Ahdaf Soueif.
Nick Buxton
(NB): We seem to be entering a
period of contradictions, of dislocating change and crisis, of raised hopes and
terrible realities. We have seen the economic crisis questioning the very
pillars of neoliberalism yet market fundamentalism has not faltered in its
march. We have had inspiring flourishing of social movements yet authoritarian
leaders everywhere are rising to the fore. How do you understand this
moment?
Ahdaf Soueif (AS): There’s clearly a
struggle taking place on a universal scale between a system that has the world
in its clutches, and something new that’s trying to be born. In a sense, this
is the story of mankind. But some elements in our situation are particular to this
moment. The first is an awareness of the interconnectedness of the world – in
both problems and solutions. Of course people with interests in the matter have
always been aware of the opportunities that different parts of the world
present; trade, conquest and migration are all based on that. But now there’s a
growing general awareness that the world’s problems need to be solved globally.
Environmental issues are the most obvious examples, but there are many more – the
exponential increase of both wealth and poverty and the obscene gap between
rich and poor, wars, migration and the movement of capital, and more – and
they’re all linked. The exponential increase of
both wealth and poverty and the obscene gap between rich and poor, wars,
migration and the movement of capital, and more – and they’re all linked.
We can’t pretend that this awareness
is shared by everybody, but it’s shared by enough politicized groups of – on the whole young people across the world
(can we call this ‘the Young Global Collective’?) – to make it now unremarkable
for us to see Palestinians, say, sending messages of support to Black activists
in the US, or to have seen Occupy using Tahrir iconography. This awareness
needs to grow, to coalesce, and to use its potential to generate ideas and
action. For this we need forms of global conferring, decision-making, solidarity
and action – like the TNI enterprise.
The second element that’s particular
to this moment is that the Internet and related technology seem to hold a
promise that global conversations and actions are achievable.
The third element is that the fate
of the planet itself is in the balance; this lends acute urgency to the
struggle.
On the other hand, the existing
power system also sees the issues in global terms – and it is in a better
position to create and enact its own global solidarity in pursuit of consolidating
and furthering its power. Bilderberg, Davos, G8 are all examples of this.
I think we need to recognise that neoliberalism
has not failed. It has not failed its proponents. It understands that it has
not delivered its promises to ‘the people’ and that, therefore, it is under
attack. But its answer is to find reasons outside itself for this non-delivery (immigrants,
shirkers, Terror) and to repeat its promises more emphatically every time it
changes its front players. It plays to the fears of the audience, and it breathes
life into the demons in their psyches: jingoism, selfishness, racism, a
readiness to embrace violence, etc. The Trump campaign was an example of this.
The system – being old and in power –
has its ideas, arguments, discourse and justifications in place. And embedded
within it are the power structures with which it protects and continuously
justifies and consolidates itself: the governments, the intelligence, police, security
and military establishments, the legal and financial systems that underpin them
– and the media.
One of the traits I find really
attractive and encouraging in the Young Global Collective is how unconstrained
it is by old ideologies. It has powerful ideas – and has ethics and natural
justice on its side – but these ideas
are not yet translated – how could they be? – into one overarching idea that
can develop into a coherent system for running the world. It has not yet found
a way to coalesce into a global movement – although we often see bits trying to
come together as happened in Cancun and Durban. (My sense is that the Green
parties are the most suited to embrace and process the impulses and ideas of
the Young Global Collective and forge them into a much-needed vision centred
somehow around life, sustainability and human rights). They
– commendably – want to change the world but not to rule it.
So what we have now is a situation
where the Young Global Collective understands that neoliberalism is lethally
bad for most of the world’s population and for the planet itself. It
continually challenges various aspects of neoliberalism in a variety of ways in
different parts of the world: activists take on Big Oil, armaments, dismantling
the NHS in the UK, police brutality in the US, austerity in Greece, the BDS
campaign takes on the Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and
so on. Every one of these challenges raises our hopes.
It used to be a received idea that
if millions came out onto the streets and stayed there the existing power
structures would collapse and space would be created for something new. Exactly
what the new thing would be like no-one knew, but everyone had a good idea what
it would not be like. And everyone
hoped there would be space and time for forms to evolve. Egypt 2011 proved that
this was not true. Syria is proving it in even uglier fashion.
Photos from Mohamed Mahmoud. Revolutionary artists reclaiming the wall, September 2012. Wikicommons/Omar Kamel. Some rights reserved.The young of the Young Global
Collective are to a large extent averse to the structures and practices of
power. They – commendably – want to change the world but not to rule it. In
other words, most social movements would find it an impossible contradiction to
employ, for example, an armed force to defend themselves and spin doctors and
PR firms to propagate their ideas. We are
witnessing an alliance of Neoliberalism and Terror whipping democracies into
fascism.
