Politicians and Journalists Thwarting Peace to Back an Authoritarian Regime

For decades, Egypt’s authoritarian military regime has exercised complete control over the entire public sphere, with politics and media naturally at the forefront, a pattern that repeats from one generation to the next with no meaningful change. This has resulted in a vast aura of emptiness, a direct consequence of such domination.

Since media mirrors society, this emptiness has manifested across both public and private channels, including those claiming independence. Every program has become a platform for echoing hollow slogans, rather than a space for rational dialogue.

Whenever a dissenting voice emerges, it is marginalized, distorted, or entirely crushed. The outcome: a politically lifeless Egypt in every sense of the word, and a media landscape nourished by hatred and hostility toward others, endlessly replaying outdated narratives about imaginary conspiracies that will never end.

This article is a concise attempt to examine two figures who present themselves as independent in politics and media, yet in reality provide significant services to the ruling system, whether intentionally or not. In any case, the reasons behind our current predicament are now perfectly clear, perhaps even to a fetus in the womb, glaringly visible along the roadside. This brief but revealing paragraph encapsulates the “terrifying emptiness” that has been gnawing at Egypt for decades.

In less than a minute and a half, it clearly exposes the catastrophic consequences of the decline that has afflicted both the political and media landscapes after seventy-three years under the current ruling system.

The Nasserist guest presented himself as a journalist, but I utterly failed to find any professional archive for him, as if writing had become a profession for those without a profession. He called for even greater extremism compared to the already extreme words of the Egyptian president during the recent emergency Arab-Islamic summit in Doha, where Israel was labeled an enemy for the first time since the signing of the peace treaty between the two countries on March 26, 1979. Boasting, he added: “If I were in charge, Israel would not have overstepped in this war,” in response to a question about what he would have done if he were president or an advisor to Sisi.

Meanwhile, the host, a nationalist-leaning journalist trained at the “Voice of the Arabs” school following in the footsteps of Ahmed Said, Zeinhom El-Badawi, and Saad Zaghloul Nassar, has practiced the profession for decades. To be fair, he conducts most of his interviews with skill and competence. Yet, the mere mention of Israel suddenly transforms him into a cheerleader or a “political promoter of clowns and fools.” He remained completely silent before his guest, abandoning even the simplest professional duty to present opposing viewpoints, as if to say: “You are speaking about a nuclear state that, with the push of a button, reduced Hezbollah to a relic of the past, while its remaining militias do nothing but mourn the ruins. Iran has largely been neutralized and removed from the Middle Eastern equation after a war that lasted only twelve days, while it continues to fight on other fronts against the Houthis, inflicting heavy losses in Yemen. And this is in addition to what it has done and continues to do with zeal in Gaza.”

Here, a personal anecdote comes to mind, one I have recounted many times, yet it encapsulates the entire scene. Years ago, I was in a major European capital and received an invitation to lunch at the home of a friend who serves as an advisor to his government on Middle Eastern affairs. During our conversation, the situation in Egypt dominated most of the discussion. He surprised me by saying that they know far more about the corruption, faults, and disasters of Egypt’s authoritarian military regime than the Egyptian politicians themselves. I asked in astonishment: “Then why do you support them?”

He replied: “Because those who present themselves as alternatives to the military regime are, in reality, nothing more than clowns and political adolescents. No rational person can bet on them in a country situated in such a strategic position amid a region rife with wars and conflicts. Things cannot endure any further, so our only option is to support the generals.”

I asked: “Until when?”

He said: “Until a group emerges capable of addressing the free world in its language, as if it were an integral part of it, a group that can contribute and build rather than destroy and wreak havoc, and that all parties can trust.”

By recounting this incident, I may have answered an important and sensitive question one that is “forbidden to be asked inside the Republic of the Generals”: Why does the authoritarian military regime, directly or indirectly, support all those with throat-based rhetoric who worship sacred zeros and labor tirelessly to inject the adrenaline of hatred and incitement into the collective glands of Egyptians, stripping them from the human community and turning them into herds of zombies?

At the same time, the military crushes the advocates of peace: from the arrest of the majority of members of the Egyptian Peace Advocates Movement in 1952, the horrifying persecution of Yusuf Helmy, to what befell the great Taha Hussein, the nation’s teacher, the attempted assassination of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the murder of Farag Foda, the suspicious death of Amin Al-Mahdi on October 11, 2020, just days after his release from prison, and finally, what befell the writer of these lines the humble servant of God including dismissal from work, continuous surveillance, and deliberate intimidation, which forced me into exile in April 2018.

At that time, my mentor and friend, the exceptional thinker Amin Al-Mahdi, said to me: “Mohamed, the greatest crime that the Egyptian regime will never forgive is for any political or social activist to speak positively about peace with Israel. That is the catastrophe of catastrophes. Go, Mohamed, the military won’t imprison you… they will kill you.” At that moment, I could not fully comprehend his words, but I understood them and much more after years of exile and accumulated experience.

A final word: As long as this remains the prevailing discourse, Egypt will continue to be ruled by the military. At best, they may sacrifice a “current cog,” like Sisi, replacing him with another, in order to preserve the survival of the ruthless authoritarian military machine that controls Egypt’s fate.