Egyptian liberals and their anti-democratic deceptions
A contemporary sad narrative
Over the past three years, liberal ideas in Egypt have been at a crossroads. Since July 3, 2013, countless “secular” political parties and movements have stood under their liberal banners in support of a military intervention into politics.
They supported the removal of an elected president, without early presidential elections. This was despite the fact that elections were a main demand of the crowds that filled the streets on June 30, 2013. They supported suspending the constitution of 2012 (my own opposition to it aside), and establishing an “Islamist free democracy” without recourse to a popular referendum and its ballot boxes. These liberal parties and movements are far removed from a real commitment to the principles and values of liberal democracy and, instead, appear quite ready to compromise them.
The majority of liberal politicians, intellectuals, and activists have been more than willing to cooperate with the de facto authority that imposed itself after July 3, 2013. In that time, Egypt has witnessed repeated oppressions: satellite channels were shut down, members and leaders of political parties and movements on the religious right arrested and abused, crimes of mass killing were associated with dispersing the Rabaa and al-Nahda sit-ins, and there is mounting evidence of systematic human rights violations. Yet, liberals have continued to work with Egypt’s de facto authority. Most of their parties chose silence rather than condemn the repression.
The voices of the security state have been on the rise, inciting hate speech and exclusionary practices; they justify state violence, human rights violations, and the bypassing of rule of law. They have trampled over rights, freedom, and democracy in their path, and label all who oppose them, who have spoken out against stripping our society bare of its humanity, against abandoning consensus and social peace and police presence, as traitors. These forces and their media campaigns have overwhelmingly won popular support; as a result, the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies in the religious right continue to make irrational political decisions, and elements among them engage in acts of violence and incitement. The fact that most liberal parties and movements have abandoned the principles and values of democracy has only helped society accept the return of state security’s repressive practices, and popularized statements like “the war on terrorism,” “the security solution is the only solution,” “it’s necessary to exclude the religious right,” and “human rights, social peace, transitional justice are luxuries that Egypt can’t afford when it’s facing terrorism,” etc.
Egypt’s post-July 3, 2013 authority has been initiating various totalitarian measures, ranging from introducing constitutional articles that make the army a state over the state and approving undemocratically spirited laws, to wide-scale human rights violations and the sustained politics of impunity. Yet, at this level as well, liberals have continued to cooperate with the powers ruling Egypt. By supporting the ascendancy to the presidential palace by the former minister of defense, Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, they have contributed to the militarization of Egyptians’ collective imagination, which began on July 3, 2013 – or, in other words, which began with the people’s search for a “military savior,” and has resulted in people engaging in a type of politics that overlooks civilians and civil democratic values.
Politics in Egypt has stepped beyond the bounds of human history that has shaped it through the past decades – types of government quite different from military rule, single party politics, the elite. The situation has stepped far beyond the bounds of contemporary human society, which has demonstrated the primacy of consensus, negotiation, and tolerance in stopping violence, the primacy of maintaining social peace, and building democracy. On the contrary, the vision of the military savior, the security state, and the popular discourse inciting hatred and exclusion negates key values of humanity, and the fact that liberal parties and movements have been politically engaged in the current moment represents their break from history and human values.
After July 3, 2013 and over the past three years, there has arisen a thick wall of isolation between most liberal politicians, intellectuals, and activists, and the very idea of liberal democracy in Egypt. They have abandoned the principles and values of democracy, compromised their moral and political credibility, accepted the negation of human values and the violation of rights and freedoms, and justified authoritarianism and a break with history.
Over the past three years, and in the context of this crossroads, liberal democratic ideas have returned to where they began in the 1970s – in universities, a few civil society organizations, and within groups of intellectuals, writers, human rights activists, and public figures. Over the course of the past three years, the new beginnings of the democracy movement’s struggle have crystallized at the margins of politics and the margins of the public sphere.
Glimpses of it can be discerned among the workers demonstrating for their rights despite the repressive grip of the security state, and in initiatives coming from civil society, such as the “No to Military Trials for Civilians” group. Struggles associated with the renewal of the democratic idea on a small, citizen-centered scale have also grown, through self-criticism and the restructuring of relationships and intersections between rights and freedoms, elections and referendums, and legal and executive institutions that are both responsible and can be held accountable. The relationship between the army and a security apparatus that is neutral and committed to the rule of law, and citizens who maintain their dignity and participate in the way public affairs are managed are also being restructured, opening a new arena of intellectual reflection centered around civil–military relations.
Over the course of the past three years – and alongside the certainty that those upholding the liberal democratic idea in Egypt must distance themselves from the parties and groups that have failed the test of 2013 – the majority of liberal parties and groups have been engaged in grand deceptions to support the repressive regime that has come into being and to justify its wide-scale violations and abuses. Whether out of fear of the religious right, in seeking to secure their personal interests and stakes, or in upholding the duality of “protection in return of support” that the ruling regime usually promises through the gleam of brute force and systematic violations of the rule of law, liberals have been engaged in generating five grand deceptions that have enabled the new military autocracy to tighten its grip over state institutions, society, and citizens.
