The Fiction of Mercurial Mobilization in Egypt

By Ismail Alexandrani[2] – as a practitioner

As a field activist, I never speak to the public reading from a paper. It’s a rule to me; however I have to break it because of my English and I like breaking rules. Actually, I think this is a good approach to introduce my modest experience in Egypt. The first thing I have learnt in my social and political participation in Egypt is to have the courage to ask: why shall I recognize something as a rule? Who makes it a rule? Why do I have to obey? Do I have the right to disobey? How shall I object? Or, more specifically, how shall WE disobey? What are the repercussions of our actions? What may our response be? How may we escalate? But before going ahead to all the questions, don’t forget the beginning— why shall we believe this rule or consider it as a presupposition?

.

Alexandria Revolutionary Protest, Feb 2011

Why shall we believe the illusions; illusions of stability verses chaos, security verses freedom, safety verses dignity (it is very important to differentiate between security and safety), illusions of the role of the state and the functions of the structures, reform from inside the regime, and the “process” of change which may be calculated by ages of generation?!

 .

Street mobilization in Egypt used to be surrounded by a lot of illusions; such as “we are dozens of activists and they are thousands of officers and soldiers,” “we always protest and people don’t join us, what a coward folk!,” “security forces are always more and stronger than us,” “those people behave like slaves and will never change,”  “hunger is more important than democracy, we should excuse them,” and  “these people don’t deserve freedom.” A lot of illusions contain undefined pronouns like: we, they, us, them, our, their. And no one knew who exactly WE are, or why THEY had another attitude!

 . .

My Egyptian experience has taught me the following (first rule): Free your mind! Have the courage to ask and re-ask!

  .

The second lesson did not take a long time to learn, simply because nobody answered us. So, I quickly knew the second rule, which is: Find the answer yourself. If you can’t find it, create yours!

  .

Throughout hundreds of field activities, awareness campaigns, silent stand-ups, slogan-writing, painting graffiti, posting promotional materials, beside the political and human rights demonstration, we, the Egyptian young activists, found out our mistakes. We were brave enough to admit our failure to mobilize the critical mass needed to bring about the comprehensive change we were looking forward to. It became clear that no single party or movement could make change alone, so the question was not about who might contribute and participate. We reached the highly pure revolutionary moment when Egyptians were “pro” or “against.” More clearly, Egyptians, at that moment, had to be against the corruption, injustice and torture except the regime clientists who were in support of their personal interests regardless the cost paid by people outside their circles. We did not have the luxury of excluding any participating, or even potentially contributing, party or movement. The real challenge was regarding how we should develop our failed experiences and resist the state security penetration in order to formulate a more healthy and productive coalition.

  .

2010 could be considered the revolutionary travail when a handful of mobilizing events and escalations took places. It was the peak year of repression, torture, electoral fraud, political exclusion by the regime and the ruling National Democratic Party, bequeathing Mubarak’s son, return of Mohamed El-Baradie, launching a public campaign to support him as an appropriate presidential candidate, and founding the National Association for Change. On the other hand, we should never forget the growing labor protest that began in 2007 which encouraged hundreds thousands of workers and employees to act and react in the street against the corruption and the neo-liberal polices facing the huge security forces.

  .

I don’t like to be reductive in maximizing the effect of Khaled Said’s case (the twenty eight-year old young man who was tortured to death on his street in front of a crowd of people in Alexandria). Actually, I wrote a long article[3] criticizing the activists’ biases which made it a very different in inspiring case even it was not the worst one. I totally refuse the silly idea of symbolizing Khaled Said as Mubarak’s famous victim, and insist on being more honest when discussing the social class biases, the emotional effect of inaccurate digital photos, the geographical and transportation facilities to the location where victims were violated, etc. In spite of my criticism to Khaled Said’s case, I’m proud to have been one of the few activists who invested in this case to shift the street mobilization in the right direction so that the ordinary people became the majority and the activists[4] became the minority for the first time in Mubarak’s era.

Khaled Said’s Silent Protest on Alexandria beach and many other cities around Egypt – ElBadeel.com

  

To go back to the illusions, who said that there is a rule to demonstrate only in downtown’s wide squares or on the stairs of a court or a syndicate?! A little thinking led us to recognize the clear fact; downtowns have a few residents and the crowds there are mostly walkers, visitors, vendors and busy people. Another clear fact is about effectiveness of protesting in wide squares which requires huge numbers of participants to be noiced. Since we are dozens of activists both in Cairo and Alexandria, it’s very easy to be surrounded by hundreds or even thousands of police forces and it is also easy to lose the only advantage, which is being well seen by the passers. These two clear facts were reaffirmed dozens times including during the first solidarity protest for Khaled Said, during which a handful of activists gathered in front of Sidi Gaber police station. These dear friends faced dire physical and legal consequences for their actions, especially since they were alone against hundreds of police officers and soldiers in a wide street.

  .

Finally, we corrected our tactic and held funeral prayer in a different mosque than usual. We normally hold most of activities, including politicized funeral services, at Ibrahim Mosque, one the most famous mosques in Alexandria and its square is the counterpart of Tahrir Square in Cairo. It became a rule to have all public opposition activities there, so we freed our collective minds from this field taboo and moved to another gathering point, Sidi Gaber Mosque, the nearest appropriate mosque to Khaed’s house. The second protest was nearer to Khaled’s home in a little square in Cleopatra district in order to engage as much neighbors as we might can. The third and the fourth were at the same place with a more enhanced capability to dodge the police forces with a protection of people in a crowded residential neighborhood. Participating ordinary people were a majority of hundreds and we, the activists and the organizers, finally became a minority of critical mass to spark big interactions.

  .

We learned a lot. One of the lessons learned was that we are not more human or keener to defend our freedom than ordinary people, but actually we used to be stupid enough to transcend the logic. Logic clearly says the small group of well-associated activists can easily move to the crowded streets and squares, meet people’s suffering and motivate them to participate. It can potentially expand as onlookers join in, which is much easier than calling on people to come from other parts of the city to join in, to search for the protest in the announced place, to penetrate the police cordon, and finally to join our regular festival of physical clashes where we were intensively beaten, harassed and arrested.

  .

Protest of “We will never be inherited” – Alexandria, September 2010

During this period, I mean the second half of 2010, the used-to-be reformative activists, like me, stored memories of conversations and debates with dreamy friends from Revolutionary Socialists movements in addition to a little group of anarchists. These memories are called on now from our sub-conscience when the revolutionary path is threatened by the political reformative compromises. They were dreaming of revolution and repeating complicated quotes from their leftist and post-structuralist references. That’s was when all rational analysts, both individuals and institutions, couldn’t think outside the structural box.

