💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › goos-hofstee-egypt-s-black-bloc.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:32:28. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Egypt’s Black Bloc Author: Goos Hofstee Date: December 8, 20013 Language: en Topics: Egypt, Black Bloc, Middle East Source: Retrieved on 28th October 2020 from https://www.fairobserver.com/region/middle_east_north_africa/egypts-black-bloc-arrival-anarchism-middle-east/
The Egyptian Black Bloc is not the first example of anarchism in Egypt.
When in January 2013, Egyptian protesters commemorated the two-year
anniversary of Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, a mysterious group emerged in
Cairo. Protesting against the Morsi regime, the newly-formed anarchist
“Black Bloc” openly declared they would not eschew violence to realize
their goals.
Using slogans, including “our mess prevents chaos” and “we are confusion
that prevents confusion,” their protests prompted a violent crackdown by
the Egyptian regime, and an excited reaction from anarchist groups
abroad.
When we look at coverage of the Black Bloc in the “anarchist
blogosphere,” the dominant tone is one of celebration. When the Black
Bloc first appeared, the jubilant blogs quickly stressed the connection
between Egyptian revolutionaries and Western anarchist movements such as
Occupy.
Moreover, the emergence of the Black Bloc was hailed as the “arrival of
anarchism in the Middle East.” The blogs — and, to a lesser extent, some
of the mainstream press — give us the impression that the Black Bloc is
Egypt’s first-ever encounter with anarchism and anti-authoritarianism.
This is, however, far from true. While it is certainly less documented
than anarchist history in the West, the Middle East — and Egypt in
particular — has a long history of anarchism and anti-authoritarian
activism.
Anarchism in the region started as early as the 1860s when Italian
political refugees and dissidents arrived in Alexandria and other
Egyptian cities, where they found the political climate to be less
repressive. Soon, the new immigrant communities were flourishing. The
newcomers became increasingly active in domestic politics, set up
workers’ unions, and influenced the burgeoning Egyptian labor movements
with anti-authoritarian ideas.
Much of these immigrants’ version of anarchism — and specifically
anarcho-syndicalism, which focuses on labor struggles through
self-organization — was about fighting the corrupted regime and
improving the lives of ordinary Egyptians. These ideas found fertile
soil with Egyptian workers.
In 1894, Greek workers organized a strike with Egyptians laborers
against the Suez Canal Company. This strike was characterized by an
unprecedented degree of unity between foreign and indigenous activists,
which resulted from a convergence of the immigrant workers’ political
radicalism and Egyptian workers’ nationalist sympathies.
This anti-authoritarian activism of the increasingly powerful workers’
unions inevitably led to more state repression of anarchists, while
several foreign activists were deported. However, it also led to more
public sympathy for these revolutionaries, whom many Egyptians
understood to be fighting a corrupt regime on behalf of the average
Egyptian citizen.
The workers’ activism went hand in hand with an upsurge in Egyptian
nationalism. While the latter was an Egyptian ideology by nature, the
immigrant anarchists supported the nationalist cause and became actively
involved. It was this entwinement of the labor movement and the
nationalist ideology that worried the British, and that led General
Allenby to comment in July 1919 that: “The foreign and native working
classes have apparently identified in their own minds the Syndicalist
(that is trade union) movement, and the Extremist (that is the
nationalist agitation).”
Even though the British granted Egypt official independence in 1923,
their military occupation of Egypt lasted until 1936. However, the 1919
national revolution against the British had opened the floodgates of
labor organization, nationalist activism, and anti-authoritarian action.
For years to come, anarchist activists kept targeting foreign powers
repeatedly, and their militant actions continued to enjoy steady popular
support.
While anti-authoritarianism and anarchism along with Egyptian
nationalism remained the dominant mode of expression for Egyptian
political activists during the 1930s and 1940s, the
anarchist/anti-authoritarian creed, along with any other political
ideology that would compete with Nasserism, was side-lined during the
heyday of pan-Arabism in the 1950s and 1960s.
However, its legacy still resonates with revolutionaries today. As a
contemporary Egyptian anarchist illustrates in an interview, at least
some of the current anti-authoritarian activism was inspired by Egyptian
anarchist activity in the 1940s.
As we can see, anti-authoritarianism and anarchist tactics are far from
new to Egyptian society. However, the Western anarchists’ reactions to
the emergence of the Black Bloc, their celebration of its adoption of
“Western anarchist tactics,” and their disregard of Egypt’s rich history
of anarchism and anti-authoritarian rebellion, display an Orientalist
tendency to gloss over the efforts and agency of indigenous actors.
Western anarchist blogs have waxed lyrical about the significance of the
Black Bloc, projecting onto it all sorts of politics, objectives and
contexts for which little or no evidence exists. They suggest that the
Bloc is somehow part of a worldwide anarchist network with a common
purpose and vision. However, by trying to fit the Black Bloc to their
own agenda, they deny the specific characteristics of this Egyptian
revolutionary movement, and the context in which it has emerged.
