29.08.2013

Egypt: Counterrevolution devours its children

A high command coup is not a revolution, says Harley Filben

There are features of the recent military coup in Egypt that are hardly remarkable. At least a thousand - possibly twice or three times that many - have been killed by security forces since Mohamed Mursi was deposed, as muscular attempts to subdue the Muslim Brotherhood turned with all the inevitability of such situations into horrific massacres. At least a thousand others have been arrested, including most of the key leaders of the Brotherhood.

Rolling news coverage was, for days, covering the twists and turns of the mounting bloodshed on the streets of Cairo. The clearing of MB encampments was followed by indiscriminate firing of live rounds into crowds. Further demonstrations resulted in hundreds of murders. The morgues overflowed; mosques turned into makeshift hospitals. The MB’s famous medical provision facilities could do little for hundreds of victims riddled with assault rifle rounds. Further stand-offs followed at the Al-Fath mosque on Ramses Square. Eventually, the MB’s demonstrations tapered off.

The ruling authorities, at every stage, thickened the fog of war with astonishing acts of double-speak. Perhaps more chilling is the visible mass support for the security services’ clampdown. Of the 17 million-odd people who turned out on demonstrations to demand the fall of Mursi, not a few have been seen since on angry mobilisations against the Brotherhood.

It has to be said that the MB has hardly acted sensibly throughout this ordeal. It was an army coup that deposed it, true enough; but it has been haemorrhaging support since it assumed control of the legislature and presidency last year. Mursi fell amidst demonstrations against his rule that dwarfed anything seen in Egyptian history. Tens of millions came out on the streets to demand his head.

Under such circumstances, the sensible approach was surely one of caution. The MB, however hateful it is, has never wanted for patience - until now. Endless demands for further demonstrations might have succeeded if its government had been popular. It was not, and even staunch supporters will have baulked at a call for a “day of martyrdom”. Between the arrests, the murders and its own errors, the Brotherhood is presently in a very weak position - though by no means decisively defeated.

Given that the latter organisation was the direct victim of the coup, it is hardly surprising that it has suffered since; that is what army high commands do in such situations. No - there is nothing remotely surprising about the behaviour of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (although the decision to release the deposed dictator, Hosni Mubarak, from prison shows impressive brass neck). More notable is the apparent impossibility for various social forces to get their heads round this basic fact.

The United States government, quite infamously, has been unable to call these events a coup. Pick out any dictionary you like, and find me a definition of ‘coup d’etat’ that does not comfortably accommodate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his cronies! Yet the lexicon of high diplomacy will not permit the c-word to pass the lips of Barack Obama, John Kerry and co - if it did, the US government would be legally bound to cut off military aid, and thus lose the greatest portion of its leverage over Egyptian affairs. Now, of all times, that thought is unconscionable - so the US state happily makes itself look foolish to any observer.

Yet this semantic tangle is symptomatic of the rough ride US power has had in the region. Nothing, of course, has decisively weakened its grip. Yet it was a political situation beyond their control - the cluster of mass democratic movements known, in more optimistic times, as the Arab spring - that forced the world hegemon to ditch Mubarak. It set out, immediately, to find new friends; and an uneasy accord with the MB followed - leaving the core of Mubarak’s state regime intact.

The military-political apparatus of Egypt is a rather hardier beast than any civilian government could have been in the circumstances. Mass roots in society, combined with visceral hatred of the old regime, propelled the Brotherhood to victory in elections, and its candidate into the presidency. When, inevitably, Mursi made concessions to the army, aligned himself surreptitiously with US interests and obeyed the cruel economic strictures of the International Monetary Fund; and when, less inevitably, he and his allies clumsily adopted a forced-march approach to the Islamisation of Egyptian society, a serious backlash was inevitable. The military seized its chance. The US state department had yet another headache on its hands.

How it responds in the forthcoming period depends to a large extent on events in Egypt itself. The current regime promises a rapid turnaround of elections in early 2014, and is looking into a legal ban on the Brotherhood - the decapitation of the only major anti-military organisation in Egypt will, in all probability, lead to a resounding victory for SCAF-friendly faces. There are indications that al-Sisi himself could swap his military uniform for the politician’s suit, and go for the top job himself. In any case, the US looks to be busy embroiling itself in that far uglier chaos that is the Syrian civil war. (This will, naturally, see it militarily supporting the Syrian arm of the MB, even as it turns a blind eye to the bloody suppression of the Egyptian branch.)

