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| (Anadolu Agency) |
When historians review this first year of Sisi’s
rule, they will note that the military regime’s core priority was to crush
popular mobilization. Under the doctrine of restoring “state prestige,” the
entire state machinery went into avenger mode, brutalizing both supporters of
the ousted president Mohamed Morsi and his diehard opponents. For despite their
myopic hatred for each other, the Muslim Brothers and their critics espouse the
same dangerous belief, the conviction that they should be able to control the
state, not the other way round. This revolutionary idea and its shortlived
practice is what Sisi is out to destroy.
Some like to pretend that the scale of state
violence since July 3 2013 is a sign of a government that’s out of control or
somehow getting off track. In a stunning abuse of language even by the forgiving
standards of diplomatspeak, the American State Department continues to
proclaim that Egypt is on “a path to democracy” but unfortunately experiencing
a “chilling detour.” In reality, the mass killings, mass jailings, mass death
sentences, mass hysteria-mongering, and mass leader worship perpetrated by
Egypt’s government are not some unfortunate aberration. They are what putschist generals do after they overthrow elected governments.
