A Guide & History on Egyptian Political Affairs

This article was published on the 12th of July, 2024, for context, people were calling for protests, but nothing happened, and I decided to write this article so that maybe, just maybe, someone will think logically and could have a shot at real change.

So, nothing happened today.

You know, I will write a long thread about what is "wrong", and why these things do not work out well or at all, which then causes the activists or representatives who are allegedly representing the "true feelings" of the people to have several brain aneurisms and insult the common man and woman.

It is a serious post that will analyze the whole situation, I am writing this as someone who was involved in the Security complex and the judicial system, from my observations both in and out, and I do highly recommend that you share it far and wide across all platforms, because maybe, just maybe, that 1% chance where someone will take my words seriously and influence his, or her, future to make Egypt slightly better than it is.

Why the stagnation and the degeneration of politics in the Egyptian Domestic Sphere?

First, a history lesson.

It is a fact that internal domestic policies in the 1970s and 1980s were much more lively, people had ideologies, people had further aspirations, and people of all types and ideologies were represented either in the street, state institutions, or parliament, this kept on well until the 2000s at least, because by the 1990s - IE, after Sadat, Mubarak cultivated his bubble of oligarchs, state security officials, and so on, who had no further aspiration than the accumulation of wealth, Mubarak was content on letting people say what they want.

This is also a fact, Egyptian movies in the 2000s were highly political and were mocking the errors of society.

"Black Molasses" by Ahmed Helmy mocked the incompetence of the government, and "Mr.Ramadan The Arabic Teacher" mocked the kleptocracy of the country and the sheer corruption, for example, in the film, the son of the Minister of Education could barely read, and the son of the Minister of Health was fat, "Alf Mabrouk" mocked the surface-level interactions of all segments of society, and so on, these movies came out at allegedly the dictatorship of Mubarak, and were widely shared across all cinemas and outlets, why we have no such films anymore, I will explain later.

What I want to tell you is that creative works were still ongoing, the aspirations of the people were still expressed, and their goals, hopes, and so on, were fully on display, the Security Establishment also did not care, because creative freedom was respected even by the upper echelons, even if they were disliked because they knew that the key to a healthy society is a healthy outlet of expression.

So what went wrong?

By 2008, something was wrong, the passivist and degradation of the economic sphere gave an outlet to the Socialists and Worker Unions to organize strikes, demand more rights, and so on, Mubarak, was not interested, and the ringleaders were arrested and the workers ordered to stay at work - this is an error across most of Egyptian history, the ruling apparatus rarely decides to hold talks or understand with any opposition - secular, Islamic, or whatever, they do not like it when you talk back, you can "talk", but never talk back - couple with the fact that all state and political spectrums of Egypt refused for a future where the son of Mubarak - Gamal, would head the country, the people did not want it and neither did the Army, a lawyer friend of mine told me an anecdotal story about how Gamal insulted and dressed down the Army Chief Tantawy in 2010 or 2009, and it was here that Tantawy realized that Gamal is being groomed for succession, and that in a case of civil strife, Gamal can not be allowed to be President, I have no idea how accurate the anecdotal story is since it only involves Suzanne Mubarak, Gamal, and Tantawy, but if true, it explains why Tantawy backed the protestors, simply out of acknowledgment of the plot to get Gamal to the presidency and maybe out of personal spite.

The Ministry of Interior was also getting much more aggressive, you have to understand the police were not always brutal, I still see retired generals and detectives remembering the days of Ahmed Rushdi, an extremely well-respected man who no one but drug dealers and criminal elements had anything wrong to say about him.

Do you want an example of just how aggressive it was by the 2000s?

The recruits, kids fresh out of school, 18, 19 - back in the 2000s, the first thing they would learn is "How to use enhanced interrogation on suspects without leaving physical marks", I wish I was joking, but this was a serious course that was taught at the Police Academy, thankfully, not anymore.

Well, anyway, it is important to note that the United States and other foreign NGOs and educational institutions have been increasingly entering Egyptian society, back in the old days they were limited to technical and professional knowledge.

Now suddenly, the American University in Cairo was offering courses on "Humanitarian Studies", "Human Rights", "The Limits of Authority", and so on, coupled with that that the Internet became much more common in households, and now people could see the variety of ideologies and talking points, that was still in the 2000s, and people realized - that they could ask more of the ruling authority, see, here is something you must understand of the Egyptian people.

