Two big surprises of the Egyptian revolution so far are: its speed and Mubarak’s failure to act like Stalin. Forget about the thugs for a moment; he could have murdered thousands to put this down at the start; he didn’t.
Both surprises reflect the power of the internet.
This revolution was not only impelled by young people who are interconnected in Egypt, but it has gained support from an international community. The hours and hours you are spending in front of the television and twitter feeds and streaming Al Jazeera now are not wasted. No, of course, you are not in Tahrir Square risking your own life; but you are committing your energy, and that energy is in itself transformative. We are creating a community of people everywhere who believe in the promise of the Egyptian revolution. Those believers now include many in power across the United States, who feel they have power to affect events. The same was not true even in the Spanish Republic or the Bolshevik revolution, despite the international waves of support for same.
This revolution and its counter-revolution are transparent in a way that none before it were. The other night Chris Matthews said that we are seeing public diplomacy before our eyes with the Obama statements, and the Mubarak speech. He’s right; television is not far from the chambers of power, we see every twist in strategy, even if we are not inside the chamber.
I am saying that just as Facebook has famously destroyed the traditional idea of personal privacy, the internet is rupturing the boundaries of the nation state. Both these things– personal privacy and nation — are human conceptions, after all, and both are subject to change. Young people are growing up with far greater transparency about matters (sexual, emotional, authority-related) that my generation grew up regarding as None of our business. These transformational ideas about authority are sweeping Cairo as well; I see it in the beautiful young faces of the revolution, the young people who are more wired than I am and far hipper than me too.
But they rely on me. They rely on Parvez Sharma’s twittering, and Ali Abunimah’s and Mona Eltahawy’s and Richard Engel’s too.
Consider: The communist rebellion in Indonesia in the 60s was suppressed with nearly a million dead, and no one in the outside world was entirely sure what had happened. Most people in the west only learned about it 20 years later, with The Year of Living Dangerously. This will not happen in Egypt.
Consider: The intolerance of Muslim fundamentalists will not define this revolution, as it came to define the Iranian revolution, in large part because the young are just too hip for that, and millions of them know how people are building their lives in Europe, and are drawing strength from that knowledge. Mubarak tried to kill that connection, but he will not succeed.
The nation-state was conceived in the 1600s or 1700s as I remember (I’m a blogger not a historian). It served economic and social purposes. Shared language and a shared (usually fictional) past unified the people of the nation around an idea of Germanness or Americanness. Benedict Anderson explained to us that a nation was an “imagined community.” The internet has allowed us to imagine community in a new way.
We are all Egyptians now, thanks to the internet. Again, the internet is rupturing the traditional boundaries of the nation state. No, none of us will be recruited for the Egyptian army; and very few of us will be clubbed in the streets of Cairo showing that we are willing to die for democracy. But many many millions of us are willing to cry out for democracy. And in an interconnected age, that might make all the difference.
Step down, Mubarak, get out of the way, and let these ravishing ideals of human freedom move forward.
