Through his stubbornness Hosni Mubarak has managed to transform himself from a 30-year-old “loyal ally” into an 82-year-old liability. Almost all dictators cling to power as long as they can. They get use to being the boss and it becomes a way of life for them. Mubarak is no different. But clearly the love of power is not all that is going on with him.
Mr. Mubarak suffers from the same syndrome as did Louis XVI just prior to the French Revolution. Louis lived in the royal complex of Versailles. He rarely visited Paris, which was just 25 miles away, and knew almost nothing of the daily lives of his non-noble subjects. Like Louis, Hosni, too, lives in isolation from the people who go about their business beyond the walls of his presidential palace. Thus, when Mubarak says he loves Egypt and will never run away from his country, he is talking about a place as distant from that of the ordinary citizen as the moon.
A sure sign of this disconnect came with the February 3 report of an interview he gave with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour. According to the correspondent, Mubarak said he was “fed up with being president and would like to leave office now, but cannot, he says, for fear that the country would sink into chaos.” This is surely a sign that the Egypt he knows is not the Egypt commonly recognized by his people or the rest of the world. From outside the presidential palace, it is starkly clear that a sort of popular chaos is what already besets Egypt and the only way to calm it is for Mubarak to leave office and probably the country as well. The vast majority of Egyptians can see that this is so. President Obama can see this is so and has probably emphasized the fact to Mubarak. Even the King of Saudi Arabia can see what is happening and has offered Mubarak asylum in his country. So, why can’t Hosni Mubarak see it?
Along with the isolation that rulers and especially dictators experience, comes the phenomenon of “groupthink.” In his book “Victims of Groupthink” (Houghton Mifflin, 1972), Irving L. Janis shows how governing political elites create self-reinforcing, decision-making circles. In other words, in the last 30 years, Mubarak has surrounded himself with like-minded advisers and aides. These are people who have a vested interest in his regime. They constantly reinforce his worldview and second his decisions. There are no devil’s advocates here. Being a military dictator also probably drives the groupthink outlook. Generals give orders; they do not normally take them. And, all too often, it is the orders given that are meant to shape reality and not the other way around. It is assumed that whatever deviation there is between the two can be swept away by force.
Up till now, this has been the Egyptian dictator’s expectation. His choice of vice president, Omar Suleiman, is a product of Mubarak’s artificial groupthink world and, no doubt, selected to keep that world intact. Therefore, Suleiman’s initial impulse was to reflect his master’s preferences. Days and days of demonstrations by tens of thousands of Egyptians demanding Mubarak’s immediate departure were deemed impractical and disrespectful of a man who has so long “served his country.” But Suleiman, until recently head of the regime’s intelligence services, now appears to have his doubts. Making reality match Mubarak’s fantasy will almost certainly require such force as to guarantee the radicalization of the protest movement.
Most of the conservative talking heads both in the US and in Israel fear the potential of an Iranian-style outcome for Egypt. That is why everyone from Glenn Beck to Benjamin Netanyahu have called on Mubarak to get tough lest we end up with ayatollahs on the Nile. But Egypt is not like Iran, neither the Iran of 1979 nor 2011. There is no rational reason to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood will suddenly turn into the Sunni version of a Republican Guard. However, if the Egyptian government does “get tough” and ends up applying force, there is yet another scenario that presents itself and that is the recent history of Algeria. Back in 1991-1992, the Algerian military crushed the country’s Islamic political movement, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), just at the moment when it had won democratically conducted, national elections. A military dictatorship was established ,which proceeded to arrest or kill all the moderate FIS leaders (those who had “worked within the system”), thus opening up the movement to much more violent factions. Indeed, these factions were ready to be as violent as was the country’s military. The result was decades of vicious civil war.
One assumes that Suleiman knows of the Algerian experience, and one assumes that someone from the State Department has filled in Barack Obama. Maybe they are both hoping that all the Egyptian protesters will just get tired and go home now that negotiations are said to be underway. This is unlikely to happen. With thousands of protesters still in the streets the opposition is most likely telling Suleiman that their reality is much more real than that of his dictator boss. If Suleiman is wise, he will get the message and make it crystal clear to Mubarak that he has quite suddenly become a liability his nation can no longer afford. For unless Mubarak can shake off the groupthink, Egypt risks spelling liability, A-l-g-e-r-i-a. Now that will be chaos for you.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.