Indeed, these liberal-made grand deceptions are among the key factors that have allowed the new autocracy to entrench swiftly in Egypt from 2013–2015. It is thanks to these grand deceptions that Egypt’s new savior in uniform and his establishment have been able to contain popular demands for a true liberal democratic order – defined by justice, rule of law, alternation of power, civic peace, and guarantees for personal, civil, economic, social, and political rights and freedoms. In today’s Egypt, these grand deceptions have been quickly employed to “besiege” the concept of democracy in Egypt once again, and to pave the way for the continuous renewal of military autocracy and the ongoing subjugation of Egyptian citizens, Egyptian society, and the Egyptian state to the unilateral will of those in power.
GRAND DECEPTION ONE – SEQUENTIALISM
The first of these grand deceptions is that of “sequentialism,” or the claim that transitions to democracy must first go through a phase of increasing economic and social development rates in order to overcome the crises of underdevelopment, poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment, to address massive gaps in income, and to improve the living conditions of the people and the level of educational, health, and welfare services provided to them.
According to this claim widely shared among Egyptian liberals, development will eventually be followed by the establishment of rule of law, rotation of power, guarantees for rights and freedoms, and other democratic principles. Of course, such developmental plans and efforts are viewed as impossible without the state, its grand investment projects, and its actors who are capable of undertaking and following up on such projects. As such, this deception of “sequentialism” propagates notions that run counter to the liberal beliefs centered around the leading developmental role of the market economy and the free enterprise of the individual, as well as the cognitive correlation between a small state and a civil society in which private property, rights, and freedoms are safeguarded.
Rule of law, rotation of power, and safeguards for rights and freedoms are considered, according to this liberal grand deception, to be the “luxuries of the rich and affluent,” thus excluding the masses of the poor, illiterate, and unemployed – an understanding that has no intellectual roots in the world of liberal democratic ideas and that would be clearly more at home among Egyptian Marxist and socialist groups. Liberal sequencing in Egypt should occur, of course, according to the will of the ruling regime.
Many political science and economic studies have debunked the notion of “democratic sequentialism” – i.e. that development ultimately leads to democracy – due to the limited number of societies and states that have followed its prescribed trajectory since the 1950s, and to the significant specific conditions necessary for this theory to hold true (as were present in South Korea, for example). Thus, sequentialism is a deception and an illusion – albeit an illusion that is highly attractive to established authoritarian regimes. Indeed, the notion ignores the following three realities:
1. Societies and nations rarely develop along straight, uninterrupted lines. Nor do such developments generally go through definitive stages over time for which it is possible to apply set rules or calculations (as if transitions took place in engineering or scientific laboratories). It is thus impossible to define organized start and end points for democratic transitions and to determine the steps that could be expected to lead states from development to democracy.
2. Ruling regimes and elites allied with them are accustomed to controlling and subjugating citizens, society, and the state. Their refusal to establish rule of law, rotation of power, and guarantees for rights and freedoms stems from the fact that their continued existence, as well as their ability to exert their unilateral will and protect their interests, fundamentally depends on the continued absence of democracy. As a result, they desperately defend existing authoritarian arrangements and fiercely combat popular demands for democracy. They continue to resist democracy even when development plans succeed in overcoming the crises of underdevelopment, poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment and in improving the living conditions of the people – although this has not occurred in a sustainable manner in Egypt since the 1950s.
3. The continued absence of democracy strips state institutions and bodies, as well as other public and private institutions and even some civil society organizations, of the ability to manage their own affairs and, thus, the ability to administer the affairs of citizens independently from the authorities. As a result, authoritarian regimes become the sole frame of reference for the society and the state, and experience dealing with these regimes is the only thing that can be relied upon by individuals and groups seeking to attain certain goals.
GRAND DECEPTION TWO – NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN...
The deception of sequentialism is not fundamentally different from a second deception also widely generated by Egyptian liberals: the deception that democracy must be postponed because “nothing is more important than such and such issue at this time.” This second deception justifies putting off the establishment of democracy, rule of law, rotation of power, and safeguards for rights and freedoms for the sake of the ruling regimes’ objectives that are formulated as sweeping slogans. Indeed, respective ruling regimes tend to link these objectives in an exclusive manner to “national interests” and “the public good,” and in doing so do not allow for these objectives to be expanded upon or amended. Rather, these objectives solely reflect the trajectory set forth by the rulers and their allied elites.
For this reason, the deception of a “necessary postponement of democracy” has been propagated in Egypt since the 1950s by successive ruling regimes and by the economic, financial, and administrative elites allied with them – the latter of which are embedded in the bureaucracy of the state institutions and bodies, and of the influential public employment sectors. Since the 1950s, many different issues have been used to complete the argument that democracy must be postponed because “nothing is more important than such and such issue.” The issues that have completed this argument have included: national independence, development and preparing the people to practice democracy, socialism, the liberation of Palestine, confronting Zionism and imperialism, the battle to liberate Sinai, economic well-being, stability, the preservation of the national state, and now the war against terrorism.
These issues have thus been claimed to be equivalent to “supreme national interests” and “the objectives of the current period,” which could not be expanded upon or amended, in order to eliminate any competing goals, values, or principles that are not sanctioned by successive ruling regimes.
