[Peace-discuss] NYT: Egyptian Liberals Embrace the Military, Brooking No Dissent

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/world/middleeast/egypt-morsi.html<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/world/middleeast/egypt-morsi.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fmiddleeast%2Findex.jsonp>

The New York Times
July 15, 2013
Egyptian Liberals Embrace the Military, Brooking No Dissent
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

CAIRO — In the square where liberals and Islamists once chanted together
for democracy, demonstrators now carry posters hailing as a national hero
the general who ousted the country’s first elected president, Mohamed
Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood. Liberal talk-show hosts denounce the
Brotherhood as a foreign menace and as “sadistic, extremely violent
creatures” unfit for political life. A leading human rights advocate blames
the Brotherhood’s “filthy” leaders for the deaths of more than 50 of their
own supporters in a mass shooting by soldiers and the police.

A hypernationalist euphoria unleashed in Egypt by the toppling of Mr. Morsi
has swept up even liberals and leftists who spent years struggling against
the country’s previous military-backed governments.

An unpopular few among them have begun to raise alarms about what they are
calling signs of “fascism”: the fervor in the streets, the glorification of
the military as it tightens its grip and the enthusiastic cheers for the
suppression of the Islamists. But the vast majority of liberals, leftists
and intellectuals in Egypt have joined in the jubilation at the defeat of
the Muslim Brotherhood, slamming any dissenters.

“We are moving from the bearded, chauvinistic right to the clean-shaven,
chauvinistic right,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a left-leaning scholar at the
American University in Cairo.

Many Egyptians are overwhelmed with dual emotions: relief at the end of an
Islamist government that many called arrogant and ineffective, and thrill
at their power to topple presidents. The voices on the left who might be
expected to raise alarms about the military’s ouster of a freely elected
government are instead reveling in what they see as the country’s escape
from the threat that an Islamist majority would steadily push Egypt to the
right.

Many on the left are still locked in an battle of semantics, trying to
persuade the world — and perhaps one another — that the overthrow of Mr.
Morsi was not a “coup” but a “revolution.” The army merely carried out the
popular will, they insist. On Sunday, one private satellite network in
Egypt was running commercials of citizen testimonials proclaiming as much.

Some have begun to voice doubts. Amr Hamzawy, a political scientist who
held a seat in the dissolved Parliament, was among the first to condemn the
military’s shutdown of the Islamists’ satellite networks, the arrest of
their staff members, and the detention of Mr. Morsi and hundreds of other
Islamist leaders.

Mr. Hamzawy objected in a recent newspaper column to “the rhetoric of
gloating, hatred, retribution and revenge against the Muslim Brotherhood.”
After the mass shooting, he called the celebration of the military takeover
“fascism under the false pretense of democracy and liberalism.” Fellow
intellectuals who said nothing, he wrote, were “the birds of darkness of
this phase.”

But he was almost alone. A chorus of liberals and leftists rushed to
denounce Mr. Hamzawy for defending the Islamists.

Khaled Montaser, a liberal columnist, declared that the Islamists were
worse than “criminals and psychopaths” because they could never reform.
“Their treason, terrorism and conspiracies are an indelible tattoo,” Mr.
Montaser wrote. “They do not know the meaning of ‘homeland.’ They only know
the meaning of ‘the caliphate’ and their organization first.”

Ahmed Maher, a founder of the left-leaning April 6 group, initially joined
a small volunteer team who tried to enlist Western support for the ouster.
But after the arrests and shootings of Brotherhood supporters, he began to
recall the generals’ long hold on power after mass protests drove President
Hosni Mubarak from office two years ago.

Mr. Maher put his worries about the generals in an online message to
another activist: “If we assume it’s not a coup, and I tell people it’s not
a coup, when they screw us again like they did in 2011, what would I tell
people?”

