6:04:00 PM
DR.H.Nurudin Siraj.MA.MSi
The banality
of evil: Thinking Hannah Arendt in Cairo
The
atrocious killings in Maspero are not so much sectarian as a staging point in a
full-scale counterrevolution
Mona Abaza ,
Saturday 15 Oct 2011
Views:4003
In my last
article for Ahram Online, I had expressed concern about growing xenophobia. But
last Sunday’s tragic massacre of Coptic demonstrators triggered even bleaker
thoughts, this time about populist mass behaviour and fascist tendencies. We
are at the peak of the counter-revolution and the spectrum of an ascending
fascism is clearly in the making. I am using the word fascism because my
impression, and I might be wrong, is that a certain mood has been changing in
the street. I sense a feeling of collective exhaustion because everyday life is
turning even more strenuous for many and the economic hardship is touching
everybody. Endless traffic jams and increasing strikes in various sectors, which
are legitimate but which end up by paralysing the city, and the functioning of
the state for the benefit of individuals, and also add to it pollution and
the yearly intake of some 100,000 new cars, all this makes Cairo an
inferno. I perceive in these days a feeling of depression amongst many because
time and again the cleaning up of the fulul (remnants of the
old regime) is not happening. Many think that those who
are sustaining the rhetoric of maintaining order to punish the
perpetrators of disorder and chaos are the very producers of it.
The grey
dinosaurs, or rather catacombs-like rulers of Egypt, sticking to power in an
all-male establishment, do not want to give the space for the younger
generations to breathe. The thick black cloud that reappears every year
because of the alleged burning of rice straw in the countryside has been taking
away already so much oxygen, suffocating and polluting Cairo to the utmost.
This black cloud might perhaps be the best metaphor for the actual
political suffocation we are experiencing that was epitomised in the last
bloody Sunday on 9 October. And life for many of those who were in Tahrir
has been made even harder than before January. We know that this
is exactly what the fulul want to convey. So that we will perhaps
one day end up being nostalgic for the former regime. Yet, this is precisely
what is not happening.
The
masterminded incidents behind spreading chaos and the recurrent perpetration of
the killings of peaceful demonstrators in various incidents since January has
been replicated time and again by using an identical logic and identical
tactics. Brutal thugs appearing time and again in public spaces to attack
peaceful protesters; remember the incident of the Duwayqa garbage collectors,
the Balluun Theatre events, the burning of the Atfih Church, the march to
Abbasiya, the demonstrations at the Israel Embassy, and then Maspero
in the summer; they all resemble each other. Violence erupted while the
army and the police forces were always around either watching the events
happen or being complicitous against the demonstrators. Since the
memorable “Battle of the Camel” in Tahrir, we are constantly reminded that
nothing has really changed regarding the violation of human rights.
However,
last Sunday’s Maspero massacre marks a new turn in the history of the January
revolution. One thing we know is that the official television channels should
be held responsible for the intentional and obnoxious misinformation
they diffused. Television officials should be put on trial for the
lies they spread, which instigated so much hatred against
Copts. State television clearly orchestrated anti-protesters (in this case
anti-Christian) propaganda by claiming that the Christians were the aggressors
and had attacked the army, which then needed to be defended by the population,
adding oil to fire by inciting hatred and encouraging a mob from Bulaq
neighbourhood and other popular areas to attack. When the skirmishes
and fights had started, the television announced that victims were on both
sides, which was evidently not true since the toll from the Coptic side
amounted to 26 dead and hundreds of wounded. Clearly a directed violent attack
was targeting the protesters. We saw on YouTube videos that there were
snipers and rock throwing directed against the protesters.
Even until
today none of the three soldiers who were reported dead have been identified or
their names made public (I was informed yesterday one soldier had died). We
know that the peaceful Coptic protesters after being attacked with rocks and
bullets had to react and defend themselves. We also know that the police or
army forces had attacked violently the offices of some satellite channels and
stopped them from airing the events. All the world saw the carnage that
followed on satellite channels, and the most detailed, moving and tragic
eyewitness reports by human rights activist Hossam Bahgat, journalist Sarah
Carr and various other bloggers like Arabawy, newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm
and anchor Yousri Fouda. All have publicly posted eyewitness reports
confirming the innocence of the demonstrators. The whole world saw
soldiers shooting madly and indiscriminately at demonstrators from
the safety of their armoured vehicles.
The whole
world also saw the atrocities of sliced bodies with missing heads, arms and
legs, after armoured military vehicles targeted the demonstrators. The
whole world saw that young, bright and beautiful men like Mina Danial were
sacrificed for the cause of the revolution. The whole world saw the collective
pain and grief that was inflicted on the Coptic community at the funerals. On
that bloody Sunday, attacks on shops owned by Christians were reported. Al-Masry
Al-Youm reported that during the attack some were shouting “Islamiya,
Islamiya.” Should we still not worry if the populist tone will be pitched for
the interest of some to further escalate hatred? And what is next?
No, this was
not a pogrom and we all agree that this would be an exaggerated designation.
Because as said earlier, the attacks seem to be part of a serial
counter-revolutionary plan that has roots and mechanisms in the Mubarak
regime. Here the sectarian tag serves best to divert the cause, and
minorities always pay the highest price in situations of crisis. This said,
since Sunday, I have been giving second thoughts to the antagonistic populist
mobs. It was so easy to mobilise them. I am also convinced that television
propaganda was successful in selling its version of events.
Cars ramming
into demonstrators is another déjà vu atrocity, first experienced during the
revolution in January. Here repetition is seriously sickening and yet should
one read it as someone wanting to convey a new message, of their unlimited
potency? I have no clue if the mastermind behind it realises its international
implications with today’s global media coverage.
Since
Sunday, I have recurrently heard the following comment being said by taxi
drivers and several people in the street: “But the army was in panic, so it had
to defend itself by attacking the violent demonstrators.” As if in this
particular case, and because it was the Copts, the massacre would have been
justifiable? I am now sure that there is no point in even starting discussions
with any of the people who argue so, and frighteningly there are quite a few
of them. Mona Anis’s opinion article, in which she demands a
legal investigation of the case mentions that the army has denied the
act and claimed that the vehicles were stolen!
Since
Sunday, each single colleague, friend and neighbour I have spoken to was
tearful upon evoking the massacre. Since bloody Sunday, my entire body has been
overtaken by nausea. The propaganda machinery that we thought was destroyed
after the January revolution seems to have been monstrously resuscitated. It
seems that “THEY” are working very hard on conditioning our mental and visual
world. THEY are desperately trying to rework our sensory functions in the hope
to succeed in mutating us. I just wonder if THEY will eventually succeed in
training our brains and memory on normalising the “unthinkable and the
terrible”. Would THEY succeed in normalising our collective nightmares about
the images of Michael’s bride holding his hand, dead in the morgue, or of the
image of cheerful Mina and the many disfigured bodies, the disappeared heads,
hands and legs? I am a mother and Mina could have been my son. Would they
succeed in conditioning us for the future so that if this were to be repeated,
we would then say, it was a normal function because THEY were merely doing
their job?
The author
wishes to thank colleagues Samia Mehrez and Salima Ikram for their comments and
input.
