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The rise and fall (and rise and fall) of the Egyptian Left – Part 3

The1990s and early 2000s: Palestine provides a spark for the Egyptian Left


10/06/2023

Editor’s Note: Phil Butland and Helena Zohdi recently interviewed Hossam el-Hamalawy about the history of the Egyptian Left. You can read Part 1 of the Interview here and Part 2 here.

Hi again Hossam. At the end of our last interview, the Soviet Union was collapsing while the Left in Egypt – as elsewhere – was in disarray. This was also the time where you personally became more politicized, drawn toward Arab nationalism. Describe this time for our readers.

The mid-1990s were a tough time for all Egyptian activists. Between 1991 and 1992, President Hosni Mubarak and his government clamped down again on social movements while starting a number of economic reforms amid a severe debt crisis, guided by an IMF-imposed structural adjustment program (ERSAP), the details of which were hotly debated at the time. It is important to note that often, “wars on terror” go hand in hand with neoliberal reforms. Egypt is no exception in this regard.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was collapsing and there was plenty of propaganda about the end of history and a clash of civilizations, the need for a “third way” separate from socialism and capitalism, such as New Labour in Great Britain. Also, right-wing parties were on the rise everywhere.

I was raised in a highly political family environment, and I did read a lot. I considered myself to be left-leaning politically, but I wasn’t really sure what that meant. In this context, I started looking for political alternatives. As the Egyptian Left at that time was in bad shape, in my searching I came across the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists.

Tell us a bit about what drew you to this particular group.

During the 1980s, the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists were mainly Marxist study circles made up of radical Egyptian students, and Palestinian students who were studying in Egypt. While they critiqued the policies of the Soviet Union, they weren’t sure about alternatives. The group then came across the theory of state capitalism, which helped to provide answers about Nasserism, as well as the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a chance for the group to start picking up disillusioned young Communists. But like I said, these were tough times to be an activist. In the 1990s, right-wing politics prevailed. I started university in 1995 in this context, looking for political alternatives. By sheer coincidence I came across the Revolutionary Socialists and I joined the group in 1998, during my third year at school.

We were a tiny, marginalized group amid an ocean of reactionary politics. The government was pushing right-wing ideas and capitalism as the way forward, combined with the privatization of the public sector. There was one expression at the time, the “socialism of poverty,” which was coined by Sadat and that was spread later on by Mubarak’s regime. Whenever we stood in front of the University campus, people would accuse us of being lunatics or aliens, completely removed from reality.

People who held right-wing ideas used to confront us, mostly with the question, “When was the last time Egyptians had a revolution?” Our opponents would say, “Our country has always been used to being ruled by a pharaoh and by the whip. Do you really think Egyptians would ever rebel against Mubarak?”

These positions were colonialist-inspired ideas, a mentality that the British or other Western powers would typically spread in colonized nations amid people of color. After a while, these ideas would become internalized, used by post-colonial ruling elites. These right-wing ideas were accompanied by a third set of right-wing ideas – those of Islamism, which were strongest at the time.

So we’ve reached the early 2000s, where things really begin to change. The second intifada in Palestine has begun, as well as the second Gulf War with the invasion of Iraq. At the same time in Egypt, textile workers in Mahalla have renewed industrial actions. What did these events mean for the broader Egyptian Left?

The start of the second Palestinian intifada was in 2000, and this changed the rules of activism on the ground in Egypt. Before 2000, while I was in university, as I’ve said, right-wing ideas prevailed and industrial actions were almost unheard of. Many experienced labor organizers were simply laid off through early buyouts.

So, there was no street activism. To hold a protest in public was suicidal. There was still a space to organize on university campuses, but you could not even whisper Hosni Mubarak’s name. At best, you could chant against the regime, you could denounce the government, you could denounce ministers. But once you started chanting against Mubarak, that’s when you knew you were in deep trouble.

In some instances, even before the security forces got to you, the students themselves would attack you – because they were afraid and didn’t want trouble. There were a number of times in the 1990s and early 2000s when our socialist group would meet before protests as organizers, and other student organizers – mainly nationalists and independents – would tell me, “No, you’re not going to speak at the protest because you’re the one who always insists on denouncing Mubarak. We just want to talk about Palestine.”

The intifada did change everything. It triggered mass protests in Egypt, the size and extent of which had not been since 1977. They started on the university campuses and soon extended to students in high school – even children in kindergarten were going on protests.

So students and children were protesting, but what about the rest of society? Where is the working class in this moment?

At this time the professional syndicates also became active. To clarify for your readers, in Egypt there are trade unions, mainly for blue-collar workers and civil servants. Professional syndicates in contrast unionize the middle-class professions, like doctors, pharmacists, lawyers and journalists.

While trade unions since 1957 had been bureaucratized and dominated by the state, within the professional syndicates there was some room to maneuver politically. And dissidents too could find a foothold within these syndicates. These groups would host space for forums and public talks, and solidarity actions with the Palestinians.

And so protests would start with a message of solidarity with the Palestinians, and slogans against the United States and Israel. But soon, the protests would be besieged by the police. And once the police arrive, that’s when the focus of the demonstration pivots toward domestic dissent. Why are the police coming to our peaceful protest? Why isn’t our government doing enough to help the Palestinians? Why doesn’t the government want to close down the Israeli Embassy? Why do we even have this peace treaty with Israel?

And then protestors would start generalizing about the domestic situation even more. The same government that doesn’t want to help the Palestinians, and is sending our troops to squash our peaceful dissent, is also providing us with poor education and housing.

