Tag Archives: Egypt

Egypt: If civilian men don’t get you, the state will

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flag-of-egyptRegional experts agree (discussed here previously): Egypt is, by far, the worst place to be a woman in the entire “Arab World” right now.

They’ve hidden that nasty reputation by distractingly pointing to real but less substantive issues like driving bans and clothing requirements in the Gulf states. But in terms of basic human rights, being female in Egypt is a pretty heinous experience right now. And when anything bad happens, their families often abandon them.

The latest affront is state-backed “virginity tests” on women detained by security services. This euphemism itself hides the reality of the situation: members of state security and quasi-medical professionals aggressively and intrusively “examining” (read: violating, since it’s not optional) women they believe have crossed some moral boundary, usually after having been assaulted by civilian men (an extremely frequent and ever-present threat since the fall of the Mubarak regime). These examinations are neither medical in nature nor scientifically based (unfortunately, in the West, many myths persist also about the topic — so don’t feel too superior, American readers).

To top it all off, the new dictator and future president is a vocal supporter of this violation as a regular tactic. 
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The propagandists’ alternate history of the Egyptian revolution

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egypt-coat-of-armsRegular readers will have noticed by now my informal chronicling of curious propaganda coming out of post-coup Egypt. Today I flag this passage in a New York Times op-ed, “Egypt’s Despair, and Its Hope,” by Alaa Al Aswany:

a systematic media campaign carried out by state television and the private channels owned by businessmen who used to back the Mubarak regime. This public relations effort aims to convey the notion that the January 2011 revolution was a plot by American intelligence agencies to remove Mr. Mubarak. It accuses the young revolutionaries of being traitors and paid agents of the West.

 
You might wonder how this kind of Bizarro-World bald-faced lying could actually work. How could any Egyptian be persuaded that the January/February 2011 uprising, which was resisted for many weeks by American officials — who had long backed Hosni Mubarak and were hoping he would hold on to power — could also be orchestrated by American intelligence agents and their Egyptian youth recruits?

This gets to the same problem I raised in my first post on post-coup propaganda:

Obviously, given their easy access to outside media, most internet-using Egyptians are probably well aware of the distinction […] It’s worth remembering, however, that a lot of Egyptians still get their news from television media and, unlike their Twitter-savvy brethren, aren’t necessarily exposed to alternate sources of information.

 
Indeed, many young, urban Egyptians are well aware of the alternate reality being constructed around — and, in fact, against them. As Aswany notes, recently a Facebook post on the despair of the rolled-back revolution went viral. Two sentences stick out in the this context:

Yet we keep on stating that it was a real dream, no matter how much they try to falsify history. None of us who have lived that dream will ever forget, or regret it, for a moment.

 
The question now is whether they will hold on to those memories long enough to outlast the efforts of the alternate-reality propagandists who are trying to convince them they have misremembered what happened and were wrapped into a Western web of lies and insurrection. It’s hard to keep hold of what you know is true the longer you spend in an environment that tells you an alternative narrative, day in and day out, and gaslights your lived experience constantly.
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Egypt insurgents shoot down military chopper

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Long anticipated/suspected, it’s now been dramatically confirmed that the Egyptian Sinai insurgency is in possession of functioning portable surface-to-air missiles acquired in the deluge of weapons that flooded North Africa during and after the Libyan Civil War. This was demonstrated when a militant group used one this weekend to take down a military helicopter, killing all five crew members on board, in front of dozens of witnesses. They later posted a video showing the attack and falling aircraft.

Meanwhile, anti-military protesters clashed with troops in Cairo, leaving over 60 dead, 250 injured, and more than 1,000 under arrest.

Tunisia still setting regional example

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Flag-of-TunisiaAmong the Arab Spring countries, Tunisia was not only the first to get the ball rolling but has also made the most sustained progress toward a durable liberal democracy, with majority rule and minority rights.

Nearly every other Arab Spring nation has regressed severely. For example, Egypt today marked its 3rd anniversary of the January 25 Protests that led to the fall of their dictator by celebrating and lauding … their new dictator. Neighboring Libya also still seems to be making progress, very slowly, but is pretty chaotic. Syria is mired in bitter civil war and the other countries generally suppressed their protests.

In contrast, Tunisian politicians have met their country’s bumps and protests with negotiations and compromise, again and again, thus avoiding disorder and civil war.

The leading, moderate Islamist party was amenable to compromise after last July’s Egypt coup showed them a much darker alternative, and the secular opposition parties were largely also very reasonable in negotiations. When a key opposition figure was assassinated last year, everyone managed to walk back from the brink of chaos and went back to working out their differences.

Yesterday, that resulted in parliament agreeing on a new constitution that exceeded expectations all around. A formal vote within parliament is scheduled for Sunday and it could enter force next week.

