Supporters praised Gaddafi's administration for the creation of an almost classless society through domestic reform.[345] They stress the regime's achievements in combating homelessness and ensuring access to food and safe drinking water. Highlighting that under Gaddafi, all Libyans enjoyed free education to a university level, they point to the dramatic rise in literacy rates after the 1969 revolution.[345] Supporters have also applauded achievements in medical care, praising the universal free healthcare provided under the Gaddafist administration, with diseases like cholera and typhoid being contained and life expectancy raised.[345] Biographers Blundy and Lycett believed that under the first decade of Gaddafi's leadership, life for most Libyans "undoubtedly changed for the better" as material conditions and wealth drastically improved,[70] while Libyan studies specialist Lillian Craig Harris remarked that in the early years of his administration, Libya's "national wealth and international influence soared, and its national standard of living has risen dramatically."[346] Such high standards declined during the 1980s, as a result of economic stagnation.[347] Gaddafi claimed that his Jamahiriya was a "concrete utopia", and that he had been appointed by "popular assent",[348] with some Islamic supporters believing that he exhibited barakah.[299]

Critics labelled Gaddafi "despotic, cruel, arrogant, vain and stupid",[349] with western governments and press presenting him as the "vicious dictator of an oppressed people".[348] During the Reagan administration, the United States regarded him as "Public Enemy No. 1"[309] and Reagan famously dubbed him the "mad dog of the Middle East".[350][179] According to critics, the Libyan people lived in a climate of fear under Gaddafi's administration, due to his government's pervasive surveillance of civilians.[351] Gaddafi's Libya was typically described by western commentators as "a police state".[352] Opponents were critical of Libya's human rights abuses; according to Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others, hundreds of arrested political opponents often failed to receive a fair trial,[353] and were sometimes subjected to torture or extrajudicial execution, most notably in the Abu Salim prison, including an alleged massacre on 29 June 1996 in which HRW estimated that 1,270 prisoners were massacred.[354][355] Dissidents abroad or "stray dogs" were also publicly threatened with death and sometimes killed by government hit squads.[356] His government's treatment of non-Arab Libyans has also came in for criticism from human rights activists, with native Berbers, Italians, Jews, refugees, and foreign workers all facing persecution in Gaddafist Libya.[357] According to journalist Annick Cojean and psychologist Seham Sergewa, Gaddafi and senior officials raped and imprisoned hundreds or thousands of young women and reportedly raped several of his female bodyguards.[316][341] Gaddafi's government was frequently criticized for not being democratic, with Freedom House consistently giving Libya under Gaddafi the "Not Free" ranking for civil liberties and political rights.[358]