  .

The third rule is: after doing your best, don’t stop dreaming of the best! Activate your fiction and believe in your dreams.

  .

At that time, our dilemma was to compromise between committing the well-known rule of UNITY (rule four) and to ignore the generation of “dinosaur” politicians without wasting time in useless clashes. This problem was solved by founding a coordinating commission between young activists from nine parties and movements including Muslim Brothers. We were all aware of, and interactive with, activities called by the first successful online mobilization platform, the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page[5] created by Wael Ghonim and co-administrated by Abdel Rahman Mansour and Ahmed Saleh. I assure you that it has been the first successful online tool because its calls for field actions, silent stand-ups, wearing black clothes, etcetera were unprecedentedly responded, while the call for the strike in 2008 had been raised by the laborers in Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra, the city of textile, then the online Facebook group of April 6^th was created by Ahmed Maher who later became the founder and the general coordinator of April 6^th Movement.

  .

Coordination, grass-root networking, flexible cooperation, and multiple-leadership of the activities were all a must. We created our own regulations– there should be no factious slogans, no partisan flags, no personal cheers, each movement’s or party’s delegation has a single vote, coordinating meetings should have no permanent coordinator or secretary, there should be no certain location or headquarter designated to hosts us, no obligatory commitments if a party will not participate in the upcoming activity, and if an entity is not willing to  participate, the representative shouldn’t waste the others’ time discussing the details, etc.

  .

The escalations went on and Tunisia greatly inspired us. Dreams of a public revolution came true on a rainy evening when we were not sure why we were wet– because of the rain or our tears! We celebrated with a mixture of hope and jealousy. “We can do it! It’s already done by our siblings!” A call for a wide spread display of anger-day on the annual Police Day, January 25. Preparatory meetings were held. Maintaining top secrecy between each movement and the others became the dominant attitude. A plan was developed on the night of  January 24^th to start from the popular and poor neighborhoods in order to improve engagement and participation in the movement. Facebook fighting started with silly comments, threatens, fears, courage, “I’m not attending the revolution,” smiley faces, sharing articles attacking Egyptians’ willing, “I’ll participate and I doubt,” “I’m coming back from abroad and will participate whatever the result will be,” etc.

  .

We started our marches from the popular and poor neighborhoods, chose chants addressing the daily unmet needs and the fundamental violated rights, and hoped people to join our dozens and become hundreds. We began at 2 o’clock with an estimation of two-hour-marches in preplanned paths. We did not plan to cheer against Mubarak or to call for falling the regime, but a few minutes later we couldn’t control the thousands of marching ordinary people who chanted “Down Mubarak!” and repeated the immortal Tunisian acclaim “الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام” People are willing to fall down the regime. Unexpected participants inspired us and affected our enthusiasm. A dyer left his work, joined the march in his smudged clothes and called his colleague: come and join! Aren’t you Egyptian?! Women on balconies supported us with bottles of water and juice. Hosni and Gamal Mubarak’s huge photos were cut and destroyed for the first and the last time.

  .

For three hours we went on marching in zigzags with uncontrolled masses of angry ordinary people. I witnessed around ten thousand people in the march I participated in, in addition to other six or seven marches in Alexandria only. Dozens of marches and protests were in Cairo, Suez, Kafr El-Dawwar, Damanhour, Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra, and approximately ten other cities and towns. People knew what they should do. Some of them volunteered to organize the traffic, some other made buffer zones between the marches and each police station we passed on, house and family of the Security Director of Alexandria were protected by some protesters, and the shaking chant was “selmeya .. selmeya” or “Peaceful .. Peaceful”.

  .

Rule five: Trust people! People are the teachers.

  .

The peacefulness ended when hundreds thousands of security forces around Egypt began using tear gas, bullets, and instigating physical clashes. People did their best to avoid fighting. Alexandria marches moved as a worm[6] many times when the security detachments tried to stop us in narrow streets. As usual, all violent clashes took place in the wide squares and street. Martyrs were first shot in Suez and the wide protests of the day of anger evolved into an uprising. Uprisings began on Friday January 28^th and continued until the famous Camel Battle in Tahrir Square on February 2^nd when the uprisings evolved into a real revolution.

  .

There are a lot of narratives to be told, hundreds of documentaries to be made, and thousands of stories will be lost. These stories describe impossible heroism, martyrs increase,  ups and downs, hopes and frustrations, how Mubarak went to jail, and how SCAF came to rule, how politics spoiled the pure revolutionary demands of “bread, freedom, social justice and dignity”, comic trials for Mubarak’s league, military trials for the young revolutionaries, laughs and tears, calls for million-person protests in Tahrir Square and marches in Alexandria street, weak responses from dozens of participants to those “million-person” demonstrations, Islamist-secularist polarization, shameful referendum on temporary constitutional amendments, and finally we lost hope in our capability to rebuild the capacity of mobilization monopolized by the Islamist movements and parties.

  .

When SCAF showed its ugly face in November 2011, Mohamed Mahmoud Street called on the Egyptians to join and defend their revolution. Millions of protesters went  out to the streets around Egypt and more than a million people gathered again in Tahrir Square, near Mohamed Mahmoud Street. It was the second revolutionary wave when Egyptians refused to kill unarmed peaceful protesters who joined the families of the martyrs and the injured to show their solidarity.

  .

New epic narratives and heroic stories will be told for endless generations. If I lost all of my memories, I could still never forget the homeless teenager who protected a university student girl by dragging her away from the violent confrontations on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. She had been exposed to huge amount of teargas and other chemical weapons used by the army. The teenage boy told her that she is well-educated while he and his peers are useless, and asked her to keep away from danger, and let him fight with stones protecting the square. He literally said: “We are priceless. Let us die instead of you, and you with your colleagues should live to build and reform the country!”

  .

Rule six: Feelings, moral motivations and nobleness could never be contained by institutional structures. Political organizations can never control the fluid activism.

  .

Rule seven: If politics needs to be minded, revolution must be felt.

  .

Rule eight: Remember rule #1, free your mind from rules, and create your rules!

 .

---

[1] This contribution was presented at the practitioners’ panel at the Workshop on Camparative Mobilization and Protest, held at Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University, October 13, 2012. Proof-edited by Hilary Collins, Associate Researcher at the Regan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship Program, the International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy.

