Many demands of the participants of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions of early 2011 focused on the right to democratic self-governance in the face of repressive autocratic regimes. This revolutionary discourse of inclusive political freedom, however, did not develop in a vacuum. Political speechifying in the contemporary world illustrates an isomorphic tendency among regimes to appeal to democracy and democratic concepts and, by necessity, activists responded to hegemonic conceptualizations of freedom and citizenship posited by ruling autocratic regimes. This project analyzes speeches given by heads of state between 2000 and 2010 from four North African countries – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt. Across all of these countries, I found that democracy was discursively linked to neoliberal economic development and insistence by leaders that the young and poor benefit from such a political economy. Likewise, tight control over civil society is presented as necessary for ensuring stability, security, and the empowerment of women and minority groups in the face of a destructively-religious, unruly, and politically immature populace not ready for complete freedom. As the 1/11 revolutions have illustrated, these hegemonic orientalist discourses were not accepted by the people in these societies. Millions of activists of all ages, backgrounds, and beliefs insisted instead on expansive notions of freedom and democratic governance. The basis of this research paper is approximately 1,700 speeches gathered from state information ministry websites, which I analyze for patterns, trends, and differences in how democracy is conceptualized across the four countries. The analysis of relevant speech excerpts relies on qualitative coding, logistic regression techniques, and metric scaling to examine and illustrate convergence and divergence in how these autocrats discuss democracy. Exploring the use of concepts of political freedom in authoritarian contexts shows that they are exceptionally fragile and easily manipulated by regimes seeking to legitimate repressive practices. This analysis also highlights a wider variety of conceptualizations of democracy are ordinarily recognized in studies of established democracies. Examining the use of freedom language among North African countries, two of which have experienced popular upheaval resulting in the removal of entrenched dictators, will also shed light on the varied ideologies and goals of these autocratic regimes. The primary focus will be on comparing and contrasting discursive patterns between these states in light of their own sociopolitical contexts and the drastic re-configuration of democratic discourse since the Jasmine Revolution and beyond.