In the midst of this conflict there
are now the emerging armed actors, like Islamic State. They serve the existing
system – by purchasing arms, militarizing struggles, normalizing violence and
by providing a Terror Monster for the use of fear-mongering politicians and so
a justification for increased surveillance of citizens, increased spending on
arms, intelligence and security. In a way, we are witnessing an alliance of Neoliberalism
and Terror whipping democracies into fascism.
All these are things we need to be –
I’m certain many of us are, constantly – thinking about, trying to imagine and
image, to represent and to develop and to counter.
NB:
You had the experience of being part of the movements in Cairo and
Egypt that inspired the world. Can you tell us something about the culture of
those resistance movements? Is there something of that time that remains today?
AS: What happened in Egypt in January
2011, and so embedded itself in the world’s imagination, was a moment – a
climactic moment – in a process that had started years before, and continues
today.
I would particularly like to remind
us of two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that were set up in the 1990s: al-Nadim
Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture, and the Hisham Mubarak Law
Centre (HMLC). Both were set up by committed and charismatic professionals: psychiatrist
Aida Seif el-Dawla and lawyer Ahmed Seif, who were able to gather around themselves
similarly committed and smart teams. Their focus was human rights, and their
work revealed the extent to which the abuse of human rights had become a normalised
part of how power structures in Egypt are serviced, consolidated and extended.
Both organizations sought to redress
and challenge this abuse; al-Nadim treated people who had been tortured,
published reports and statistics, and took huge risks campaigning against the
Ministry of the Interior and individual officers; HMLC provided people with legal
support against a wide spectrum of human rights violations, published
information and research papers and sought to take cases to the Constitutional
Court and so to change and develop the law itself.
By taking on the Mubarak regime in this
way al-Nadim and HMLC started this latest round of resistance and enabled it to
take root. The positions they took formed the “personality” of the 2011
revolution. Both organizations provided their
services free, paid their staff in line with Egyptian rates, and were very
careful in choosing non-governmental funding sources whose agendas matched
their own.
Both organizations provided their
services free, paid their staff in line with Egyptian rates, and were very
careful in choosing non-governmental funding sources whose agendas matched
their own; this way they avoided the alienation and de-politicization that
blights so much NGO work.
Both were clear in that their
services were available to everybody regardless of nationality, citizenship,
faith, gender, sexual orientation, etc. HMLC, for example, took on the defence
of the unpopular and dangerous “gay case”; the Queen Boat. Both were welcoming
of refugees. Their audience – their constituency – was the public both at home
and abroad. They implemented a vision of human rights and speaking truth to
power as international as well as local concerns. In Australia, I once met a
Sudanese writer who told me al-Nadim had saved his life and his marriage.
The first decade of the new century
saw a number of initiatives appearing in Egypt, all seeking change and
challenging power.
HMLC then opened its doors to new
initiatives like the Movement for the Support of the Palestinian Intifada
(2000) providing these initiatives with a free safe space, resources,
information and advice. Lawyers trained in HMLC established their own NGOs
supporting freedom of information and expression, workers’ rights, land rights,
personal rights, economic rights, housing rights and others.
There were movements for the independence
of the universities and for the independence of the judiciary and movements
simply for ‘change’. ‘Kefaya’ was an umbrella movement for social and political
change which put sudden and imaginative protests on the streets from 2005 to
2011. The 6 April Youth Movement, which worked to establish links with workers’
protests, managed to create a reasonable cross-country presence with activists
in every major town.
When – after 28 January 2011 –
Tahrir – and other locations in Alexandria and other cities – for a period
became a liberated space, the culture they created was informed – in its basic
principles – by the spirit of the work of the previous decade.
One clear principle was the
empowerment of people. Activists taught reading and writing to street children
who, for the first time, found a safe space on the street. The Mosireen Film
Collective trained anybody who came along to shoot and edit film. Some of the
trainees were street children who went on to shoot their own footage with
Mosireen equipment. Mosireen documented housing struggles, fishing, industry
and legal struggles and amplified people’s voices through them. One clear principle was the empowerment of people.
Activists taught reading and writing to street children who, for the first
time, found a safe space on the street.
‘Let’s Write Our Constitution’ was an
initiative set up by Alaa Abd el-Fattah (Ahmed Seif’s son and one of the most
prominent figures of the revolution. Now serving five years in prison for
protesting) to elicit a new set of constitutional governing principles from ordinary
people across the country.
