Reject the Generals

I was initially ambivalent about the Egyptian coup.  On the one hand, the military was overthrowing a legitimate, democratically elected government after only one year in office.  On the other hand, the Muslim Brotherhood voices extreme right-wing fundamentalist views on just about everything and are arguably fighting against the very conditions (freedom of speech, a secular state, women’s rights) which make democracy possible.  However, there was another massacre in Egypt on Saturday.  The army opened fire on supporters of overthrown ex-president Mohammed Morsi on Saturday, killing more than 65 civilians.  This comes after 30 Egyptians lost their lives in clashes on July 5th and the army shot down another 54 Islamist protestors on July 8th.  There have also been suspicious changes since the coup – police restoring order to the streets after being absent for months, sudden improvements in energy shortages – that suggest a concerted effort to prepare the ground for the military takeover.  At this point, I think it’s clear that there’s no room for ambivalence.  The Egyptian coup was an illegitimate military takeover, backed by elements of the old regime, which will deeply damage democracy and prospects for positive social change in Egypt.

The emperor has no clothes

The coup’s aftermath highlights an important lesson – process matters.  For all the anti-abortion, pro-robber baron, militarist nuttiness emanating from modern right-wing politicians, I would never argue that their election was illegitimate, or that the laws they pass are non-binding.  Egyptian protesters had every right to mass in the streets, to conduct general strikes, to use every tool in the civil society/dissident/peaceful revolutionary arsenal to pressure Morsi to step down.  But by resorting to force, backers of the coup rejected the legitimacy of the democratic system itself.  That legitimacy is hard to restore, and it’s difficult to see how the military-backed government can navigate its way out of this crisis and back to democracy.  They’ve got to either 1) ban the Brotherhood (i.e. the most democratically popular party) and establish a technocratic government supported by an elite minority (risking a civil war) or 2) allow the Brotherhood to run in elections it will likely win, and then anti-democratically limit what the elected Brotherhood representatives can do.  Either way, by violently rejecting democratic governance and institutions, the military and its backers have set Egypt on an inevitable path towards autocracy and dictatorship.