasser would just stand and smile and people would merely look and cheer – only adds more aura to this extraordinary phenomenon. Far from being an exclusively Egyptian phenomenon, however, Nasser was able to turn any Arab people he visited into a similar audience. It is, indeed, his visit to Syria in 1958, upon declaring the formation of the short-lived United Arab Republic, that offered an unprecedented instance of Nasser and the people-as-audience. Muhammad Hasanayn Haykal (1923–2016), prominent Egyptian journalist and Nasser's lifelong confidant, presents the following account:

It is Nasser's speeches, however, that effectively demonstrate this audience– spectacle relationship. Characterised by their passionate and hyperbolic rhetoric, defiance, and even humour, those speeches punctuated the president's decisions and responses to international and local events – from the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956 to the infamous ‘resignation speech’ in the wake of the 1967 defeat, to name but the two most memorable ones. They were ‘dramatic performance[s]’, with the spectators ‘looking as if they were seeing something messianic’.