With Courtesy to MIT Egyptian Student Association(ESA)
October 4th, 2013 in Kresge Auditorium, MIT,
Cambridge MA USA
7:00 Chomsky: The fact that I’m standing
here in front of a large audience in a big auditorium may be misleading. So let
me quickly allay any misimpressions. I’m here basically to open a discussion. I
don’t pretend to have any deep understanding of the remarkable events that have
been taking place in Egypt in recent years. I’ve followed them as closely as I
can but haven’t researched them deeply. And many of the sources, the most
important ones, ones that are in Arabic, I haven’t had access to.
Another reason for my own hesitation is
that I find myself in kind of surprising disagreement with some of my old
friends, good friends in Egypt, the people whose judgment I’ve always respected
and whose actions I’ve regarded with much admiration. I’ll try to explain why
as I proceed.
I’ll first give a quick review of some of
the most important events which I’m sure you’re familiar with. So, beginning in
January, 2011, the uprising or some called it revolution took place at the Tahrir
Square. It was occupied, set in motion in a chain of spectacular events that
led very quickly to the fall of the dictator, US-backed dictator. And many other
achievements are [that] lively political atmosphere opened up, much opportunity
and… which was made good use of for freedom of the
association, interchange and speech. Some of the most important achievements
were scarcely reported here except in the specialist literature.
That had to do with labor rights. Egypt had
had quite a militant and active labor movement for many years outside the
official framework. There was an official state union which, as usual, was more
committed to controlling the workforce than working for their interests. But
outside of the institutional structure, there was a militant labor activism
taking place. It accelerated roughly ten years ago as the neoliberal programs
were instituted more severely. As just about everywhere in the world, including
here, as these programs were instituted, they had pretty standard consequences.
One was that they were highly praised by the international financial institutions:
World Bank, the IMF, US Treasury, many economists. And they had numbers that
looked good. But underneath the numbers, they had usual consequences; we’re
familiar with them here. Sharply rising inequality, very high concentration of
wealth, elimination of social support systems, atomization of the population,
extensive repression, unbounded corruption, usual effects around the world
which have led to uprisings almost everywhere.
In Latin America, they’ve led to actually
remarkable liberation of South America from 500 years of Western dominance. And
what began in the Arab Spring, in Tunisia and Egypt, was in part an uprising
against the imposition of the harsh neoliberal regime combined with opposition
to a brutal dictatorship that of course, the US was strongly supporting. And there
were major achievements in labor rights very quickly. Labor movement was not
initially directly involved in the uprising in the Tahrir Square occupation but
began to join very soon and provided substantial mass basis for it. The general
strike was one of the main factors that impelled the military command, SCAF to
decide to shelve the dictator, Mubarak. An independent union was formed for the
first time outside of the framework of the legal structure. That’s broken the monopoly of the state labor union. The involvement
of labor movement in uprising added social and economic demands to the narrower
political goals. And they also made constructive and substantive
achievements: a raise of the minimum wage, new unions, much else.
The scholar who does most of the work on
this, Joel Beinin at Stanford, reviews it extensively and points out that one
of the main achievements was perhaps more subtle. It was just simply providing human
dignity and a voice to people who had been so suppressed and marginalized that
they had none.
All of that was of great concern to the
United States and its allies. They don’t like such developments. And that was particularly
kind of accelerated by the studies of public opinion in Egypt at that time—in Egypt
and much of the Arab world. And these were conducted by major US polling agencies
and certainly well known to planners and elite elements. They were not reported
and barely mentioned in the United States in the media,
barely mentioned. But they’re interesting and revealing for us and
helpful for understanding the US attitude toward the developments that were taking
place. US official attitudes.
In what Egypt at the time of the Tahrir Square
occupation, a major poll taken by one of the main US polling agencies found
that a very high percentage of the population, roughly 80%, regarded the
greatest threat that they face as being the United States and Israel. They
dislike Iran. All through the Arab world, there’s a sharp dislike of Iran, but
as elsewhere they didn’t regard Iran as much of threat. Maybe 10% regarded Iran
as a threat. In fact, opposition to US policies were so strong among the
population that a majority in Egypt actually thought that the region might be
more secure if Iran developed nuclear weapons to offset US and Israeli power.
Well, if you have a really functioning
democracy, the popular opinion is going to influence policy. And it’s pretty
obvious that the United States doesn’t want these policies implemented. And, as
usual, the fear of democracy guided much of US policy; both suppression of information
for the public here but also the policy actions. That’s actually quite normal.
There were elections. The elections were
won by Islamists mostly the Muslim Brotherhood. They had been the best organized
group for many years. They were illegal most of the time under the dictatorship
but they functioned. And the organization enabled them. That was one of the
factors that enabled them to win the elections.