Since the 1950s, such claims have been used not only to justify postponing democracy, but also to artificially circulate a negative view of the principles of rule of law, rotation of power, and safeguards for rights and freedoms. According to this view widely shared by Egyptian liberals, implementing such principles at the respective current time, in the worst case, would prevent Egypt from protecting its “national interests” and from achieving the “objectives of the current period” and thus such principles must be overlooked. At best, this view claims that principles of democracy are a “luxury that cannot be afforded due to the dangers, threats, and challenges facing the nation.” Again, such “luxuries” must be postponed, and voices and groups calling for them must be silenced.
In all cases, this negative vision, which fundamentally contradicts liberal democratic ideas, completely denies any positive correlation between rule of law, rotation of power, and safeguards for rights and freedoms, and societies’ abilities to achieve national independence, development, progress, economic well-being, and civic peace – despite the existence of convincing, credible evidence for such correlations in the histories of many peoples around the world, including some similar to ourselves in Egypt.
GRAND DECEPTION THREE – THE NOTION OF NATIONAL NECESSITY
The current despotic regime in Egypt and the elites allied to it depend heavily on the propagation of the liberally produced grand deceptions of sequentialism and postponing democracy. In turn, these grand deceptions are utilized among Egyptian liberals to produce a third deception that contributes to the current siege on the concept of democracy in Egypt; the deception of “national necessity.”
Through this deception, the new military autocracy can effectively ensure its continued grip on power. Prior to and following the summer of 2013, I consistently warned of the authoritarian trend that lies behind the claims that the military intervention in politics and the coup of July 3 were “acts of necessity” and that the former minister of defense, Field Marshal Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, was participating in the presidential elections as the “candidate of necessity,” later to become the “president of necessity” following the announcement of the election results in 2014.
These claims of “necessity” are truly authoritarian in nature, as they – in the best of cases – justify departing from democratic mechanisms in the summer of 2013, based on the pretext that there was no alternative to an intervention by the military establishment in politics, even when the alternative of holding early presidential elections certainly was possible. In the worst of cases, such claims of “necessity” effectively strip citizens of the right to freely choose their leaders through elections by legitimizing the presidential candidate backed by the two strong state institutions, the military and the security apparatus as a matter of “national necessity.”
Moreover, the deception of “national necessity” produced by Egyptian liberals has effectively prevented at least some Egyptian citizens from freely expressing their opinions about the orientations and actions of the national savior in uniform who has ascended from the ministry of defense to the presidential palace, and who has been portrayed in the human and most integral embedment of the notion of “national necessity.” As such, the right to peacefully oppose the president and the executive branch of government is virtually eliminated. Indeed, opposition is immediately framed as a betrayal of the exigencies of the “national necessity,” just as the right to seek alternative orientations or modes of action is falsely labeled either an act of “conspiracy against the nation,” “ignorance of the nation’s greater interests,” or “futile idealism.” Individuals who express such opposition or seek such policy alternatives are discredited, defamed, or labeled as traitors.
The most belligerent use of the grand deception of “national necessity” by Egyptian liberals was related to their endorsement of the former defense minister Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi’s run for president. His candidacy was undemocratically propagated as an “act of necessity” and his involvement in mass killing, human rights violations, and repressive measures immorally justified by liberal parties and movements.
The deception of the “candidate of necessity” reduced Egypt and its societal and political affairs to one person, the hero-savior, the savior in uniform being introduced to the public prior to the presidential elections as “the only candidate” capable of “rescuing the nation from the current danger” and “the last hope” for “saving the nation from the evils and harms of the enemies, inside and out” and achieving its greater goals and objectives.
Here, the pro-Sisi liberal politicians, intellectuals, and activists used his affiliation with the military establishment to inject the image of a strong and capable leader. They intentionally conflated his military role with involvement in politics and matters of governance, and, in doing so, laid the foundations for the “candidate of necessity” deception.
Pro-Sisi messages, heard widely on public and private media outlets during the presidential elections, invoked a litany of slogans and stereotypes to imply the former defense minister is the only one who is able to “save the ship of state, battered by storms of internal and external conspiracies”; “confront and defeat terrorism”; “guarantee efficient state institutions and vital services because his career is rooted right at the heart of the military institution”; “achieve a cohesive state and society following the chaos of the past few years and the destructive roles played by the Muslim Brotherhood and by pro-democracy traitors”; “implement a real reform program adopted by state institutions and backed by a popular majority yearning for a strong president”; “transcend the current exceptional situation of danger and crisis,” and many others.
It is worth mentioning that private media outlets were identifying with the emerging national savior either because they have been under the control of the security apparatus, or because of the organic bond between the economic and financial interests that own private media outlets and the power centers in the military establishment and in the entrenched security apparatus.
The “candidate of necessity” deception stifled the people’s voting preferences in the presidential elections by eliminating in practice the right of Egyptians to cast their vote freely among diverse presidential candidates, and excludes any real chances of competition outside the electoral process. If we take these facts into consideration, in light of Egypt’s current situation of military–security dominance since the summer of 2013, the decay of politics, prevalence of one voice, compounding violations of human rights, freedoms and the constitution, and oppressive, undemocratic laws passed in recent months, the “candidate of necessity” deception was an additional step in a series of acts diverging from the course of democracy.
Such a deception, which Egyptian liberals helped produce and sustain, reintegrated tyranny and autocracy. In the wake of the presidential elections, the “candidate of necessity” deception was an additional step in entrenching the new autocracy and justifying its crimes; it was soon to be followed by the propagation of a set of sub-deceptions such as the “inspiring leader,” “eternal leader,” “president’s party,” “president’s achievements,” “the need for the president to stay in his position because there’s no alternative,” and others, which by design promote tyranny and silence citizens.