These 2000 protests took the regime by surprise and the reaction was ruthless. It was from these protests where my first experience of being detained and tortured at the hands of the state security police occurred, in October 2000. I was interrogated and tortured for roughly four days.

Because of the brutal repression on behalf of the regime, the protest wave subsided. But actions were re-ignited in March 2002, following Operation Defensive Shield, put into motion by Israel’s Ariel Sharon as he sent Israeli tanks into West Bank cities. That’s when you had the Battle of Jenin and other infamous massacres. Once again, another wave of protests within Egypt erupted.

This was also when the so-called Cairo University intifada took place, in the neighborhoods surrounding Cairo University in Giza. Running battles with security services lasted for two days.

This was the first time that I heard explicit, anti-Mubarak slogans chanted and then repeated by thousands of people. Most famously was, “Hosni Mubarak is just like Sharon. He’s the same color. He’s the same figure.” Again, these protests were ruthlessly repressed, with more arrests, including my second.

Protests ignited once again with the Iraq war in March 2003. When the United States, Great Britain and their allies invaded Iraq, protest erupted and Tahrir Square in Cairo was taken over for two days as activists fought with the security services.

Protestors set banners of the ruling National Democratic Party on fire. They set posters of Hosni Mubarak on fire, and chanted against him. Security forces responded with tear gas. This was the first time that I saw those colored water cannons, and they were being used against us.

This was my third arrest, and I wasn’t alone, as the regime rounded up hundreds of activists. They were arresting activists en masse, so much so that there was no room for us to be detained. The prison truck I was in drove to a number of police stations in Cairo, asking if they had room. The crackdown was massive.

All the mobilizations between 2000 and 2003 had been triggered mainly by events in Palestine and in Iraq. They created for the Egyptian Left, for our group, the room for move and to revive Egyptian street politics.

So at this point it looks like the Egyptian Left has a new lease on life. Where did the movement go from here?

In 2004, we witnessed the rise of the “Kefaya” movement for change. Kefaya is Arabic for “enough.” It was an umbrella organization that included Revolutionary Socialists and other groups, mainly secular opposition parties. Very few Islamists were involved, however, mainly from the Islamist-leaning Labor Party. The Muslim Brotherhood was not part of Kefaya at the time. Until 2011, in fact, the Muslim Brotherhood did not push back publicly against Mubarak.

Kefaya introduced the slogan, “No extension of Mubarak’s rule! No succession!” which meant no political succession for Mubarak’s son, Gamal. Kefaya mobilized anti-Mubarak protests for two years. But the movement was led mainly by middle-class professionals, like pharmacists, engineers, doctors, university graduates, students and artists. Kefaya never really found a foothold with the working class.

But the brilliance of Kefaya and its outreach strategy was the use of visual elements to inspire protest. We activists watched closely to figure out why Egyptians took to the streets in 2000. We realized it was because the satellite television station Al-Jazeera was broadcasting video of the protests in Palestine to every single Egyptian home, every night. Satellite dishes may have been expensive in the beginning, but they began to get cheaper and available to more homes. And each house would also share connections, too.

So, these powerful images were on Egyptian screens all the time, and this inspired people to act. In contrast, our protests never really exceeded a handful of protesters. They were usually about 20 protesters, 100, maybe 500. On a very good day, we could get 1,000 in downtown Cairo.

We managed to mobilize 5,000 once, but this was a special moment in September 2005 during the presidential elections. Mubarak wanted to show a good image to Western nations, so state repression at this time was muted. This was an exceptional moment.

But we made sure that for later protests, we would liaise with Al-Jazeera and other satellite TV stations, and with newly established private newspapers, to guarantee coverage – which meant that our small protest would be aired to millions of Egyptians.

We are planning to publish Parts 4 and 5 of this interviewo on theleftberlin.com on Saturday 17th June and Saturday 24th June.

You can subscribe to Hossam’s blog on contemporary Egyptian politics here.

Can feminism be banned in Russia?

Why Russia’s new bill calling feminism an extreme ideology is absurd


06/06/2023

Trap for the Deputy

The new proposal in Russia to recognize feminism as an extremist ideology has led its leading advocate MP Oleg Matveychev into a trap. How to define feminism in such a way as to separate objectionable feminist organizations from, for example, Clara Zetkin, buried in a necropolis near the Kremlin wall? What to do with March 8 or with the recently passed National Action Strategy for Women?

The strategy document refers to the need to “improve the legislation of the Russian Federation in the field of prevention of violence against women, including domestic violence, harassment, sexual harassment at work, sexualized violence.” And the strategy ends with a promise that “as a result of the implementation of the strategy, there should be formed a system of measures aimed at ensuring the implementation of the principle of equal rights and freedoms for men and women and creating equal opportunities for their implementation by women in all spheres of life, at increasing economic independence, political activity, expansion of opportunities for self-realization of women, as well as to overcome stereotypical ideas about the social roles of men and women”.

The question is how to define feminism in law in such a way as to separate it from such public policy, on the surface. It is no coincidence that, according to Matveychev himself, some deputies suggested: “Let’s not destroy ideology, but specific organizations?”

It is not difficult to guess what kind of organization we are talking about: the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR), which was placed last year in the register of “foreign agents” by the Ministry of Justice . On April 9, Director of the Safe Internet League Ekaterina Mizulina, proving her inability to read, said that the FAR activists “confessed that they were directly involved in the implementation of sabotage and terrorist attacks on railways and in military registration and enlistment offices”, mistaking an interview with activists of another organization — BOAC (Fighting organization of anarcho-communists).