[2] Ismail Alexandrani is a freelance journalist, socio-political researcher, social media expert, and youth activist based in Alexandria, Egypt. He has previously worked with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s Unit of Futuristic Studies and the Project on Studying Social Movements at the American University in Cairo, focusing on political activism in Egypt and the Middle East. As a writer, blogger, and civil society activist, he advocates for the political and social integration of marginalized communities across Egypt, seeking to promote a culture of human rights through informal education, solidarity campaigns, and intercultural exchange.  As an online activist, he has trained nongovernmental organizations in the use of new and social media at the grassroots level. He has also trained political activists, emerging political leaders, and human rights advocates in effective networking and capacity building. In 2009, he was a global winner of the World Youth Movement for Democracy’s International Essay Contest on Youth and Democracy. During his fellowship, Mr. Alexandrani is comparing how digital and offline social media are used in Egypt and the United States for collective mobilization

[3] Why was Khaled Said’s case different? When solidarity becomes implicitly violating! (in Arabic).

 http://ismailalex.blogspot.com/2012/06/blog-post.html

[4] Word “activist’ has become meaningless in Egypt since we have had jobless fulltime activists and part-timer activists. In Arabic it is pronounced “Nashett” which stands for the word “active”. Egyptian humor targets its concept and comic comments explain it as “not lazy” or “the person who exercises regularly”. However, I use it in order to refer to groups and individuals who know each other throughout public events address political and human rights issues.

[5] http://www.facebook.com/ElShaheeed

[6] That’s why I call it “mercurial”. I explain it more in “Arab Youth: Twitterizing Mercurial Generation, The original copy of this article published in French and Spanish in Afkar/Ideas Magazine, issue no. 30, summer 2011. (http://www.afkar-ideas.com/), English copy is on https://alexsalon.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/arab-youth-twitterizing-mercurial-generation/, and the Arabic copy is published on Jadaliyya

(http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1913/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%A8-)

Arab Youth: Twitterizing Mercurial Generation [1]

النسخة العربية منشورة على موقع جدلية (اضغط هنا)

Friday of Victory at Tahrir Square – Al-Masry Al-Youm

 By Ismail Alexandrani

“What a dodgy generation?“, “elusive“, “wily“, “devious“, “rigger“, etc… are examples of the horrible, or at least the significant, attributes Arab youth were stained and smudged by. No chance for dialogue, nonstop judging and parental evaluation definitely made us careless of defense. Did it really deserve?

It was common, both security-wise and socially, to address the famous question to any political or Human Rights-wise involved person with a “respectable” background or affiliation; “what is the relationship between you and those kids?“. Those unarmed kids actually were in their route to the historical day when they surrounded the Apparatus (Security State) and physically won that unequal battle (Alexandria, March 4, 2011). 

“Conclude!“, “Be brief!“, “Start from the end!“, “And finally…?“, are among phrases and expressions I have heard from my peers since I was a high school student more than a decade ago. Sometimes, this rhythm of life was a matter of criticism and a call for nostalgia to the “beautiful era“, when a whole family listened to the radio waiting for a two-hour concert of a single song by Om Kolthoom. It was also an approach to excusing pressed depressed people in many Arab countries, where two full-time jobs might not secure a decent life. Actually, it was worth studying as an indicator of the upcoming style of actions, but “who cared?!“

 

Twitterizing not Twitterized

Post-revolutionary referendum on constitutional amendments[2] in Egypt has assured that digital media and networks may reflect the reality or an aspect of it, but do not make it for sure. When the elitist campaign for “NO” was optimistic by the online surveys, I published my expectations as the “Result of Referendum from the Control Room“, a week before the referendum[3], where I estimated at least 70% of votes for “YES“[4], and alarmed to the way the “elite” follows to assess and evaluate. The main teaser is about conceptualizing the real role e-social media does play in the Arab world. If e-meetings are safer than physical ones, and if complicated networking is familiar to the web-sphere, does it mean that e-social media is changing the culture of acting and practicing?

I may argue, depending on my ethnographic participation and observations at least, that Facebook has been politicized, and there is no doubt that it was not a politicizing tool in Mark Zuckerburg’s plans when he built it as an e-social network, or even when he and his partners developed it to a business corporation[5]. The same argument is existing concerning YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, etc. When we realize that the general percentage of illiteracy in the Arab World is approximately 30% (and 40% among adult females)[6], it may be more understandable that the numerical majority of Arabs are not familiar with the internet itself, especially when we consider that Arabic domains and URLs are not used yet.  

The counter argument says that we did not need the majority to spark the revolution, even if literate and illiterate citizens made it. It sheds lights on the concept of “critical mass” which change requires. Here, I may wonder what would happen had YouTube been a platform for sharing Om Kolthoom’s songs’ rhythm! Or if Twitter were a forum for more than 140 thousands characters!

I do believe that the success and effectiveness of e-social media is based on its compatibility to its users’/interactors’ culture of practicing their ordinary life. That culture is a fundamental factor of understanding why the equal usable e-platforms get different popularity. So, the web-sphere had been ready to the globalized twitterized youth, before launching Twitter itself. Arab youth are a part of this culture of “Conclude!” in the era we have stopped to name it as “the era of speed“. It is usual to seek for minimizing digital devices, reducing search time and thinking in how we shall make everything faster without disruption of any other earnings. Does it remind us about the issues of fast-food?

Actually, the motivation of preferring fast-food may be typical to creating the e-feed, and may also be a good perspective to understand why they have been Twitterized Revolutions. It is the difference between two-hour concert of a single song with a legion of band members and a three-minute rap clip with digital music, and probably mono-production. After participating in twitterizing the global web-sphere, even if by using and interacting, Arab youth have twitterized the historic changes and reduced the processing time from years and months to weeks and days.

 

Mercurial Properties

If all metals are solid and all liquids are dim, mercury is the only shiny liquid metal. Only mercury does not care how solid metals underestimate it and why other liquids are depressed enough not to shine, because they simply are not mercury. That’s how Arab youth are! With exceptional self-confidence and significant ambition, they act indifferently to what parents tell at home, teach at university and apply at work. It would be a bloomer if we perceive it as a generation conflict. What kind of competition might be between horsemen[7] and Facebookers? It is very important to recognize that absence of harmony between Arab different generations does not mean a crisis, because peace is not absence of conflict.

It may be a post-conflict status, and sometimes it is a negative peace between Arab youth and whom start their speech by “Oh, my son” or “Look, my daughter!” Ironically, adolescence symptoms appeared suddenly on parents after the revolution. In many public events, they express their feelings of persecution and marginalization, and the surprise is that young persons in charge do not take revenge. It became strenuous to the young organizers of events to contain and deal with these current revolutionary side effects, but the real challenge is to convince the older generations that we have been tolerant with them for a long time and they did not notice. It started when we believed that they mostly disliked to understand us, or were incapable of that, and when we stopped waiting for their support and continued our struggle, not only politically but also socially and career-wise.

