NOVANEWS
Ali Abunimah:
And different futures are possible. On the minds of many observers is the “Turkish model” of constitutional democracy, economic resurgence and foreign policy independence, all under the rule of a “moderate” Islamist party. Turkey, once closely in the orbit of the United States, started to break out with its refusal to allow the US to use the country’s bases for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And different futures are possible. On the minds of many observers is the “Turkish model” of constitutional democracy, economic resurgence and foreign policy independence, all under the rule of a “moderate” Islamist party. Turkey, once closely in the orbit of the United States, started to break out with its refusal to allow the US to use the country’s bases for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Since yesterday, and actually earlier, middle-class activists have been urging Egyptians to suspend the protests and return to work, in the name of patriotism, singing some of the most ridiculous lullabies about “let’s build new Egypt,” “let’s work harder than even before,” etc. In case you didn’t know, actually Egyptians are among the hardest working people in the globe already….
Today, I’ve already started receiving news that thousands of Public Transport workers are staging protests in el-Gabal el-Ahmar. The temporary workers at Helwan Steel Mills are also protesting. The Railway technicians continue to bring trains to halt. Thousands of el-Hawamdiya Sugar Factory are protesting, and oil workers will start a strike tomorrow over economic demands and also to impeach Minister Sameh Fahmy and halt gas exports to Israel. And more reports are coming from other industrial centers.
At this point, the Tahrir Square occupation is likely to be suspended. But we have to take Tahrir to the factories now. As the revolution proceeds, an inevitable class polarization will happen. We have to be vigilant. We shouldn’t stop here. We hold the keys to the liberation of the entire region, not just Egypt. Onwards with a permanent revolution that will empower the people of this country with direct democracy from below. . . .
The left is not exactly absent from Palestinian political history, nor can you dissolve demands that run along lines stratified by class in the acid bath of a pluralist national sentiment. Capitalism matters, not least because it frequently sets up an incentive system that trumps national interests, setting up collaborator classes (loyal to global capital) within nominally independent states according to a pattern not unknown in the modern history of the global South.
One can stick with the strategy of a realist appeal to American “national interests.” But that merely kicks the can down the road in the form of a two-state settlement that stabilizes regional imperialism and will lead to a new bout of cleansing or ongoing differentiated citizenship within ’48. The history of the American left and the Palestine solidarity movement is not exactly unblemished. But there are those who have worked hard to tend to such blemishes, and they’re nearly gone despite the shrieks of some hysterics. What’s up? Why is class discourse still practically absent from central movement organs, even in the case of Egypt, where the dictatorship was a veneer for class war? At a certain point, one must take sides.
Technorati Tags: Ali Abunimah, Egypt, Gaza, Hossam el-Hamalawy, imperialism, Israel, MRZine,Palestine
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