In general, the FAR, like many other feminist organizations in Russia, lives under attack from more “correct” women’s media personalities and channels: from small to those with million audience, below I use their quotes to reflect on the relationship between the women’s movement and the state in the history and present of Russia.

State feminism

Feminism has a long history in Russia, and much of it is tightly intertwined with state politics. But the institutionalization of the feminist agenda and top-down policies of gender equality, as well as women’s organizations affiliated with the government, were not at all a special feature of the USSR. Rather, they can be called a common political phenomenon in many countries that were actively included in the UN Decade of Women (1976-1985).

Sometimes the term “state feminism” is used to talk about this — for the first time in relation to the Soviet gender order, Elizabeth Wood used it in the 1997 book The Baba and the Comrade. She meant by that exactly the top-down policies of gender equality. In this sense, the term is still often found in relation to the Soviet, supporting the exoticization of the experience of the second world.

I am talking about exoticization because state feminism is by no means an exclusive feature of the USSR and other socialist countries. Researchers note the rise of so-called women’s political agencies — government-affiliated organizations in liberal democracies that mediate between independent feminist movements and governments and lead to the “institutionalization of feminist interests” after the UN Decade of Women. Since the late 1980s, the term “state feminism” has also been used to describe them in political science. Researcher Helga Hernes proposed it in 1987 to describe “public policies and organizational measures designed partly to solve general socio-economic problems, partly to meet women’s needs.”

Since the second half of the 1990s, a whole field of comparative studies of state feminism has emerged, which made it possible to overcome the false dichotomy of the state and the “autonomous” women’s movement in liberal democracies. The main focus of the analysis of state feminism is the extent to which women’s political agencies, or state-affiliated women’s organizations, are associated with independent feminist movements and how much they have access to the decision-making process and the achievement of goals consistent with the feminist agenda.

Thus, we can move from the impasse question of who is how autonomous, to the question of how much grassroots movements, or “ordinary” women, have had and are able to influence the agenda of women’s political agencies and how much the women’s movement and the women’s rights agenda are used in the interests of accumulation of capital, imperialist expansion and other goals contrary to “women’s interests”.

Is it possible to separate the “women’s movement” from “feminism”?

This question isn’t new as well. The official Soviet women’s organizations (from the Zhenotdel to the Committee of Soviet Women) diligently separated themselves from “feminists”. In the post-war years, even a stable expression for a clear demarcation was formed — the women’s democratic movement. That was the name of the women’s movement of the socialist block.

Yet despite this painstaking distancing, it was never truly possible. Even an ardent opponent of the “feminists”, the first in history woman ambassador Alexandra Kollontai wrote: the assertion that for women’s liberation it is necessary to abandon capitalism, “does not eliminate the possibility of a partial improvement in women’s life within the framework of the modern system … each newly acquired right brings women closer to a certain goal — to their complete emancipation.” The Zhenotdel (Women Office), organized by her, also did not escape accusations of “creating some ground for feminist deviations,” which, according to some groups in the party leadership, could lead to “separation of the female part of the labour people from the class struggle.”

In the 1970s, against the backdrop of the rise of the feminist movement in the United States, employees of the Committee of Soviet Women reported to the Central Committee on various branches in the feminist movement in America and concluded: “The feminist movement can help in awakening the political consciousness of women, which is why the cooperation of women’s organizations of the socialist camp with this move seems appropriate.”

And already in 1975, the Rabotnitsa (Working woman) magazine, which was published in millions of copies, reported on the struggle of American women against “sexism.” Of course, this did nothing to help the feminist groups among Soviet dissidents. The creators of the almanacs “Woman and Russia” and “Maria” were persecuted by the KGB and expelled from the country for their feminist criticism of the USSR and the war in Afghanistan in 1979-1982, writes Anna Sidorevich. They were repressed not so much for advocating women’s rights — in the end, many of the problems they voiced resonated with the official women’s press (and on the pages of other official newspapers, in trade union reports and in other documents, there was no less harsh criticism, with references to the achievements of the party and the Soviet states). They were repressed for trying to challenge the dominant value system (“common sense”) and offer a fundamentally different linguistic and value perspective.

The Committee of Soviet Women, the official Soviet women’s organization whose members had fought for the right to abortion 24 years earlier, played a role in 1979 in condemning “feminists.” But it seems that it didn’t gain political strength from this. And that did not bring any improvement in the status of women.

Attempts to separate women from “politics”

The past does not repeat itself, but sometimes it makes it possible to better discern the processes of the present that are not yet obvious. For example, the efforts that the Russian state is making today to demarcate the boundaries between the “normal” women’s movement and the “wrong” feminists.

The topic of women’s rights is increasingly heard in the state media and on various state platforms. The launch of the “United Russia Women’s Movement” in addition to the already existing Union of Women of Russia (the successor to the Committee of Soviet Women) and the Eurasian Women’s Forum is another sign of the growing attention to the definition of what is acceptable in the conversation about women’s rights and feminism in Russia today.

The consonance of comments about women in Russia and feminism in the censored Russian information field draws a new silhouette of the state-approved women’s movement — as opposed to the wrong “feminists”.

It is worth exploring it separately, but I will outline only some strokes using the example of a curious document of the era — an article about the “split” of the feminist movement in Russia (which establishes this split and, judging by the selection of experts from the Kremlin’s political technology pool, may be diligently working on it).

Connection with the West

The first stroke is the issue of connection with the West. Whether physical, intellectual or political, any connection with the world outside of Russia is constitutive of the definition of a bad women’s movement. Thus, a month before the initiative of Deputy Matveychev, Senator Daria Lantratova stated in the article: “Personally, I consider feminism, at least in the form in which the West presents it to society now, a destructive phenomenon — propaganda that dictates things alien to the Russian mentality.”

