Once Upon a Revolution (37 page)

But the National Salvation Front was riven by egos and indecision. Its leaders couldn't even agree on a strategy against Morsi's constitution until the last minute. They couldn't settle on a single leader. They didn't embrace any positive agenda, and it became impossible to fairly describe the alliance as “liberal.” It was simply anti-Morsi and anti-Islamist.

Even more alarming was the Salvation Front's chauvinist prejudices. Sadly, the National Salvation Front was so obsessed with rooting out Islamist influence that it rejected a partnership with Aboul Fotouh, since the independent politician had roots in the Brotherhood. Aboul Fotouh's Strong Egypt Party criticized authoritarian overreach by both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, endowing it with unique political credibility of the sort painfully absent from the Salvation Front. Even Basem dismissed Aboul Fotouh: “Once a Brother, always a Brother,” he said. When I asked how he felt about his old friends from the Revolutionary Youth Coalition, Moaz and the other activists whom I considered
religious liberals, he was equally negative. All of them had been expelled from the Brotherhood, and all of them had toed a delicate line, resisting Brotherhood policies but not succumbing to anti-Islamist intolerance. Apparently, to Basem, this ambiguity made them suspect.

“I like them personally, but there is always some screen between me and them,” he explained. “I never fully trust them. They say one thing, but they mean something else.”

An active member of the Muslim Brotherhood takes an oath of fealty and must always follow direct orders. That unquestioning obedience distinguished the Brothers and left a lingering mark even on those who left the organization. Moaz, for instance, had challenged his Brotherhood bosses, but he had retained the strict commitment to an idea. Now he was a liberal revolutionary and not a Brother, but he put his principles first. Basem found the Brotherhood's groupthink and discipline disturbing. He had noticed how longtime friends still in the Brotherhood had severed ties completely with Moaz and the other dissident Brotherhood youth.

“The organization means more to them than friendship,” Basem explained to me. “I don't think they ever really consider us friends.”

This profound mistrust coursed through Egyptian society, often taking a much more virulent form than Basem's skepticism. Brothers were portrayed as drones serving a power-hungry secret society: robots, automatons, fanatics willing to kill on an order from the supreme guide. The caricature wasn't entirely removed from reality, as had been evidenced in the Brotherhood's vile display at the presidential palace. Yet it carried its own ugly whiff of prejudice. The elite looked askance at the type of head scarf worn by Morsi's wife and marveled that a great nation like Egypt had a president so ill versed in matters of etiquette. In September Morsi fumbled with his testicles on live television during a meeting with the Australian prime minister, a move taken as further testament that the new president was a coarse rube. Eventually nearly three million people watched the clip on YouTube. Morsi fed the ridicule with his bumbling English. Although he had a doctorate from the University of Southern California, Morsi spoke awkwardly, calling world history a “spaghetti-like structure,” comparing modern politics to the film
Planet
of the Apes
, and warning against drunk driving at an international conference in Germany in heavily accented English, admonishing that “gas and alcohol don't mix.” That final phrase spawned an entire genre of satire, including a popular song and ultimately an opposition slogan: “Egypt and Morsi Don't Mix.” Satirist Bassem Youssef's popular show
El Bernameg
, modeled on Jon Stewart's
Daily Show
, won spectacular ratings mocking Morsi. Even Moaz made it onto the program, subjected to a withering takedown for a talk-show clip in which he argued that it was possible to oppose some of Morsi's policies without opposing everything about the man and the Brotherhood.

Morsi made an easy target. There were weekly outrages, some great and some small. As Egyptians struggled under increasing economic hardships and international setbacks, mocking Morsi's malapropisms helped boost the people's morale. Bassem Youssef got great mileage off a bizarre hat that Morsi wore while receiving an honorary doctorate in Pakistan. When the comedian was summoned to the general prosecutor to be investigated for insulting the sovereign, Bassem Youssef wore an oversized replica of President Morsi's doctoral cap. Furthering his image as a thin-skinned and imperious ruler, Morsi initiated more prosecutions for the crime of offending the head of state than Mubarak, Sadat, Nasser, and King Farouk combined.

Along with a handful of liberals and ex-Brothers, Moaz joined in the National Conscience Front, a rickety effort to counter the reflexive antireligious sentiment of the secular National Salvation Front. The Conscience Front was supposed to showcase Egyptians able to engage in honest criticism of the president without resorting to rote anti-Brotherhood and anti-Islamist propaganda. Many of its members were apologists for Morsi, however, and as the sole young revolutionary in the Conscience Front, Moaz was attacked for carrying Morsi's water.

“You are doing the Muslim Brotherhood's dirty work, cleaning up their mess,” one of Moaz's old revolutionary comrades accused him during a televised debate.

Moaz said, “My conscience makes me follow the right path even when it's hard and I don't like it. I don't like the Muslim Brothers; they fight me and make problems for me. But I want to do the right thing.”

Although his motives appeared earnest, Moaz was being manipulated. He was serving as a kind of useful idiot, a cover for the Brotherhood's increasingly inept presidency. And he was caught in an increasingly deserted middle ground. With every passing day, fewer and fewer Egyptians were interested in seeing the merits of both sides and willing to cooperate with secular liberals as well as with Islamists. Liberalism's first tenet is freedom. It depends on laws and rights that allow disagreement and protect minorities. Increasingly, no one from the secular or Islamist camps believed that their opponents had the right to so much as express their opinions in public. In this corrosive atmosphere, Moaz's efforts appeared vain or even foolish.

