EGYPT: The Revenge of the Police State

By Wael Eskander

[14 August 2013, security officer firing tear gas on protesters as they attempt to escape the attacks by the security apparatus. Image originally posted to Flicker by tarek1991]

While the ongoing violence in Egypt has contributed to a state of confusion and polarization, one thing is certain: The biggest threat facing Egypt remains the return of the police state. More specifically, the threat concerns, not only the reconstitution of a police state, which never really left since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, but also the return of the implicit, if not overt, acceptance of the repressive practices of the coercive apparatus. In this respect, the current face-off between the state and the Muslim Brotherhood holds very damaging potential. Widespread anti- Muslim Brotherhood sentiment is currently providing the state with legitimacy to use of force against the Brotherhood, and, in the future, a potential cover for using similar tactics against other dissidents as well.

Tahrir-ICN statement on events in Egypt

The events of the past couple of days are the latest step in a sequence of events by which the military can consolidate its hold on power, aim towards the death of the revolution and a return to a military/police state.

EGYPT:Fetishizing the State

 August 08, 2013 by Baheyya

 

An old and pernicious idea is back in circulation since the July 3 coup. It was a running theme in the military ruler’s speech on July 24 where he demanded a popular mandate to “confront terrorism.” Right on cue, government officials parroted it repeatedly in their stern warnings to dissenters. Pro-military activists, politicians, and intellectuals happily invoked it in their jihad against the Ikhwan. The idea is haybat al-dawla, or the state’s standing and prestige, a central plank of the Arab authoritarian order that’s making a big comeback.

EGYPT: Anarchism in Egypt, after the Brotherhood

12.07.2013 by Joshua Stephens

Mohommed Mahmoud St. in Cairo. (WNV/Joshua Stephens)

The morning after the June 30 uprising that brought down Mohammed Morsi, I did an interview with Mohammed Hassan Aazab as he helped hold down four anarchist tents in one of Cairo’s major sit-ins. Shortly thereafter, the military stepped in, removed Morsi from office, and set about rounding up Islamists and shuttering media outlets deemed to be partial to the Muslim Brotherhood. In some cases they shot party members under arrest, even massacring a number of supporters during prayers. Islamists have responded by blocking the airport road and carrying out low-scale warfare in scattered parts of the country.

EGYPT: Is the Egyptian Revolution Dead?

By Philip Rizk

[On 25 January 2013, a protester leads chants amidst clashes with police, on the second anniversary of Egyptian revolution. Ultras Ahlawy (hardcore football fans) clashed that day with Central Security Forces guarding the Interior Ministry, in revenge for the killing of their colleagues in Port Said stadium last year, alleged to have been intentionally killed by police. Image originally posted to Flicker by Jonathan Rashad]

The short answer is “No.” A longer answer follows. What happened in Egypt between 30 June and 3 July was not a coup against an elected government. It was another attempt by the generals to co-opt Egypt’s January 25 Revolution. The situation’s complexity and its globally and ideologically charged nature makes it hard to see the forest for the trees, here is my view on why the revolution is far from over:

In the space of a few days Mohamed Morsi went from being a ruler who implemented laws and alienated the opposition in order to monopolize power, to one without any power because the people went to the streets. To say the Muslim Brotherhood made mistakes in the last year is an understatement. They did not just replicate the Hosni Mubarak regime that we ousted from power. They took things even further. They allowed the police to maintain their use of violence against everyday citizens and revolutionaries, locking us up, maiming us, torturing us, and killing us. In response to protests against the Brotherhood’s monopolization of power, both their members and the security forces they oversaw fought back with incredible brutality. All this took place without any legal retribution of police or army members. The Brotherhood’s prosecutor general refused to reopen cases against the police who killed or were complicit in killing protestors during the revolution despite having promised to so in the name of the revolution. Police brutality did not once wane under Brotherhood rule. Instead, the police maintained their impunity to wreak havoc on a society still in revolutionary momentum.

EGYPT: NO MB, NO ARMY: The Revolution Continues

10.07.2013  Blabiush from Tahrir ICN

So you are confused? Maybe because the complexity of every society is
confusing, especially in its turning points and the process of change.
Anyway let’s try to answer some questions and accusations which emerge now and provide another perspective on the current situation.

EGYPT: Goodbye, Welcome, my ‘Revolution’…Egypt, The Military, The Brotherhood & Tamarod

9 July 2013 by mohamed jeanveneuse

Egypt…How do we move? In what direction? How do we do this? There is a consensus of urgency, of impending catastrophes, but what action do we take? Many of us think that if the operators of the system are changed that the situation will be resolved, but that is an illusion. We need to come together immediately and move to create a society that is beyond our current reality. A start would be that we exchange our nouns for verbs. If we say ‘education’, we submit ourselves to someone educating us, but if we change to the verb ‘learn’, we recover the ability for ourselves to learn; for it is we who learn, we who teach ourselves, by reading and experimenting, learning from others who before us have sought different worlds, sending us messages from other worlds, as those Indigenous Rebels who call themselves the Zapatistas, deep inside the Lacandon jungle, before we had even heard of them. We need to find a way that we can all partake in learning, and give away our dependency. So, health becomes healing; how do we heal ourselves? 
The next action is clear. How do we dismantle the State apparatus of repression? By making this apparatus irrelevant. Capitalist production, extraction, and exploitation – how do we eliminate these? By minimizing their need to exist. We are in a structure of domination but how do we urgently dissolve this structure? By making it unnecessary, so that then everything will come into place. After all, just saying ‘no’ is not enough. This ‘no’ has to be accompanied by the creation of alternatives.

EGYPT: Neither religious-fascist pest, nor Military Cholera

Statement by Coordination of Anarchist Groups CGA (France)

Source here

Since more than 2 years, the counter-revolution in Egypt came in the form of the power sharing between 2 sectors of the state and the bourgeoisie. On one side, the muslim brotherhood, which stood for the spare wheel of the mercantile bourgeoisie and occidental states to prevent any social revolution, were running civil affairs. On the other side, the army, standing for the backbone of the egyptian state, kept a key position in egyptian economy, trhough monoopoles, but also in the political power structure.

EGYPT: Four days that shook the world

by Sameh Naguib, Revolutionary Socialists, Egypt

Protesters in the city of Fayoum, Egypt, celebrate the fall of Morsi

What happened on 30 June was, without the slightest doubt, the historic beginning of a new wave of the Egyptian revolution—the largest wave since January 2011. The number of people who demonstrated on that legendary day is estimated to exceed 17 million citizens, an unprecedented occurrence in history. This surpasses in significance any participation by old regime remnants, or the apparent support of the army and police.

Mass demonstrations of millions are exceedingly rare events in human history, and their effect on the consciousness and confidence of the populace in themselves and in their power to change the course of history transcend the limitations of the slogans raised and the political alternatives put forward.

EGYPT: The real regime still has to fall

by Jerome Roos on July 5, 2013

Egypt’s revolutionary process is a complicated convolution of people power and military co-optation. To succeed, it will have to take on the army anew.