Millions of Egyptian Demonstrators Vanish in a Puff of Logic
July 18, 2013 11:52 AM   Subscribe

How far in advance was the coup in Egypt planned? After the army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood president, gas shortages that had crippled Morsi's popularity magically disappeared, and a local billionaire bragged about secretly financing the opposition. The coup was predicated on enormous street protests that seemed to represent another revolution, but one analysis suggests that the army and opposition massively exaggerated the scale of the protests in order to justify the seizure of power. Egyptian liberals however, defend the overthrow, saying that 'democracy is not reducible to the ballot box.'
posted by A Fine Mess (65 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
There were 14m people on the streets in Cairo. It's a little difficult to think that all those people were manipulated into protesting in the Egyptian heat against their better judgement by some conspiracy. Like there are pictures of that many people on pretty much every news site.
posted by ishrinkmajeans at 12:00 PM on July 18, 2013 [4 favorites]


I mean you're telling me this metric shit load of people are being manipulated by a conspiracy? Really?
posted by ishrinkmajeans at 12:02 PM on July 18, 2013


I find it interesting how crowd size estimation continues to be a controversial and problematic thing. To the point where officials don't official estimates of crowds at demonstrations anymore. Estimates in the US of crowd size vary wildly.

Honestly, it seems like something Science could step up and do (aerial photos counting heads, perhaps?), but were not at a point where people can say with any certainty how big any crowd is. A 20% margin of error would be fine for me, personally.

On a side note, can anyone point me to the best coverage of Egypt happenings? The US media seems pretty incompetent, and I'd like some nuanced perspective I can trust even a little bit on the subject.
posted by el io at 12:04 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


It couldn't be that the 'sudden improvements' are a direct result of the army getting shit done™?
posted by dabitch at 12:05 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


Great post, very thought-provoking.

I will note that most revolutions have had only a small percentage of popular support.
posted by corb at 12:06 PM on July 18, 2013


Which of those photos shows 14 million people?
posted by aaronetc at 12:06 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]



As long as the Egyptian military receives 1.5 billion American dollars every year (as a cash payoff to let Israel do as it pleases) democracy has no chance in Egypt. Morsi threatened that supply of sweet, sweet American "aid" (the GOP doesn't like giving money to an Islamic government) and thus he had to go.
posted by three blind mice at 12:06 PM on July 18, 2013 [4 favorites]


As long as the Egyptian military remains receives 1.5 billion American dollars every year (as a cash payoff to let Israel do as it pleases) democracy has no chance in Egypt. Morsi threatened that supply of sweet, sweet American "aid" (the GOP doesn't like giving money to an Islamic government) and thus he had to go.

Pretty much Israel whipped them every time, so it isn't a bad deal for Egypt.

Having said that, I don't think liberals were manipulated at all. They want a more secular state and were willing to exchange more Army influence in the government for just that.
posted by Ironmouth at 12:11 PM on July 18, 2013


They want a more [adjective] state and were willing to exchange more Army influence in the government for just that.

So says every uncomfortable ally of a military regime that's just overthrown the democratically-elected guy. It's only a bad thing when the military's more conservative that what came before.
posted by resurrexit at 12:15 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's a little difficult to think that all those people were manipulated into protesting in the Egyptian heat against their better judgement by some conspiracy. Like there are pictures of that many people on pretty much every news site.
...
I mean you're telling me this metric shit load of people are being manipulated by a conspiracy?


That is a metric shitload, but is it 14 million? Because that is a huge amount of people. That's 35 Indianapolis Motor Speedways packed to capacity, including the infield, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a mile long. Take every NFL stadium and put them together and count MetLife twice because the Giants and the Jets both play there. Then multiply all those people by six. Fourteen million in the streets is an unfathomable number of people and impossible to photograph or even count.

