“This act of communal killing had ideological underpinnings in Nasserism and the brand of Arab nationalism that it propagated, which viewed the nation as an organic, harmonious whole with a clear popular will, rather than a myriad of different social groups with conflicting interests that needed to be mediated.”
The writer suggests that the conflicting interests “needed to be mediated” and that “a deep process of reconciliation” is the solution! Conflicting class interests under an authoritarian repressive regime is to be solved by reconciliation without overthrowing the repressive power relations?
And since this goes back to ‘Arab nationalism’ and the type of the regime it has generated, why is it that since the 1950s, and not only in Egypt, ‘mediation’ and ‘reconciliation’ have not materialised? I wonder whether the writer while writing the article had the Arab uprisings in mind and how the regimes and the counter-revolutionary forces destroyed them or the decades of repression, privatisation, marginalisation, humiliation, plunder and corruption.
Whether the Muslim Brotherhood or the millions in Syria, Iraq Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya ... what those imprisoned and those who lost their sons and daughters for merely protesting and speaking against the regimes want is justice. And there is no justice and real change without overthrowing the existing order. The struggle is unfinished. It has had its defeats and victories and it will have more defeats and victories, but no ‘reconciliation’ can solve the irreconcilable differences. Only a change in class and power relations can. That’s the first lesson to be drawn from the Arab uprisings.
Turning a massacre into the regime’s foundation myth
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