Documento 263-febrero de 2011

For Egypt, this is the Miracles of Tahir Square

Slavoj iek
One cannot but note the miraculous nature of the events in Egypt: something
has happened that few predicted, violating the experts opinions, as if the
uprising was not simply the result of social causes but the intervention of a
mysterious agency that we can call, in a Platonic way, the eternal idea of
freedom, justice and dignity.
The uprising was universal: it was immediately possible for all of us around the
world to identify with it, to recognise what it was about, without any need for
cultural analysis of the features of Egyptian society. In contrast to Irans
Khomeini revolution (where leftists had to smuggle their message into the
predominantly Islamist frame), here the frame is clearly that of a universal
secular call for freedom and justice, so that the Muslim Brotherhood had to
adopt the language of secular demands.
The most sublime moment occurred when Muslims and Coptic Christians
engaged in common prayer on Cairos Tahrir Square, chanting We are one!
providing the best answer to the sectarian religious violence. Those neocons
who criticise multiculturalism on behalf of the universal values of freedom and
democracy are now confronting their moment of truth: you want universal
freedom and democracy? This is what people demand in Egypt, so why are the
neocons uneasy? Is it because the protesters in Egypt mention freedom and
dignity in the same breath as social and economic justice?
From the start, the violence of the protesters has been purely symbolic, an act
of radical and collective civil disobedience. They suspended the authority of the
state it was not just an inner liberation, but a social act of breaking chains of
servitude. The physical violence was done by the hired Mubarak thugs entering
Tahrir Square on horses and camels and beating people; the most protesters
did was defend themselves.
Although combative, the message of the protesters has not been one of killing.
The demand was for Mubarak to go, and thus open up the space for freedom in
Egypt, a freedom from which no one is excluded the protesters call to the
army, and even the hated police, was not Death to you!, but We are brothers!
Join us!. This feature clearly distinguishes an emancipatory demonstration from
a rightwing populist one: although the rights mobilisation proclaims the organic
unity of the people, it is a unity sustained by a call to annihilate the designated
enemy (Jews, traitors).
So where are we now? When an authoritarian regime approaches the final
crisis, its dissolution tends to follow two steps. Before its actual collapse, a
rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are
simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy; its
exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know
the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice but goes on
walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall

only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the
regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be
reminded to look down
In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard
Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroads,
a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to
move, and the embarrassed policeman withdrew; within hours, all Tehran knew
about this incident, and although street fights went on for weeks, everyone
somehow knew the game was over.
Is something similar going on in Egypt? For a couple of days at the beginning, it
looked like Mubarak was already in the situation of the proverbial cat. Then we
saw a well-planned operation to kidnap the revolution. The obscenity of this was
breathtaking: the new vice-president, Omar Suleiman, a former secret police
chief responsible for mass tortures, presented himself as the human face of
the regime, the person to oversee the transition to democracy.
Egypts struggle of endurance is not a conflict of visions, it is the conflict
between a vision of freedom and a blind clinging to power that uses all means
possible terror, lack of food, simple tiredness, bribery with raised salaries to
squash the will to freedom.
When President Obama welcomed the uprising as a legitimate expression of
opinion that needs to be acknowledged by the government, the confusion was
total: the crowds in Cairo and Alexandria did not want their demands to be
acknowledged by the government, they denied the very legitimacy of the
government. They didnt want the Mubarak regime as a partner in a dialogue,
they wanted Mubarak to go. They didnt simply want a new government that
would listen to their opinion, they wanted to reshape the entire state. They dont
have an opinion, they are the truth of the situation in Egypt. Mubarak
understands this much better than Obama: there is no room for compromise
here, as there was none when the Communist regimes were challenged in the
late 1980s. Either the entire Mubarak power edifice falls down, or the uprising is
co-opted and betrayed.
And what about the fear that, after the fall of Mubarak, the new government will
be hostile towards Israel? If the new government is genuinely the expression of
a people that proudly enjoys its freedom, then there is nothing to fear:
antisemitism can only grow in conditions of despair and oppression. (A CNN
report from an Egyptian province showed how the government is spreading
rumours there that the organisers of the protests and foreign journalists were
sent by the Jews to weaken Egypt so much for Mubarak as a friend of the
Jews.)
One of the cruellest ironies of the current situation is the wests concern that the
transition should proceed in a lawful way as if Egypt had the rule of law until
now. Are we already forgetting that, for many long years, Egypt was in a
permanent state of emergency? Mubarak suspended the rule of law, keeping
the entire country in a state of political immobility, stifling genuine political life. It
makes sense that so many people on the streets of Cairo claim that they now
feel alive for the first time in their lives. Whatever happens next, what is crucial
is that this sense of feeling alive is not buried by cynical realpolitik.