- Before an ultimatum to attack an anti-coup sit-in earlier this week, Egypt’s new strongman and coup leader Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi received one of his warmest endorsements ever – something that might have been torn right out of the steamy pages of the “Arabian Nights”.
Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi. Credit: U.S. State Department/public domain
A female secular columnist for the liberal, privately-owned daily Al-Masry Al-Youm wrote in support of his planned action, literally offering herself as “a sex slave”.
If this sounds like a typical example of how depraved Arab tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Hafez Al-Assad strengthened their iron grip on their countries on the shoulders of compliant media and elites, it is because it is.
After all, this is the Middle East where more than two years after the Arab Spring, the elite, military and local media remain the world’s most skilled inventors of ruthless autocracies, from mad despots such as the deceased Muammer Gaddafi of Libya to brutal tribal monarchs such as the Al Saud royal family in Saudi Arabia and Al Nahian tribe in the United Arab Emirates......
The rhetoric from the private media, owned by the country’s wealthy elite classes and members of the minority Christian Coptic church who both support Sissi, routinely encourage crackdowns against opponents. Examples include urging Sissi to cut off water and electricity from opposition sit-ins, flooding the sit-ins with sewage, and calls to shoot at “just their legs”, while all along showing fanatical devotion for their new Pharaoh, Sissi the Savior.
But nobody has yet matched Sherif’s offer. “Sissi, all you have to do is just wink,” the liberal writer titled her column.
“He is a man that Egyptians are infatuated with. If he wants to take four wives, then we are at his bidding. If he wants just a sex slave, by God, we’ll not be hard to get either.”"
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