It is interesting that the well-known political technologist and feminist Anna Fedorova in the text suddenly removes this identity from herself in order to emphasize that she is different from those “media feminists who … left.” The physical or even intellectual crossing of a boundary serves in this narrative as a point of irreversible change.

This is rather strange when applied to the women’s movement, which has always been both ideologically and materially transnational, built on the exchange of ideas, the travel of activists and the transit of political strategies, and emigration throughout history has provided and continues to provide support to activists within the country. Moreover, now we see much more articulated projects to build solidarity between “those who left” and the “remaining ones”.

We already have the rights

The second stroke is the approach to women’s rights. An important part of the “normal” women’s movement is the assertion that “everything is already there” or “everything is already being done” without feminists. By the way, the official women’s movement in the USSR had a similar approach. Here one can note both remarks like “We are not fighting for rights — we have them” or “Over the past year, the role of women in Russia has become even more significant”, sounding from the patriotic camp, as well as critical remarks (that the problems that were in the country before the war, did not evaporate, even new ones appeared), but even those with a positive twist, as, for example, in the remark of Maria Baronova: “The only temporary advantage that women got [thanks to the war] is when they get a job”. Thus, feminist analysis and criticism are replaced by unfounded clichés and are accompanied by the ritual “Life has become more fun.”

Patriotism

Finally, the third stroke is patriotic participation in politics or non-participation in it. For example, the rejection of political action in favor of a humanitarian one, the rejection of the political identity of feminism in favor of the political polyphony of the “woman” identity, a polyphony that obviously excludes only one position — rejection of war and participation in political associations against it. The war itself is hardly presented in the article as a negative factor in the context of women’s rights, except perhaps in the remark of Elena Klimanskaya. In most of the selected lines, the fight against the war is opposed to the fight for women’s rights: “No one pays attention to this situation: everyone is fighting Russian imperialism.”

Such a contrast cannot but surprise those who have read at least one feminist text criticizing militarism and capitalism, or those who honestly observe the consequences of the war: the abolition of a number of labor guarantees, delays in wages and social benefits, an increase in domestic and state violence, an increase in housing and communal services tariffs and so on. The fight against war is an integral part of feminism, not a side story. But the “correct” women’s movement claims the opposite and tries to separate military and state violence from gender violence.

What is a ban anyway?

I do not believe in the possibility of banning feminism in Russia: even with a legal ban, this will definitely not kill our ideas and deeds. They permeate our laws, cities, history. But it can be said with confidence that the conceptual work in order to stigmatize feminism in the Russian public field and put in its place a “normal” women’s movement, from patriotic to opposition-humanitarian, is actively being carried out.

I don’t want to condemn the difficult political choices of the authoritarian era. The same Committee of Soviet Women knew different periods. In one of its members, they used their status as a legal women’s movement to promote new laws, decriminalize abortion, improve working conditions, the Family Code, and so on. At other times, committee members seemed to lose their agency and found themselves in the service of Soviet foreign policy, which they themselves did not determine. “State feminism” in Russia is by no means an exception and can contribute to the improvement of the status of women as much as possible in the case of the existence of a state in general and an authoritarian one in particular.

The future of the “normal” women’s movement is open. I would like to believe that at least those who work against “feminists” in Russia today will not step on the same rake — they will not confuse the protection of women’s rights with kissing with authoritarian power.

This article first appeared in Russian on Glasnaya Media. Translated by: Dani Romanova, coordinator of the Feminist Anti-war Resistance. Reproduced with permission.

Dominick Fernow (Prurient) Releases Split Album with Neo-Nazi Band Genocide Organ

German clubs and music media must stop supporting a Fascist musician


05/06/2023

Content notes: white supremacy, Confederate flag, KKK, neo-Nazism

Dominick Fernow, aka Vatican Shadow/Prurient is known for collaborating with neo-Nazis and fascist artists and releasing their work on his label Hospital Productions. He has received a lot of support from platforms Resident Advisor and Pitchfork, and the club Berghain and its label Ostgut. To catch up, see the open letter with more information here, and the list of 258 signatories to the open letter is here.

 

…we ask you to join us in calling upon Resident Advisor, Pitchfork, and Berghain/Ostgut. These platforms should address their support for and collaboration with Dominick Fernow, because they have directly contributed to the worrying rise of fascism within music.

Dominick Fernow never responded to the open letter. Recently Fernow emerged from his silence, by releasing a split EP on his own label Hospital Productions, with a German band called – we kid you not – Genocide Organ. Their album is called Carte Blanche, with song titles like True Son, Layer of Bodies, and Pro-Serial Killer. The refusal from Resident Advisor, Pitchfork and Berghain to publicly address why they actively supported him while knowing about his fascist ties, is a big part of why he feels comfortable enough to make a comeback.

Genocide Organ is widely known for their support of the KKK and releasing neo-Nazi music. Dominick Fernow and Becka Diamond’s label Hospital Productions intends to bring Genocide Organ to Japan in April 2024, for an all-ages festival cohosted by a group called Nuclear War Now!

