Photo: A supporter of deposed president Mohamed Morsi demonstrates in central Cairo. (AFP: Mahmud Khaled)
The military ousting of Egypt's first democratically-elected president was not, as the army claims, the will of the street. What coup supporters reveal is an ignorance of the history of US-backed coups, writes Austin Mackell.
They say the next big thing is here,
That the revolution's near
But to me it seems quite clear,
That it's all just little bit of history repeating
- Shirley Bassey, via Propellerheads. History Repeating
Since Egypt's first ever elected president was booted from office a little less than two weeks ago, more than 300 of his supporters have died, according to the Brotherhood who (unlike some of its opponents) doesn't have a history of fudging such numbers.
According to the Guardian's independent count, more have been killed or injured in the past two and a half weeks than in all political violence that occurred during Morsi's year in office. The latter violence, of course, has been carried out by the security forces and the army, which have both since made it very clear that their "loyalty" to him was never more than lip service.
Their real loyalty is to the Pentagon, demonstrated by, for example, torturing people, including an Australian citizen at their behest.
On top of this, a poll has been released in which 63 per cent of respondents say they oppose the coup. This percentage is spookily similar to the Islamist majority in the parliament (which was dissolved by Mubarak-era judges) and the "yes" vote during the referendum on the country's new constitution. Only 26 per cent, a number that looks a lot like the standard "liberal" showing in such electoral contexts, say they support the Morsi removal. That's more than a 2-1 ratio in the anti-coup camp's favour.
This was seen by many as a huge swing from the last poll, conducted not long before the coup, in which a similarly large majority said that if "elections were held tomorrow" they would vote against the embattled incumbent. This poll, unlike the post-coup one, was waved around by the militarist-liberals as evidence of the Brotherhood´s collapsing popularity, and is now pointed to as evidence that this new poll must be fake.
But is it? It is entirely possible the Egyptian centre had, after a solid year of hatchet-job reporting from private and public media, merely decided they would vote differently next time. There is a big difference between that and supporting a military coup.
The poll before the coup, however, failed to ask a very important follow-up question. If they wouldn't vote for Morsi, who would they vote for? The last poll to compare him to opposition leaders found Morsi still had higher favourables and lower unfavourables than any other politician in the country. No polling has been done that shows anyone is likely to beat him in an election.
If there is a serious electoral threat to the Brotherhood, it comes from the second biggest party in Egypt, Al Noor, which is to their religious right. (They were part of the coup coalition, by the way.)
Now the Brotherhood, the most popular party in Egypt, are gone from power and Egypt has a government that's far more oppressive, and which is accountable to no-one but its Washington paymasters. It's opposed by the majority of the country, and is composed entirely of Mubarak-era holdovers and Mohammad ElBaradei, who lived in Europe until 2011 and has no chance of ever winning an election in Egypt.
Someone remind me about how "revolutionary" this is, please. I'm having trouble remembering.
This is a military coup carried out by generals; trained, paid and supplied by Washington. This has been the main method, throughout the second half of the 20th century by which the imperial power centre has kept democracy from interfering with its control over vassal states.
But this isn't a coup, the "coupies" (the general's groupies) say, because the army wasn't in the driver's seat, it was following (and this is where the fantasy gets really juvenile) the will of the street. It was terrified that the largely middle-class pro-police, pro-army crowds, cheered along by the private and state media and funded by US aid and one of Egypt's richest men, would "threaten business interests". (Never mind the crowds had been on the streets less than 24 hours when the army took the lead.)
What these people reveal is an ignorance of the rich history of US-backed coups.
A place to start is the early 1950s, when America backed not one but two coups, one in Guatemala and the other in Iran, both of which were preceded by street protests. Things have changed of course. In Tehran the Yanks were paying acrobats and street performers to help get the crowds in the street; in Egypt they were funding "Grass Roots Social Media Campaigners".
I challenge those still making excuses for the military's involvement to look at the history of those two countries in that context, and tell me again how the "will of the people" will keep the military in check if they are giving orders to, rather than taking them from, an elected president.
In the 60 years since then, the formula has been applied again and again: Chile, Benin, Brazil, and dozens of other countries. These are just the ones where I could easily find online evidence of the protests and political crises which are such a normal precursor to coups like this that they often don't rate a mention. It is less than a day's research, but still more than the coup cheerleaders did.
As Jackson Diehl wrote recently in the Washington Post in an article that also cites Argentina and Turkey as examples:
Cairo's secular middle class consequently had far less cause to take to the streets last weekend than did the pot-bangers in Allende's Chile, the general strikers of Caracas or the yellow shirts of Bangkok. They can, however, expect much the same results - which will be anything but the liberal democracy they say they support.
Indeed, soon after arriving here in Ecuador, where I moved to from Egypt, I was having a discussion with a local security analyst, who said unequivocally that the elite here would love a coup (the last attempt was in 2010), but that they simply cannot generate the sense of crisis which would create space for their US-allied military to act. The Tahrir kids solved that problem for Egypt's generals.
Once the decision for the imposition of military force was made, democracy was broken in Egypt.
The Brotherhood now has no incentive to participate in fresh elections. It's not a problem of what if they lose, but what if they win. They already tried that, all they got was shot at and locked up.
Now we get to the stage in the argument where, rather than address any of these concerns, a coup apologist will ask, "But wasn't it also a coup against Mubarak? How can you support that and not this without being a hypocrite?"
Well, research shows (as if that were necessary), that coups against dictators tend to improve democratic outcomes, whereas coups against elected leaders... Do I really need to finish this sentence?
Of course I don't. Both the principle and practicalities are obvious. That is why the US has laws which halt aid to "the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup d'état or decree". And yes, he was duly elected. Ask the Carter Centre.
So of course the US should cut off aid. But talking as if that is going to happen is well and truly missing the point. US aid doesn't flow to all these countries despite the risk of a coup, it flows to make sure that risk is maintained, and that governments know they serve at Washington's discretion. Morsi clearly had trouble with this.
Austin G Mackell is a freelance journalist who has reported from all around the Middle East and Australia. View his full profile here.
More on Egypt:
- Michael Collett: Egypt tourism can hardly afford another revolution
- David Hardaker: In search of the Egyptian Mandela
- Yassir Morsi: Egypt's 2011 revolutionaries had no shared vision
Egypt's unrest and a coup against democracy - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