Egyptian liberals have been trying to turn back the hands of time. Voices that in the 1950s, 1960s, and following decades promoted the myth of the “president of necessity” and “eternal leader” resurfaced today to play the same role through the “candidate of necessity” deception.
Remarkably, this occurred after the January 2011 revolution that sought to keep pace with modernity, seeking justice, rights, freedom, rule of law, and rotation of power, then democracy and development. It is as though the results of the 1960s, 1970s, and later decades were not catastrophic for Egypt and did not lead to tyranny, and the lack of justice, rights, freedom, and development that ignited the January 2011 revolution. It is as though tyranny and its accompanying deceptions did not testify to the experience of countries near and far that failed to overcome their own crises. These countries failed to safeguard the cohesion of the state and communities whose sovereignty, stability, security, civil peace, and coexistence are threatened by unjust, violent, and oppressive autocratic rulers, far more than internal and external conspiracies, whether real or fabricated.
This prevalence of one voice in post-July 3, 2013 Egypt paved the way for the suppression of opposing visions and ideas. Therefore, it was morally and intellectually shocking to take note of liberals arguing, in justifying the deception of the “candidate of necessity,” that there was no contradiction between the elevation of the former defense minister to a national savior and competitive conditions in the presidential elections in 2014. They even linked his expected ascendancy to presidential power to the objectives of democracy, rule of law, rotation in power, safeguards of human rights and freedoms, and pro-reform sentiments. In complete disregard for human history and for liberal democratic ideas, these arguments put forward by Egyptian liberals supposed that authoritarianism will lead to a democratic outcome, and that it is possible for tyranny to establish the deception of “national necessity,” and then to confine them to a set period of time and move beyond them once the society is developed and citizens are enlightened.
GRAND DECEPTION FOUR – RELIGION AND POLITICS
The fourth grand deception produced by Egyptian liberals and contributing to dismantling the very idea of liberal democracy has been the religionization of politics and the politicization of religion. This deception that it is acceptable to use religion for political gains stems from the corrupt implication of religion in matters of rule and in the affairs of the state and society. Liberals, opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood and other movements within the religious right-wing spectrum, have defended the current regime taking advantage of religion, as well as using religious spaces and symbols, to lend a false “holiness” or untouchability either to the savior in uniform who is not only on a mission to save the nation but is also actively saving religion – the state-sanctioned discourse of moderation and renewal in religious thinking, or to the orientations and actions put forward by the savior – even when they entail clear human rights violations and repressive measures.
This corrupt use of religion by ruling regimes in Egypt dates back even further than the 1950s. To this day, official religious institutions are implicated in such schemes that abuse religion for political purposes. Groups and currents of the religious right have also attempted to use religion for their political benefit. Such groups’ alleged monopoly on absolute truth eliminates space for democratic engagement on matters related to power and rule, the state, and society, for it disallows diversity, plurality, difference of opinion, peaceful opposition, and the right of citizens to freely choose their leaders and to freely express their opinions within the framework of rule of law, rotation of power, and guarantees for rights and freedoms. However, the new element in the post-July 3, 2013 setting has been the liberal involvement with producing and propagating this deception.
The deception – that it is acceptable to use religion for political gains and in doing so introducing the dynamics of religionizing politics and politicizing religion – grants legitimacy to the current ruling regime and helps it to a social effectiveness that is difficult to deny. It does so, even as the regime subjugates Egyptian citizens, society, and state institutions to its unilateral will and fiercely fights popular demands for democracy. Indeed, official religious institutions and their ranks and files – both Muslim and Christian – are accustomed to bestowing such religious legitimacy on the rulers and to renewing the formulations of this legitimacy to keep pace with changing events and to fit diverse “saviors” who come to power, along with their orientations and actions.
As for groups and currents of the religious right, they also thrive on the regime-sanctioned and liberally produced deception of religionizing politics and politicizing religion. It has always allowed them in moments of social ascendency to express condescension toward those who differ from them and to disregard the exigencies of citizenship and safeguards for citizens’ rights and freedoms, even as they strive to align themselves with the idea of democracy. In moments of decline, such groups adopt a disastrous narrative that runs between peaceful opposition to the injustices and violations to which they are subjected and oppressive, totalitarian, extremist narratives that are hostile to the “other” – no matter who the “other” is – in order to justify extremism, violence, and bloodshed, a dynamic that is today taking hold in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In all cases, the very idea of liberal democracy is eclipsed, and those who truly seek democracy are marginalized.
GRAND DECEPTION FIVE – THE STATE ABOVE EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING
It is a wild turn of contemporary history that Egyptian liberals find themselves, in their attempts to promote the new autocracy, praising Nasserism and the Nasserite experiment of the 1950s and 60s.
Amid the grating cries of today’s agents of darkness, who propagate the fascist slogan “you are either with us or against us,” who serve the “sultan,” and not surprisingly buy into the deal of “obedience to the regime for protection and revenues”; amid the voices that justify injustices and violations of human rights and freedoms, and the economic and financial elite who perpetually seek to protect their privileges by supporting the new autocracy; amid of all these, Egyptian liberals have been vested in producing and propagating a fifth grand deception – the deception of the supremacy of the state, which justifies abandoning democracy and the continued dominance of the military establishment and security apparatus over the society and the citizenry.