Screenshot of an instagram post from user @beckadiamond. At left is a square image of a flyer for the music festival with an off-white background. In red text on the right hand side, it says NWN! (Nuclear War Now!) / Hospital Fest Vol I 2024. Sat Apr 6, Sun Apr 7 in Osaka Japan. On the far right side is a collage-style black-and-white image of a knife overlaid on top of a skeleton. Logos for bands are on the left hand side in black stylized German Fraktur font for bands Beherit, Blasphemy, Masonna, and Genocide Organ. More artists TBA. In red text along the bottom is written: Tickets Available: nwnprod.com, hospitalproductions,net. Venue: Gorilla Hill Osaka. 559-0023 Osaka Suminoe Ward Izumi, I Chome-1-82. Sports Village Suminoe. On the right, the username @beckadiamond is visible at the top, and @nicovascellari commented, "yes ticket bought" with some sword emojis.
Instagram post from Becka Diamond, who runs Hospital Productions with Dominick Fernow and is also his girlfriend

Many of Genocide Organ’s albums have been banned from sale on Discogs because of their white supremacist content, going back to the late 1980s. Genocide Organ has released KKK and neo-nazi music, like their 1998 album Klan Kountry, with cover art featuring a Confederate flag. Some song titles from other albums include White Power Forces, Woman Is Meat, and John Birch Society, referencing a far-right extremist group in the US.

Screenshot from website Discogs, showing at left a black square album cover. At the top, white text says "Genocide Organ" in all-capitals. Underneath is a confederate flag in white on black: a cross with white stars in an X-formation. Below the flag in white text is the album title, "Klan Kountry"
Discogs listing for Genocide Organ’s 1998 release “Klan Kountry”, which features a Confederate flag. The album is banned from sale on Discogs’ marketplace. https://www.discogs.com/master/1172-Genocide-Organ-Klan-Kountry

Dominick Fernow is also releasing a new album on his own label under the name Prurient. He continues to receive a lot of support from well-known artists within dance music, many of whom claim progressive/leftist politics, such as TelefonTelAviv, Nico Vascellari, Volvox (Unter), Silent Servant (Hospital Productions), and Berghain/Ostgut affiliates Shifted and Phase Fatale.

Screenshot of an instagram post from user @beckadiamond. At left, Dominick Fernow is wearing black plastic glasses, a black hat that says "Vatican Shadow" on it, a black jean hacket. Silent Servant has short dark hair visible, and is wearing a black leather jacket and a striped black-and-white shirt. They are seated close together, looking into the camera, and in the background are walls and a lamp casting light on the walls behind them
Instagram post from @beckadiamond, with a photo of Silent Servant and Dominick Fernow together on New Years Eve, and well-wishes from Phase Fatale, Shifted, amongst others

 

Instagram post from user @beckadiamond, showing at left an image of Dominick Fernow with a black jacket and a white patch or design on a shirt of a spider web or target design. At right, a comment is visible from @telefontelaviv, commenting "We miss y'all xoxo", under which @beckadiamond commented "@telefontelaviv miss you & @desertmoonchild" with two black heart emoji. Underneath, there is a comment from user @idealbeast, "Happy New Year" with a black heart emoji.
Instagram post from user @beckadiamond. Dominick Fernow is in the picture, and telefontelaviv comments “We miss y’all xoxo”

As we wrote in the open letter, we ask you to join us in calling upon Resident Advisor, Pitchfork, and Berghain/Ostgut. These platforms should address their support for and collaboration with Dominick Fernow, because they have directly contributed to the worrying rise of fascism within music.

More reading

Links

  • Antifascist Music Alliance on Twitter
  • Antifascist Music Alliance on Substack

The New Alliance Between India and Israel

Interview with author Azad Essa


04/06/2023

Azad Essa is a leading anti-imperialist journalist and senior reporter for Middle East Eye. His recent book “Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel” is out now with Pluto Press, and he will be doing a book presentation in Berlin on June 9th, to which all are welcome.

To start, can you introduce us to your book, why you wrote it and what the general theme of the book is.

Thank you, Rowan, for speaking with me. I’m a journalist from South Africa. I grew up in the 1980s, during a time when the fight against apartheid was reaching a peak. The country was burning, especially in the townships, and it came alongside an international movement and boycott campaign against the apartheid regime. I was always enamoured by this idea of solidarity, of people somewhere else thinking about you and acting on your behalf. I am a South African of so-called Indian origin. And so, I also grew up with the idea that India had played a leading role in the anti-apartheid movement. For instance, India was part of the non-aligned movement, and it is often said that India was the first country to have imposed a boycott on South Africa. Then you think about Gandhi and Nehru, and all of these moralistic ideals they are meant to represent. I was always enamoured by all of that. But my idea of India changed when I learned about Kashmir as a graduate student. Then I thought, how does a country purportedly pro-Palestine, and such a supporter of the anti-apartheid movement have an occupation of its own? 

Thus the book is born out of that encounter between my idea of India, and then my encounter with India and Kashmir, and the idea of India as anti-colonial and pro-Palestinian. How do these contradictions exist? 

In 2014 when Modi came into power, the mask fell off from the pretences of Indian foreign policy, and India drew openly closer to Israel. That forced me to think about how India so purportedly pro-Palestine for decades had suddenly become a close ally of Israel. I entered a journey to interrogate what we knew about India’s past policies and how they explained the present. 

You also talk a lot about the similarities between Zionism and Hindutva. Readers here will most likely be familiar with Zionism. But can you explain to us what Hindutva is, and what those commonalities and relationships are?

Hindutva emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century. It means “Hinduness” or “ways of being Hindu”. It is a political ideology of Hindu nationalism and supremacy. The project believes that India was always Hindu for thousands of years, and was contaminated by foreigners, particularly Muslims. It therefore, became weak. So for Hindutva, India has to reclaim its Hinduness and become a Hindu state. Everyone within it should bow down to the Hindu nationalist rhetoric. If you don’t, you are a second class citizen at best. This is similar to Zionism — the element of exclusion. 

