Egypt: How to overthrow a dictator

By Samir Amin, Pambazuka.org,  Feb 24, 2011, Issue 518

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cc H HSamir Amin discusses the role played by four key components of the opposition to Mubarak – the youth, the radical left, middle-class democrats and the Muslim Brotherhood – and the strategies used to oust the regime.

 

SAMIR AMIN: In a previous paper, I wanted to stress the strategy of the enemy, that is, the strategy of the USA and the ruling class of Egypt. Many people do not understand this. Now I would like to discuss the components and the strategies of the movement.

There are four components of the opposition. One is the youth. They are politicised young people, they are organised very strongly, they are more than one million organised, which is not at all a small number. They are against the social and economic system. Whether they are anti-capitalist is a little theoretical for them, but they are against social injustice and growing inequality. They are nationalist in the good sense, they are anti-imperialist. They hate the submission of Egypt to the US hegemony. They are therefore against so-called peace with Israel, which tolerates Israel’s continued colonisation of occupied Palestine. They are democratic, totally against the dictatorship of the army and the police. They have decentralised leadership. When they gave the order to demonstrate, the mobilisation was one million. But within a few hours, the actual figure was not one million, but fifteen million, everywhere throughout the whole nation, and in the quarters of small towns and villages. They had an immediate gigantic positive echo in the whole nation.

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