Το άρθρο αυτό παρά το “ριζοσπαστικό δημοκρατισμό” του εξηγεί αρκετά καλά το μηχανισμό πρόσδεσης όλων των πολιτικών τάσεων της Αιγύπτου στην ιδεολογία του κράτους. Η κρίση στην Αίγυπτο παράγεται πλέον ως κρίση του κράτους και το “δημοκρατικό κίνημα” εγκλωβίζεται στο φαύλο κύκλο της διαχείρισης του κράτους ως ανικανοποίητου στόχου του κύκλου ταραχών που ξεκίνησε το 2011.

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An old and pernicious idea is back in circulation since the July 3 coup. It was a running theme in the military ruler’s speech on July 24 where he demanded a popular mandate to “confront terrorism.” Right on cue, government officials parroted it repeatedly in their stern warnings to dissenters. Pro-military activists, politicians, and intellectuals happily invoked it in their jihad against the Ikhwan. The idea is haybat al-dawla, or the state’s standing and prestige, a central plank of the Arab authoritarian order that’s making a big comeback.

It’s unsurprising that in his July 24 speech, General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi would portray himself as a wise and honest mentor to the errant Mohamed Morsi. The twist is that he says Morsi didn’t understand the concept of the state because he’s an Islamist, not a nationalist (a claim Sisi repeats in his Washington Post interview). Sisi says he gave up on instructing Morsi and decided to “emphasize the idea of the state” to the judiciary, al-Azhar, the Coptic Church, the media, and public opinion, that is, all the institutions that supported the coup.

Whether voiced out of conviction or rank opportunism, defending the state is the favorite ideological vehicle of Egyptian conservatives and counter-revolutionaries. Portraying the state as a sacred entity whose standing is forever under threat rules out any talk of state reform. But the really nefarious thing about haybat al-dawla is that it short-circuits any attempt to democratize the state, to open up its commanding heights to popular election and access. The implication is that the state can never change hands. It must always remain under the auspices of permanent custodians.

Superstitious Reverence

Masking Hereditary Rule

After the revolution, the challenge to state managers became existential. Not only had Egyptians broken the police backbone of the state, they even wanted to democratize this state and put some of their own people in top positions. They wanted free presidential elections, and parliamentary elections, and a new constitution. They demanded an end to state corruption, organized theft, and police rule. They wanted a state that works for its people, not a predatory machine that fleeces and kills them.

This is all sacrilege for the exclusive class of Egyptians who have come to see state office as their birthright. Whole chunks of the state are hereditary fiefdoms. If you’re a foreign service officer, then it’s probably because your father was. Same with the judiciary, the police, public universities, and the state-funded culture industry, to say nothing of cabinet portfolios. Hosni Mubarak merely wanted to extend the hereditary nature of state office to the presidency, but the revolution ended that dream.

The point is that over time, the Egyptian state has come to be controlled by a privileged caste that’s not about to sit idly and watch a popular revolution snatch its incredible perks. Of course the ruling elite don’t come out and openly say this, though they say it privately at their gaudy weddings and other tacky gatherings. They have to devise a smokescreen for why ordinary citizens and counter-elites like the Muslim Brothers can’t be let into the state sanctum. They call that smokescreen haybat al-dawla.

State Prestige under Mohamed Morsi

The Muslim Brothers’ biggest miscalculation was to assume that they could join the ruling caste and begin to wield the doctrine of state prestige. Morsi worked very hard to court and appease the Mubarakist security state and its business cronies, but he realized far too late that these pillars of the old elite would never accept him and his confreres into the ruling coalition.

A Militarized Restoration

In the end, haybat al-dawla is a fancy term to dress up and mystify minority control of the state. Stripped of its grandiose aura, “state prestige” is a byword for exclusion, for walling off the state from regular citizens and their revolutionary demands for state accountability, protection, and public services. Like an exclusive club on well-tended grounds, the Egyptian state and its military controllers do not allow public access. If the Muslim Brothers were so violently cast out, despite their polite deference to the ruling elite, then the message is: the state is off limits to everyone.

To me this is one of the most sobering lessons of the aborted Morsi presidency. The popularly-supported coup is quite a triumph for the Mubarakist ruling caste and the doctrine that the state is theirs to run. They can lay on thick the rhetoric of haybat al-dawla and restoring state standing, but what’s really been restored and re-legitimated is their complete control of the state.

Since the military leads the ruling caste, and sets the agenda and talking points for their civilian subordinates, political conflict is now cast as military conflict. Look no further than the military ruler’s discourse portraying resistance to his putsch as a battle between patriots and enemies. Oppositional sit-ins are threats to national security. Participants in the sit-ins are duped simpletons or paid agents. Their leaders are terrorists and killers. And any opposition to the military’s road map is a threat to state standing.

The challenges confronting the revolutionary project couldn’t be more daunting. It not only faces a reconstituted, militarized anti-revolutionary order, but a wicked ideology that naturalizes that order as a matter of state standing. State standing boils down to the prestige of the state’s hard core, military and police. And the revolution’s great promise of endowing citizens with full political standing is in abeyance.