OWEN HEMSATH
PRIDE STAFF WRITER

It began on Jan. 17 when a 50-year-old Egyptian storeowner set fire to himself in protest of his government’s policy on bread coupons. Since then, thousands have protested the 30-year authoritarian reign of President Hosni Mubarak. Hundreds have been killed or seriously injured and many remain in the streets of Cairo while others have mounted an armed defense of their homes.

When President Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003 the media launched a hailstorm of criticism and judgment calls that take precedent in the conversation even today. The awkward contradiction however is this: Iraq is a democracy, and Middle Eastern countries have noticed. In an area of the world rotten with theocratic and authoritarian governing systems, the people are beginning to demand liberty, first in Tunisia where dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali left the country after a grass- roots uprising. Now that same grass roots revolution has reached Egypt.

According to Ralph Peters, a retired army officer, “the Tunisian popular uprising that unseated a dictator was the trigger for the demonstrations in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world today, but commentators have ignored the salient fact that, despite its long and violent ordeal, democracy is currently working in Iraq—the first democracy in a major, large-population Arab country. Egyptians are well aware of it, too. They don’t want to be left behind by Iraqis. Bush kick-started a long process that will play out over decades—the evolution toward democracy in the world’s most-troubled region.” That sentiment was echoed by a native Egyptian Sam Tadros in the “American Thinker” when he wrote, “Tunisia had broken the barrier for many people.”

With Tunisia acting as the catalyst, the stage was set for revolution and Egyptians began shouting for freedom as loud as their social media could yell. Citizens (including extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood) began using Facebook and YouTube as a means to organize their protest and to incite others to join them. In one particularly emotional video posted by Asmaa Mahfouz, no words are minced when she calls her countrymen to action, “maybe we can have justice, freedom, and honor … we will go down [to Tahrir Square] and demand our human rights … If you think yourself a man, come down with me. Sitting at home and just following us on Facebook humiliates us. Come down with me.” In another video posted by 8-year-old Juju, “let the people of Egypt vote!” Seven days later on Jan. 25, this video and others like it brought thousands of Egyptians into the street where the revolution began. The people protested, Mubarak’s thugs were called and the army stood by.

This use of social media to sound the battle horn marks an unprecedented use of technology by a nation accustomed to state-run media. Tadros mentions, “the social media tools had given people something that they had lacked previously, an independent means of communication and propaganda. Hundreds of thousands of young Egyptians, in a matter of minutes, were seeing the demonstration videos being uploaded on YouTube.” The government responded.

Acting in a panic on Jan. 28, the Mubarak government shut down internet services in a ploy to stop the use of social media to spread dissention in what’s been hailed as the most comprehensive electronic blackout in history, a plan Mr. Obama has not only not decried but has reserved for his own use in this country. As reports the UK’s Daily Mail, “under proposed new laws, President Barack Obama would have the power to cut access to the Internet in the event of a cyber threat to national security.” While the law is couched in language designed to instill a fear of “cyber terrorists” and other threats, it is important to know that both the Bush and Obama Departments of Homeland Security define a terrorist as anyone who, among other things, overtly appeals to the “constitution.”

Despite the governments attempt to stifle the uprising, Egypt is moving closer to democracy and the challenges that lie ahead are huge, while we in the west are bathed in the foundations of Rome and Jerusalem of which democracy is a large part.

Egypt has never in its thousands of years had a democratic government. Tadros reflects, “Egyptians might not know what democracy actually means, but that does not make the concept any less desirable. Perhaps it is precisely its vagueness and abstraction that makes the concept all the more desirable.” Furthermore, a democracy is Egypt would no doubt attract fringe groups who will want to either disrupt or join the party. General Peters acknowledges that troubles when he wrote, “none of this is meant to pretend away the potential trouble Muslim fundamentalists might cause over time, whether it’s the Muslim Brotherhood at the polls, or al Qaeda showing up with suicide bombers.” Perhaps a slightly larger problem for Egypt is the weak-spined support it’s receiving from the American government and media who are reporting the story in terms of American politics and hiding the fact that the last two presidents supported a regime that is now effectively non-existent.

Not only has the media in our country assigned the opposition leadership to a man named Mohammad El Baradei, but Chris Matthews has compared the Muslim Brotherhood to the Tea Party Movement. Anderson Cooper along with Christiane Amanpour, are ignoring the revolution to write stories about the boo-boo’s they’ve received while covering the riots. In response to the American coverage of the events Tadros wrotes, “El Baradei is nothing. A man that has spent less than 30 days in the past year in Egypt and hardly any time in the past 20 years is a nobody. It is entirely insulting to Egyptians to suggest otherwise.” Additionally, American media has framed the revolution in terms of terrorism despite the thousands of college students in jeans and t-shirts who challenge the front line of Mubarak’s thugs. Yahoo instead posts pictures of Muslim clerics praying in front of tanks. While there is definitely an extremist angle on the change of power in Egypt, the people are not chanting “death to Israel” or “death to America.” They are simply demanding freedom.

There was a time when Americans too took to the streets to protest tyrannical rule and rid themselves of oppression. There was a time when America just wanted to be free and average people took up their arms and started fires in government buildings. During this revolution Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of the patriots.” Despite the troubles that lie ahead for Egypt, they are watering their tree. Egypt, like a young American, just wants to be free.