It is in relation to this fifth grand deception that Egyptian liberals come to praise Nasserism. Joined of course by leftists, liberals of today put forward an idealistic and romantic recollection of the 1950s and 60s, and a depiction of those decades to the public as an extended era of national independence, rejection of domination by other countries, economic prosperity, and social modernization, with social justice policies that defended the poor, under the leadership of the military establishment and a single, heroic military leader, commander, and savior.
On the one hand, this idealistic and romantic recollection of the 1950s and 60s downplays the catastrophic breaches of human rights and freedoms, which are falsely described as either necessary for national independence and social justice or as mere errors that could have been avoided. On the other hand, there is a dearth of critical evaluation of Nasserism, which was founded on autocracy, the military establishment’s intervention in politics, and the predominance of the intelligence and security agencies. Nasserism weakened civil institutions, which became iron cages of bureaucracy that lacked efficiency and bred routine, corruption, and nepotism. It crippled the rate of economic growth and the mechanisms of sustainable social modernization, most notably higher education, large- and small-scale investment in scientific research, the democratic partnership between the state and public activity, and the independent role of the private sector. It cancelled politics and criminalized pluralism. It also cost Egypt a catastrophic military defeat in 1967.
The idealistic and romantic recollection of the 1950s and 60s by Egyptian liberals dresses up the idea of autocracy in the false robes of the “just dictator” and the “strong state.” It justifies the military establishment’s intervention in politics – old and new, and the predominance of the intelligence and security agencies as the direct results of the weakness of the civil, political, and economic elite, and of the necessities of national security and preserving the cohesion of the nation-state. It blames local or foreign conspiracies or “the avoidable mistakes of the savior,” like the breaches of rights and freedoms, for the lack of growth and modernization and the catastrophic military defeat. The truth that this idealistic and romantic recollection denies in today’s Egypt is that all of the dangerous violations and breaches mentioned above were the inevitable result of the autocracy established in the 1950s and 60s. After all, in the twentieth century that autocracy inevitably thwarted the very goals it had promised its droves of crushed and broken citizens. In the end, it did nothing to preserve national independence, to promote development and modernization, to create a country with strong institutions that abide by the constitution, the rule of law, or the standards of efficiency and fairness, or to foster a productive and educated society that ensures citizens’ economic, social, and political rights.
An additional element of the deception of the supremacy of the state is connected to a claim that is contradicted by Egyptian history from the 1950s until the January 2011 revolution. In essence, it is that the arrival of former President Anwar Sadat to office in 1970 made a break from the powerful state of the Nasserist period, which only grew during the three decades under former President Hosni Mubarak. On the one hand, this creates a distinction between Nasserism – which strove for a strong state tasked with achieving national independence, development, modernization, and social justice, and was biased toward the poor and low-income – and the regimes of Sadat and Mubarak – which are accused of pushing the Egyptian state toward subordination to international powers, ignored development and modernization, and turned against the poor and low-income in favor of an alliance between the regime and the revolution, and of a corrupt and exploitative economy. On the other, it offers the public reductionist explanations for this distinction that revolve around the “correct” choices of the heroic military savior in ensuring the strength of the state and the “incorrect” choices of the presidents who came after him, as well as the central role of the military establishment and nation’s public sector in the 1950s and 60s and its subsequent regression in favor of the “civilian,” economic, financial, and security elite in the 1970s and afterwards.
But this claim of a complete break between Nasserism and the eras of Sadat and Mubarak denies the objective truth that the role of the military in the state, society, and politics has not decreased since the 1950s. Rather, the overlap between the military and civilian elite has grown for reasons concerning the interests of the government and the revolution. Furthermore, none of the economic or social policies toward the public sector or in support of the poor and low-income has changed; the state institutions have only become less capable of effectively implementing them, after years of corruption, nepotism, and administrative exploitation of society’s resources. The predominance of the intelligence and security agencies has not changed since the 1950s, and neither have the breaches of rights and freedoms. National independence took a hard hit in 1967, and, though the Egyptian administration (and the military–civilian collaboration) reclaimed its land after the 1973 victory, the government surrendered to Western subordination and largely relinquished its national and pan-Arab role.
It is absolutely impossible to argue that Nasser’s decisions were “correct” while the decisions of his successors were “incorrect.” Some of their decisions were essentially the same, such as the oppression, restrictions on freedoms, and the practices of the state security apparatus. Others began under Nasser and continued under his successors. These included the tyranny of bureaucracy and the inefficiency of state institutions and executive and administrative agencies. They also included the domination of the “trusted” elites (military and civilian) over their knowledgeable, intellectual, thoughtful, and experienced counterparts to the degree of producing corruption, nepotism, and laziness. A last category, however, did differ, whether partially – as in the case of the presidents’ economic models, social attitudes, and weight of the public and private sectors – or completely – as in the case of their regional and international policies. Egypt has yet to completely break away from Nasserism and its disastrous consequences, including militarization, the absence of democracy, and a crippling lack of development.