It’s still going to be a challenging road ahead but Tunisia is getting a new constitution that seems pretty well balanced and includes some really impressive provisions. Here’s a BBC analysis of the new document by Naveena Kottoor:

The majority of the members of the Tunisian constituent assembly are very keen to stress that this constitution is a consensus document, that reflects the unity as well as the diversity of the country.

Confronted with political stalemate and protests on the domestic front and the removal of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in Egypt last year, the governing Islamist Ennahdha party agreed to a number of concessions, including the removal of references to Islamic law.

The final text states that Islam is the religion of the Tunisian state, but guarantees religious freedom.

Article 45 puts a burden on the state to protect women against violence and ensure equal representation of men and women in elected institutions, a milestone in the Arab world.

But whether this new constitution will indeed pave the way for more democracy, transparency and accountability will depend on whether the principles enshrined in the text will be respected by Tunisian politicians and be put into practice in the coming months and years.

 
Tunisia is setting an example for the Middle East & North Africa region that there is another course and that societies with big differences can still come together and talk it out until there’s a solution that works for everyone.

Egypt’s Sisi selflessly offers to be leader forever

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fake-time-magazine-egypt-200In the least convincing denial yet that he is building a cult of personality and permanent personal dictatorship, Egypt’s General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi has told voters there that they should vote for his new constitution in this week’s referendum if they want him to run for president:

“If I run, then it must be at the request of the people and with a mandate from my army,” General Sisi said at a military seminar, according to the website of the state newspaper, Al Ahram. “I can’t turn my back on Egypt.”

 

Sisi added that it would be embarrassing for him if they didn’t vote for it, and you don’t want to disappoint the Dear Father.

“Don’t embarrass me in front of the world,” he said, “not me personally but the military, because in the military we are as united as one man’s heart, and we adhere to democracy.” He noted that the new charter authorizes the military to “protect the will of the people” and he vowed, “We will protect it in any circumstances.”

 

Fortunately for Sisi, campaigning against the proposed constitution is not allowed. Seems like a pretty fair way to check on public opinion before you run for something, right? And just to be sure, the state propaganda engines are grinding away toward victory:

The state news media and Egyptian private television networks, all supportive of the military takeover, are effusive in their endorsements of the new charter and contain scarcely a word of criticism. A group of Egyptian movie stars has recorded a television commercial singing a song in praise of the new charter, ending with a call for a thousand yeses to the new Constitution. And the military itself has produced a television advertisement in which a group of children sing their own endorsement to a martial theme.

“It’s to be or not to be,” the children sing, warning listeners that they will be judged by God for their vote and urging them not to “leave my country for destruction.”

 

So, to recap: If you vote against this, you’ll embarrass the national armed forces and its leader and then God will smite you. This seems compelling.

Women in Egypt want their basic human rights back

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egypt-coat-of-armsA recent survey of hundreds of gender experts from the region found Egypt to be the worst place for women in the Arab World right now, due to the chaos of the Arab Spring aftermath. Even Saudi Arabia came out ahead. Egypt has long had legal rights on paper for women, but in practice it hasn’t held up — and has gotten dramatically worse since the fall of the Mubarak government in early 2011.

9 in 10 women ages 15-49 have been mutilated, 99% have been aggressively harassed or sexually assaulted. Grievous assaults have occurred in full view of hundreds with no one intervening. Contrary to the messaging of opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood who claimed political Islam was the main threat to secular rights for women and others, the situation for Egyptian women has worsened even further under the military coup government installed in July of this year. Many of the pro-coup protesters have been among some of the worst public offenders. Now, Egyptian women are fighting back.

Trigger warning for the article linked above.

When old-school propaganda meets the internet age

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The irony of the internet age and the rise of social media under autocratic states is that it not only hasn’t brought an end to traditional replacement-of-reality-with-alternate-reality propaganda (à la the Soviet Union’s totalitarian media) and toppled all the dictators, but it has actually provided new opportunities for some of the propagandists. Propaganda is not just co-existing but flourishing, at the moment, even in places with ample internet access.

Person of the Year

Case in point: Egyptian government propagandists on state-run and pro-coup television were so eager to promote their new dictator, General Sisi, that they convinced everyone that Egyptians could control the outcome of TIME magazine’s person of the year selection and ordered them all to vote for him in the magazine’s online reader poll — which has no affect on the final choice for the magazine (which the editors pick). More Egyptians voted in the global internet poll, open to anyone, than the number of Americans or Indians who voted. Then when General Sisi won that reader poll, Egyptian media produced a fake cover of TIME and reported (falsely of course) that he had been officially chosen by the magazine as Person of the Year.

fake-time-magazine-egypt

Obviously, given their easy access to outside media, most internet-using Egyptians are probably well aware of the distinction, whether or not they voted for him in the poll. It’s worth remembering, however, that a lot of Egyptians still get their news from television media and, unlike their Twitter-savvy brethren, aren’t necessarily exposed to alternate sources of information. So if the TV says TIME magazine picked their nation’s leader as the global Person of the Year, and shows a cover to prove it, then they might not know otherwise.

