The first advice one hears about being blackmailed is that once you give in, there is no turning back. It is a nonstop process whereby the victim keeps paying the blackmailer with no end in sight. Egypt has to stop paying the blackmailers, or else the whole transitional process will be derailed and there will be no path to a better future. Instead, we will find ourselves dragged into the quicksand of political sophistry about what happened and what could have been. Instead, we should be focused on taking positive concrete steps towards state building.
After the 30th of June’s uprising, the first blackmailing of the Egyptian new state was the alleged “massacre” that took place in dispersing the Muslim Brotherhood’s militarized sit-ins. No state on earth would tolerate a 45-day, hostile sit-in that endangered the peace and, sometimes, the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians living in the area, let alone tolerate an allegedly peaceful sit-in that incited violence, attacked and tortured policemen and civilians, and boasted a weapons’ arsenal. Egyptian authorities were blackmailed into letting the sit-ins grow and were forced to drag their feet about whether to disperse them, especially after the issue became one of international public attention. When the police finally moved in, there was a pre-orchestrated outcry, both internally and internationally, calling the dispersal a “massacre.” A day before the sit-in, there was an opinion article in the Guardian calling for Army Chief Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi to be tried in the International Criminal Court and for an end to the Egyptian Army’s “impunity.” An independent investigative committee must be set up with regards to the dispersal of the sit-ins, simply to document what exactly happened, the exact death toll, and whether there was any use of brutal violence by the police. The violence of the allegedly “peaceful,” militarized protesters has already been documented and seared on our collective retinas because we saw them using arms against the police.
The second wave of political blackmail was the orchestrated calls for “reconciliation” and a “rejection of ostracism.” These calls took place at the very same time that the Muslim Brotherhood’s militarized sympathizers, along with their "takfiri" proxies, stormed more than fifty churches across Egypt. They killed innocent civilians, burned and looted ancient architectural monuments, and attached police stations, killing and maiming officers who couldn’t or wouldn’t use arms against the attackers. The Interior Ministry was weak in protecting its own assets, fearing the ready-made accusations of excessive violence and oppression, and caved in to the blackmail. Instead of calling religious fascism and terrorism by their names (as the political adviser to the president, Dr. Moustafa Hegazy, unabashedly did in his press conference), calls for political reconciliation and negotiations were growing even louder. Accusations against those who supported the 30th of June uprising were manifold. Accusations included obsequiousness to the army generals, opening the door for the return of the Mubarak regime, and finally, that those who took to the streets on 30th of June were not the same as those who revolted on the 25th of January. That the two uprisings aren’t the same. That the latter is an army coup against “legitimacy” and “democracy.” As if the Brotherhood’s rule wasn’t a spectacular example of dictatorship, political exclusionism, and fascism. As if people didn’t take to the streets to end tyranny in the name of God.
The third blackmail issue is now the “return of the police state.” Those who were with the June 30th uprising against the Brotherhood are being accused of allowing the return of “miBlackmail crippling Egyptian statelitary fascism” and police violence. Those who call the recent events for what they are, a war on terrorism, are branded with "Bush-ism," authoritarianism, and publicly ridiculed for buying into the “military propaganda.” Never mind innocent civilians dying on the streets because they happened to be watching the “peaceful” armed demonstrators of the Brotherhood passing by, getting shot at, attacked and killed in the process. Never mind bombs being planted amongst civilian targets (let’s not even discuss the real takfiri insurgency the army is fighting in Sinai). Never mind that we find ourselves fighting for the very existence of the state. All of this is promoted as part of the army’s “propaganda.”
A return to the police state of Mubarak is impossible, simply because the Egyptian people have shown that they will no longer tolerate tyranny and oppression. They overthrew Mubarak, they overthrew Morsi’ s regime of religious fascism, and they will overthrow any future attempts to derail the transition to a democratic state, including a return to military rule.
It is time to stop listening to such rhetoric because it has shown itself to be merely a seditious hindrance to any efforts to move forwards. It is a backward discourse that will only stop the valiant efforts to build a new state based on social justice and accountability. It is time to stop paying the blackmailers.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