Twists and turns

From the Realpolitik of the American state we turn, inevitably, to the ‘unrealpolitik’ of the Socialist Workers Party and its Egyptian followers, the Revolutionary Socialists, whose contortions on the issue are something of a distorted mirror image of Obama’s and Kerry’s discomfort.

So many have been the twists and turns of the SWP/RS on this matter, a short recap is necessary. The comrades - rightly - were inspired by the great social upsurge at the beginning of 2011, with the fall of Mubarak, one of America’s key regional strongmen, as the crowning achievement. From here, things went downhill pretty rapidly. The RS supported the rush to call elections immediately, calling for a government of national unity against the old regime, including - naturally - the Muslim Brotherhood, and - unnaturally, given its insignificance - the Egyptian far left.

When it came to the crunch, the comrades advocated a vote for Mursi, as a way to continue the revolution; and there was no need to worry. The MB was weak, it was falling apart; all the old ‘After Hitler, us!’ clichés were wheeled out. From being the continuation of the revolution, Mursi rapidly became for the RS an intolerable tyrant; as the Tamarod movement gathered speed, and the military took its chance, the comrades called down from cloud cuckoo land to say that this was a “new phase of the revolution”.

It did not matter at election time how reactionary Mursi was, as long as the movement stayed strong and the military was kept out. Then, as he fell, it was suddenly irrelevant how reactionary SCAF was - so long as the movement stayed strong and the Brotherhood was kept out!

It barely needs to be said that, for an organisation that contends for leadership of the Egyptian working class, the schizophrenic record of the Revolutionary Socialists is beyond ridiculous. What on earth are revolutionary-minded people in Egypt, even those scant few who pay attention to such an insignificant organisation, supposed to make of all this? We suspect that any such person would reach the obvious, common-sense conclusion that the comrades were either self-deluding, deliberately deceptive or simply insane.

Now, the line has had to change - again. A headline in last week’s Socialist Worker (August 20) reads “Egypt’s revolution is in peril - but not beaten”. According to Judith Orr, “Hatem [Tallima, of RS] reports that the army is imposing ‘a bloody military dictatorship and bringing Mubarak’s people back into the government, media and economy’.” That certainly seems to be the case. But there is still reason for hope: “Recent months have seen a rise in workers’ struggles. ‘This was one of the reasons the popular rage against Mursi was so widespread,’ said Hatem.” Which would, indeed, be encouraging, had SW not been trumpeting an ill-defined ‘rise in workers’ struggles’ to justify every baffling switcheroo in this whole period.

A sober analysis would have to concede that the Egyptian revolution has been in retreat at least since the MB started winning elections. Retreat is not defeat, of course. Yet it was a signal: that the euphoria of Tahrir Square had come to an end, and that political work needed to become serious, grinding, patient and not necessarily immediately rewarding for a defeat not to become a rout.

Comrades in Egypt have had two years to build up working class politics as an alternative pole of attraction to Islamist and militarist reaction. A strong showing for the left Nasserite, Hamdeen Sabahi, in the 2012 presidential elections suggested that there were at least some people thinking outside that paralysing division, in any case. The truth is that this work would have taken a lot more than two years; but, by acting as they have, the Revolutionary Socialists have squandered a period of relative political freedom by desperately chasing whatever movement happened to take to the streets at a given time. Who knows how much longer such clement conditions will exist?

The SWP, meanwhile, has latched onto the steady stream of fictional good news from Egypt with desperate enthusiasm. We have to take seriously the possibility that its comrades are unable even to think the concept ‘defeat’, let alone admit it. Its burning need for things to be moving forward leads it to force reality to match its preordained political perspectives; but this procedure only succeeds in deceiving its own membership (it is unlikely anybody else is deceived), thus reducing its fighting strength. The SWP lies to itself about everything, from the most insignificant provincial industrial action to its own internal turmoil, to world-historic events, such as those in the Middle East today; the only difference is that the self-delusion is all the more tragic when the stakes are higher.