American TV News

Television is by nature an authoritative, one-way medium that many viewers can’t contradict or fact-check easily (and tend not to, even if they can). Thus, propagandists can exert a heavy influence without much to challenge them. And in the modern era, they can couple it with the power of the internet rather than being undermined by it.

The Egypt story might seem provincial and irrelevant to us in the United States, but let’s not forget that a majority of Americans — particularly from the older generations — still get their news from television each day. The influence of TV news producers, while substantially more open to challenge in the United States than in Egyptian state media, is still a powerful force with a rigid narrative.

Viewers receive a narrow (partly by nature of the time-restricted format) and often repetitive message and are strongly encouraged to put their trust in the networks — local, national, or cable — that they are being told The Truth. Network brands are marketed like other products through heavy promotion. The promos urge people to maintain high brand loyalty to a particular delivery service of what is (theoretically) open information that should — if it’s really The Truth, as advertised — be more or less the same across brands.

The Fox Delusion

Fox News Channel, of course has taken this philosophy much further. They brag that they are the highest-rated cable news network … after years of convincing viewers — who skew older and count on television to be factually accurate — that the news world outside (except for right-wing talk radio, of course) is filled with lies and treachery, and that only Fox News Channel and its hosts’ radio shows are able to bring you The Truth. So everyone on the conservative end of the spectrum jumped on the bandwagon long ago and stayed put, resulting in its rise to the number one spot (while liberals split over a range of sources). For a regular viewer, adjusting that dial away from Fox News means being exposed to the “liberal media” conspiracy beyond.

Fox News Channel broadcasts are riddled with demonstrable errors — not just in analysis, but in basic statements of empirical, encyclopedic facts — as many a media fact-checking website has shown every day. Its viewers know better by now than to check outside the channel or its partners for the facts, though, so there is little danger they will be exposed to reality. When they go to vote in U.S. elections, they are doing so based on information received almost entirely if not solely from one news universe that has built all its analysis upon totally fabricated underlying facts. It’s not just skewed interpretations being delivered to viewers, but even foundational “facts” lacking in truth.

All this holds true even in an age of easy access to a literal world of factual information, via the internet. The internet, for a Fox viewer, instead of a source of contradicting reality, becomes a network of websites affiliated with Fox News or run by other devotees and like-minded ideologues.

Thus, as I have discussed extensively before, Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and the conservative blogosphere have established an entire unchallenged, closed-loop parallel universe of news “reality,” much in the way a totalitarian government’s state media would. And just as with Egyptian TV’s fake TIME magazine Person of the Year cover, Fox News Channel is able to propagate its elaborate fiction through traditional means, with help from the internet, rather than being genuinely subverted and exposed by the internet, as we might have expected.

What does the future hold?

The internet, social media, and freer access to information around the world will undoubtedly play a major role in opening societies and exposing fictions presented as news — and certainly the U.S. internet community has already been ripping apart fraudulent news stories in the traditional media for many years and forcing corrections (from outlets that aren’t trying to create a parallel reality).

But for the moment, at least, the rise of the internet is not the cure-all for propaganda, whether on U.S. cable or on authoritarian governments’ TV stations. The meeting of the internet and propaganda isn’t like throwing water on the Wicked Witch of the West. The narratives and fictional worlds of propagandists don’t dissolve instantly in the presence of access to information. But eventually, they will crumble.

The interim period will not be without consequences. How do people, including Egyptians or Fox News fans, react when confronted by the harsh light outside the cave? Ultimately this confrontation will inevitably occur, as it always has, despite the propagandists’ efforts to steer people to favorable sources. Whether the clash with reality occurs in the form of the loss of U.S. election if you were under the false impression that everyone agreed with the worldview Fox News nurtured in you, or in the form of realizing at newsstands in a few weeks that TIME magazine hasn’t put Dear Leader on the cover after all, people seem react in two ways.

The first reaction is turning in anger to wild conspiracy theories that explain the disjunction — i.e. that inscrutable minority forces must be controlling outcomes — and encourage extreme responses to “correct” the conspiracy — i.e. that the opposing faction must be destroyed. The second reaction is accepting that the propagandists have misled their audience about The Truth outside.

Sadly, many people find discovering themselves massively wrong or realizing they have been to duped to be extremely embarrassing or humiliating. (Being manipulated is something that happens to other people.) And so these people generally resist accepting they have been conned at all costs, even if it means embracing the extreme conspiracy theories and doubling down on their misguided beliefs. And that’s when the politics in a country get really scary.