Hazem Salem: Mustafa Hegazy’s Discourse, Being More Militant than the Military

The political advisor to the interim President (advisor and now spokesman of the military regime) was a good choice for the military junta to justify the killing that took place in what we could name “The Black August” over the past week (on August 14th in Rabaa and Nahda then 16th and 17th throughout the nation).

Compared with El Baradei who resigned over the killing and the bloodshed, and who opposed the use of force to end the sit-ins and called for peaceful solutions, Hegazy is the direct true opposite, as he, representing the Egyptian everlasting militarized ideology, is a person who believes in building a “modern” nation and a State by all Egyptians who are “united more than ever before”, as he said, behind “the military” (and – of course – a charismatic military ruler).

It was not haphazard that the new “militarized” regime chose Hegazy to represent them in this press conference, being well dressed in a civilian uniform and well versed in English language. He was a good replacement to El Baradei as a civilian and Col. Ahmed Ali, the military spokesman. Hegazy does not have to lie because he defends his own belief on this matter; he defends “the rule of the military generals” as the path to “modernity” as an alternative to democracy under the strictly unified mentally pre militarized mass of the society.

This was exactly the dream and the modernist project of Mohamed Ali Basha in the 19th century and then that of Nasser with a Marxist Maoist twist in the 20th century. It is exactly equal to the Nazi way in Germany of Adolf Hitler who wanted to inspire the German nation towards that end. It seems elementary certain that Hegazy believes that El Sisi and the military would be the objective equal to Mohammed Ali and Nasser in the 21st century version.

After speaking about the Egyptian people and the nation that is “united more than ever before”, as he said, behind “the military”, Hegazy talks about the “maverick” rebel mass of “terrorists” who had a non peaceful sit-in and who have fired at the law-abiding and human rights protecting police forces! The way Hegazy built his argument against those “terrorists” was not convincing; but he shifted to the lexicon of George W. Bush in his War on Terror and quickly equated them with the Taliban (though Taliban never had a sit-in to fulfill its demands) and he equated that with the US support (to the Talibani Brotherhood).

Never-the-less, he did so before lashing both in one sentence as “enemies” to the Egyptian military State and its supporting society. In fact this underlined the contradiction between Hegazy’s militarized ideology and that of liberal democratic capitalism of US as well as any religious or divine ideology that is deemed theocratic, fanatic and terroristic by the neo Oriental Nazi, Mustafa Hegazy.

The rather “Oriental Nazi” mentality of Hegazy went on to refute all arguments by the local and foreign correspondents on the human rights abuses and the abrupt killing that took place at the hands of the security forces covered by their military peers. His argument was always like “How come you did not see them as terrorists? You should be logical enough (and believe in my own logic) and you should believe me!”.

For Hegazy, all protesters were not peaceful and they were maverick terrorists shooting all people; though in the end, the number of people killed from those protesters was massive, including the ones who had to jump from a bridge over the Nile into the water to escape the live ammunition shooting from the security. This scene must remind the Egyptians with a similar one when the Egyptian authorities under the monarchy in 1940’s opened a bridge when students were demonstrating on it, and thus, many of them fell into the water (and it is not a secret that many Egyptians by then till now “cannot swim”).

This neo Oriental Nazi ideology even prevented Hegazy from speaking about democracy as we know it. For him, the nation building by the military is going through (and should not be disrupted or interrupted by democracy seeking demonstrations). This came as he said that the Constitution amendments are almost finished and the Committee of the 50 will be finalized soon. Both the Committee of the 10 and that of the 50 are appointed by the military, though the 50 members of a rather Constituent Assembly are distributed as quotas by the military to various societal segments and entities. Hegazy here hints that the Constitution that the new military regime wants (not the public) will be delivered to the public (to say “Yes” in a rigged referendum) because the military and its neo Oriental Nazi intellectuals like Hegazy know what is best for the people and the nation, and thus, the people do not have to bother to be consulted or engaged in any dialogue or so, or to make any suggestions or proposals, in this Constitution. Hegazy wants to say to the Egyptians: “For the Constitution, we will do it for you. You do not have to worry”.

The Hegazy sort of military patriarchy comes higher when it comes to Civil Society and associations. Under the pretext of combating terrorism, he says that all associations, groupings and civil society entities would be (scrutinized and) legalized. This means that a new Mc Arthurian lens would be put to eliminate the NGO’s that would be deemed as terrorist (the Islamist ones) and those supporting terrorism (including the democracy advocating and the human rights ones). The issue here does not start or end with the Brotherhood as an entity, association or group, it could be extended under the mentality of Hegazy and his peer military fan intellectuals to include the foreign funded organizations (as we saw under the rule of SCAF) and, of course, the ones who advocate Human Rights in the way that criticizes the military and disrupts the nation-building in this “foundational not transitional” period as Hegazy labels it.