Another similarity is the expansionist idea of Zionism and Hindutva. Zionism has the “Eretz Israel”, or “Greater Israel”. Recently a blog came out in the Times of Israel newspaper, calling for the obliteration of Palestine and about reclaiming the biblical lands of Lebanon and Syria as well. Hindutva has a similar expansionist settler colonial identity. They believe in Akhand Bharat, or “undivided India”. In their imagination, Pakistan is just “Muslim occupied India”, and the greater India expands from Afghanistan to Myanmar. 

On top of the ideological connections, you also point out more material connections, especially the military industrial complex. What’s the relation here, and how does it foster these joint occupations?

India’s military relationship with Israel begins in the 60’s, with India buying weapons from Israel in 1962 in the war with China in the Himalayan Mountains. India did not have diplomatic ties with Israel then. But Prime Minister Nehru wrote to several leaders asking for help and Ben Gurion responded. Nehru then asked that weapons be sent in unmarked ships. Ben Gurion refused and Delhi had no choice but to accept them.This was the start of their military relationship and illustrates that while India said they were pro-Palestine, their foreign policy was marked by duplicity. They were quite happy to work with Israel secretly. When you don’t have proper diplomatic channels, or formal channels of communication, things happen undercover. This suits Israel, because Israel uses military trade as a second arm of its diplomacy. They wanted India to become an ally. But they know India is reluctant because there was a certain currency in being seen as pro-Palestinian and anti-colonial — as a leader of the so-called “Third World”. So Israel works with a state militarily, hoping that state becomes dependent on them and will change its mind. That happened in ‘62 for India, and it happened again in ‘65 and ‘71 in India’s wars against Pakistan. 

Another aspect to this Israel-India relationship is the ‘67 War in which the Arab armies were decimated. Suddenly many countries understood that Israel’s military industrial complex might be better than they imagined. We often think it’s only the US that got on board with Israel in ‘67. But then you had Mossad and Indian foreign intelligence working together straight from the Prime Minister’s Office in India. In the 70s and 80s, Israel’s military industrial complex started becoming a lot bigger and privatizing. Simultaneously India wanted to join the global capitalist economy. So they began operating together in secret, until normalization took place in the 90s. Today, India buys around 46% to 50% of all Israeli arms produced, making it the biggest buyer of Israeli arms in the world. It’s now between $1 billion to $2 billion a year. In comparison, in 2021, the entire African continent bought 3%, and the Middle East bought 7%. Another nefarious aspect is that India is not just purchasing arms, but co-produces weapons with Israel. And that is incredibly dangerous, when you realize that India has such a hold on the global imagination and access to markets that Israel does not have. So, weapons that Israel could not ordinarily sell to certain places, India can sell. But, when you buy Israeli weapons, you also purchase a technology and a methodology. You’re not just buying a weapon, you’re buying a way of doing things. And it’s about how you handle protesters, citizens, civil society, and the media. You’re buying into an idea. 

This is beyond the specific topic of your book, but when you say that Islamophobia is the glue that binds these two projects, I am struck by the similarity to white nationalist movements here in Europe, including in Germany. Do you see connections taking place to white nationalist or fascist movements in other places as well?

In August 2019, the Indian government revoked Article 370 that had allowed Kashmir to have semi-autonomy. Days before they went ahead with this, the Indian government placed Kashmir under a communications lockdown and cut all communications including the internet; they criminalized activists, suppressed the press and sent additional troops to Kashmir to add to the  700,000 troops already there. This outraged Kashmiris in the diaspora, who could no longer even call home. Journalists had to smuggle memory cards and USBs with tourists or family members flying out of Kashmir. This is how they [India] operate — the world’s largest so-called democracy. It drew a lot of criticism in the US especially, and some lawmakers made a bit of a fuss about it. India had to protect its brand and defend itself in the media. Who do you think they met to help them defend their actions? The then Indian ambassador to Washington met with Steve Bannon — to market what India was doing in Kashmir. So, yes, there are links with the far right wing movements over in the west. Modi is very close to both the Republican Party and Democratic Party and those far-right neo-con policymakers. By sharing the west’s “concerns” over Muslims and China, India has thrived as a partner and ally.

Another thing that strikes me is the role of street movements, which has become especially prominent within the last few years in the Israeli case, but in India has a longer history. Can you speak about the role that street movements or mob violence plays?

Now that these far right movements are in power in both India and Israel, the groups conducting vigilante justice or intimidating communities do so with the blessing of the state.

In the past, the impression was that these were fringe movements and not the basis of society or the state. But now they have carte blanche to do the things the state has always wanted to do and with more regularity.

So, laws are being passed and hateful statements are being published that energize and push mobs to do the work of the state. People are going into the occupied West Bank, and planting Israeli flags, or conducting vigilantism and pogroms, all under the protection of the army. It’s all very brazen. 

You also noted this emphasis on masculinity, as seen in the idea of the new Israeli man who can conquer the desert. But there’s also this striking narrative within Hindutva discourses of ‘love jihad’. What role does this remaking of this hyper masculine man play within both colonial projects of Hindutva and Zionism? And, to maybe counter that point, what is the image of women within these projects? 

Hindu nationalists say that Muslim men seduce Hindu women into a relationship, and then convert them to Islam. They call this “Love jihad” and it has become another way to demonize Muslims, especially Muslim men, and has resulted in mobs and vigilantes attacking Muslim men across various parts of India.

So by this logic, Muslim men are depicted as the enemy of the nation, while Hindu women double for “the nation” who must be protected and defended. So it’s another way of criminalizing Muslims.

