Political Bullying

The world watched as our youth sat in Tahrir Square in peace to protest a dictator. The world also watched as some headed down to Dokki, burning down and destroying presidential candidate Ahmed Shafik’s campaign’s headquarters. A dictator often justifies his grip on the people by thinking to himself that he knows what is best for his people — more so than they think they do. He often thinks he knows what his people actually need, even if it contradicts what they think they do. The intentions often differ, some dictators are motivated by power, ego, status or money. But others have genuine urges to protect and care for their subordinates, colleagues, family members or feelings by protecting what he perceives as their wellbeing — which is especially true in a patriarchal society like ours. The intentions may differ, but the outcome is the same, each and every one of those can fit under the category of dictators. I keep referring to the influential Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire’s bookPedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) because it relates to our reality to a shocking degree. Freire explains that an oppressor isn’t necessarily a tyrant, but it is one who believes he knows the interest of the oppressed more than the oppressed himself does. He adds that for a liberation to occur, the ruling or educated class needs to stop acting like saviors of the oppressed, even if they are doing so in the best intentions possible. Otherwise, Freire adds, it is exchanging one oppressor with another — in our case, exchanging the Hosni Mubarak regime with the Tahrir Square dictatorship. An educated youth called for a revolution against a dictatorship, they gathered people from various classes and trusted in them to lead an uprising against the regime. Then came the moment of truth, the moment where the people were to head out to the ballots and have their says.  But the educated few, like most other educated fews in the history of revolutions, didn’t agree with the outcome of the revolution — much like what happened in Iran. Political theorists have often argued that the educated classes that mobilize the masses in movements calling for democracy often aren’t pleased with the outcomes of the democracy that is defined by the masses and not the educated few. The parliamentary elections brought forth the Muslim Brotherhood, the presidential elections brought forth two candidates that left the revolutionary youth anguished. But it isn’t up to me, you, or anyone to dictate what the people should want — it is only up to the people. If people called for a democracy that allow for the people to make their choices, then why are some so arrogant that they cannot accept that choice they fought so hard to give the people the right for?  Why do they want to impose the outcome they were hoping for? The people chose a military man and a political Islam man, the people have decided.  Violations and legitimacy of the elections aren’t for up to the streets to decide, they are up to the judges and organizations that closely monitored the process. If we do not trust the judicial system, nor do we trust the civil society, then we need to tear the whole country down and start from scratch. Freire says that those he calls converted oppressors, or those of the ruling classes who fought for people’s liberation from oppression, “almost always bring with them the marks of their origins: their prejudices and their deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people’s ability to think, to want, and to know.” He adds that “They talk about the people, but they do not trust them.” Revolutionaries fought to give people the right to choose, and now they are fighting to take that right away from them because they seemingly do not trust the judgment of those they fought so hard to liberate.