ANOTHER GREAT COMMENT
By Hani Shukrallah , Thursday 6 Dec 2012
Ahram Online
"To chants of “Command, command oh Badei, you command and we obey,” the Muslim Brotherhood in power was fast mutating into the very caricature of itself as painted by its bitterest enemies. Its easily mobilized, effortlessly bussed loyalists, happy to throng in their thousands in typically malevolent and horrifyingly brutal defense of policies and decisions they knew nothing about, now stood in stark contrast to the “new Egyptians” born of the revolution they made – a brave, free and rebellious people who bow to no one, and for whom the very notion of “obedience” is anathema......
Pity then, that the seductive kiss of power in post-revolution Egypt should have transformed them, vampire like, to that very caricature. We might identify several crucial moments in that transformation:.....
For both the military and their Muslim Brotherhood allies, the revolution had not so much given rise to a new political and social order as it had created a power vacuum which needed to be filled. For the Brotherhood specifically, the moment of “Tamkin”, or empowerment had arrived. A power-sharing arrangement between the twin inheritors of the Mubarak regime seemed written in the stars.
Yet the revolutionary energy unleashed in January/February 2011 would not dissipate.....
In the space of a few months, between the parliamentary elections (28 November 2011 - 11 January 2012) and the first round of the presidential elections (23 - 24 May 2012), the Brotherhood had managed to lose over half its electoral base – nearly seven million votes.....
A Brotherhood in power that is happy to collaborate with the US and Israel in fighting terrorism in Sinai; speaks of strategic ties with Washington; signs a typically stringent loan deal with the IMF; shows astonishing ineptitude and lack of vision; fails to deliver on any of its own promises, let alone the promises of the revolution; and is hailed by the US and Europe for its role in “containing” Hamas and safeguarding Israel’s security is a Brotherhood that has lost whatever mystique it once had....
Such awareness however did not make for a willingness to open up to a growingly politicized, and pluralistic Egyptian society and its reemerging political landscape, but rather to create a frenzied sense of urgency that if they don’t seize the full reins of power today, they will have lost what is possibly their single chance to do so in the 84 years of the group’s life.....
On Wednesday, thousands of Muslim Brotherhood thugs, armed with rifles, shotguns, knives, chains, bludgeons and remarkably, tear-gas were bussed into the vicinity of the presidential palace to attack the few hundred peaceful protesters that had staged a symbolic sit-in before the palace following Tuesday march.
As the footage and testimonies of protesters, bystanders and journalists kept coming onto the airwaves and the social media, we seemed to have been hurled back in time and space, to the rise of Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, Francism in Spain.
The mutation of the Muslim Brotherhood into its ugliest caricature: a gang of fascist thugs was complete.
No pasaran!
They shall not pass!"
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