'We are all Khaled Said' and Social Media's Impact on the Egyptian Revolution

During the process of creating my Egyptian revolution vs. Iranian revolution comparative powerpoint, I made several references to the Facebook group 'We are all Khaled Said.' I've brought it up in class as well, because I feel that the Facebook group, originally created by internet activist Wael Ghonim, was not only essential to the success of the Egyptian revolution, but also a glimpse of what revolutions may look like in future years. 

Perhaps the reason 'We are all Khaled Said' is so fascinating to me, is because it is essentially a primary source of the Egyptian revolution, updated constantly with images and articles. I am one of 120,000 members of the English group. Rather than being forced to read JSTOR articles or search through newspapers, I have the opportunity to learn about the Egyptian revolution while scanning down my news feed on Facebook. However, we mustn’t forget that such as source is incredibly biased. 

Although I probably wouldn't post on the page, participating in polls and seeing the images and articles of the Egyptian revolutionaries as they are released gives me a feeling of indirect involvement in the revolution. Wael Ghonim's group has had a profound impact on the Egyptian revolution; both the actual murder of Khaled Said and the group, which was made to commemorate him, are recognized triggers of the unrest. 

I believe that part of the allure of Facebook is the ability to read others' status updates, pictures, and information, and to feel with some justice that you are involved with their lives, without directly participating. Seeing images of other Egyptian youths protesting probably drove many demonstrators to the streets of Cairo. When Mubarak’s government shut down the internet in Egypt, the young people must have felt that this was a personal attack against them. 

The story of Khaled Said himself is an extremely tragic one. In June of last year, the 26 year old was falsely arrested by members of Mubarak’s secret police and was tortured and killed for “committing crimes against the government.” The cell-phone image, which shows Said’s mangled face after his death is truly horrific. There was definitely an element of martyrdom as demonstrators began to protest earlier this year. For young people, seeing the handsome face of Khaled Said on Facebook must have reaffirmed the fact that he was just an ordinary young man, brutally tortured and killed for next to no reason. 

As we look back on revolutions of the past century, we notice the profound effect of media on the courses of revolts. From Razmi’s photo from Iran in 1981 to the video of the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square in 1989, media has come to define these events. I believe that groups like ‘We are all Khaled Said,’ and social media in general, are the next stage in a long evolution of journalism and media’s effects on revolutions. Wael Ghonim himself said, “Without Facebook, without Twitter, without Google, without YouTube – this would have never happened.” So will future revolutions be impossible without Internet access? I doubt it, but in a new age of globalization, I have a feeling that social media will infiltrate any exciting event. 

United States Intervention in Iran and Iraq

albionmonitor.com

As we conclude our study of the Iranian Revolution, we also conclude the first revolution that our parents can remember, and one whose repercussions are still unfolding and impacting the world today. As we all know, contextualization is the key to understanding history, but when we study events that occurred relatively recently, I’m afraid we tend to fall into the trap of overlooking certain facts. The textbook, which we read about the Iranian Revolution, alludes to several occasions where the United States meddled with Iranian affairs and directed the course of the revolution there, but I get the sense that these fleeting references don’t fully describe the impact of the United States on Iran, and the entire Middle East during the 20th century.
When I first skimmed through The Iranian Revolution by Brendan January, I was fairly surprised to notice that the Iran-Contra affair wasn’t mentioned once. The book only mentions the United States’ sale of weapons to Saddam Hussein in one, ambiguous sentence. Although Iran-Contra occurred several years after the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war is a somewhat separate topic from the actual revolution, I think it’s important to consider the effects of these two episodes. The image above depicts the former United States Secretary of Defense shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein. In the early 1980’s, the US provided Hussein with billions of dollars worth of aid, military training, and perhaps most sinister, chemical weapons to wage war with Iran. American companies shipped several different nerve agents into Iraq over the course of three years, including dozens of specimens of Bacillus Anthracis (Yes, that’s Anthrax). Saddam Hussein used these very weapons to gas the Kurds at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, and when we realized our former business partner was killing his own people with our weapons, President Bush Sr. invaded Iraq during the Gulf War in the early 1990’s.
When asked about WMD’s in Iraq, I feel the vast majority of people would say that we found none. But, some people would disagree with this stance; The Fox News article from June 2006 entitled ‘Report: Hundreds of WMDs found in Iraq’ speaks for itself. When the United States returned to Iraq after the turn of the millennia we did find “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” but only ones, which we built and gave to Saddam Hussein to destroy Iran decades earlier.
While a war raged between Iran and Iraq during the 1980’s another conflict was being waged much closer to home. A group of rebels, known as the Contras, were fighting a war against the dictator in Nicaragua in a brutal civil war, which had lasted for over a decade. For several reasons, The United States government was determined to support these Contras at all costs (even though they were responsible for much of the cocaine flowing into the United States), but was not permitted to support them directly. The US government was also not permitted to sell weapons to Iran due to an embargo on Iran since the hostage crisis in 1979. Thus high-ranking officials of the Reagan administration plotted to sell arms to Israel, which would then sell them to Iran. The project would have served both as a way to release American hostages held in Lebanon and a method of funding the Contras in Nicaragua. Needless to say, the entire affair was highly complex, and I don’t fully understand it, but one should note that in 1986, during the Iran-Iraq war, the United States directly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran.
While Iran and Iraq were locked in a brutal struggle, the United States sold arms and chemical weapons to both sides of the conflict. As hundreds of Iranian Basij ran at their enemies, unarmed in suicide attacks, and while Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons to kill Kurds, the United States government could hold itself in large part responsible for these conflicts. I consider this fact not only notable, but also imperative during the task of contextualizing the Iranian Revolution along with the events in the Middle East, which continue to unfold. So why are these controversies overlooked? I honestly don’t have an answer. Perhaps authors like Brendan January feel that these situations are too complex to include in textbooks for students, or perhaps they feel that they are irrelevant. I’m no conspiracy theorist, nor am I blaming the United States alone for the destruction wrought during the Iran-Iraq war. I’m merely suggesting that we contributed to this havoc, and that fact should not be overlooked.