We did stop explaining our different approaches and thoughts, lost our former destitution to their understanding, and also excused them, because we believed that they were doing their best to guarantee a better future for us, not to highhandedly control our breaths. We all were in the same trench fought by the authoritarianist regimes which enjoyed narrowing their income rates and opportunities and smashing our dreams and hopes. Simply, we went ahead and saved our energy not to lose it in such sterile debates.       

On the other hand, Arab youth, mercury which does not compete other liquids or other solid metals, are not servile. Dictator regimes were conceited enough to ignore mercurial toxicity and thought that they could swallow them. On January 25, the starting of Egypt’s revolution, I co-led one of seven simultaneous demonstrations in Alexandria, where we started in dozens of activists and semi-activists. We choose to go from margins and poor areas where police forces had to not be aggressive and tried to stop our marching by negotiating on keeping it as a stand-up protest. In Al-Ma’had Al-Dini Street, eastern Alexandria, the light police force could not stop dozens of us. When we arrived to 45 Street in hundreds, they deployed the Central Security forces to block the way to the near Church (as a security precaution). Spontaneously, the marching demonstrators avoided the physical clash and detoured in a narrow side street, where we crept to Sidi Beshr (another neighborhood) and became thousands, and activists lost the control of directing it, even before continuing to other neighborhoods along the miles in the route to the center of the city, where the smallest demonstration became more than ten thousands persons. This was an example of how it evolved from wide demonstrations to an uprising, and then to a revolution.

It may be funny now to liken the metaphor of swallowing mercury to the fake forensic report which claims that Khaled Said[8] died because he tried to swallow a roll of drugs to escape legal punishment. Indeed, Mubarak’s regime was trying to swallow its crimes to hide them, but they did not know that recent youth generation is mercurial, which means poisoning.  

 

Arab Regimes and Fluid Poisoning

What may a piece of wood do with a jumbo bulk of concrete? Or, let’s say, what may structured institutionalized political organizations do with the best built, strongest and most wanton regimes? But, what about facing the concrete with water? And deconstructing metallic structures by fluid solutions?

“According to Mr. President’s instructions” was one of the most silly and lumpish sentences we used to hear from the state media in the Arab region. We did not imagine that once a day we would say: “the revolution could not succeed except according to Mr. President’s instructions“. And this is true!

I argue that many Arab revolutions and uprisings might be discharged if the regimes were not too arrogant to take the initiative and responded to the basic demands. Anger Fridays should have not evolved to be uprisings if martyrs were not shot, and the uprisings might be contained if the courtiers were not stupid enough to send un-uniformed cavalry, nomadic (Hajana) and thugs. This brilliant tactics were capable to guarantee, at least, the continuity of uprisings/revolutions. Most importantly to study is which order those tactics occupy in the long term mercurial suicide.

“Pressure generates explosion” is not enough to describe the frozen boiling which was observed. Ahmad Nazeef’s, Mubarak’s last Prime Minister’s; government boasted that it was running forward to “smartizing” (digitalizing) Egypt. It is well known that all related deals with multinational corporations are smudged by corruption suspicions, but a positive aspect of those procedures is to support spreading the culture of using the internet among wider sectors of youth, even in poor areas where individuals/families have no PCs and usually use internet cafes. As a purely security mentality, the Ministry of Interior Affairs tried to rule the public use of internet cafes and to practice primitive censorship. In addition to other several reasons, it encouraged the illegal DSL networks, with a very good societal experience in illegal satellite cables, which means more online hours to spend and higher female participation.

Linking the computer and internet use with playing, entertainment and having fun was the fatalist strategic mistake stored in parental regime’s subconscious. Pharaoh Mubarak’s unforgettable comment on the Parallel Parliament in the parliamentary assembly on December 19, 2010 by saying “let them entertain themselves” was a serious indicator of the gage of disregard they paid to the under-surface mobility as well as the above-surface interactions. Steven Heydemann attributed the Arab regimes as “earthquake resistant“[9], as they enjoyed a unique ability to contain all opposition actions, but actually they were trying to contain the poisoning mercury. Banning all public spheres irrigated all kinds of private activities, facing the keyboard by handcuffs let nothing to do except announcing discontent, and finally blocking all sorts of communications forced people to get out and go to know what was happening.

Mubarak’s and Bin Aly’s regimes monopolized the structural efficiency and the hierarchy agency, which missed any chance to healthy structured political bodies. It was like a huge tree crumbled all competitive shrubs to thorns, where their movement became faster and easier, and then surrounded, jabbed and finally pushed it down. It is the same situation for an elephant attacked by ants’ army in comparison to fighting a couple of little donkeys. Here, Asef Bayat’s term of “encroachment of ordinary people“[10] in the context of studying the Social Nonmovements may be suitable.

Twitterized Mercurial Revolutions and the Master Transition

This exceptionalism is uninhabitable in both conservative metal and liquid minds, where both modern and postmodern approaches are incapable of explaining what exactly has happened in Tunisia and Egypt, or even to analyze what is running in the whole Arab world. It is the academic historic shift where western academia in its worst situation, and when the political process model and classic, or even postmodern, political sociology are expired. Where they principally valid to the Arab region?

How many imported fibs on institutionalism, missing the political opportunity, resource mobilization, structure agency, etc did we study in a totally different soil? How negatively-romantic, absurd, chaotic and useless was the Arabization of postmodernism? What would our aspirations and visions be had we deleted these elapsed three months from the memory of history?

Post-leadership, post-organization and post-ideology are the terms and concepts which disqualified a paper of mine to be published by a prestigious academic institute in 2010. Aly El-Raggal, a young researcher has been working on the concept of rhizomatic forms and networks in opposition to the tree/hierarchy shapes, faced also a lot of ignorance to his thesis by Egyptian scholars who obtained their PHDs from reputable universities around the world in accordance with the “scientific” social theories and methodologies. There are just two examples for what is running now, when those concepts are going to be golden keys for understanding, analyzing and explaining a lot of real proceedings. Many Arab youth’s academic aspirations on having our own theories and models were rewarded by huge neglect, and this is a subject of academic revolution during the upcoming years.

Not only the academic illusions have been outdated, but also many political, social, and security myths have been broken by Arab revolutions sparked by youth. One of those superstitious beliefs is regarding the nationalistic disintegration between Arab peoples. Ongoing revolutions and uprisings assure that the Arab Regimes Club, the League of Arab States, does not represent the organic correlation between the Arab nations. Sooner or later, it is expected for the Saudi regime to be poisoned by the fugitive mercurial stalkers, and also expected to the whole area to start a new era of democratic post-islamist empowerment of people’s rule. Definitely the political and economic maps are going to be redrawn, but the question is about the demographic and lingual maps in the upcoming ten years, not why but how!

