The weak US response to the August 14 massacre of protesters in Egypt signals a preference for the Egyptian military’s vision of stability over the uncertainty of a genuinely democratic political process, says Middle East Report editor Chris Toensing in a segment on Democracy Now!.
As Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Lina Attalah report, the horrific assaults on protest encampments, reprisal violence against Christians and demonizing of the Muslim Brothers and their supporters in the state-dominated media landscape has polarized Egyptian society in a way that “re-empowers a very regressive authoritarian security state in the country.”
I think what we’re seeing is a counterrevolution that’s occurring, more quickly than many people thought it might. The powers behind the throne in Egypt, who have been the powers behind the throne for some 50 years — the army, the secret police, their allied civilian politicians, their civilian faces, if you will, the so-called Egyptian deep state — is afraid of the Egyptian people. They don’t want civilian oversight over their prerogatives. They want to maintain their impunity, their ability to operate above the law. And we’ve seen what lengths they will go to to preserve those privileges.Chris Toensing
Find the full broadcast and transcript here.