The third element of the deception of the supremacy of the state relies on people’s false perception that reproducing the attitudes and policies of the 1950s and 60s is the way out of our current failures and crises, and that “the candidate of necessity” in 2014 turned “president of necessity” in 2015 is the only person capable of moving Egypt in that direction of rescuing its state.
Liberal politicians, intellectuals, and activists involved in perpetuating this deception differ in their explanations for the current crises and failures. Some believe they are connected to the weakness of the nation-state and the weakened capacities of its institutions and agencies. Others treat the crises as synonymous with the absence of development and social justice. A third group believes that they are the result of the corruption of the political elite and the wickedness of the economic and financial elite. A final group blames them on local and foreign conspiracies, which plague Egypt and threaten its sovereignty, national security, and civil peace.
They trick people by suggesting that reproducing the “strong state” of the Nasserite decades would be a way out of all these failures and crises, while they know that the fruits of the 1950s and 60s were far from sweet. They suggest that more government intervention would lead to development and social justice, while they do not call for fighting corruption or rein in the wicked economic and financial elite. They trick people by claiming that only a heroic savior from the military establishment is capable of protecting the nation-state, fostering development and social justice, and frustrating local and foreign conspiracies. It is as if the nation-state is the priority of the military and no one else, and that, in the minds of civilians, development and social justice are mere luxuries.
It is as though the military and their allies in the intelligence and security agencies held a monopoly on fighting both local and foreign conspiracies. It is as though the autocracy connected since the 1950s and 60s to presidents with military backgrounds had not weakened the state with its absence of democracy, the rule of law, justice, and freedom, and had not derailed development and social justice for the benefit, profit, and gain of the ruling military-security sector and corrupt economic and financial elite. It is as though surviving amid regional disintegration and fighting was conditioned on abandoning the need to build a democratic nation-state, society, social justice, and a legitimate government that adheres to the rule of law and the principles of transparency and fairness. After all, these are all ideas that autocracy throws to the wind.
Finally, Egyptian liberals vested in the deception of the state Ueber Alles put forward an additional element focused on the notion of a “direct relationship” between the heroic savior with a military background and the common people, who have no need for political entities, parties, or civil society organizations as mediators, or for legal or popular monitoring of the government.
The masses are portrayed as capable of transcending such limitations due to their hero’s deep love for the public and their limitless trust in him; they identify with their hero, who has been chosen by fate. This element offers the public a simple, fascist approach to governance, power, and politics. In this approach, once again in a wild turn of history employed by liberals, politics is essentially dead and the ruling regime thrusts its hand deep into the state and society without supervision or control. Autocracy is justified and allowed to monopolize the discourse in the name of the public and the masses – while the individual citizen is crushed – and to make claims that it is impartial, pure, and the embodiment of their hopes and dreams. A few of the false statements that date back to the Nasserite period, for instance, include that political parties were forums for private, special interests, or that all different types of civil society organizations were under the control of foreign powers which determined their priorities and activities, or that the tools and mechanisms of popular and legal monitoring of the government remained ineffective as long as the ruler himself did not endorse them. As with Abdel Nasser, a rose-tinted picture of a heroic military savior has been painted in the public imagination. Today’s savior is capable of transcending party limitations, gaining control of the foreign-influenced civil society, and transparently communicating with the public and the masses. What allows him to do so is his ability to monitor and hold others accountable. This rose-tinted picture goes hand in hand with the sales pitch that the military establishment is the only institution that can stop the political entities and parties toying with the nation and quarantine the damage caused by civil society organizations, which it accuses of working against the state to fragment society. Then, in the name of the direct relationship between the heroic savior and the public (the connections of love and trust) and in the name of the military’s necessary role to defend the state, it justifies autocracy, militarization, the absence of democracy, the oppression of civil society, the disappearance of the individual citizen, and the weakness of legislative, executive, and judicial institutions and agencies meant to monitor the ruler and hold him accountable.
As with the other deceptions, the grand deception of the supremacy of the state, with its many elements and diverse contexts, has one goal: to justify autocracy and convince the public that it must inevitably accept the dominance of the military establishment and, for that matter, the security apparatus over the state and society, and support its heroic savior. Liberals have been engaged in this truly undemocratically spirited deception in spite of the bitter fruits of the Nasserite period in the 1950s and 60s. The fundamental difference is in the situation today, the tragedy of romanticizing the past, the disastrous reduction of the state to one institution and the nation to one ruler who is neither monitored nor held accountable, the danger of allowing the regime and the corrupt economic and financial elite allied with it to gain more power, and the delusion that those who oppose the regime and the savior are abandoning the defense of the nation or following foreign agendas.
CONCLUDING REMARKS – FASCIST TECHNIQUES STEPPED UP
However, confronted with an unprecedented and documented accumulation of human rights violations, including crimes such as extra-judicial killings, forced disappearances, and torture practices, many Egyptians between the summer of 2013 and the summer of 2016 have come to perceive the military autocracy for what it is: a brutal regime keen on defending the privileges of the army generals, the security and intelligence services, and the corrupt financial and economic elites allied to them. Such an altered perception has led to the gradual erosion of the persuasive power of liberal elites supportive of the military autocracy. Among other reasons, it has also led to the rise of nonviolent protest activism – according to the Egyptian nongovernmental organizing Democracy Index, 3,691 protest activities have been reported in 2015. The population segments participating in the protests have also grown more diverse – students, informal groups of young Egyptians, industrial workers, civil servants, medical doctors protesting at police brutality, victims of human rights violations, and Muslim Brothers. At least in two cases, the 2015 killing of a citizen who was in police custody in the southern city of Luxor and the 2016 killing of a citizen by a policeman in a Cairo neighborhood (al-darb al-ahmar), massive popular protests against police brutality erupted and prompted the military autocracy to either start legal investigations against the police personnel involved in the violations or to promise accountability and improvements in the performance of the police.