The other was that there were many splits
in the secular, left liberal quasi-coalition, which actually got a majority of
the votes. More than half of the Egyptians voted for what was called “the
revolutionary candidate,” candidates from those sectors in the last summer’s presidential
elections. But there were six accredited candidates from those groups and that
was split so the Brotherhood easily won, Salafists took a big roll.
They imposed a regime which was pretty
harsh. The SCAF, the military command, maintained its very powerful role in dominating
the society. The government made only limited efforts to share governance, became
quite unpopular. By this year, there was a major uprising June 30th,
a huge outpouring of the people into the streets; petitions calling for the
government to resign. A couple of days later came the military takeover on July
3rd. Well, that’s part of the background.
My own personal aspirations and sympathies…
and in fact friends, are mostly with the mass
popular June 30th uprising movement. But I think they’re making a
serious error in their support for the military coup--or for many of them, even
the outright denial that the coup took place--and in their faith in the commitment
of the military to defend what they called “the people” against the Brotherhood.
That’s a term that should be avoided. The people are badly split. Maybe you may
not like them, the Brotherhood, you may not like their actions but they’re
there. They’re substantial part of the population. And they can’t be written
off. So, the reference to the people already tells you something is misleading
and the commentary severely so.
Also mistaken,
in my view, is their faith that the military is going to move to establish a
democratic secular regime. And that’s highly unlikely. Much more likely is that
the military will act the way the military acts
everywhere. And historically in Egypt as well, it’ll impose, as they’ve already
imposed, a harsh brutal regime. Its aim will be to reinforce their own power of
the political system and also to sustain their control over quite substantial economic
empire. It’ll crash dissidents and undermine civil and human rights. That’s already
happening. My unpleasant expectation is that my friends, the secular liberal
left opposition that has welcomed the military, are likely to be its victims
pretty soon as it has happened in the past and as it’s beginning to happen
now.
One of the best informed international
correspondents in the region, Patrick Cockburn, wrote recently after returning
from Egypt that “Egypt is on the brink of a new dark age as the generals close
in for the kill.” “With 10 retired generals and two police commanders from the
Mubarak era being appointed provincial governors, Egypt is effectively under
military rule.” And there’s of course huge support from Saudi Arabia and other
elements of the most reactionary parts of the Islamic world. The West prefers
them to the Brotherhood. The United States, like Britain before, it tended
overwhelmingly to support the most extreme radical Islamists in opposition to
secular nationalism for understandable reasons. They
don’t like to have the Brotherhood particularly but that’s a different
matter. Saudi Arabia and Salafis are way to their extreme side.
It’s possible Cockburn predicts that this
may lead to a bloody civil war. Joel Beinin, a specialist on Egyptian labor,
writes that the security forces, after the military takeover, quickly crashed “a
militant strike at the Suez Steel Company, located in the Canal Zone city that,
not coincidentally, was in the vanguard of the revolutionary forces that
compelled Mubarak to step down.No matter how popular the army may be at the
moment, workers now face an emboldened authoritarian state that is openly
hostile to their rights and aspirations.”
I suspect he’s correct. As I said, there
have been real gains maybe lasting ones but they are in danger and I think the danger
is quite serious. Right now there are two major power centers. One is Islamists
and the other is the military. And the latter is very much in the ascendant and with substantial left liberal support, as I
said I think is a mistake.
Two weeks ago, a new initiative was
launched. It’s called, it calls itself “Revolution Path Front.” The main state
newspaper al-Ahram describes it as a “new, anti-Brotherhood, anti-military
front launched to achieve revolution goals.”
It contains well-known political figures, activists,
labor leaders and others. The spokesperson at the press conference where they
announced themselves was Wael Gamal. He is a quite impressive young left economist,
I met him a couple of months ago in Egypt. He said at the press conference that
"It has been two-and-a-half years since the revolution began and Egyptians
have not yet achieved their dream of building a new republic that will provide
them with democracy, justice and equality," "Millions have taken to
the streets twice; once in January 2011 to topple Mubarak's regime, which was
based on corruption and oppression… and a second time in June 2013, forcing
Mohamed Morsi to step down after losing legitimacy as a result of the Brotherhood's
attempts to monopolize political life and rebuild an oppressive system."
According to Al-Ahram, the aim is “to work
for the redistribution of wealth, achieve social justice, combat the formation
of an oppressive regime, achieve equality between citizens, set the path for
transitional justice and adopt foreign policies that guarantee national
independence.” Now if it does, that also guarantees US opposition to it. Is
this possible? I don’t know. I hope it is. I think it’s…it looks like the best
hope right now to save Egypt from what might become one of the darkest periods
of its history under military rule. Thank you.
