Violence in the Arab Revolutions: The Paradigmatic Case of Egypt

Abstract

Arab Revolutions promoted non-violence (selmiyah) at their outset, in conjunction with thedignity of the citizen (karama). These mottoes did not resist for a long time against theviolence of the Deep State, the intolerance of the revolutionary actors, and the geopolitics ofthe region, with the notable exception of Tunisia, where geopolitics were not paramount. Thisarticle aims at analyzing the manifold features of violence during the transitional period, fromthe ousting of the President Mubarak in February 2011 up to the third anniversary of theRevolution in January 25, 2014. It purports to show that grass root level actors (the BlackBloc made of Football fans, the secular youth building up the social movement Tamarrod...)and institutional ones (the Judiciary, the security forces representing the Interior Ministry, andthe military at the highest level) rejected the new President from the Muslim Brotherhood.The latter acted in an inept and partisan manner, dialogue becoming impossible and violentrupture becoming unavoidable. The two types of violence (from below and from the DeepState) made democratization impossible. The door was opened for a new period ofauthoritarianism under the aegis of the army.The article does not deal with the geopolitics andtheir role in the radicalization within the Egyptian society.