Faced with the popular realization of its failure, the growing aversion against human rights violations, and the dwindling approval rates of the self-proclaimed savior president, the military autocracy has fashioned alternative techniques to convince Egyptians either not to discontinue supporting the official policies of the government or not to develop their disenchantment into active opposition followed by a search for an alternative to a failed government. In a way, these techniques have come to supplement – if not to replace altogether – the anti-democratic deceptions of the liberal elites, whose credibility has been eroded in the eyes of many Egyptians.
While noting that such techniques do not precede the use of state-sponsored repression to subdue citizens, and scare them from the consequences of opposing the president or his government, they are all based on a conscious attempt by the military autocracy to ridicule politics, discredit civilian politicians, and suggest to Egyptians that only the generals are able to run the country.
In this regard, one of the most prevailing techniques is the continuous extension of “enemies and conspirators” lists in the government rhetoric and discourse. In the summer of 2013, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood represented the core of the nation’s enemies and conspirators who were made responsible for the upsurge in terrorism, for the failure in terrorism-combating efforts, and for the absence of improvement in the living conditions in Egypt. The Brotherhood was accused of nurturing ties to terrorist groups in Sinai and elsewhere. It was publicly defamed for “plotting” to sabotage the national economy and to disrupt development efforts. In the downward stratification of enemies and conspirators, the Muslim Brothers were followed by pro-democracy and human rights activists who opposed the military coup of July 3, 2013 and spoke up against human rights violations perpetuated by the autocracy. They, in spite of their sheer weakness and due to the collective hysteria that followed the coup, were described as “dangerous traitors and collaborators” and a “fifth column” acting against the nation and its security and stability.
In 2016, the “enemies and conspirators” categories have been extended to include wide segments of the population which refuse to remain silent in the face of violations and injustice. University students, young activists, industrial workers, and civil servants are accused of conspiring against the nation because they either demand an end to human rights violations or peacefully protest against the loss of their economic and social rights. Medical doctors, whose syndicate organized wide-scale peaceful protests after various doctors became victims of police brutality, are accused of “national treason” and are defamed as “collaborators” of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. Eruptions of popular anger and protest due to the accumulation of human rights violations – especially extra-judicial killings and torture practices – are blamed on “conspiracies” of regional and international actors opposed to the Egyptian autocracy. The governments of Qatar and Turkey, Hamas, Western governments, and the forces of international terrorism are accused of stirring up popular protests in Egyptian cities and of using misled masses to undermine the stability of the state, to challenge national security, and to impose on Egypt the fate of a failed country similar to that of Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Legions of “enemies and conspirators” are being held accountable for Egypt’s ongoing crises. They – Muslim Brothers, human rights activists, students, workers, and average citizens – are responsible for terrorism in Sinai, not that the military autocracy is stumbling in its terrorism-combating policies because of the unilateral dependence on security measures and the wide-scale repression inflicted on the population of Sinai creating a local environment conducive to terrorism and violence. They are also responsible for the deterioration in economic and social conditions – conspiring all the way from bringing down the value of the Egyptian pound against the US dollar and creating a foreign currency crisis to flooding big cities, such as Alexandria, through the subversive activities of underground groups. Not that the military autocracy is also stumbling in its social and economic policies due to the obsession with “Grand National Projects” that are not economically sound, because of the lack of transparency and the free flow of information, which are essential to successful development efforts, because of the environment of fear that undermines the private sector and citizens’ initiatives, and because of the lack of rational debate and freedom of expression, which are vital assets to align people and government in combating economic and social crises.
A second prevailing technique in the government rhetoric and discourse feeds on the ever-increasing societal polarization and hate speech in Egypt. Representatives of the military autocracy, government officials, and media apologists of the self-proclaimed savior president dehumanize opponents and delegitimize the act of nonviolent opposition in itself. Putting forward arbitrary accusations regarding the identity of those involved in acts of terrorism, the (as of 2016 still) minister of justice, Judge Ahmad al-Zind, announced in a TV interview that members of the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of the movement are not “true Egyptians,” and described them as “elements that do not deserve to live among us.” Subsequently, he topped his Nazi-like rhetoric with a call to collectively execute the Egyptian Muslim Brothers as an act of revenge for the victims of terrorism. The minister of justice made no reference in this regard to due process, legal safeguards of human rights and freedoms, or to the rule of law.
Mr. al-Zind’s hate speech is indicative of the wider dehumanizing techniques used by the military autocracy. By no means is such a technique restricted to collective accusations and calls to acts of revenge leveled against the Muslim Brotherhood. Since the summer of 2013, similar accusations and calls have been heard in relation to pro-democracy and human rights activists. Also, they have been effectively used against the limited number of writers who refused to remain silent in the face of repression or to submit to the military autocracy. As promoters of terrorism and violence, as sympathizers of the Muslim Brotherhood, and as traitors of the nation true liberal writers have been defamed and repressive measures implemented against them – varying from imprisonment to travel bans – justified.