---

[1] The original copy of this article is in press in French, Spanish and Portuguese in Afkar/Ideas Magazine, issue no. 30, summer 2011. (http://www.afkar-ideas.com/), and the Arabic copy is published on Jadaliyya (http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1913/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%A8-)

[2] After Mubarak’s stepping down, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces recruited a commission for preparing the essential constitutional amendments in order to pave the way to the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

[3] Ismail Alexandrani’s blog (Egyptian Alexandrian), March 14, 2011. http://ismailalex.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-post_14.html

[4]  The final official result shows that “YES” got 77% of votes.

[5] Look also at: El-Raggal, Aly, Facebook and Political Mobilization in Egypt, 2010. (https://alexsalon.wordpress.com/?s=facebook+and+political+)

[6]  Estimations statistics of the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development,  http://www.arabfund.org/Data/site1/pdf/jaer/jaer2007/2.pdf

[7] It is not about the ancient stereotype on the Arab region, but a taunt on the way Tahrir Square protesters were attacked.

[8] An ordinary young man was tortured to death in the street by two police men near to his house in Alexandria in June 2010. Then, the largest Facebook page in the Arab region, We Are All Khaled Said (Kollona Khaled Said), was created and played an influential role in mobilizing and motivating huge numbers of ordinary Egyptians.

[9] Heydemann, Steven, The Persistence of Egyptian Authoritarianism and Prospects for Social Activism, Egypt’s Today Mobility conference, AUC, May 2010.

[10] Bayat, Asef, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, AUC Press, 2009.

(3/3) Facebook and Political Mobilization in Egypt

.

An Academic Paper by: Aly El-Raggal, February 2010

 

This paper was submitted to Professor Alvaro Sierra as an assignment of the Program of MA in Peace, Development, Security and International  Conflict Transformation Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

 

Part 1: Click here

Part 2: Click here

 

Security and the New Media

The new media, particularly social networks as Facebook, is imposing a lot of security challenges. I argue that in Egypt Facebook as a social/information network and a sort of a new media succeeded to break down the chain of power being imposed and practiced from the authority for a long time now. This chain is formed through three stages: surveillance, control and punishment. Now the authorities are confronted with the new fact that they can not put more than 1,232,480 persons under surveillance. The broken joint –surveillance- in this chain had broken down the whole chain; as the things went or could go out of their control. It is true that the authority had punished Esraa Abed El-Fateh and others after the 6^th of April 2008, but they could not punish the 75,000 members of the Facebook group. They could not also punish the masses which did not go to their jobs and made a public disobedience at this day. “That Esraa herself has been deterred by the security-oriented mentality does not, argues Nabil Abdel-Fattah, suggest that that strategy will be successful in other cases. There are “hundreds of other young Egyptians who will replace Esraa and use cyber space to express their socio- political demands; no censorship or deterrence strategies can stop them”.”

 

Moreover, the political and social activists could easily –and some of them already did- develop new techniques to counter the government actions which were taken against them. Simply they can use fake names and change their IP addresses. Playing with these new tactics the new technologies offer is not that difficult. In August 2008, the Egyptian authorities imposed new monitoring measures by demanding that Internet cafe clients must provide their names, email and phone numbers, before they can use the Internet”. It is now 2010 and you can find a lot of Internet cafes which are not going to ask for your ID, no one even is going to ask for your name. Also the easily build relationships between the clients and those who run the Cafes in Egypt can be a real obstacle in front of the authorities even if they tried to impose these measurements by the harsh force.

Micheal Dillon, one of the famous scholars in the field of the security studies, argues that the contemporary global security concerns can be distinguished from those of previous eras by developing three analytical terms: circulation, complexity and contingency. Dillon`s analytical paradigm, in my point of view, is not only helpful to understand the new security challenges and concerns on a global level, but on national and local levels too. The complexities being imposed by Facebook and the circulation of information and data are unpredictable. Moreover, it succeeded to integrate different spheres in the same pot. These interactions between the techno, politico and social spheres are putting the security mentalities in Egypt in a real confusion and a total state of flux. This, no doubt, creates a complex systems which in Dillon`s words “are not only adaptive entities behaving more like living systems, they are a combination also of social and technical elements”. As I mentioned before, Facebook is really successful in bringing ordinary people to the game. Moreover, politics have been socialized. “Even the phrase ‘6 April youth’ is enough to ruffle the feathers of the government. The security apparatus clearly believes that this kind of opposition has the ability to incite people to demonstrate”. This is in addition to their manifesto which clearly more societal rather than political. Amr Elshobaki argues that “it is unwise, not to say impossible, to deal with Egypt’s virtual community with the same security-oriented mindset the state uses in confronting on-the-ground challenges”. Following Dillon`s line of argumentation could also allow us to see the must of the change in governmentally of the Egyptian authority regarding its old security apparatus. Dillon is saying that “the interface between the human and the technical elements is integral to the dynamic of the whole system”. He goes further saying that the interface, where the human is also the social, which is most difficult to comprehend and command. This in turn requires a cognitive shift in the way in which the natural and the social world are studied scientifically – together not separately”. The main point which could also be very important to my argument is Dillon`s conclusion that “any transformation in the way in which the world is understood technically and socially will entail a cognitive shift in the way in which security becomes problematized and in the conduct of security policy”. Dillon is arguing that “we are undergoing such a historical shift now”, which if I would take it on a national level I would argue that the new techniques and tactics which had been adopted by the political activists in Egypt is strongly shacking and threatening the authorities in Egypt.

El-Gamal believes the 6 April arrests expose how the ruling system now sees security as its only available response to Egypt’s problems. The response to the strike, says El-Gamal, is proof that we are in an urgent need of a new political mind set. Historian Qassem Abdu shares the same with El-Gamal. The detentions are an example of the security-oriented mind set of the state in dealing with any crisis situation caused by socio- economic or political conditions, he says.

El-Sennawi, a well known Nasserist writer says that there was a dire need to look into the usage of the new technologies. Weapons and armored vehicles come face to face with the new realms of technology.

 

In all this flux, there were some rumors about the regime intention to shut off the Facebook. “From a purely practical point of view, Elshobaki points out, shutting Facebook will have little impact since the pages that are closed can easily be re-loaded on other sites”. Nabil Abdel-Fattah believes any attempt to block Facebook will only indicate the state’s weakness and inability to confront the digital era in which we all now live. “It is as if the state can come up with nothing but old policies in facing new, revolutionary techniques. This is very unwise and will never work.”

 

At the beginning I argued that Facebook is an information network as well as social one. “Information networks make it impossible for politicians to maintain effective control, try as they might. The networks are simply too fluid, too leaky, too undisciplined and too rampant to allow the politicians to maintain an effective hold” (Frank Webster, 2001; p.7).