The Egyptian has lived through 7,000 years of history, one core tenant that was never challenged was heeding authority, we heeded the kings of Ancient Egypt, and we heeded (and occasionally trolled and revolted against using passive measures) the Roman and Greek figureheads who were not interested in anything with us except to seize their taxes on crops and money, we heeded the Arabs who came around to Egypt, we heeded Muhammed Ali - a random Albanian tax man - and marched with him towards Anatolia to fight the Ottomans, we heeded his sons and the sons of his sons since he established Modern Egypt, we heeded the Republican Officers, and here we are - as long as you have established yourself as an authority figure, and you were not a foreigner who was purposefully violent and a colonizer - in which case you will be met with passive and active measures of resistance -, then you were heeded

7,000 years of respecting authority figures (mostly) and yet somehow we are still here, truly a miracle of the Lord.

The Egyptians are better described as a "Statist People", the closest thing I can think of is the Japanese people who heeded the Samurai and ruling clans of Japan, or the Russian peasantry who heeded the Mongols, Boyars, then the Tsars, then the Communists, and now Federal authorities, a truly unique viewpoint that can only be cultivated in the Old World and after 7 millennia.

But back to our history lesson.

So now, the young generation - men and women in their early and mid-20s, graduates of the modern world through the internet and their courses at the German and American and whatever universities in Cairo that were influenced by Europe and America - were passionate about the future, they wanted to create a future, and they had all the catalysts and reasons to try and make a future according to their ideologies.

Well, then that man from Alexandria was brutally murdered by a bunch of corrupt police officers, and that was simply one straw too many, and the people of Tunisia rose too! why not us as well? and then the protests happened and the revolution lasted about a month - 800 dead on the streets - and hope filled the souls of all these young men and women.

What the AUC or these NGOs never taught this generation is that while the "American Experience" can be achieved, it needs pillars and reconstruction of society, the political wisdom of the common Egyptian, was, to put it bluntly, retarded.

I will show you an example.

Okay, so, Mubarak is bad, right? Mubarak's regime, was very bad, what was the first thing the Egyptian people did in the 2012 elections? 48% of them voted for a Minister of Civil Aviation and then a Prime Minister.. who was part of the Mubarak regime.. so 48% of the politically active segments did a revolution against a regime and then proceeded to try and vote in aspects of the regime they overthrew - that was the official result, there are rumors and stories that Shafik won but it was handed over to Morsi due to fear of civil strife, in Tunisia some candidates who opposed the local Islamists were assassinated in 2012, so, such concerns were based on something, if the stories were true, that is.

So, anyway, 2011 went by, the Military took over, organized elections, and then the Muslim Brotherhood won - by 51%, here is something that you must understand as well, the MB is divided into a "common segment" and an "intellectual segment", the common segment are the common people and the intellectuals are those sophists, engineers, or businessmen who went abroad to study for their degrees then came back and established a presence, but they too had a lack of political wisdom.

They suddenly got drunk on power, they said - hey, we have the presidency, we can do whatever we want now -, and this is true - they went to the prisons and wanted their members back, convicted or still on trial, and the authorities had no choice but to release them, this was the first of many mistakes they would do - the average man on the street would say, hey, you are misusing your power to help your own goals, the authorities would say - wait a minute, are you trying to do something suspicious?

The MB also had no interest in talking or interacting with any sort of opposition or segments of society, they told the Church to fuck off, they told the worker unions to fuck off, they told the middle class to fuck off, they forced Al-Azhar to allow the entrance of the Iranian President into the complex as a "peaceful visit" and so on, suddenly - they had a state within a state, then.. some odd things happened.

Well, it is too long to explain, but in a nutshell.

Morsi rewrote the constitution to make himself invulnerable, Morsi never took the steps to try and engage the Military in any sort of meaningful conversation (And the Speech Morsi gave on July 3rd, 2013, was the last straw, more on it down later), nor the judicial system, nor any other sort of segment of society or the government, and so protests against him flared again, then riots and counter riots happened, then uh, their "common segment" of the Muslim Brotherhood thought it would be nice to say.. interesting speeches, and do interesting things.

Almost every Egyptian who lived in that time era saw something, for me, they looted supermarkets in the name of Allah and said that payment is with the goodwill of the Angels, for others, they said they will "put IEDs in every police station, courthouse, street, and any other place they oppose us", for others they heard speeches that "Whoever throws water at our guy, we will throw blood back at him", and so on, this got so bad that heads of the Muslim Brotherhood told their minions to shut the fuck up for once - you are putting fuel on the fire, and, the low and middle management is acting aggressively and thinking they own the whole universe now, and it's just giving more reason to hate them.

Well, so all the other segments of society got together (or their representatives that is), went to the Army, asked for immediate intervention, they obliged, and 2013 happened and so on, you know the rest of the story.

From here, in terms of politics, the "interest of the Egyptian people" ceased to exist, and instead, it became camps for their supporters, this was already defacto the situation in 2012, but in the 2010s it was solidified, and hereafter this massive history lesson I get to the first reason why.

1) Hypocrites.

