On February fourth, I blogged about different aspects of the
Egyptian revolution, including its challenge to those who might
possibly explain it as fomented by the State Department, the CIA,
or Soros-type NGO’s. I wrote:
Ever since the Balkan Wars, many leftists have understandably
fallen victim to a kind of mechanical anti-imperialism in which
politics is reduced to looking for clues of American support for
dissidents overseas. While there is no question that such a
methodology works well for Yugoslavia, Lebanon, or Georgia, it
cannot do proper justice to the movement against Ahmadinejad in
Iran or against Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Imperialism, for its own
reasons, will often place money on a horse. It will also place
money on two different horses in the same race, in an effort to
hedge its bets. Considering how Goldman-Sachs routinely doles out
millions to Democrats and Republicans alike in the same
presidential race, this should not come as any surprise.
In a remarkable article in the NY Times today (A Tunisian-Egyptian
Link That Shook Arab History) detailing the origins of the protest
movement in Tunisia and Egypt, there’s much more information on
the NGO tie-in:
The Egyptian revolt was years in the making. Ahmed Maher, a
30-year-old civil engineer and a leading organizer of the April 6
Youth Movement, first became engaged in a political movement known
as Kefaya, or Enough, in about 2005. Mr. Maher and others
organized their own brigade, Youth for Change. But they could not
muster enough followers; arrests decimated their leadership ranks,
and many of those left became mired in the timid, legally
recognized opposition parties. “What destroyed the movement was
the old parties,” said Mr. Maher, who has since been arrested four
times…
For their part, Mr. Maher and his colleagues began reading about
nonviolent struggles. They were especially drawn to a Serbian
youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator
Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American
political thinker, Gene Sharp. The hallmark of Mr. Sharp’s work is
well-tailored to Mr. Mubark’s Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is
a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might
cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of
stability.
The April 6 Youth Movement modeled its logo — a vaguely Soviet
looking red and white clenched fist—after Otpor’s, and some of its
members traveled to Serbia to meet with Otpor activists.
Another influence, several said, was a group of Egyptian
expatriates in their 30s who set up an organization in Qatar
called the Academy of Change, which promotes ideas drawn in part
on Mr. Sharp’s work. One of the group’s organizers, Hisham Morsy,
was arrested during the Cairo protests and remained in detention.
If you are susceptible to mechanical thinking, the connection to
Otpor would automatically lead you to conclude that the revolt in
Egypt was tainted. After all, Otpor was in the vanguard to
overthrow one of the few opponents of NATO in Eastern Europe,
Slobodan Milosevic’s government in Serbia.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/what-is-the-connection-between-otpor-and-the-egyptian-youth-movement/
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