Group items tagged

There were many reasons to be pessimistic about the Revolution's prospects: Egypt's endemic poverty; the weakness of civil society; the absence of organized political parties, aside from the Muslim Brotherhood, with deep roots; the sharp ideological divisions between political groups; and the overbearing and omnipresent security services and military, both of which remained largely intact after the uprisings. 

The revolutionaries failed to recognize the extent of the structural challenges to building a liberal democracy, challenges that may have doomed the prospects of any democratic transition. They should have seen the political process that began with Mubarak’s resignation as a down payment toward a democratic future. But, rather than working with the Islamist forces who had been their allies in the January 25 Revolution, the revolutionaries called their political rivals traitors, transforming them into enemies of the revolution. Revolutionaries eschewed formal politics in favor of demonstrations, boycotts, and strikes, crippling the legitimacy of the elected Brotherhood government. They ignored the fact that the Brotherhood, unlike the military, could be removed from office peacefully by the ballot box.

This has paved the way for the return of a chauvinistic nationalist discourse in which no conspiracy theory is too bizarre: a former Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court justice (and prominent supporter of the military) claimed that President Obama is secretly a member of the Brotherhood, and Vodafone was recently accused of using puppets in commercials to communicate coded messages on behalf of the Brotherhood.