And frankly, yes, 14 million people can be manipulated by a conspiracy. The article outlines in fairly stark ways how the bureaucracy and police forces of the Egyptian government at best slow-stepped gasoline distribution and basic security while Morsi was in charge, and then things got dramatically better within days.
posted by Etrigan at 12:16 PM on July 18, 2013


Morsi threatened that supply of sweet, sweet American "aid" (the GOP doesn't like giving money to an Islamic government)

Which is why the US gives no money at all to Pakistan. World politics is so simple and straightforward.
posted by yoink at 12:16 PM on July 18, 2013 [6 favorites]


Democracy treated as a stepping stone to theocracy is not democracy at all.
posted by Behemoth at 12:17 PM on July 18, 2013 [9 favorites]


behemoth: I'm no fan of theocracy (of any flavour), but what do you do when 70% of folks want a religiously governed state? I'm not stating that is the case in Egypt, as my ignorance is pretty substantial there, but more in the abstract.

The US has a pretty checkered history when it comes to supporting democracies around the world (when it's a democracy that we like, we're pretty enthused, otherwise we often are very supportive of coups).
posted by el io at 12:24 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


Based upon reports from the few friends I have in Cairo (both Coptic and Muslim, but all liberal), the mood in the past year has gone from "The Muslim Brotherhood is not as bad as everyone in the West thinks" to "The Muslim Brotherhood is worse than any of us imagined."
posted by kanewai at 12:33 PM on July 18, 2013 [5 favorites]


what do you do when 70% of folks want a religiously governed state?

According to The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:
- 74% of Egyptian Muslims think Sharia law should apply to all citizens, not just Muslims.

- 86% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for apostasy.
The idea of a pluralistic Egypt governed by liberals is very appealing to me personally, but I can't help but think that the Muslim Brotherhood, despite their obvious failings, reflect the general will of the Egyptian people.
posted by BobbyVan at 12:35 PM on July 18, 2013 [3 favorites]


The word I've heard for Morsi's approach to rule is "majoritarian", i.e. we won just over 51% so we shunt everyone else off to the sidelines and create a pure Muslim Brotherhood government. This may seem technically acceptible on the face of it (and pretty damn normal in the U.S.) but it was a coalition victory; one poll indicates that only 28% of Egyptians are Muslim Brotherhood supporters.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:35 PM on July 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


Based upon reports from the few friends I have in Cairo (both Coptic and Muslim, but all liberal), the mood in the past year has gone from "The Muslim Brotherhood is not as bad as everyone in the West thinks" to "The Muslim Brotherhood is worse than any of us imagined."

Yeah, from what I understand, the difference between rich liberal Cairo residents and the rest of the country is orders of magnitude wider than the (very wide) difference between rich liberal NYCers and the rest of America.

Although I always get a kick out of statistics like BobbyVan's - polls like those don't ask people to weight their beliefs at all and so the responses are often an indicator of tribal identity, not actual policy preferences.

I don't know. "Democracy" clearly means more than "rule of the people" but it was nice to know that the largest Arab nation was being run by a democratically-elected government that didn't answer to Washington.
posted by downing street memo at 12:43 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


Egyptians went to great lengths to get rid of a dictator. And then soon after Morsi takes office he starts consolidating power and rewriting the constitution. I can see why Egyptians might be upset with this. Sure, the military gave the people what they wanted by kicking him out, and are now in power. But if they think can return to another Mubarak type government, then they have a surprise coming.

I keep seeing this portrayed as a pro/anti Muslim protest or a pro/anti military, but it is neither.

Egyptians can want support of their religion and want democracy. It exists in Tunisia. It is what they thought they were getting with Morsi, but quickly found out otherwise. They don't appear to be willing to settle for yet another power-hungry dictator. So the military better watch their steps.
posted by eye of newt at 12:46 PM on July 18, 2013 [3 favorites]


Hello, if I might chime in from Egypt with a couple points:

First, of course the number of people who took to the streets was exaggerated by the military and the opposition media, each had their own incentive to do so. That being said, however, the thirtieth of June brought down an enormous, mind boggling amount of people to the streets, in marches and rallies across the country. The BBC article on crowd counting is right on in certain cases, but their correspondent who dismisses the estimate is talking about Tahrir alone, whereas in Cairo there was at least one other site as large as or larger than Tahrir that was full of people, and that beyond these two main points of congregation people were everywhere. These numbers felt, and probably were a good deal larger than during the original 18 days or other large demonstrations since; this is in part because of the participation of many who hadn't been part of the original (or any) uprisings (whether because they were sympathetic to the old regime or just uninterested before).