 

Conclusion

 

This paper argued that Facebook is not only a social network, but it an information network and a sort of New Media. It also argued that briefly the notion of Foucault Power/Knowledge and it concluded that the New Media will produce new sorts of Knowledge. This will have a lot of impacts on the exercises of power and its centralization and marginalization. The second part of this paper, discussed the role of Facebook in Egypt in the different spheres particularly the socio, politico and cultural one. It also discussed the role of Media –both of them- and the Facebook effective role in the 6^th April strike, and it proved that they were very influential in moving and shaping opinions and perspectives towards the strike particularly and towards the whole system in Egypt generally. The last section of this paper argued and discussed the challenges imposed by this new technology and its impacts on the governmentally in Egypt. Which could be concluded to the following: seeking security through the old securitized orientated mindset of the regime to oppose any kind of political activism through Facebook will never be fulfilled. Moreover, it could end with a huge amount of violence which the authorities and the regime themselves are not going to stand.

 

References:

 

Al Ahram, 2008: “Seasons of Protest”, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/928/eg6.htm

Chris Van Buren, 2009: “Egypt and the Facebook Revolution”, available at: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/idblog/2009/01/27/egypt-and-the-facebook-revolution/, last reterived 13 Feb, 2009.

Gamal Nkrumah and Mohamed El-Sayed, 2008: “Politicising the Internet”, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/894/pr1.htm, last reterived 13 Feb, 2009.

International Telecommunications Union, “ITU Internet Indicators 2008, retrieved on 02/09/10 from http://www.itu.int/ITUD/icteye/Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportNam….

Magda El-Ghitany, 2008: “Facing Facebook”, available at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/895/eg5.htm, last reterived 13 Feb, 2009.

Ibid, 2008: “Politics or Security”, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/893/eg5.htm,

Mohamed El-Sayed, 2009: “Face-off with Facebook”, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/908/eg7.htm, last reterived 13 Feb, 2009.

Salonaz Sami (2008): Virtual politics, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/909/fe1.htm

-A Tool to Mobilize?, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/909/fe2.htm,  last reterived 13 Feb, 2009.

Wetherell, Taylor and Yates, 2003: Discourse Theory and Practice, Sage Publications LTD, London.

Wim Donk (2004): Cyber Protest: New Media, Citizens and Social Movements, available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=vm_Ox6lyyt0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=new+media+and+social+movements&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Frank Webster (2001): Culture and Politics in the Information Age http://books.google.at/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1oGFwjQ30t0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA32&dq=new+media+and+social+movements&ots=D6hLIt5cM_&sig=SUSl_gobMpEwB0RYdWwtT-uvVys#v=onepage&q=new%20media%20and%20social%20movements&f=false

Open Net Initiative (2009) : Internet Flitering Media in Middle East and North Africa, http://opennet.net/research/regions/mena, last reterived 13 Feb, 2009.

Berkman Center for Internet and Society (2009) Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/Mapping_the_Arabic_Blogosphere, Issue of June 2009, last reterived 13 Feb, 2009.

David M. Faris (2009): The end of the beginning: The failure of April 6th and the future of electronic activism in Egypt  http://www.arabmediasociety.com/ , last reterived 13 Feb, 2009.

SAMANTHA SHAPIRO (2009):Revolution, Facebook-Style http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25bloggers-t.html

i Ben Gharbia(2009): Egypt: Facebooking the Struggle http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/30/egypt-facebooking-the-struggle/

 

(2/3) Facebook and Political Mobilization in Egypt

.

An Academic Paper by: Aly El-Raggal, February 2010

 

This paper was submitted to Professor Alvaro Sierra as an assignment of the Program of MA in Peace, Development, Security and International  Conflict Transformation Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Part 1: Click here

Media, the Old and the New, and its Impact in Different Spheres

 

The call was through Facebook and was taken from there to every corner in Egypt. There was high and strong escalation on Facebook before the day of the Strike. Reporting every single moment happened on that day through a cooperation between the 6th of April Facebook group and Blog. Upon her arrest, a self-titled Free Israa group spontaneously emerged on Facebook, where she was considered a heroine, by the dozens of thousands who joined in. “This proved once again how powerful these online youth really are,” said Ghoneim.

People’s Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour was quoted in Al-Ahram, the most important official Newspaper in Egypt and by far a governmental/ official one, saying: “The 6 April strike was aimed at undermining stability and security to achieve doubtful aims”. Official papers were unanimous in their criticism of the supposed misuse of the Internet. Indeed, Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, editor-in-chief of the daily official Al-Gomhuriya called upon readers to “boycott Youtube and Facebook websites”. The weekly magazine Rose El-Youssef launched a harsh critique against the Facebook, “Facebook is a secret room aimed at ruining Egypt” ran the headline of the file. “Members of the website are searching for gossip,” the paper reported. Political commentator El-Sayed Yassin was the first to attack the bloggers, accusing them of altering the truth and tarnishing Egypt’s reputation abroad. “Foreign embassies follow up on these blogs and groups and report back to their countries,” said Yassin. Most, if not all, of the bloggers’ posts distort and misrepresent reality. “They send the wrong information about Egypt to the world,” he claimed. Councilor Murad Hassan went further, insisting they deliberately manipulated facts, circulated fabricated pictures, and magnified individual incidents to mislead public opinion. “In addition, the kind of language they use to express their opinions is unsuitable and strange to our society,” Hassan told Al-Ahram Weekly.

What really tarnish Egypt’s reputation, pointed out writer Sakina Fouad, are the “lack of transparency, corruption, as well as a lack of information which these groups and blogs are trying to expose”. The 6 April strike, said Harb, showed that virtual activism is beginning to have a grassroots impact. And the fact that the regime felt it necessary to arrest 27-year-old Israa Abdel-Fattah for starting a Facebook group, he argued, “is a clear proof of the threat that the regime feels… the Internet is the new battleground between those who want to speak out and those who would stop them”. Whatever the ideological leanings of bloggers, said Bahieddin Hassan, head of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies, they have one thing in common: “They are all rejected by the authorities, regardless of their political, social or religious views, on the grounds that what they do is a crime.“ And, with his magical touch as always, veteran writer Mohamed Hassanein Heikal was quoted in Al-Masry Al-Yom as saying: “The Egyptian press is experiencing a crisis, and this is attributed to the general atmosphere in Egypt which is reflected on the media scene in general.”

 

Is it Really Effective?

A Controversial Debate

In the aftermath of the 6^th of April the question of how effective is Facebook as political and social tool for the change in Egypt becomes very debatable in the different intellectuals circles. Many see Facebook as the new hammer of hope that the struggle will use it to dig the tunnel of change in Egypt.