Freedom of information was another
principle, with Mosireen, again, acting not only as producer of footage but as
collector, archivist, point of exchange and distributor of footage onto mobile
phones. By the end of 2011, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF)
was killing revolutionaries on the streets, this footage was used by activists
in the campaign: Kazeboon (‘They Lie’), to expose the lies of the military. Kazeboon
achieved what every grassroots movement aims for: non-ownership. People across
the country downloaded footage from mobile phones, acquired or borrowed
projectors and set up surprise screenings against walls. This was how everyone
came to see the huge gap between the rhetoric of the military and what they
were doing on the ground.
Another initiative set up by Alaa
Abd el-Fattah – who happens to be a software designer – was ‘Tweet-Nadwa’; a
discussion forum run by Twitter rules. This was one of the activities in which technology
and game-playing were used to celebrate diversity, tackle difficult topics and
bring people together. The first Tweet-Nadwa brought young people from the
Muslim Brotherhood and others who’d left the Brotherhood to talk about their
experience with each other and with a wide audience – a meeting that was a
ground-breaker for everyone involved. Another was held sitting on the ground in
Tahrir, about reforming the police. Applause was not by clapping but by ‘twittering’
your hands in the air. Attracted by the twittering hands more and more people
joined the nadwa and the discussion. Tweets were streamed on a large screen. The first Tweet-Nadwa
brought young people from the Muslim Brotherhood and others who’d left the
Brotherhood to talk about their experience with each other and with a wide
audience – a meeting that was a ground-breaker for everyone involved.
In Tahrir there was, overall, a
rejection of neoliberal capitalism. There was true altruism, a rooted belief in
human rights and a tremendous emphasis on social justice. People understood
that their views about how to achieve social justice ranged from centre right
to far left, but it was enough that everyone wanted it. For the moment the work
of keeping the sit-ins alive, pressing for the removal of Mubarak and then
trying to press for transparent, democratic government provided enough common
ground for people to work from.
As Tahrir was periodically under
attack by security forces, the army and various related thugs, field hospitals
very quickly appeared. The organization and efficiency of these cannot be
overstated. Entire systems came into being organically to save and treat
people. After the attacks they often stayed in place to provide everyone with
free medical care. A culture also grew where many physicians who did not come
to Tahrir made themselves available to perform emergency surgery – particularly
eye surgery – for free at their hospitals and clinics.
And, of course, art was everywhere.
From simple pavement drawings by people who suddenly realised they were free to
make them, to huge sophisticated murals by graffiti artists that expressed –
and created – the collective spirit of Tahrir. Graffiti artists recorded
events, made statements, created iconic emblems – The Blue Bra, Nefertiti in a Gas
Mask, Angel Ultras, Universal Man – and eventually created massive murals which
mined the art of every era of Egypt’s long past to bring its aesthetic and
moral force to bear on the present moment.
There’s much more. But I want to
close this section with a quote from a young revolutionary, written in December
2011:
Tahrir Square
worked because it was inclusive – with every type of Egyptian represented
equally. It worked because it was inventive – from the creation of electric and
sanitation infrastructure to the daily arrival of new chants and banners. It
worked because it was open-source and participatory – so it was unkillable and
incorruptible. It worked because it was modern – online communication baffled
the government while allowing the revolutionaries to organise efficiently and
quickly. It worked because it was peaceful – the first chant that went up when
under attack was always ‘Selmeyya! Selmeyya!’. It worked because it was just –
not a single attacking (thug) was killed, they were all arrested. It worked
because it was communal – everyone in there, to a greater or lesser extent, was
putting the good of the people before the individual. It worked because it was
unified and focused – Mubarak’s departure was an unbreakable bond. It worked
because everyone believed in it. Inclusive, inventive, open-source, modern, peaceful,
just, communal, unified and focused. A set of ideals on which to build a
national politics.
You ask Is there
something of that time that remains today? The answer has to be ‘yes’. Even though thousands of our young people have
been killed and thousands have been injured – some without repair; even though tens
of thousands are in prison and hundreds of thousands live in trauma.
Even though the country has been through betrayals and massacres,
the democratic process has been discredited and the military has established a
counter-revolutionary regime more repressive and vicious than any that Egypt
has ever known.
Even though there are people who found themselves in the
revolution and when it was lost they were lost. Even though there are people who
are disillusioned and bitter and people who pretend 2011 was a mass
hallucination and people who have gone back to their lives and are trying to
forget that the last six years ever happened.
Yet, I would say that everybody who was truly involved in 2011 and
who is now working on something – anything, whether they are in Egypt or
outside it – is doing work that will one day fuel the next revolutionary wave.