Egypt’s Black Bloc grew out of the struggle for liberation from an
authoritarian system, and its mission has on several occasions been
stated as the fight against the authoritarian regime — be that the Morsi
government or the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
The first clip that the movement posted on YouTube showed young men
waving black banners emblazoned with the international anarchy sign, the
letter A in a circle. Black Bloc members have also been known to wear
balaclavas and Guy Fawkes masks at their protests.
Judging from these superficial symbols, it might indeed seem that the
Black Bloc identifies with broader anarchist movements like Occupy.
However, it is important not to read too much into these outward
appearances and logos.
As its numerous statements, social media declarations and interviews
show, there is hardly anything conclusive about the politics of Egyptian
Black Bloc participants. In fact, one of the few things it does indicate
is that the Black Bloc revolutionaries do not share too much in the way
of vision with their Western anarchist counterparts.
Their emergence has been responsive, borne out of specific political
circumstances, and they represent a tactic, not a particularly anarchist
ideology. In fact, their message has been mostly reform-oriented,
evocative of a constitutional liberal position, and has echoed what one
finds coming from any number of revolutionary groups in Egypt.
While their tactics and militant actions may be anarchist in nature,
Black Bloc’s ultimate aim is not about a stateless society or
non-hierarchal self-governance. Rather, as my recent interview with a
leading Black Bloc member illustrates, their goals very much involve the
institution of a state. “We want a state that is a product of the
revolution, where everybody can be free, not a secret, repressive state,
but a state that provides a better future.”
These anarchists are not dogmatic purists obsessed with hierarchical
structures or complete collectivism. They are realists and pragmatists,
and their immediate goal is to improve the situation of the Egyptian
people. As the aforementioned activist said to me: “If Egypt would be a
secular state, and this state would give my kids food and education,
equality and healthcare and peace, we would be ok with that.”
These statements illustrate that the objectives of contemporary Egyptian
anarchists of the Black Bloc fit in very well with the historical
context of anarchism in Egypt. The struggles of the anti-authoritarian
revolutionaries in the late 19^(th)/early 20^(th) century were
responsive in nature as well, borne out of a historically specific state
of affairs. For all their ideological foundations, in practice those
struggles also focused on improving living and working conditions for
the people, rather than aiming to establish a completely self-governed
stateless society.
When we take a close look at modern Egyptian history, it seems that the
Black Bloc is far from a historical novelty but just another example of
anti-authoritarian struggle in a country that is, in fact, quite
experienced with these matters. Moreover, to focus exclusively on the
Black Bloc as the sole representative of anarchism in Egypt is to gloss
over other, equally meaningful, initiatives in Egyptian society.
If we borrow Noam Chomsky’s “definition” of anarchism — namely that it
is an “orientation against relations of domination and toward relations
of equality, democracy and cooperation” — we can accept that all
activity which undermines the repressive hegemonic structures that
dominate society can be defined as “anarchist activity.”
This means that not only is the Black Bloc not the first anarchist group
in Egyptian history, it is neither currently the only one. If we go by
Chomsky’s explanation of anarchism, we have to realize there are groups
and individuals currently active in Egypt whose efforts and small
struggles on a daily basis are anarchist in nature. These individuals
may not wear black hoodies or balaclavas, but they are fighting a
repressive system as much as the Black Bloc does.
Think, for example, of the efforts of organizations like Operation
Anti-Sexual Harassment. While they do not concern themselves with the
creation of stateless societies or political hierarchies, they certainly
fight against a repressive (patriarchal) hegemony. Not only do they
physically protect women from sexual assault during protests, they also
vehemently reject the imposition on women’s clothes, looks, whereabouts
or lifestyle in order to avoid sexual assault.
Hence, they fight the system in practice as well as in theory. If
anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical organization in the
conduct of human relations (including, but not limited to, the state
system), surely opposing the dominant hierarchy of values that currently
attributes more influence, authority and freedom to men than to women is
a quintessentially anarchist battle.
Many of the men and women involved in Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment
may have never read the writings of Mikhail Bakunin or Emma Goldman. Yet
they personify all that anti-authoritarianism essentially stands for.
Nonetheless, their efforts have been excluded from the dominant Western
anarchist discourse because they do not fit within its “narrow and
complex definitions, labels, and lifestyle.”
This does not only fail to do justice to the efforts and achievements of
these “everyday revolutionaries,” it is also detrimental to our own
understanding of the complexities of anti-authoritarianism in Egypt.
The one-sided representation of the events currently unfolding in the
Egyptian revolutionary arena holds up a mirror to our own shortcomings.
It exposes Western anarchist commentators — and some of the mainstream
media pundits — as historically unaware, Orientalist in outlook, and
more concerned with form and flags than with understanding the real
context of Egyptian anarchism.
Even if their generalizations stem from some romantic notion of shared
struggle and brotherhood in battle, ultimately it drowns out the
specific Egyptian anarchist discourse. If we really want to understand
the Black Bloc, the Egyptian revolutionary groups or even the revolution
itself, we need to learn not to speak for Egyptians, but to listen to
them.