However, the real reason that these numbers were so big was that the Muslim Brotherhood were seen as an unmitigated, complete failure in people's eyes. Having won presidential elections with 51% of 50% of eligible voters, many of whom (including Gaber Salah, a young activist later killed by police protesting against Morsi) simply did not want to see Ahmed Shafiq, an old Mubarak man and Morsi's opponent, win. This was not a sweeping mandate, but rather the hope for a more conciliatory, consensual government not affiliated with the old regime.

Nor were the protests a question of theocracy, islamism, or even conspiracy. This was a fact of most people's lives, who watched them not only extend themselves into every nook and cranny of government with cronyism that harkened back to the Mubarak days. People watched them not only fail to reform the police but use them in a brutal fashion leading to torture, murder, and in one case stripping naked and beating a demonstrator while TV cameras watched. Furthermore, prices were rising and the crisis was deepening just as the brotherhood pursued deeper cuts to services and austerity. This on top of a media crack down that saw four times more prosecutions of journalists for "insulting the president" than under Mubarak's 30 years.

Add to this that during Morsi's presedency was the only time in the history of the Coptic Orthodox church that its seat was physically attacked (while police stood by and even participated), and that just days before the 30th Morsi himself presided over a rally ostensibly about supporting Syria which had numerous speakers spewing inciteful hate speech against Shia muslims. Days after that 4 members of Egypt's shia community were lynched. Even after the enormous protests on the 30th, Morsi's speech not only failed to make any concessions or compromise but leveled threats against the opposition to huge applause, saying "A year is enough".

This list goes on and on, and it's improper to say that this was merely a coup (sure it was, but that's not the greater site of struggle). I am against the army, and have comrades and friends who were killed by the SCAF when they were in power. I believe that what they did was an attempt to coopt the street and salvage as much of the regime they could by jettisoning the Muslim Brotherhood. I believe we could have removed the Muslim Brotherhood without the army. And while I have no doubt that the Army, the Police, and even members of the old regime have capitalized and are attempting to capitalize further on the popular resentment against the Muslim Brotherhood, I also know that the great majority of people in this country want "bread, freedom and social justice," and that until they see this coming to them, and until they see that things truly have changed, people will continue to return to the streets. To say that all of these people were manipulated and that they didn't know they were being oppressed, imprisoned and starved is insulting.
posted by sherief at 12:49 PM on July 18, 2013 [69 favorites]


I should note that those figures (the 74% on universal application and the 86% on apostasy) apply to "Egyptians who favor making Sharia law the law of the land," which amounts to 74% of the overall Egyptian Muslim population, which is estimated at 90% of the overall population.

TL;DR, there are powerful theocratic tendencies within the dominant religion in Egypt, leaving the country with a choice between two internally contradictory systems: an authoritarian-liberal government, or a democratic-theocracy.
posted by BobbyVan at 12:49 PM on July 18, 2013 [5 favorites]


There were 14m people on the streets in Cairo.

14million is 150% of the population of Cairo. Yes, people came in from outside the city. But half again the entire population of the city wasn't on the streets at once
posted by Justinian at 12:51 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


sherief: do you recommend any particular news outlet for getting good (english language) news on Egypt?
posted by el io at 12:55 PM on July 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


I think when Americans read about "the Egyptian military" we think it's like the US military. It's not; it's a much more commercial enterprise. The Egyptian military owns tourist resorts, car factories, farms, transportation infrastructure, etc. That's not entirely unusual to China, but it's very different from how we think about the role of the military in the US and Europe. More info on NPR, Planet Money, and this leaked diplomatic cable.
posted by Nelson at 1:00 PM on July 18, 2013 [5 favorites]


14million is 150% of the population of Cairo.