The Cult of Personality

www.morningsun.org

One of the most fascinating aspects of studying the Communist regimes of Stalin and Mao is analyzing the ‘Cult of Personality’. According to Wikipedia, “A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image.” This definition is interesting, because it suggests that the cult of personality isn’t limited to Communism, but in fact can apply in any form of government or society. I’ve always thought of the cult of personality as a strictly Communist ‘strategy’, but as recently as the 2008 presidential election, we witnessed a democratic leader employ it to an extent. I don’t mean to criticize President Obama for effective campaign artwork, but I think it’s reasonable to say that a lesser form of cult of personality was at work. Before I continue equating President Obama’s campaign artwork to Mao Zedong’s propaganda, it’s important to state that Mao took it to a different extreme, as can be seen from ‘The Last Banquet’ above. But in both men’s cases, we can witness how powerful the cult of personality can be. Although difficult to observe, due to the nation’s seclusion from the rest of the world, the ‘Peoples Republic’ of North Korea embodies Mao’s legacy in the cult. Few people truly understand what goes on in North Korea, and even fewer have been there and escaped, but nevertheless, a National Geographic documentary made about the nation has always fascinated me. In the documentary, a National Geographic film crew is allowed in the country with an eye doctor from Nepal for 10 days. During these 10 days, the group is escorted constantly by several government agents as they capture fleeting clips of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our time. The eye doctor performs hundreds of surgeries on blind people, and just before the crew leaves the country, all of the patients gather in one hall to remove their eye patches. One by one, the patients remove their eye-patches and look around, and one by one, they crowd around the picture of Kim Jong-il, their great leader, to thank him for his generosity and for ‘his invention’ which saved them from their blindness. (Skip to about 43:02 for this scene in the documentary)
As one watches such a documentary, the thought almost certainly crosses one’s mind, are these people genuine, or are they acting out of fear? I think the answer is that they are acting out of fear, because for these people, fear has become reality. Acting out of fear is acting genuinely.
As I said, I used to think of the Cult of Personality as a political strategy, only employed by Communist regimes, but now I think of it more as a phenomena: a natural occurrence. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans always tend to find something or someone to idolize. It is also an extremely powerful force which can rally hundreds of millions to carry out the agenda of one man. The cult of personality is a natural phenomena, and it will thrive as long as there are leaders in existence who wish to utilize its power over us.

Gandhi vs. Che - Satyagraha and Foco

wikinfo.org

peoplequiz.com

At this point in the year we’ve discussed numerous revolutions in history class. The most recent we’ve studied was Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance and independence movement. Simultaneously, I’ve been studying Che Guevara and the violent Cuban revolution. It seems only fitting that I should compare these two men’s concepts of revolution. I wrote a post earlier this year about whether or not violence is necessary during revolutions; although this topic may seem similar, I intend for this to differ from my earlier post.

