The Sisi coup enters its fourth year

Sameh Naguib,
Revolutionary Socialists.

July 2016 marks the beginning of the fourth year of the 3 July coup. The events of the last three years have shown, beyond any doubt, that this bloody coup had been planned and prepared by the army’s leadership and big businessmen months before it unfolded, and that the political and popular mobilisation against the Muslim Brotherhood and president Morsi exploited popular anger against him and the Brotherhood’s failures. This mobilisation used tools that seemed revolutionary in form, but that in reality aimed to create a popular base for the coup and the counter-revolution.

The essential goal of the al-Sisi regime was and remains not only getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood, but more importantly to work systematically towards the liquidation of any form of movement, consciousness or mobilisation linked to the 25 January revolution. This includes the movements and organisations that are linked to that revolution as well as the workers’ movement or any other protest or youth movements that were unleashed by the January revolution.

The reactions of the revolutionary forces and organisations went through three successive phases. During the coup’s first year, many were in denial of reality, and kept on working as if the revolution was still ongoing under the assumption that the coup would not last long. However as it became obvious that the coup was relatively stable and solid, the first reaction of denial turned into one of deep demoralisation and near capitulation. But today as the coup enters its fourth year, we must bring an end to those irrational and unrealistic reactions; our task is to analyse the current political moment in all its aspects and contradictions, in order to enable ourselves to present strategic and tactical proposals that correspond not to the wishes or fears of revolutionaries, but rather to the real possibilities of today.

The last three years saw barbaric repression and media mobilisation against any form of opposition or protest, as well as the passing of laws that restrict all forms of movement or expression, not to mention the judiciary’s filthy role of issuing thousands of prison and death sentences against opponents of the regime and the retroactive imprisonment of those who participated in the January revolution; however in spite of all that, last year’s developments can incite us to cautious optimism.