[OPE] Brief Thoughts on the Egyptian Revolution

Jerry,

Let me assure you that what happened in the last weeks is not related
to a stage in 1952 (unless you subscribe to a Stalinist/Althusserian
theory, where any historical event can be related to any other historical
events according to a "law of motion" invented at the whim of the
Central Committee).

Some things struck me in particular so far:

1) This isn't yet a revolution, whether a social revolution or a political
revolution, though it could become one. The infotainment marketing
of the non-social media in the West suggest this is an:

"easy everything democratic revolution 2.1"

where after the leader has been ousted, the protestors clean up after
themselves and go home or back to work.

But all there is so far, is a military coup d'etat, within what amounts to a
military dictatorship; some reform proposals; and a change in social
mentality brought about by mass demonstrations. The military top brass in
Egypt has strong ties with the US, and one-third of Egypt's military budget
is directly financed by the US. The US and EU govts aim to "harness",
"manage" and "contain" the enthusiasm of the masses, to install a new client
regime, and media messages not compatible with that objective are simply
edited out of the "free press". Egypt has to become "more like America".

2) The Western and Chinese non-social media distortion is gigantic, and the
propagandizing of a media "narrative" to define the meaning of what is
happening, is happening on a gigantic scale. The goal of the mass movement
is narrowly defined in Western media propaganda as being about "freedom and
democracy" - this being the "end of history", the horizon of legitimate
thought. Western intelligence services and Mossad are working overtime to
sabotage any significant initiative that doesn't fit with the Western
imperialist plans for Egypt. Cruel facts, such as that the US and EU
financed, supported and endorsed Mubarak's oppressive regime for decades,
just like they finance and support Israeli fascism, are simply deleted
from the story.

3) Many spokesmen of the New Marxist Exploiting Class, the leftist
knowledge bureaucrats, largely followed liberal enthusiasm about Egypt's
uprising. But they complained often about Egyptian "spontaneism", lack of
organization, lack of hierarchy, and the lack of subordination of the
masses to the Central Committee of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party;
because of this, they argue, the Egyptian masses played into the hands of
the military, rather than follow through the revolutionary schema. But, in
reality, there was a lot of organization done by the Egyptians. It is just
that the anti-social media (the commercial media) mostly edited that part
out of their infotainment product. We're not supposed to know how to
organise like that, because it could be "destabilizing" - particularly if
"we" live in the Middle East or North Africa. In Algeria, the protestors
were outnumbered by the policemen (!), about three to one, that's how
afraid they are of an escalation.

Jurriaan

_______________________________________________
ope mailing list
ope@lists.csuchico.edu
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
Received on Sun Feb 13 08:37:10 2011