And naturally, it had also led to even more ludicrous accusations, like “Corona jihad” — in which groups accused Muslims of spreading the Coronavirus in 2020. 

This is part of framing Muslims as outsiders contaminating the nation. The Muslim man contaminates the nation by taking ‘our’ women and contaminates the nation by converting them as well. Such demonization has led to a lot of difficulties over what it means to Muslim in India; the extent to which you have to hide your identity to survive in the country. This is similar to how Jews in Europe and Germany were changing their names in the 1880s and 1890s. We are at that stage. I’m not saying there’s going to be a mass genocide in India. But with the institutional framework being set up and the vigilante culture and obedience to the state, Indian Muslims are in a very vulnerable position and the state is not beyond organizing massacres or pogroms. 

My last question then, you talked at the beginning about ideas of solidarity, and so what do you see happening currently? What do you hope your book will contribute to, in terms of opening paths of solidarity between the different groups at play? 

You know, it all feels like doom and gloom, with the climate crisis and ongoing “amazonification” of our lives. 

One of the things I’m hoping that this book achieves is de-centering the West, or America, as the primary or the only player in this mess. There are multiple actors, some of whom act under the guise of a decolonial or a progressive agenda, but nonetheless stand for the same values of hyper capitalism and even authoritarianism: The world is a lot more complicated now; corporations have the upper hand. The hope is that we have seen these colonial tactics before and we can recognize them. 

Kashmir has become a classic settler colonial project and occupation. India copies Israeli tactics, they use Israeli machinery and military technology. It means that the work of activists becomes easier — not necessarily easy — but easier, and they can work more closely together, because they’ve seen it before. 

The second thing I’m hoping to unmask is what India has done over the last 70 years as a state, through understanding it as a hegemon in South Asia. It was used by the West as a bulwark against communism first, and then against the Islamist threat, and now to expand the neo-liberal arm of imperialism. And we better catch on to that, because the third element to this is that India is now the most populous state in the world. And being the most populous state in the world, with the added label of being a democracy, means it has the potential to shape the way “democracy” is understood around the world. If India doesn’t allow foreign journalists to come in easily, if it crushes civil society, if its Prime Minister has never held a press conference, then that is what democracy can become elsewhere.

Azad Essa will be in Berlin this week to promote the book. On Tuesday, 6th June, from 8pm, the Berlin LINKE Internationals and the India Justice Project are organising an informal reception for Azad at Café Karanfil, Weisestraße 3 (U-Bahn Boddinstraße). On Friday 9th June, Azad will be presenting his book at the Hopscotch Reading Rooms Wedding office, Gerichtstraße 45 (between Leopoldplatz and Wedding). After the presentation, there will be time for discussion. 

The rise and fall (and rise and fall) of the Egyptian Left: Part 2

Egypt’s 1968 and the aftermath


03/06/2023

Editor’s Note: Phil Butland and Helena Zohdi recently interviewed Hossam el-Hamalawy about the history of the Egyptian Left. You can read Part 1 of the Interview here.

Hi, Hossam. We finished our last installment by focusing on the events of 1961 when the Egyptian Left was in a bad state. Did things get any better afterward?

The third communist wave started in 1968, a year after the war with Israel. Usually in leftwing literature, whenever events that took place during the year 1968 are mentioned, the focus is usually on the West. Quite legitimately, people have focused on important events such as the uprisings in May 1968 in France, or the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, anti-Vietnam War protests, the martyrdom of Che Guevara, or the student occupations that were taking place across Europe.

But the Arab world also had its own 1968. It was not separate, and events were partially inspired by what was happening around the globe. I wrote my master’s thesis on this period, and it’s available online.

The year 1968 was marked by student dissent across Egypt. In February 1968, there were serious student protests taking place for the first time since 1954. Students took to the streets. The trigger for these actions was the sentencing of Air Force generals during mock trials. After the disaster of the Six-Day War, Nasser had to have a scapegoat. The generals were to blame, and they deserved to be prosecuted – but they nonetheless were given light sentences.

The protests were started by Helwan factory workers, and during the events, police opened fire on the workers. The workers also sent delegations to university campuses, in particular the Ain Shams University in Cairo. This was the first time there was a joint students’ and workers’ focus within the Egyptian Left.

Nasser realized he needed to retreat and offer the movement some concessions. He presented what was called the 30 March program, one month after the protests. In this, he acknowledged that there were problems with the country’s socialist project, and that there should be more room for self-criticism. Nasser also presented some democratic reforms.

Simultaneously, the so-called War of Attrition began. This conflict started in 1968 and ended in 1970. During this time, as part of anti-occupation operations, Egypt launched commando raids into Sinai while Israeli forces retaliated, often by bombing civilian targets.

There were several horrible massacres, including when a primary school was bombed in Egypt’s northern Sharqia province. This is an event that Egyptians remember still today. We also commemorate the bombing of oil refineries in Suez.

The state had to move residents of the Suez Canal cities to Cairo and elsewhere to protect them. These cities turned into ghost towns. I grew up in Nasr City, an eastern suburb of Cairo. We had a district which was known as the “Suez people” area, to which some displaced people were moved.

At the same time, Egypt’s social movements continued to grow. And a tiny minority of Communists who had refused the dissolution of the party in 1965 began to build bridges with newly radicalized students. More Communist organizations started to develop.

One of the most important groups was at the time was the Egyptian Communist Party – 8th of January. The party’s name refers to the events of 8 January 1958, when 40 Communist factions came together and formed the Egyptian Communist Party.