Mohandas K. Gandhi has become a household name. Films, books, and volumes have been dedicated to the life of an individual who drove India’s quest for independence in the early to mid 20^th century. Born in 1869, Gandhi left his native India to study law in England and eventually traveled to South Africa in 1893 to establish his own practice. He wasn’t excessively wealthy in his youth, but came from a somewhat well off family and had a promising future. During his time in South Africa, Gandhi made the choice to pursue a life of activism against the civil rights violations, which he witnessed, and was subjected to on a day-to-day basis. During his time in South Africa he developed the concept of satyagraha, based on the philosophy of ahisma (non-violence). He returned to India in 1915 and for the next three decades led the struggle for Indian independence from Britain, employing his peaceful revolutionary strategies, such as civil disobedience, hartals, and noncooperation. He is noted for fasting on several occasions, when he attributed his actions for causing even the smallest amount of violence. He rejected violence, even in revenge for events like the Amritsar Massacre, where over a thousand Indians were killed by British troops during a peaceful gathering. Gandhi’s actions did eventually lead to the attainment of Indian independence, but during the partition of India and Pakistan an estimated half million people were killed or displaced. By the end of his life, Gandhi considered himself a failure, as his philosophies of nonviolence seemed to have led to the tremendous violence, which occurred during the partition. Nevertheless, Gandhi’s legacy survives and continues to inspire social reformers across the globe.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina in 1928. Famous as a Marxist, physician, and Guerilla fighter, he was a personal friend of the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and one of his highest-ranking officers during his campaign to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Most people only know of Che by the famous image of the Guerrillero Heroico, a famous picture of Ernesto Guevara. Che also grew up to favorable circumstances. His parents were both successful in their respective fields and Che had the opportunity to study medicine. Despite his success in the study of medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, Che never became a doctor. Less than a year before he would become a licensed physician, he decided to traverse the South American continent with a close friend on a motorcycle, ‘La Poderosa’ (The Mighty One). Che already came from a highly liberal and even revolutionary family, but during his motorcycle journey, (on which the movie The Motorcycle Diaries is based) he chose to dedicate his life to revolution against the oppressive governments of South America. He eventually met Cuban revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro and found himself with a machine gun, and a company of fellow revolutionaries sailing towards the Sierra Maestra mountain range in Cuba. Che chronicled his experiences in the Cuban jungle in Reminisces on the Cuban Revolutionary War, a riveting read available for free download online. During his time in the Sierra Maestra he devised the Foco theory of revolution. The Foco theory is based on the small, disciplined unit of Guerilla fighters, which, through careful maneuvering and local support can eventually defeat large standing armies. Che is famous for his speech to the United Nations entitled ‘Patria o Muerte’ (Homeland or Death). His Guerilla strategy eventually succeeded. Despite the violence and suffering of the revolutionary war, Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959.

Both of these revolutionary leaders served as a driving force behind each of their respective revolutions. Both Che Guevara and Mohandas K. Gandhi battled against injustice and strived for civil rights. Their legacies continue to inspire different schools of revolutionary thought to this day: one violent, and one nonviolent. Perhaps the main source of intrigue for these men comes from their leaving behind a promising life for the cause of revolution. But which was more successful? Gandhi viewed himself as a failure, even though he achieved Indian independence through nonviolent means: I would argue that the violence that occurred during partition was out of his control. Che Guevara also succeeded as a lieutenant under Fidel Castro and his Foco strategy has been utilized in several violent revolutions preceding its development. By the same token, Che was captured and executed in Bolivia in 1967, while he was attempting to lead another revolution based on Foco. In a way the philosophies of Satyagraha and Foco are incomparable, but both seem to offer a different means of revolution. Gandhi felt that the path of violence was not only unjust, but was a ‘corner-cutting’ method, but he would most likely have supported Che’s cause. Che on the other hand never enjoyed executing his enemies and offered second chances whenever he could, (according to his own memoirs) but believed that violence was a necessary evil. One must also consider what kind of governments were established after these revolutions succeeded. In the case of India, a democracy, still haunted by the remnants of the caste system and subject to a fair amount of corruption. In the case of Cuba, a communist regime, shunned by much of the modern world. While both men were pioneers and successful in some respect, I believe Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence was more innovative, as violence has predominated for most of history. Horrible atrocities were committed as the direct, or indirect results of these men’s actions, but nevertheless, their legacies continue to inspire millions to this day, which is a success in itself. 