Arbitrary urban designations are often irrelevant to where people actually live. Cairo metropolitan area officially has over 17m people, and a lot of people live there unofficially.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:01 PM on July 18, 2013


There were 14m people on the streets in Cairo.

14million is 150% of the population of Cairo. But half again the entire population of the city wasn't on the streets at once


I agree with your last statement (and the idea that 14 million is an exaggeration), but the population of the Cairo metropolitan area is somewhere around 20 million, and even that is an estimate, because there are hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of Cairenes who are only barely accounted for by the government (e.g., the residents of the City of the Dead).
posted by Etrigan at 1:03 PM on July 18, 2013


My Egyptian friends keep posting this hashtag: #notacoup

This had a lot of popular support and is likely to be marginally better than Morsi's regime.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:03 PM on July 18, 2013


Two of things I find so perplexing coming out of Egypt:

- The current government of Egypt wants to prosecute the former president Morsi for treason because he escaped from a prison during the 2011 revolution. A prison he was put in only days earlier by Mubarak as part of his attempt to quell the revolution: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/egypt-will-investigate-allegations-that-morsi-escaped-prison-in-2011.php

and
- Many anti-Morsi Egyptians seem to have succeeded in "othering" the people who disagree with them, to the extent that 51 people killed by the military is just written off in a way that gives 100% trust to the military: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jul/18/cairo-republican-guard-shooting-full-story

questions about coup versus revolution have their place, but the pressing issue seems to be what kind of society Egypt is becoming. It seems way too much trust is being put into the same military that was reviled before Morsi took over.

P.S. I sure hope their new constitution has some form of impeachment or recall elections instead of just arbitrary protests being the criteria to remove a corrupt or disliked ruler.
posted by mulligan at 1:03 PM on July 18, 2013


el io:

I think that the best outlet at this point is a new online publication called Mada. It's made up of a great group of journalists who started it last month after having previously worked for the English-language Egypt Independent (whose parent company, Al Masry al Youm closed them down for financial and political reasons). The latter now mostly translates their parent paper's pieces, but it can be good for basic info as well.

Ahram Online is technically affiliated with State-owned media, but previously had an excellent editor (pushed out from the Arabic paper by Mubarak and the English by Morsi) and doesn't share it's Mother paper's editorial line. They manage to do some decent stuff as well.

Daily News Egypt, like Ahram Online, also runs some good features and news pieces. A lot of great English language journalists in the area have started out there, so while it's a bit more spare it's no slouch

Jadaliyya is more about commentary and analysis, but I think they publish thoughful, informative work.

There's also Arabist, a great blog for analysis that links to a fair amount of news

There's other interesting stuff out there, but I'd be getting into nepotism and a bit of self-linking/promotion
posted by sherief at 1:04 PM on July 18, 2013 [10 favorites]


Al-Jazeera Under Fire For Its Coverage Of Egypt, in part due to claims that crowd sizes on each side were misrepresented. al-Jazeera hits back at claims of 'bias'.
posted by seemoreglass at 1:05 PM on July 18, 2013


I just want to say that the city of the dead is like out of a crazy mystery or suspense novel. People actually living in family tombs? A necropolis converted into a slum?

It's strange and beautiful and at the same time it is also sick and saddening that people are forced into such situations. Very strange.
posted by ishrinkmajeans at 1:09 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


As long as the Egyptian military receives 1.5 billion American dollars every year (as a cash payoff to let Israel do as it pleases) democracy has no chance in Egypt.