 

After an interview, with Dr. Mona El-Tahawy, a specialist on the New Media, a very positive vision for the future of political activism through the New Media, particularly Facebook, could be concluded. El-Tahawy believes that some political activists, especially young ones in their 20s, have managed to use Facebook to organize in ways unavailable to them in the “real” world. Some activities have been successful such as setting up the April 6 Movement, launching groups to combat sexual harassment and to raise awareness among young people, and most recently I just came across a Facebook group called “The Egyptian Candle Against Sectarianism Initiative”. It will organize a demonstration outside the Journalists Syndicate.

 

New Media is one of the few reasons that I remain optimistic about Egypt, speaks El-Tahawy, “a country where the majority of the population is under the age of 30 and where many of those young people who have Internet access are on Facebook. When I have taught classes here in the U.S. on New Media in the Arab World, my students have always been impressed at how Egyptians especially use Facebook in such a political way. Some, of course, use Facebook in the way other young people across the world do – to just connect with friends and post photos from parties – but Egyptians have embraced their ability to voice their opinion on Facebook more than the average young Americans have”.

 

In conclusion, El-Tahawy believes that young people in Egypt especially are learning to experiment with the voices and views through Facebook. Of course it is not available to everyone but views encountered online can be shared with friends’ offline and the circle of influence can widen.

 

However, the above mentioned leads us to ask with Salonaz Sami from Alhram Weekly, does what happen on Facebook remains there? Actually this could be very debatable. From my experience as an Egyptian who lives there and belong to the upper middle class, most of them have Internet access, I would say no. It does not stay there. Particularly after Facebook has succeeded to socialize politics or politicize the Internet. The call for the 6^th of April, definitely, did not stay there. The night before the strike I was in Alexandria. All the people I met were speaking about the public strike; from the taxi drivers to the beggars in the streets, from my friends who do not care for politics and do not even want to hear something about to the political and social activists. In this night it did not matter which class or political party you belong to. Fear, cautious, tensions and irritations were seen, felt and even smelled in every corner. Describing the whole atmosphere before the strike and after the strike I would say that it was a night of tension, a morning of fear and cautious and the evening of taking breaths. This does not argue that everything in virtual reality moves to the reality. This mainly argues that it depends on the cause and its importance and engagement with the needs, aims or even fears and the people interests in the reality.

 

Mahinour El-Masari argues that under an undemocratic and tyrant regime in Egypt which suppresses any movement in general and any kind of political dissent and by the emergency law still in force, it is easy to put people in jail for lame evidences. This is the thing that makes activists prefer mobilizing others through social networks, as it is easy to escape from the supervision of the regime, especially that it is still primitive in the technology field. It also gives a wider range of people. The Facebook group calling for the 6 of April 2007 public strike reached over 70,000 members, while at the sometime Kefaya Movement, the largest opposition group by this time, didn’t exceed 4000 activists.

 

Chris Van Buren in his Famous article “Egypt and the Facebook Revolution” says “Egypt, long stalled corrupt secularism and Islamic fundamentalism, may find its political situation radically altered by the rise of  Facebook literate citizens, ready to blog, question and organize for their causes”. Nora Younis, in an interview done by Sami Ben Gharbia and posted on the Global Voices Advocacy said: “Internet was the main tool in mobilizing for the 6 April strike. It’s true a tiny fringe of Egyptians have access to Facebook but the 70,000+ members of the group acted as strike advocates in the society and took the debate from PC screens to taxis, workplaces, dinner tables and breadlines”. However, Nora also pointed out that we should not forget that what gave April 6 its weight was the labor movement uprising and their struggle for a dignified minimum wage. She also added that Internet alone, without the popular base, wouldn’t have led to the successful strike we witnessed April 6. Blogger Hossam El-Hamalawy criticizes the exaggeration of the influence and power of the virtual reality on reality saying:

 

“We, the Egyptian bloggers, have always prided ourselves on the fact that we have one foot on the ground and the other in the cyberspace… But this time, it seems some have thrown both their feet as well as brains in the cyberspace and are living some virtual reality, mistakenly believing (helped by the media sensationalist coverage of the “Facebook activism“) that they are the ones behind the events in Mahalla…”

 

Ismail Alexandrani, an E-journalist and Human Rights activist, told me once in an interview through the Internet that the influence of the Internet, particularly, social networks like Facebook, are very limited because of the wide spread of literacy reading and writing, as well as computer and Internet literacy.

 

“Some of my fellow researchers in the project Social Movements at the American University in Cairo – who are also strong activists – believe that Facebook social networking give an illusion of self that one is a real activist and a large compensatory. In fact, Facebook activists often receive Facebook “piles” in the events they created attended by hundreds, then by default does not come to it in fact only a few dozens”.

 

“However, I can not deny that the Facebook played an important role in the mobilization of many causes as the 6^th of April for example. But we should not forget that there were different factors which were more important like the traditional media, without which the mobilization through Facebook only was not going to be that successful”, he added.

 

As anyone who has caught the internet virus can attest, virtual activism may serve as a substitute –and not as a spur- to activism in the real world (Tarrow 1998: 193). In my point of view, I argue that Facebook could lead for strong revolutionary shifts in the political and social spheres in Egypt. If the political activists started to adopt techniques like establishing Rhizomes to oppose the regime, these could work simultaneously and parallel on different causes in different places. This no doubt can easily exhaust the authority if it tried to oppose it. Moreover, the authority will not be able to follow the velocity and dynamics of these Rhizomes. It is asymmetric technique which the authority structures, particularly the security system –regardless its power and harsh violence dealing with any political actions- are not going to be able to ban it or stop its efficiency. Trees hierarchy structures, whatever strong they are, can not defeat the structures of the Rhizomes – this by the facts, nature and order of things.

 

However, away from direct political activism, I argue that there is white revolution, which many are not aware of, in the spheres of social and development activism whose playground is Facebook. Different un-politicized organizations, associations, NGOs and youth initiatives are running a strong and influential work through Facebook. And as most of their activities are safe, non ideologist and interesting, they gained great popularity and a lot members not only on the virtual reality but on the real ground. Moreover, the facilities offered by Facebook allowed them to launch strong campaigns and promote their ideas and events without spending one Egyptian pound. They do all their advertisements, public relations and publicity through Facebook. Their work has nothing to do with a direct confrontation with the current regime, but they work on cultural and social issues which could lead for drastic changes in the collective cognitive maps. This awareness sooner or later will find its way to change, not only the political structure but the whole social, economic and cultural structures in Egypt. Dr. Mona El-Tahawy in an online interview with me said: I like to say that young people in Egypt are rebuilding civil society through new media. They are expressing themselves in unprecedented ways and across the political spectrum. They are also challenging authority of various kinds – political, religious and social. You see blogs and Facebook groups and Tweets by everyone from the Muslim Brotherhood to secular groups to gays and lesbians. However, the flow of arguments leads us to try to explore the impacts of the New Media on the security mentality, structure and system of the police-state in Egypt.