His allies responded by trying to drum him out, not only from the volunteer
team but also from the April 6 group. Esraa Abdel Fattah, a prominent
activist, campaigned against him in the media and circulated a list of his
statements questioning the “coup.” And Ms. Fattah insisted that the Muslim
Brotherhood, whose political party won the post-Mubarak elections, amounted
to a foreign-backed terrorist group. “When terrorism is trying to take hold
of Egypt and foreign interference is trying to dig into our domestic
affairs, then it’s inevitable for the great Egyptian people to support its
armed forces against the foreign danger,” Ms. Abdel Fattah wrote in a
newspaper column.

In the turbulent period of military rule after Mr. Mubarak was ousted, many
liberals and leftists stood shoulder to shoulder with Islamists to demand
that the generals relinquish power to elected civilians. Now the liberals
appear to have joined in a public amnesia about the abuses and scandals of
that period — the forced virginity tests of female protesters; Coptic
Christian demonstrators shot by soldiers or run over with armored vehicles;
the videotaped stripping and kicking of a female demonstrator who became
known as the Blue Bra Woman.

The activist Hassan Shaheen was captured in the same video, bleeding from
the head as a soldier stomped on his chest. But this spring he helped lead
the petition drive asking the military to remove Mr. Morsi. And he joined
in the rejection of Mr. Maher, saying that by calling the ouster of Mr.
Morsi a “coup” he was “following the rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“We will stand together, the people and the military, in the face of
terrorism,” Mr. Shaheen wrote in an online message, arguing that the
Brotherhood’s political party “must be dissolved and all its leaders must
be arrested.”

“No negotiation, no reconciliation, no going back,” he added.

Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Right, said
that the liberals’ goal — an Egypt governed by an inclusive civilian
democracy — appeared to be further away than when Mr. Mubarak fell. Now, he
said, the old institutions and elites from the Mubarak era are emboldened
to push for a full return of the old order. “There is a powerful and
well-resourced player now trying to push Egypt back to 2010,” he said.

Even those on the left who are critical of the military overthrow fault Mr.
Morsi and the Brotherhood for their actions in power, for excluding other
groups from decision-making, accusing critics of treason and exploiting
religion as a political tool. They say that in recent days some Islamist
leaders have told their supporters to prepare to use violence to defend Mr.
Morsi, as they did during a crisis in December.

Brotherhood leaders say their organization has not condoned violence in
Egypt since the days of British rule. They say that private media outlets
have worked for months to stir up nationalist sentiment against them, for
example by circulating false rumors that they were considering giving away
the Sinai or selling the Suez Canal. Over the last week, many news outlets
have claimed that Brotherhood leaders invited foreign interference by
appealing for help from Washington to hold off the military takeover.
Television hosts even assert that the crowds at pro-Morsi rallies are
actually full of Syrians and Palestinians.

The military has set the mood as well. Before the takeover, it broadcast
aerial images of the protests against Mr. Morsi, set to soaring martial
music. On Sunday, it released another 30-minute broadcast depicting
soldiers protecting the public, set to a similar score.

State and private television channels also broadcast images of Gen.
Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi in his trademark black beret, explaining to admiring
soldiers the military’s obligation to intervene in the national interest.
“Egypt is the mother of the world, and Egypt will be as great as the
world,” he declared.

Much of the public, fatigued by revolutionary turmoil, has embraced him.
“The people had been saying ‘down, down with military rule,’ but Sisi
completely changed them,” said Mohamed Mofeed, 38, a barber in downtown
Cairo. “They love him.”

Mr. Morsi “should have been tougher with the media,” he added. “They were
disrespecting him all over the place.”

Osama Mohamed, 20, a student sitting with a group of friends, said they
wanted General Sisi to “leave his office and elect himself president.”

Mohamed Abdel Fattah, 24, an advertising manager, agreed. “For Egypt,” he
said, “democracy is chaos.”

Mayy El Sheikh and Asmaa Al Zohairy contributed reporting.

-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
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