It's not just us. It's not even primarily us. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, no friend of the Muslim Brotherhood, are also dangling a checkbook to the tune of 8 billion American dollars.
posted by IndigoJones at 1:28 PM on July 18, 2013


I'm pretty sure those 1.5 billion dollars come in the form of checks already made out to selected U.S. defense contractors anyway.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:32 PM on July 18, 2013


- 86% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for apostasy.

This is incorrect. 86% of those who think Sharia should be the law of the land favor the death penalty for apostasy. Only 74 % of Egyptians think that about Sharia, so only 63% feel this way about apostasy, roughly speaking. Wikipedia thinks Muslims are 80-90% of the Egyptian population, so we have 50-56% of the Egyptian population supporting this idea.

Given the fraction of Americans who support killing abortion providers, think that Saddam was behind 9-11, or are members of the Tea Party, that statistic is not as fucked up as it seems at first glance.
posted by Aizkolari at 1:40 PM on July 18, 2013 [4 favorites]


On lack of preview: Bobby, I see you already corrected yourself on that. Sorry for the duplicate post.
posted by Aizkolari at 1:41 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty sure those 1.5 billion dollars come in the form of checks already made out to selected U.S. defense contractors anyway.

I can't talk about actual numbers, but I have specific knowledge that this is not the case for the majority of that money.
posted by Etrigan at 1:43 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


Honestly, it seems like something Science could step up and do (aerial photos counting heads, perhaps?), but were not at a point where people can say with any certainty how big any crowd is. A 20% margin of error would be fine for me, personally.

This is actually basically what's done. Take a photograph looking down on the part of the crowd in some space whose size is known, work out the people/square foot, figure out how many square feet the crowd covers and multiply. (Divide into zones of different densities if you're being careful.) The problem is that crowd estimates in the media are sometimes just pulled out of thin air by nominally impartial reporters or they're given to reporters by people with incentive to under- or over-"estimate" (where 'estimate' means 'make up'). Of course, you can also manipulate which areas you sample to distort the crowd density.

The photograph method (or, more accurately, estimates of square feet/person for different sorts of crowds) is apparently attributed to a guy called Herbert Jacobs.
posted by hoyland at 2:06 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


Actually the military aid is given as a grant that does go right back to the USA. Of course there's a lot of skimming and shady business from the Egyptian Army, keeping the generals fat and happy
posted by sherief at 2:08 PM on July 18, 2013


The point of the second article in the FPP is that there can have been NOWHERE NEAR 14 million people demonstrating; the calculation seems to show that in the whole city of Cairo there were 'only' somewhere between 200-450,000 demonstrators. And of course Cairo had the vast majority of demonstrators for the whole country.

Ishrinkmajeans: I think what people don't realize is that 200,000 demonstrators IS a metric shitload of people. But saying that 200k or 450k called for Morsi to go does not give the same kind of pseudo-legitimacy that a claim of 14 million does (since 14 million happens to be just exactly more than voted for Morsi in the first place!).
posted by A Fine Mess at 2:09 PM on July 18, 2013


Just for fun, I tried using the Herbert Jacobs method on one of the Reuters crowd shots from the article linked above, and came up with 3,200 people. It's a big crowd, but it also show what an enormous number a million, or 14 million, is...
posted by A Fine Mess at 2:22 PM on July 18, 2013


And frankly, yes, 14 million people can be manipulated by a conspiracy.

What's your high number there? What's the biggest number of people that can be manipulated by a conspiracy?
posted by telstar at 2:28 PM on July 18, 2013


telstar: how many people supported the invasion of Iraq?
posted by el io at 2:32 PM on July 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


(the GOP doesn't like giving money to an Islamic government)

Islamist. Islamist. It's not the same thing.
posted by dhartung at 3:13 PM on July 18, 2013 [3 favorites]


I heard an interview with John Anthony West the other day. He does expensive guided tours to the temples and pyramids and whatnot. He says all the political unrest is actually good for the tourists. Tourism is down by 80-90% and so everything that attracts crowds of tourists is almost wide open. If you are an Egyptian then some other Egyptians might be looking to harm you but if you are a tourist everybody in the whole country is quite happy to see you right now.
posted by bukvich at 4:11 PM on July 18, 2013




And frankly, yes, 14 million people can be manipulated by a conspiracy.