Another organization which was also important in the 1970s was the Egyptian Workers’ Communist Party. They critiqued Nasser and the Egyptian Stalinists, but they were coming more from a Maoist perspective, Maoism generally being a more radical version of Stalinism.

There is one thing about 1968 that we haven’t talked about, when Russian troops went into Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring. Suddenly, Stalinism didn’t seem as radical as it used to be. Amid Western student movements, at least, one witnessed the rising influence of both Trotskyism and Maoism. Was something similar happening in Egypt?

Not with regards to Trotskyism. Historically, the Trotskyists were always a tiny minority, on the fringes of the movements. In the 1940s, there was a small Trotskyist group called Art and Freedom, which later changed its name to Bread and Freedom, and was mainly composed of surrealist artists. Later in the 1970s, another small Trotskyist group formed called the League of Communist Revolutionaries, a small Fourth International Trotskyist group.

Separately, from the stories that I’ve read about Tony Cliff, who was later a leading Trotskyist in the United Kingdom, when he was trying to flee Palestine, he was initially thinking of coming to Egypt as he had always regarded Egypt as the center of the Arab working class. When he realized the situation of the Trotskyists in Egypt, however, he said he’d be better off someplace else.

The Maoist situation was different. In Egypt, relations between Nasser and China were excellent. There wasn’t any censorship on Chinese literature. My father, for example, could get hold of Mao’s writings in Arabic from the Chinese cultural center.

Around the world at this time people were talking about China’s Cultural Revolution, seen positively as a student rebellion against bureaucracy. No one really knew about the massacres or the power struggles, in which Mao cynically used student mobilizations to destroy his enemies.

So, for many leftists of this generation, China represented the answer. In addition, part of the Maoist package was armed struggle. At the time, the models of success and inspiration included Cuba, Che Guevara, the Palestinian struggle, and Vietnam.

After Nasser died in 1970, the student movement was revived in 1971. Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, promised the liberation of Sinai, yet nothing happened. Tahrir Square in Cairo was famously occupied in 1972. Students were saying: “Look at the Vietnamese, they are confronting the Americans, we need a people’s war.” The ideas of Maoism at the time struck a chord with the newly radicalized students.

Left-leaning students’ societies on university campuses led the movement, calling themselves the Society of the Supporters of the Palestinian Revolution. This was telling about who has historically been a source of inspiration for Egyptian dissidents. The Palestinian cause has always been important for Egyptian activism.

And then there was another war with Israel.

In 1973 war broke out, and Sadat quickly proclaimed victory. But the Egyptian national question, which was perceived to be solved, only added fuel to the social question. The student movement however temporarily lost steam as for three years, all mobilization addressed the war with Israel to liberate Sinai.

Then in 1974, the social questions were relit with the government’s so-called open-door policy. Sadat and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet were the two pioneers of neoliberalism in the Global South. Sadat began neoliberal reforms with the help of the United States in 1974, and also entered into peace talks with the Israelis.

In the same year, there was a revival of industrial action with an important strike at the steel mills in Helwan, south of Cairo. In 1975, there was a strike at Mahalla, which was a hotbed for industrial militancy in the textile mills. According to reports, Sadat sent in helicopters at low altitudes to terrorize the striking workers. The revolts were put down by force.

In 1976, a huge strike by public transport workers brought Cairo to a standstill. These are the highlights, but basically, strikes were erupting everywhere during these years.

All of this culminated in the January 1977 bread riots. For two days, Egyptians participated in a national strike, triggered by Sadat’s neoliberal strategy to remove subsidies from basic commodities, including bread. Bread is a very important daily food staple for Egyptians, and the Arabic word for “bread” is also a synonym for “living.”

The uprising ended after two days, for two reasons. First, Sadat sent in the army after local police forces proved themselves ineffective. Secondly, Sadat also performed a U-turn and retracted all his “reforms.” Following these riots, the regime didn’t have the courage to implement its neoliberal reforms until the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s. This is how shocking the uprising was for the regime.

But the failure of the Left to lead this uprising into a full-fledged revolution also signaled the beginning of the end for the Left. Already in the early 1970s, Sadat maintained an unofficial alliance with Islamists. He released their leaders from prison. And the regime’s security services gave them more room to operate, to act as a counterweight to the Left. This was a tactic, by the way, that has been used in several other countries in the region.

As we now know, the Islamists became a Frankenstein’s monster, created by Sadat. Their development followed two trends. One was a reformist route, represented by the Muslim Brotherhood. The other was more radical, represented by Islamic Jihad and Gama’a Islamiyya. The latter two briefly united in 1979, and then split again after the assassination of Sadat.

Discussions among more radical members took place while they were in prison, about why an Islamic revolution hadn’t yet happened. The plan was to kill the president, and the masses would rise up. But after Sadat’s assassination, mainly nothing happened.

There is a brilliant book in Arabic by Hisham Mubarak. You may have heard the name, for example, from the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre. Mubarak is a former Communist who passed away in the 1990s. He was also briefly a member of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists.

Hisham Mubarak wrote a book called, “The Terrorists Are Coming,” in which he brilliantly explains the fights between Islamic Jihad and Gama’a Islamiyya inside prison, including over theological issues. But he explains how these issues were not actually theological, as they more reflected organizational and political matters.

This was the beginning of the end of the Egyptian Left, the failure of the revolutionary uprising following the end of the Sadat regime. And by the 1980s, the Left was more or less declared clinically dead. And once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Left was officially dead, marking the end of Egypt’s third communist wave.

Further parts of this interview will be available on theleftberlin soon.

You can subscribe to Hossam’s blog on contemporary Egyptian politics here.