Egypt

The conclusion is clear: only an endless and leaderless struggle exhibiting a spirit of absolute democracy and uncompromising fidelity to the revolutionary event of 2011 can possibly resist these formidable powers of military co-optation. Only the decentralized swarms and constituent power of the multitude can survive a relentless crackdown at the hands of the hierarchical authoritarian state. For this reason we must strongly refute the false prophets of the American and European left who continue to urge Egypt’s revolutionaries to somehow develop a formal leadership structure and organize themselves into a party so they can stand for elections and begin their long march through the institutions in order to gradually push back the army and create the preconditions for a functioning liberal democracy. Such well-intended reformist exhortations may be intuitively understandable, but they are ultimately futile in practice. Today, more than ever, it is clear that only the power of the streets can beat back the army (or any other form of illegitimate authority that aims to exercise its rule over the Egyptian people).

The revolt, or Tamarod, of June 30 was complex.The Tamarod organization itself was an extremely loose alliance of youth from the Social Democratic Party, the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, Mohamed ElBaradei's Constitution Party, and the Revolutionary Socialists (RS). None of these groups, except the RS, are actually socialist or even very left; Hazem Al-Beblawi, for example, a founder of the Social Democrats, is the current prime minister. But behind the Tamarod were millions of Egyptians who wanted Morsi's ouster and prompt new elections. Some 22 million signed the Tamarod petition calling on Morsi to step down, and an estimated 17 million demonstrated in Cairo on June 30 in what may have been the largest mass demonstration in history.

In one of the bloodiest days in Egypt in decades, security forces attacked two sprawling sit-ins of supporters of the deposed president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, shooting dead scores of people and igniting a wave of violence across the country. Hours after the raids began, Egypt’s military-backed interim president declared a month-long state of emergency, allowing security forces to detain civilians indefinitely and without charge, and imposed a nighttime curfew in Cairo and ten other governorates. The health ministry said 235 people were killed across the country, although the death toll is expected to rise. The Muslim Brotherhood put the toll at over 2,000, calling the crackdown a “massacre.”

The bloody dispersal of the sit-ins in al-Nahda Square and Rabaa al-Adawiya is nothing but a massacre, prepared in advance. It aims to liquidate the Muslim Brotherhood. But it is also part of a plan to liquidate the Egyptian Revolution and restore the military-police state of the Mubarak regime. But we have to put the events of today in their context, which is the use of the military to smash up workers' strikes. We also see the appointment of new provincial governors, largely drawn from the ranks of the remnants of the old regime, the police and generals. Then there are the policies of General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi's government. It has adopted a road map clearly hostile to the goals and demands of the Egyptian Revolution, which are for freedom, dignity and social justice. This is the context for the brutal massacre that the army and police are committing. It is a bloody dress rehearsal for the liquidation of the Egyptian Revolution. It aims to break the revolutionary will of all Egyptians who are claiming their rights, whether workers, poor or revolutionary youth, by creating a state of terror.

Our revolution in Egypt is very much alive. It has been battered, and left for dead too many times to count, but it's still very much alive. Our revolution did not call for either military rule or for an Islamist Egypt. It called for bread, liberty, social justice and dignity. I’m writing this in Cairo where along with 13 other provinces we’re under curfew and a nationwide state of emergency has been announced just one day after a day drenched in blood - the bloodiest since our revolution - a day that included at least 20 churches getting torched. Our revolution isn’t dead, it is bringing Egypt back to life, painfully and messily. Egypt is like a house that’s been under lock and key, every door and window trapped shut for more than 60 years. The revolution kicked them all open and the stench is unbearable. But we are persevering. My proof? Egypt has changed, forever.

Tawakkul Karman, who shared a Nobel peace prize for her pro-democracy campaigning in Yemen, has said she views the Egyptian army's overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi as a death knell for Arab democratic movements. The removal of Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, on 3 July "reset the clock" on the gains made since a popular uprising ended 30 years of Hosni Mubarak's one-man rule in 2011, she said on Monday. "The first emerging democracy in Egypt's history and the first in the region since the Arab spring is quickly being dismantled," said the 34-year-old Yemeni mother of three.