“Egypt’s historical trajectory is emblematic of pervasive military rule, particularly during the republican era that began in 1952. To entertain any notion to the contrary implies either a lack of historical understanding or a novice comprehension of political dynamics.”
“This stance not only exposes the moral bankruptcy of some Egyptian liberals, but also underscores their complicity in endorsing state violence against their ideological and political adversaries. Such actions run counter to the basic principles and commitments of liberalism, which are firmly rooted in values of pluralism, tolerance and acceptance.”
This is misguided/selectively liberal-biased approach. Liberalism from its inception was contradictory. Liberalism cannot be taken in isolation from the political economy of capitalism and its operations worldwide. “Pluralism, tolerance and acceptance” have to be analysed in history and reality, not by a sweeping statement such as the one made by Al-Anani in his article. Liberalism must be grounded in class and power relations, racism and institutional racism, obscene inequality, exploitation and marginalisation, and what is deemed a threat to the status quo and what is not in a specific conjuncture.
“Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery.”
Losurdo reveals “the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order.”
Al-Anani completely misses a crucial factor: the liberal middle class vacillation. He criticises Egyptian liberals from a liberal stance, ignoring the interconnection between class, ideology and politics completely.
“The most important middle-class revolution of the 21st century so far, argues sociologist Goran Therborn, is undoubtedly the Egyptian, due to the size and regional significance of the country. But “Latin Americans have already learned through bitter experience in the 20th century that there is nothing inherently democratic about the middle class, its members actively opposing democracy in Argentina (1955–82), Chile (1973) and Venezuela (2002). It is ‘situationally’ (opportunistically) democratic—or anti-democratic.” (Therborn, New Left Review 78, 2012)
Precisely because of the social indeterminacy of the middle classes, their weight may be thrown in different, indeed opposite directions. The mobilized middle class was a major force behind Pinochet’s coup in Chile, while its Venezuelan counterpart supported a failed attempt to overthrow Hugo Chávez in 2002, and the well-heeled ‘Yellow Shirts’ of Bangkok brought down the government in Thailand six years later. As twentieth-century European history shows, the middle class is no intrinsic force for democracy. However, it has also been a source of pressure for democratic change, playing an important role in Taiwan and South Korea during the 1980s—alongside industrial workers—and in Eastern Europe in 1989. It was a central force in Cairo and Tunis in 2011, and a supporter of popular street protests in Greece, Spain, Chile and Brazil in 2011–13. The volatility of middle-class politics is vividly illustrated by the sharp turns in Egypt, from acclamation of democracy to adulation of the military and its mounting repression of dissent, effectively condoning the restoration of the ancien régime minus Mubarak. (Goran Therborn, New Left Review 85, 2014)
Al-anani also ignores regional and Western ‘liberal’ states, the media and their positions towards the Egyptian state during the last decade.
Related
Liberalism - A Counter History by Domenico Losurdo, Verso 2014, a book praised by Peter Clarke of the Financial Times as "a brilliant exercise in unmasking liberal pretensions."
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