What Australia (and the world) can learn from Egypt's uprising.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/44190.html


What Australia can learn from Egypt's uprising


Tad Tietze

The word “revolution” comes loaded with many preconceptions, but the 18 days that brought down the Mubarak regime in Egypt have deeply challenged views about what revolutions are and are not.

In large part this is because official politics in the West has treated revolutions as hazardous, destabilising and an unwelcome break from liberal democratic norms. It has wanted to warn people against getting dangerous ideas in their heads about seriously challenging concentrations of wealth and power. Revolutions are often equated with coups by tiny groups of armed militants, carried out over the heads of the people and almost invariably installing regimes more tyrannical than what came before. Or they are seen as mere chaos, proving yet again that ordinary people need strong leaders because they are incapable of governing themselves.

There have been some exceptions to such views, trying instead to reduce revolutions to safe channels. A key example is the recent enthusiasm among Western elites for “colour revolutions” like those in the Balkans, former Soviet republics and Lebanon. These are seen as “self-limiting” examples of “people power” that helped pro-US opposition groups into government. And then there is the risible notion that the current Middle East revolts are an extension of George W Bush’s toppling of Saddam Hussein, as if invasion by a foreign power can engender the same kind of freedoms as have been won by ordinary people on the streets.

The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 suggests that such notions are at best misguided and at worst designed to actively undermine serious political and social change. The ubiquity of media coverage of the events in Egypt has allowed many millions of people around the world to see such myths disproven. It is worth looking at some of them more closely.


‘A descent into chaos and violence’


Western leaders were quick to condemn “violence” in Egypt, but initially refused to point the finger directly at Mubarak, urging “restraint by all sides”. The media was quick to call neighbourhood defence groups, set up in response to the sudden withdrawal of the police from duty, “vigilantes”. Yet remarkably little violence was caused by anti government protesters, with the great majority of the hundreds of deaths being caused by police and Mubarak’s thugs. Protesters displayed high levels of discipline, not only guarding their communities but also creating a living, highly organised, cooperative community in places like Tahrir Square. There were widespread reports that sexua| harassment of women decreased dramatically and women played a key role in the protests despite stereotypes about their place in Muslim societies.


‘A victory for the strategy of non-violence’


On the other hand it would also be wrong to claim that protesters won because they refused to raise a hand to the regime. The scenes on 25 January of riot police being chased by demonstrators (reversing the usual scenario) was the first sign that the movement no longer feared the brutality of the state and was willing to confront it directly. When Mubarak sent thugs on horses and camels into Tahrir Square, and snipers into the surrounding streets, people set up barricades and threw broken paving stones at their attackers. If they had not responded they could have been defeated at an early stage. Instead, on 4 February the biggest protests yet filled Cairo’s streets. Rather than being a win for a defined strategy of non-violence, the revolution decreased the risk of worse violence by attracting greater numbers of people into activity.


‘A revolution without leaders’


The lack of a single leader also disturbed mainstream expectations, in which there must be a clear figurehead. Mohammad El-Baradei and jailed Google executive Wael Ghonim were touted as possible candidates, but it was clear that they held limited sway over a movement much broader than their respective support bases. Ghonim’s public exhortations to workers to stop striking have largely been ignored, for example. It was one of the results of 30 years of emergency rule that the regime couldn’t permit prominent oppositionists to develop support, leaving an apparent vacuum when state power was weakened.


Yet this doesn’t mean leadership was absent. Apart from the social media organisers (who were somewhat overhyped in the Western media — especially given Egyptians’ limited access to the internet, let alone smart phones), there were groups which distributed detailed leaflets on how to conduct the 25 January protests, the various strands of the pro-democracy movement of the last decade, secular socialist groups and, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood. Tahrir Square was the site of constant strategic and tactical debates about the way forward. Without some taking a lead, making their views known and winning people to their arguments, then the highly coordinated growth and direction of the movement could not have happened. And while embryonic, there were also the beginnings of coordination with protesters around the country.


‘A revolution without politics or ideology’


This is a bizarre claim, repeated by Q & A panellist Lydia Khalil last Monday night. It is hard to imagine anything more political than seeking to overthrow a government. Anybody following the uprising will have seen the interplay and debates between more conservative elite opinions like those of El Baradei, the nationalist and anti-imperialist demands of many young protesters, the calls for strike action from socialists and the crucial interventions of the Muslim Brotherhood. Such analyses miss the fact that in its early stages any revolution brings together a wide variety of ideas and groupings united for democratic rights and that the lack of a single “line” is simply a reflection of this.