On the second anniversary of the uprising, Moaz felt deflated. He was trying once again to revive the ethos of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition. He had managed to assemble some soccer ultras and some Salafis, along with representatives of the Revolutionary Socialists and the breakaway Brotherhood Youth, to proclaim a renewed revolutionary agenda that focused on ending police brutality and improving the quality of life for workers and the poor. It was a noble but marginal effort. Moaz marched with the now-fractious remains of the revolutionary youth on the same route they had followed two years earlier, but the commemoration lacked passion. Only a few thousand walked the whole route. In Tahrir, Moaz saw Basem.

“You're still in the square?” Basem asked.

“Yes,” Moaz said.

“You accept the actions of the Muslim Brotherhood?” Basem asked archly.

“No, that is why I am in the square,” Moaz said, his voice tinged with fatigue.

“We should fight together against the Brotherhood,” Basem suggested.

“We should not just fight against the Muslim Brotherhood,” Moaz replied. “We should fight for ethics and the revolution against everyone who opposes them.”

They conversed almost pro forma, knowing they weren't going to work together again, and that each was unlikely to shift the other's view.
Basem excused himself. He was expected in a television studio to discuss the National Salvation Front's latest demands.

Some intangible restraint was cast aside after the 2013 anniversary of the uprising. President Morsi no longer went through the motions of sounding conciliatory. His advisers threatened the opposition on television. Morsi screamed himself hoarse in speeches and went after dissenters in court. Riots broke out in Port Said because the runaway courts sentenced fans to the death penalty for the previous year's soccer stadium slaughter but failed to convict any of the senior police and military officials who were ultimately responsible for the killings. Police fired indiscriminately, killing forty people. Morsi failed to condemn or curtail the police violence. The military occupied the canal cities to quiet things down but refused to enforce the curfew that Morsi had ordered. Videos circulated of soldiers playing football after dark with Port Said residents. The police had reverted completely to their old ways, wantonly beating citizens, with many of the most gruesome incidents recorded in videos that the police shamelessly dismissed as fakes. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood's media began a sectarian drumbeat, portraying opposition forces like the upstart anarchist “Black Bloc” as Christian fronts.

It was the most promising moment yet for the secular forces. The Brotherhood's mistakes opened the way for a change of fortune at the polls. Yet as quickly as it had coalesced, the political opposition collapsed. Already its leaders had deadlocked over whether to invite or exclude members of Mubarak's ruling party. Formed as a non-Islamist alternative to Morsi, the National Salvation Front had devolved into a bickering company of narcissists. Just a whiff of power had driven them mad. Basem was methodically preparing for an election that was expected sometime in late spring. A grand coalition of all the secular and liberal forces was the only effective counter to the domineering Islamists, but Basem wanted to be ready to run with just his own midsized party if that was all that remained. He found himself arguing even with his fellow liberals and Social Democrats. Many wanted to boycott any election organized under Muslim Brotherhood rule because they believed it would be inherently unfair.

“We have to participate, so that we don't leave everything to them,” Basem urged his fellow central committee members. “We have to work hard and be ready for elections whenever they come.”

But there was a deep-seated culture of boycott in Egypt that far predated the revolution. Under Mubarak, most ballots had been rigged so heavily that the only way to protest was to stay home. Dissenting votes would be thrown away, the thinking went, but a national election with a 5 or 10 percent turnout at least would embarrass the dictator and make it hard for him to claim a popular mandate. This idea had survived into the age of Tahrir, and time and again it had prompted revolutionaries and liberals to squander any serious chance at shaping the electorate. Twice they had hesitated until the last moment to campaign against flawed constitutional referendums because they had been tempted to boycott. Most revolutionaries and many liberal and secular voters had boycotted the parliamentary and presidential elections because they resented the authoritarian conditions under which they were held and the lack of acceptable candidates.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the feckless symbol of secular liberal Egypt, managed to undo the opposition campaign with a single tweet. “Called for parliamentary election boycott in 2010 to expose sham democracy,” ElBaradei tweeted in late February. “Today I repeat my call, will not be part of an act of deception.” What arguably had made sense in Mubarak's waning years made none in the revolution's third year, when secular and liberal Egyptians were trying to establish themselves as an alternative to the Islamists. Within days, the entire opposition agreed to sit out the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

No one wanted to defy ElBaradei, the wise man who had been so inspiring in the early stages of the uprising. He had been right about a few major points. He had always insisted that, after Mubarak's fall, the first step was to carefully draft an inclusive constitution before moving on to a contest for power. No one had listened. He had also pushed for a revolutionary presidential council as a way out of crises, but he never managed to persuade any powerful constituencies. He never decided whether he wanted to remain aloof, the conscience of the revolution, or to enter the fray and seek to lead the country. When it came to politics, ElBaradei was a total failure. He never resonated with the public. He was a terrible,
uncharismatic speaker. He was indecisive and often misread the situation. Almost every tactical call he made was wrong. He had declined to establish a political party for more than a year while his followers forged organizations without him. He had kept channels open with the Brotherhood and with old regime figures without ever managing to hold either side accountable for its abuses of authority. He had courted the military without effectively condemning its control of public life.

At this key moment, the opposition could have outgrown and cast aside this once inspiring but now handicapping figure. Other leaders in the National Salvation Front could have disagreed with “the doctor” and insisted that the only way to win power in a democracy was to run for office. Contesting elections didn't forfeit the right to protest afterward if they were rigged or stolen. It was almost as if ElBaradei were so afraid to lose, so afraid that the secular front would never manage to attract a sizable electorate, that he preferred to sit out every competition or only enter it halfheartedly. Most of the opposition chose to follow ElBaradei's lead. Either they shared his diagnosis or they were too deferential to him. Basem fell in the second camp, as did the majority of the Social Democratic Party: they wanted to run, but they felt for reasons that were never entirely clear that they couldn't break ranks. “We have to respect the decision of the Salvation Front,” Basem said.