They exist across all segments, in Egypt, there was this well-known activist who kept saying "Islam is the solution guys", and "Khilafat soon", and whatever, well... he was seen going to the U.S Congress, wearing a tie branded with American flags, and just going a next to the Yankees.

This shattered his image, you keep saying Khilafat, but you go to the United States Congress, the same congress where they "muh oppress sisters in muh Syria and muh Iraq", since then he faded into public irrelevance, I have a friend who reacted very poorly to this and became depressed, because that guy was well-liked

Do not worry, hypocrites are everywhere, there was this one guy who said "I am a man of the people" and "I work for workers' rights."

It is hard for a factory worker or a farmer to relate to someone who gets paid millions of Egyptian Pounds for doing nothing but yell and write posts online or do a speech or two in parliament, and owning supercars and villas.

There was also this one other if I recall, he was the Leftist socialist militant kind, he was about "freedom" and "education" and shit, he proceeded to burn down a library in Egypt, destroying tens of thousands of ancient works, even I was a kid (this happened back at 2011) was extremely upset to see it go.

I am not naming names because 1) they will not be known in the English or Arab Wikipedias (I think) and 2) I am talking to you from the perspective of a normal common day-to-day figure if every time I open Facebook or go to the forums and I see these people are the ones allegedly at the front of the charge and in control of my movement, then I would call them hypocrites and be shut off from politics - I would simply be too depressed and disgusted

I would estimate the extremely vast majority of figureheads, both pro and anti-government, are simply hypocrites, and they do not give a shit about you or me, they will say one thing and openly do another, and that is one of the main reasons why Egyptian Domestic politics is dead, everyone without exception who gets to the top suddenly becomes a hypocrite - well, except maybe Tantawy (The Civilian, not the Army Chief), but he was too much of an idealist and refused to play ball with the authorities and did not answer certain questions about certain sensitive topics.

In America, you may plead the 5th, but in Egypt, we have no such thing, you must answer the question either in the affirmative or negative, no in-between.

2) Security concerns.

The Security Establishment was the only part of the government that was barely degraded by the political turmoil, the Army was in check and so were the Security Services, they did not care about the internal affairs of the country unless it directly threatened the stability of the state, you want to know when the Security Establishment turned against Morsi? when Morsi, two weeks before he was ousted, did some rally for "Free Syria", and said - quite plainly - "Go fight Assad for freedom and liberty" and that shit.

Even here, all segments of the security establishment panicked, and I will tell you why.

In Egypt, in the 80s and 90s, there was a wave of terror, and it was brutal, over 3,000 injuries were recorded, of which, 1,500 were killed.

I am talking about beheading women (Imbaba), and throwing babies off the roofs (Cairo Central), in one instance they gutted a Swiss tourist, took her entrails, and displayed it - (Luxor Massacre), the largest casualty event for the Swiss outside of
Switzerland if I recall, you know who led these?

During the war in Afghanistan, Sadat said the same thing - "Go to Afghanistan and fight the Soviets, for freedom", well, they went to Afghanistan, they fought the Soviets, then they came back and led the charge and killed Sadat and did this terror wave, which was brutally quashed by the end of it, but it taught a valuable lesson to the Egyptian State Security - never, ever, give an outlet for people to do that.

I have friends who knew military and police officers who were even sympathetic to the MB, and this was it - even I later bumped into a few - this is when they withdrew their sympathy and realized that the stability and security of the state is above all, and they turned on him.

The Speech of Morsi before June 30th is considered one of the worst and most unprofessional speeches in all of Egyptian history, a new record, now, if you are a larping Khilafat/Liberal rights enjoyer from Europe or the U.S you most likely would not have heard of it, and I get it, certain people with certain media arms don't want you to hear the errors of their utopia.

This is why the army and the police were united, regardless if they were sympathetic or not, the power of foresight was known to all.

I would also like to boast that the Egyptian State Security apparatus is the one that taught the Statsi and the Romanian Securitat everything that they knew when the relationship started back in the 1960s, this was told to me by a certain archivist within the state, and if you know the reputation of the East German Statsi and the Securitat, then you know how truly dire it is, it is simply out of the benevolence of the people that we are not enacting these policies on them, I will share a slight secret with you, almost everyone in Egypt has a file, and all it needs is just an order being given and you will probably see 8, 9, maybe 10 million people cramped into the prison system within the week, the State Security is mostly reactive (by choice), not proactive, if its proactive (and in the rare occasions that it is, their targets tend to be headless chickens before organizing any serious effort), you would not even be entertaining these thoughts at the moment, they just view 90% of the people that have files on as bugmen and not worth the time, but even insects clumped together can be a threat if the opportunity arises.

3) The Rat Race.