Enough to note the internet news sites like MadaMasr, or al-Badeel,
or Yanair and all the people working
in them, still providing news, analysis and commentary. The network of legal
and practical support for the prisoners – still functioning despite exhaustion.
The human rights organizations born of HMLC, still working despite arrests,
freezes on assets and smear campaigns. Aida Seif el-Dawla and her colleagues
sitting in their office, refusing to close, and facing down 20 security agents
just a few weeks ago. And all of this while arrests disappearances and deaths
in prisons and in police stations continue. People understood that
their views about how to achieve social justice ranged from centre right to far
left, but it was enough that everyone wanted it.
Ultras Martyrs, March, 2012. Wikicommons/Mohammed El Dahsan. Some rights reserved.NB: From your experience in participating in the Arab Spring and then
seeing its hopes and aspirations diverted or crushed, how do you see the role
of culture in sustaining and one day delivering on those dreams?
AS: It is through culture that we
describe the world and what has happened to it and to us in it. We comment on
the present, excavate the past and try to imagine a future – or several.
Culture holds up a mirror, criticizes, tries to synthesize; it puts worlds
together, opens up feelings, validates them, provides illumination, ideas,
respite. Culture is dreaming the dream, it is also enacting it. Culture
provides us with the language, the symbols, the imagery to explore, communicate
and propose. Without culture no dream is
dreamable.
I’d like to give you one tiny, and
to me, powerful example of the role of culture creating meaning.
We’ve all seen the ancient Egyptian
symbol of the scarab with a disc between its front legs. Well, some artist, thousands of years ago,
watched a black beetle lay its eggs in a bit of animal dung. The beetle rolled
the dung and rolled it and rolled it till the eggs were encased in a ball of
dung at least twice its own size. Then the beetle dug a hole. Then, moving
backwards and using its hind legs, it rolled the ball of dung deep into the
hole. It then came out of the hole, filled it up and went away. The artist
watched the space where the hole had been until one day, struggling out of the
earth, there emerged 15, 20 baby beetles. As they found their feet and shook
the dung and the earth off their wings and started to take their first
tentative flying leaps the artist saw the new little beetles’ luminous bright
blue wings catching the light. Iridescent, sparkling little joyous flickers of
sapphire blue against the earth. The Scarab is the dung beetle, the Disc is
both the ball of dung and the sun that gives light and life to everything. For
the reader, thousands of years ago, the image of the ‘Scarab holding the Disc’ spoke
of ‘becoming’, of transformation and
emerging. Just think of all the elements
that image brought together, and of the power of what it proposed.
NB: “Culture” is often regarded – and may be presented by political
and religious authorities – as being both homogeneous and static, yet we know
that there are always fault lines and voices that don’t get a hearing or are
suppressed. We also know that well-intentioned external efforts to address
harmful or gender-restrictive traditional practices can have the effect of
further entrenching them. How, then, can changes happen and be sustained?
AS: I think change happens organically within each community/culture group. The
change is for the better – in other words towards more freedom, openness,
transparency etc. – when people are confident and not defensive. ‘Outside’ intervention should only ever be at the
request and according to the demands and guidelines of trusted and authentic ‘inside’
groups. So a feminist group from Somalia, say, wanting to work on feminist
issues in Norway, would only do so in partnership with credible, rooted
Norwegian groups and within their programme. The change is for the
better – in other words towards more freedom, openness, transparency etc. –
when people are confident and not defensive.
NB: What does a culture of
transformation, democracy and justice look like?
AS: The society
we dream of would be one in which no child is born disadvantaged, where basic
education and healthcare are free, where people don’t have to worry about
survival, where everyone has enough time and resources to fulfil their
potential as they see it, where people are truly involved in the decisions that
will affect them, where we respect the earth and all natural creatures on it.
I believe that
the world needs to be engaged with and run as one unit.
I believe that
the processes of democracy unless accompanied by certain safeguards are merely
a tool for the system. When people have to make a decision on an issue they
need to have all the information that’s relevant to that issue, be able to
understand it, and be free of any need or coercion that affects their decision.
Without transparency, freedom of information, education and guaranteed human
rights there is no democracy.
Finally, this is
a statement that I’ve been making for a while, and I would like to make it
again here, as particularly relevant to TNI:
“If I could
decree a universal education programme, I would make every child in the world
learn a brief history of the entire world that focused on the common ground.
It would examine how people perceive their relationship to each other, to the
planet, and to the universe, and it would see human history as an ongoing,
joint project, where one lot of people picked up where another had left off.”
This interview features in State of Power, an annual
anthology on power published by Transnational Institute, an international
research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and
sustainable world.
Copyright: Ahdaf Soueif 2017 All rights reserved.