The fact that this dehumanizing technique feeds on societal polarization and has disastrous repercussions on the Egyptian social fabric, on the dissemination of feelings of anger and vengeance among the victims, and on the nature of the public space, which has come to be permeated by hate speech and other hysteric sentiments, does not seem to caution the military autocracy. Nor do the erosion of the notion of rule of law and the threatening collapse of popular trust in the state and its institution, both of which emanate from the wide-scale repression and injustice perpetuated by the autocracy, seem to caution them.
Far more important in the autocracy’s short-sighted approach to Egyptian social and political realities is the use of the dehumanizing technique to delegitimize the act of nonviolent opposition and to justify state-sponsored violence and human rights violations. Far more important for the self-proclaimed savior president is to ridicule politics by means of dehumanizing all potential participants in politics who are not willing to serve the autocracy or to submit to its hegemony over state and society.
Using the dehumanizing technique to defame opponents and to ridicule politics and its potential participants also results in pushing the autocracy’s denial of Egyptian social and political realities to new heights. In the world of the autocracy, there is no repression, nor injustice. Alleged victims of human rights violations are fabrications of enemies and conspirators who seek to undermine the nation, the state, and national security. Then, when violations become documented through the personal testimonies of some of the victims and through the efforts of their family members, their defenders, and some independent human rights organizations to document the injustice they have been facing, the military autocracy launches government officials and media apologists to justify the state-sponsored violence either by framing the violations as individual cases of abuse of office committed by a small group of policemen who “will be subjected to scrutiny and accountability” or by describing them as acts of legitimate self-defense in the face of conspiracies and subversive activities. Harassed medical doctors, imprisoned industrial workers, students participating in peaceful protests to denounce repression and violations, and tortured-to-death citizens are alternatively accused of plotting to overthrow the government, to wipe out the state, to violate “true Egyptian ethics and morality,” or to undermine the glory and inevitable success of the savior president.
In a last step of madness, the dehumanizing technique of the military autocracy leads government officials and media apologists to resort, when other deceptions and techniques are rendered no longer sufficient, to justify state-sponsored violence and crimes as legitimate acts of “liquidating enemies of Egypt.” In this regard, wide segments of the population are constructed as enemies of the nation, in a manner similar to twentieth-century National Socialist anti-Semitic constructs of German citizens of Jewish religious affiliation as well as to xenophobic constructs of Muslims and Arabs in discourses of radical right-wing movements in the contemporary West.
A third prevailing technique generated by the military autocracy to supplement or replace the meanwhile less convincing anti-democratic deceptions of liberal elites is to ridicule politics and to suggest to Egyptians that their country can only be ruled by the army generals. This technique relies on systematically undermining civilian institutions and civilian elites. The state gets reduced to its ascribed mighty core related to the military establishment, the security services, and the intelligence community.
Civilian institutions within the state apparatus, especially the state bureaucracy at the national level as well as local administrative bodies, are portrayed as being dependent on the military-security core of the Egyptian state both in historical developments and in contemporary realities. With regard to the three branches of government, the same duality of the mighty military–security core and dependent civilian components get reproduced, and the executive branch of government that is controlled by the generals is empowered over the legislative and judicial branches. So, the legislative and judicial branches of government are subjected to the dominance of the military-security core. Furthermore, the current legislative assembly has been composed on the watch of the security and intelligence services, with almost one-fifth of its members being retired army and police officers, while judges who have been joining the judiciary since the 1970s come from the ministry of interior and are being positioned to preside over key criminal tribunals in which members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other “enemies” of the military autocracy are being trialed.
Finally, other, civilian elements of the legislative and executive branches of government are reduced to ineffective components that need to be controlled and contained. The ultimate outcome is to reduce civilian elites to individuals driven by personal interests, and to groups incapable of tackling bread and butter issues or of delivering food to the tables of Egyptian families. The ultimate outcome is to ridicule civilian elites, to ridicule politics, and to deprive Egyptians of their legitimate quest for an alternative to the generals’ administration.
In this context, the technique regarding the dominance of the military-security core and the weakness of civilian institutions and elites employs a set of arguments ever-present in the rhetoric and discourse of the Egyptian autocracy. Examples of such arguments can be discerned in key phrases systematically propagated in statements by government officials and media apologists: “the president is working singlehandedly, other state institutions undermine his success”; “the president and the army are working hard to rescue the nation, whereas parliament and the state bureaucracy are consumed in either nonsensical debates or petty demands”; “the Egyptian state would collapse if it was not for the army and security institutions safeguarding its stability and cohesion,” etc.
The predominance of the army generals, the security and intelligence institutions, and their extended representation in the legislative and judicial institutions leads to ridicule politics and ultimately aims at depriving Egyptians of their right to free choice between alternatives visions, ideas, policy proposals, and serious politicians.
Ultimately, similar to the grand anti-democratic deceptions of liberal elites, the depressing reality of the military autocracy with its perpetuated wide-scale repression and its failure in tackling the country’s economic and social problems will undermine the persuasive power of the techniques of leveling conspiracy accusations, dehumanizing opponents, and ridiculing politics. It is only a question of time.