This is both a mix of coincidences and purposeful policies, if I apply severe economic pressure on you, your main instinct is to be able to pay out this month's expenses, why would you read Karl Marx if you can't pay your rent?, so I make you focused on trying to gain your bread and money to support your family, but this is a delicate balance, which is somehow maintained, how, is beyond my expertise, but the vast majority of Egyptians have become disinterested in politics for this reasons, the Egyptian for most of history was content with simply having a roof over his head and his crops being grown, he had no further aspirations, but modernity gave him an outlet, never again.

4) Methods of the State.

Here, I will write about the state's activities to remove any sort of dissent of all sorts, I am sorry if I make you feel that you are living in a 1984 world by the end of it.

I recall this one time when I was guarding a checkpoint, it was in the Red Sea Governate, and we checked the buses and so on going on, with us was a certain man in black, we got on a bus, going through the permits, then the man in black stared at someone for a few seconds, and said that he does not like him and he will accompany him.

Well, we cuffed the guy and dragged him back, one of ours stood with the man while he was interrogating and going through the suspect's belongings - and by the way, he was clean-shaven and everything, so no racial or religious profiling.

Yeah turns out the man had ISIS material on his phone and speeches that were recently released, he pleaded that it was for academic research - but a quick look through the State records shows that this man was not an academic researcher, but some office worker, it was deemed that surely, he must have something interesting to say.

They took him away, and I never saw him again, so yes, the State Security Apparatus is extremely professional, their officers - and I am not talking about the Ministry of Interior - are some of the best and most professional men and women out there, to such a scary level that I am convinced the field of psionics is real and they can read your inner thoughts, I have no further explanation.

I once asked an officer - "Commandant, if we can easily arrest and nab anyone, from abroad or from here, why do we let them keep making tweets and videos and blog posts and that, especially the more public ones?"

He had an interesting answer, the officer worked liaison with the NSA or the FBI if I recall, and so an interesting perspective appeared.

TLDR, what he told me was simple, moths are attracted to fires, flies are attracted to shit, and the fires and shit in this scenario are the Twitter Accounts of the so-called revolutionaries and those who have Telegram channels or the likes, the State Security takes special measures on the flies and moths, not the fires and shit, because fires and shit without flies and moth are just that - static piles of shit and fires, which both will degrade by time, but as long as there shits and fires, there will be moth and flies, moths and flies are more numerous, they move unlike the fires and piles of dung, and those are the real threats.

If you want a more historically accurate representative, the Ancient Egyptian King, Pepe II, had a slave covered with honey, so the flies would go to him instead - the Security apparatus sees the larpers and figureheads as useful slaves and tools, while the flies are the ones showing themselves, and are the ones that should be dealt with

Every viewer, commentator, or even people who leave "impressions" on such posts are keylogged, no amount of anonymous viewership will help you, they can get to you, a quick look through you, and if it is deemed you are a threat you get nabbed pretty quickly, and if you are not, it is simply archived and abandoned, until it either becomes useful, I will inform you of that - if you have an active file in the State Security, you are fucked, there is no way around it, you must have done, said, or suspected of doing something to gain the active attention of a cog in the machine.

The reason that this is not implemented in Europe and America is simple, and I know it is a joke, but they have "freedom" and "rights" and "the right of Self-Expression", thankfully we are not bothered by such, which is why all of these Larpers and big talkers live abroad, not here, and even if they do live abroad, they still play the roles of the fires and shit, so still an indirect useful tool.

It is a funnel where cows will willingly go to the slaughter, the cows being the impressionable men and women who are supporters and followers of the fires and piles of shit, like carrots in front of donkeys.

5) Cultural Stagnation.

With the four above factors, the Egyptian has become apathetic to politics, he does not care about anyone and only wants to feed himself and his family, his idols have betrayed him and he intrinsically knows that if he steps out of line he will never be seen again, and nobody will miss him, just dust upon the winds of fate, and thus, his outlet for creative expression has been bland.

So you ask yourself, Med Man, what is the solution?

Well, I can tell you to vote for me and help me make Egypt great again, but I will not do so, I will personally advise you.

I wrote about the 5 matrices to have any sort of chance in the Egyptian political system, which I will link here (https://t.me/medmannews/5362), if you fit at least two of them, your chances went from 0 to 1%, but a 1% chance is better than nothing.

Advance your career, become more powerful, be honest, engage with all segments of society no matter their religious, cultural, or political affiliation, and place stability of the state and cohesion of the Community above all else, the interests of the state are above all, but you must also need to align and help with the interests of all the social segments of society, do not favor one over the other, it will give your enemies fuel to take you down, be calm and collected and think things rationally and from more than one viewpoint.

I hope this article was of massive benefit to you, be so kind as to subscribe to my Telegram Channel (https://t.me/medmannews) or follow me on Twitter (https://x.com/MedManOG), maybe, my journey may teach you a thing or two, until then.