‘A revolution for liberal democracy’


After initially hesitating to support the protesters and praising Mubarak for his moderation and stabilising influence, Western leaders belatedly switched to calling for “free and fair elections” and a return to “the rule of law”. Implicitly they were saying that if only Egypt was like the West all these problems would go away — as if people would forget they had turned a blind eye to Mubarak’s crimes. Yet to anyone paying attention, most of the protesters wanted the regime gone as the first step in restructuring Egyptian society so that the economic and social privations produced by almost 20 years of neoliberal reform could start to be corrected. Such aspirations would require far-reaching redistribution of wealth and power that are anathema to both the Egyptian elite and its Western allies. They certainly don’t match the intellectual contortions of some supporters of economic “liberalisation” who want to claim that an obviously anti-neoliberal revolt is a sign that Egypt needs even harsher attacks on alleged “restrictive labour practices”.


‘An Islamist revolution’


This bogey has been raised repeatedly because of the strength and deep social roots of Egypt’s main opposition organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood. It has also been trundled out because of Western nightmares about a repeat of Iran 1979 and the hysterical mainstream Islamophobia that has marked domestic politics in many countries during the War On Terror. Yet as sober accounts of the Brotherhood point out its strength lies not in “medievalism” that appeals to allegedly backward and hateful Arab masses, but to its prominent — if inconsistent — role in fighting repression and United States and Israeli foreign policy, along with its networks of charity-based social welfare that attract the poor. Even in Iran in 1979, where the situation was vastly different to now, Khomeini couldn’t consolidate power until some 30 months after the overthrow of the Shah. The eruption of democracy in Egypt has not set any outcome in stone; rather, it is full of potential for different political currents to compete for leadership of the movement.


‘A military coup’


This notion has arisen because the army command has taken over from Mubarak. But it took 18 days for it to act decisively — and then against its usual allies in the regime. Its authority is, for now, dependent on popular consent and there are signs its leaders don’t feel they can convince troops on the ground to crush the uprising. While it has cleared Tahrir Square it has been unable to convince workers to call off strikes, and there are stories of local units intervening on the side of workers against bosses. That doesn’t rule out the possibility of a coup in the future, but to date the army has acted in response to the mass character of the Egyptian revolt.


‘A self-limiting or “people power” revolution’


This description matches the wishful thinking of Western leaders who realise the situation in Egypt has run well out of their control. There are no opposition leaders or groups in which the United States can find a pliant negotiating partner, having kept all its eggs in the Mubarak basket for so long. Furthermore, the economic and social conditions left behind by the neoliberal dictator mean that profound social change is expected by ordinary Egyptians. Apart from an end to open dictatorship, none of these other issues will be addressed by superficial political reform. The growth of workers’ struggles, mostly independent of their corrupt, state-run unions, has been marked by a fusion of economic and political demands. Egypt is not only the most populous country in the Middle East, but the one with the largest urban population and working class. Many workers are calling for their Mubarak-era bosses to “leave, leave” just as they demanded of him. Even sections of the police, angered by being ordered to repress the protests of recent weeks, have themselves demonstrated calling for the former interior minister to be executed. It seems certain that the working class will play a progressively larger role as the revolution develops.


‘A festival of the oppressed’


As Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, this revolution has been universalist in character, not only born of social causes but reviving eternal ideas of “freedom, justice and dignity”. The protesters have opened a new world of possibilities because through their actions “they suspended the authority of the state — it was not just an inner liberation, but a social act of breaking chains of servitude.” In a similar vein, the Russian Marxist V.I. Lenin called revolution “a festival of the oppressed”. It is a powerful descriptor of amazing scenes of millions of Egyptians rising up against their dictator and his bevy of torturers.

But the fall of Mubarak is only the beginning — revolutions are processes and not singular events. The success of a movement largely united around national-democratic demands will now give way to a plethora of debates and discussions as different social groups’ interests are refracted through movements and political parties, competing with each other (and the military) over the best way forward for Egyptian society.

Such mass participation in politics is a breath of fresh air compared with the situation in Australia, where trivia, personalities and the 24-hour news cycle stifle vision and creativity, and Q & A calls itself an “adventure in democracy”. But then in Egypt today the stakes are much higher — and the outcome will profoundly shape the future of one of the most important regions of the global system.

That, it seems to me, is why revolution is the essence of politics, not some temporary aberration. We could use some of its spirit here.

Tad Tietze is a public hospital psychiatrist who works in Sydney. He co-runs the blog Left Flank, and he tweets as @Dr_Tad. Tweet