“Intellectuals have been the fathers and mothers of movements, and of course sons and daughters, even nephews and nieces.” – Edward Saeed
This quote from the late intellectual giant Edward Saaed is an apt description of the journey I went through in writing my book Egypt under El-Sisi. In many ways, the book and my intellectual outlook are the product of the mass uprising of 2011, and the coup of 2013. One can say that I am the son of the revolution and the counter-revolution. I was in my mid-twenties when the mass protest erupted in Egypt, with millions pouring into the street, and toppling Egypt’s aging autocrat, who came to power in 1981 and stayed in power for 30 years, a shocking event on a personal level, even though I did not participate in it. It shattered deeply held personal beliefs that saw the Egyptian as being uninterested in public life. I was able to reclaim a part of myself through the struggle of others. In 2013, this all came crashing down, with a bloody military coup, followed by 10 years of remarkably repressive military rule, under President El-Sisi. Most depressingly, the ideas that I used to hold about myself, and my fellow Egyptians, came back with a vengeance. Ideas that Egyptians are inept, lazy, and need to be ruled by force were part of the regime’s propaganda, and these ideas became in vogue as the regime started to consolidate its grip on power. As Franz Fanon once said, “The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.”
This triggered an intellectual itch of a deep desire to understand the workings of the new military regime. At the end of the journey laid a book that I hope will provide at least partial answers, illuminating the working of one of the most repressive and radical regimes, not only in Egyptian history, but also in Middle Eastern history.
I first picked up a pen, in this case a laptop, in the summer of 2013, just before the start of the worst mass killing in modern Egyptian history, the massacre of supporters of the ousted President in Rabaa. I argued with friends and family against the mass murder of thousands of their fellow citizens, in an atmosphere of mass hysteria and bloodlust. I lost most of these arguments, and some of my loved ones went to the streets to show their support for the security forces that were about to commit a massacre - the closest thing to a case of mass delirium that I experienced. The Sisi personality cult was overwhelming and his promises of a bright future were too appealing.
For the next decade, I did not stop writing. The first few years were the loneliest; it felt like I was writing for myself, working in an echo chamber. No one seemed to be listening and no one seemed to care. All that was asked of us was to forget the victims, the disappeared, and the tortured. All of this was deemed a small price to pay for national glory, a necessary evil. But I kept writing.
At some point, the tide started to shift. I was no longer ignored, my voice drowned with sounds of collective madness. My marginalization, however, quickly turned to fear, as it became clear that I was now in danger if I ever returned home. I remember when I was first denounced on a talk show, controlled by the intelligence services, I could not sleep that night. I felt like a child cornered by a monster, in a small dark room, the monster finally noticed me. But I kept writing.
Piece by piece the feature of the regime started to manifest. What emerged was something much more sinister than what Mubarak, who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011, was ever capable of, namely a military dictatorship with unprecedented brutality. Indeed, the regime of Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is something that is unique in Egyptian history, a deeply ideological dictatorship with manifest fascist overtones.
This book is my attempt to understand, and most importantly to document, the rise and consolidation of the regime, as well as an attempt to look at its future direction. It is an analysis from one of the regime’s victims since I am now exiled and will probably be for a long time. I had multiple goals with this book. My primary goal was to “bear witness” to what has happened over the past 10 years, not only to condemn it, but to understand and learn from it. I am hoping that this becomes a document, not only for my fellow countrymen but for all who are going or have gone through something similar.
I also hope that this book provides a much-needed insight to the regime’s many international backers, who are currently complicit in its crimes, so that when the time comes, the notion that the international community was unaware of what the regime was doing becomes obsolete. In the end, it is also an act of resistance. A feeble attempt by an exiled Egyptian to challenge the powers that be, and an attempt to tell the future generation that many of us tried to resist the rise of tyranny. As Pablo Neruda said, “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”
Maged Mandour is the author of Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge. He is an Egyptian political analyst who writes regularly for outlets such as Middle East Eye, openDemocracy, the Arab Digest, and the journal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has made a number of media appearances as a commentator on Egyptian affairs and is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, UK.