 

To be followed…

Part 3

 

(1/3) Facebook and Political Mobilization in Egypt

.

An Academic Paper by: Aly El-Raggal, February 2010

This paper was submitted to Professor Alvaro Sierra as an assignment of the Program of MA in Peace, Development, Security and International  Conflict Transformation Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Introduction

 

What can not be done in reality, can be done in virtual reality. The New Media opens totally new horizons which were never there before. Now we can be the producers and consumers, at the same time, of a media done by us. It is no longer that we are going to consume information passively. It is everyone’s turn now to tell his or her word in the world of media and information. The information technology revolution, which is considered to be the third most important one in the human history after the industrial revolution, can empower anyone who can just have access to the Internet. However positive or negative impacts this will have on our lives, this technology is no doubt a strong tool for exercising power. Technology can easily turn to be our worst nightmare. But this has nothing to do with technology itself. Still there is –and will always be- a human factor beyond the screens. The scene we watch on the theater of life is played by people like us. And even if the show was done through robots, still we are the one who program them.

The New Media, Power and Information

You Create Your Own Media

In my point of view, I argue that knowledge is mainly based and created on/ through information. Power reproduces knowledge/ power and exports it to us. According to Foucault, power is knowledge which could only be understood and have a meaning through discourses. “Discourse is about the production of knowledge through language. Foucault argues that discourse construct the topic; it defines and produces the objects of our knowledge. It governs that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about” (Margaret, Stephanie and others, 2003: p.72). In the spectrums of these lines of argumentation, I argue that through the new technology and our capability to produce our knowledge, power can never be centralized. The truth “either/ or” dichotomy will barely exists in our life. This New Media will allow power to emerge from the center and from everywhere, not like before, practiced from the top to bottom, as Max Weiber argued. “Politics in the “information age” is, in Castell`s view, either on the informational networks or it is irrelevant. That is, contemporary politics is necessarily media-centric since outside the media sphere there is only political marginality” (quoted from Frank Webster, 2001; p.7). But what the New Media allows, from my point of view, in the game is that media is not centralized anymore.

 

Facebook- Your Book

 

Facebook is not only a social network, but it is an information network too. It is one sort of the New Media. It is, in my point of view, a revolution in the New Media itself; a radical and total change, exactly as any dictionary could define revolution. Facebook changed the whole game. It changed its tools of production and consumption. It is totally a new interface and interaction. You can produce and consume all kind of media and information from writing your status informing about your mood, to articles, news, photos, images and videos. All in the same pot and can be done almost in the same time. Every one can be on Facebook, from business men, politicians to students, young people, peasants and labours. “And if it is on the news, you will find on Facebook, said Salama –a professor of social studies” (Salonaz Sami, 2008). Social networks, particularly Facebook, made a drastic change in our lives. Debord described the change done by the new technology by saying “all that was once directly lived has become mere representation” (Debord 1992: Thesis 1).

The New Media is, according to a lot of scholars, journalists and writers, playing a huge rule in different spheres; from the socio to the economic. Egypt is the second country in Africa having Facebook users. According to Harvard University’s Berkman Centre – which did a study on the Arabic blogosphere in 2009, Egypt has the highest number of blogs in the Arab world. Since two years now, the role of Facebook and the New Media is widely debatable in Egypt. In Egypt, where more than half the population is under 25 years old, “there is a thirst for new technology,” explained Ahmed Ghoneim, a Technical Director. “Facebook has provided these young people with a chance to escape the backward conditions they were born into, into their own virtual utopia, where anything is possible,” he added.

Facebook is up and growing, offering a lot more than just a political platform for activists. Users can choose to join different networks organized by city, school or workplace. It allows members to create groups that discuss everything, from politics, philosophy, and history to religion and spirituality. Egypt, also, is one of the best examples for the usage of the social networks like Facebook, and the new media tools like Twitter for political mobilization. This is because of reasons concerning the level of freedom in the country, the strength of the opposition powers, the type of the issues and its variety, and the target group from this kind of mobilization, thus had spoken Mahinour El-Maseri, a young political activist, in an online interview with me.

In 6 April 2008, Esra` Abed El-Fatah and other young people from different organizations and movements called for a public strike. This strike found a strong ground in Egypt, particularly, in the labors sectors. And it ended with one of the most violent incidents in Gazel El-Mahaila, a big industrial city for textile. Many people were wounded by the security forces and some of them were killed. (See different reports on http://6april08.blogspot.com/). The city turned to be a battlefield between the security forces and the masses. Different cities, like Alexandria where I was in its streets reporting for Alexnews website, were occupied by hundreds of security vehicles and thousands of soldiers. Different demonstrations were oppressed by violence. This is in addition to hundreds of political arrests in different cities.

This strike caught the attention to the possibility of using Facebook as strong tool for political mobilization. Some started to argue that the Egyptian political activists are politicizing the Internet. Facebook, points out Amr Elshobaki of Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies, is popular all over the world. Only in Egypt, he says, has it been so politicized. One reason being that while other countries have a variety of venues for socio-political expression, including political parties and NGOs, in Egypt this is not the case. “Young people have deserted a reality in which they knew they can change nothing and directed their efforts instead towards this virtual environment. If the state deprives them of even this form of expression, then they will look to release their anger elsewhere.” They may turn to violence” (Magada El-Ghitany, 2008).

However, in my point of view, I strongly believe that Facebook succeeded to socialize politics and to politicize the Internet. The 6^th of April strike was, yes, mainly initiated by political activists, but the 75, 000 who joined the Facebook group were not all of them political activists. Thousands of people who did not go to their jobs at this day were not either. Facebook succeeded to bring ordinary people to the game by making the political issues socially debatable. Even the 6^th of April Manifesto was almost calling for social things. People who were doing nothing except uploading photos on Facebook and who had not done any political or social activity before are now socially debating many political issues. “This is the so called “cute-cat theory of digital activism,” whereby average users, normally interested in uploading cute cat pictures, suddenly develops a political grievance against the censoring authority” (Chris Van Buren, 2009).

However, this strike has huge impacts on the political, social and media spheres till the moments. The role, also the media –the New and the Traditional- played was very critical one, through the different stages of the strike.

 

to be followed….

Part 2: Click here

Part 3: Click here