"The mind of a child is where the Revolution Begins"

http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/crawling-inside-your-childs-mind/

I've ruminated on the meaning of the above statement for quite some time now and I think that now might be the time to formally analyze it. This statement comes from a verse by one of my favorite political rappers, Immortal Technique (Felipe Andres Coronel). I believe in the context of Immortal Technique’s song it’s understood that the “child” makes up the entire youth, including teenagers and young adults. With the youth of Egypt having a major impact on the Egyptian revolution, it seems like the perfect time to apply this statement to the real world, but first let’s address some psychological aspects of these words.
Let’s face it, my fellow teenagers and I face one of society’s most prominent double standards. We are oftentimes assumed to be hormonal, rowdy, insecure, and rebellious and as a result are often feared by those older than us. Our emotions are considered unstable, and we apparently believe that we are immortal. That’s quite a resume, and as much as I hate to admit it, some of these attributes are partially true for many of us. But could these traits actually permit us to start revolutions? Immortal Technique seemed to think so, and he also believes that revolutions are, “the birth to equality and the antithesis to oppression.”
In the United States, young adults under the age of 30 are practically just as likely to support socialism as they are capitalism, while adults over the age of 40 are much more likely to support capitalism. This is only one statistic of many that leads to the same conclusion that young people are much more likely to have radical, and potentially revolutionary views than their older counterparts.
People aged 10-24 in Egypt make up over 33% of the population. They are the founders of the facebook group, “We are all Khaled Said” and the driving force behind the Revolution. As we speak they crowd the streets of Cairo chanting about Freedom and Change. But why did they start all this? What about the other 66% of Egypt? My only answer is one I give for most psychological questions: Biology.

In case any adults haven’t noticed by now, us youths doubt things. We often refuse to accept the rules and customs of our parents because we inherently seek change. In the midst of rapid emotional changes in our lives we build up insecurities. These insecurities lead to fear, and rather than suppressing this fear, we attempt to destroy it. In short, our hormones drive our revolutionary tendencies.
So while us teenagers are antagonized on a regular basis, we account for much of the desire for change in the world. We haven’t been on this earth long enough to accept and conform so easily. For better or for worse we will probably always be the age group behind revolutions, and for this reason one could reason that we are the most important age group. I have a feeling that Immortal Technique realizes this, and I can only hope that I do his words justice.

Industrial Revolution - Loss of Human Reciprocity?

Reciprocity (N.) 

Machines and appliances are undoubtedly a large part of your life as they are in mine. Cell Phones, Computers, and Ipods; these devices are the descendants of innovations during the Industrial Revolution. In the late 18th century Europe bore witness to the mechanization of production. People who previously worked with their hands to produce specialized commodities gradually migrated to factories where the machines they operated churned out products at an exponentially faster rate. Humans began to rely on machines in a new way. Although machines and appliances have existed for millennia, the Industrial Revolution introduced devices, which could replace human labor almost entirely. One topic that is sometimes overlooked is the loss of human exchange that occurred during the Industrial Revolution and remains a significant issue today. When machines take the place of humans and when products of manual labor become luxuries a loss of reciprocity has occurred. When humans rely on machines more than other people they tend to isolate themselves. The famous social scientist Karl Marx oftentimes alluded to this in speeches along with his political theory. He recognized the dangers of mechanization and during a speech in 1868 concluded with, "To conclude for the present, machinery leads on one hand to associated organised labour, on the other to the disintegration of all formerly existing social and family relations." After writing my French Revolution paper on the Sans-Culottes in Paris, it's clear to me that the value placed on manual labor and individual artisanship deteriorated during the Industrial Revolution and perhaps relationships in general. Mass production and department stores quickly reduced the ancient tradition of craftsmanship into a much smaller luxury market. Along with producing isolation, mechanization oftentimes decreased the quality of life of workers before it improved it, as we have witnessed in numerous primary sources and accounts.  On the other hand, public health and life expectancy vastly increased during the Industrial Revolution due to advancements brought about by mechanization. The profound effects of the Industrial Revolution on Europe are innumerable, but for now let’s consider the modern world on the basis of reciprocity. In today’s world it’s practically a rarity to encounter a handcrafted item. Essentially everything necessary for human life comes into contact with a powered device. Relationship standards and dynamics have certainly undergone tremendous changes since the Industrial Revolution. Is it possible that humans in the modern age are relatively isolated as compared to their pre Industrial Revolution counterparts? Has our reliance on machinery, which we oftentimes seem to take for granted, resulted in a great loss of reciprocity? Yes and no (in my opinion). Appliances dominate our lives and as a result we tend to interact with other people more out of pleasure than necessity. At the same time, globalization and social networking counteract this process, creating and supporting a whole new definition of relationship that didn’t exist during the Industrial Revolution. But now I leave it to you, when my mom calls me on my cell phone to come downstairs for dinner has reciprocity been lost or gained?