What's your high number there? What's the biggest number of people that can be manipulated by a conspiracy?


Billions of people believe that various priest classes hold the keys to afterlives for which no one has ever provided the slightest shred of evidence.
posted by Etrigan at 6:03 PM on July 18, 2013 [1 favorite]




Jeffrey D. Sachs: Bring Back Egypt’s Elected Government
posted by homunculus at 12:28 AM on July 19, 2013


the GOP doesn't like giving money to an Islamic government

The GOP has been perfectly happy to give money to Saudi Arabia, which is not only an Islamic government but arguably an "Islamist" one. The GOP was happily giving aid to the Taliban pre-9/11 as well.

So it's not really about the government's religious orientation. It's about whether that government is serving perceived American interests at the time.
posted by seemoreglass at 6:52 AM on July 19, 2013


P.S. I sure hope their new constitution has some form of impeachment or recall elections instead of just arbitrary protests being the criteria to remove a corrupt or disliked ruler.

People in the US need a better education in the fundamental mechanics of democratic systems...

In a lot of parliamentary democracies, mass protests are an integral part of the system, and its precisely the fact that there are mass protests that triggers the parliamentary processes that remove unpopular officials from office or that lead to the dissolution of governing coalitions. Protest is a feature of democracy not a bug or a failure.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:09 AM on July 19, 2013


Americans just love personal convenience and economic stability too much to believe in democracy anymore.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:12 AM on July 19, 2013


saulgoodman,

But even with what you've described, it triggers a parliamentary process, not a military action.
posted by mulligan at 2:49 PM on July 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


This is one of those threads that Metafilter does best.
posted by JHarris at 9:14 PM on July 19, 2013 [1 favorite]


You're right. There does also need to be a referendum or other process to keep military intervention from being necessary. I missed the point for a second there. Sorry about that.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:35 PM on July 19, 2013


Saudi Arabia, which is not only an Islamic government but arguably an "Islamist" one.

Well, they do give the religious police some pretty free rein and there are a lot of retrograde legal regimes in place, but in general the Islamist movements themselves don't trust the Kingdom any farther than they can throw one of its fat princes. Islamism may be illiberal, but it tends to be populist (if not exactly democratic). This is also a vice versa thing -- the royals have allowed a lot of religious expression as a safety valve, but remain constantly worried about the threat of revolution.

Be careful what you assume these terms mean.
posted by dhartung at 4:42 AM on July 20, 2013 [2 favorites]


There is wide disagreement on what Islamism means. But according to that article there are two strains:
the fundamentalist "guardians of the tradition" of the Salafism or Wahhabi movement, and the "vanguard of change and Islamic reform" centered on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Re: Saudi Arabia I was thinking particularly of Wahhabism, "the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia", which the Saudis have "have spent at least $87 billion propagating".
posted by seemoreglass at 6:48 AM on July 20, 2013






Things have collapsed to pure butchery of political opponents. Yay, democratic military coup?
posted by Justinian at 1:36 PM on August 14, 2013




"Scores" is misleading, it's in the hundreds.
posted by Justinian at 2:00 PM on August 14, 2013


I think there is some "selling the coup" going on for both sides. The local paper message board known for vile and irrational right winger opinions had an interesting converstation going on. "Isn't this a coup?" "No, this was the military taking back the country"

Um, I'm pretty sure that's a coup folks.
posted by Big_B at 9:42 AM on August 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


I don't think any rational person denies it was a coup. I'm just surprised at how many people who should know better, including on metafilter, thought it was a good thing.
posted by Justinian at 4:06 PM on August 15, 2013




The confirmed deaths is nearing a thousand so far as I can tell.
posted by Justinian at 5:14 PM on August 15, 2013




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