Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Egypt and the Right to Truth

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, April 4, 2014

Egypt and the Right to Truth

Click here to access article by Mohamed El-Shewy from Muftah.

Obviously Egypt's January 25th (2011) uprising, although it removed one dictator, did not succeed in a full social revolution. The same power remains intact in the form of the Egyptian military which is largely a puppet regime having been armed, trained, and financed by the US. During the course of the political events since there have been numerous human rights violations committed by succeeding governments, all of which remain largely covered up. This article is devoted to the importance and difficulty in uncovering the truth about these violations.

This issue raises questions regarding the ability of repressive governments to engage in legitimate processes of truth-seeking. Events in Egypt over the past three years serve as a stark reminder of this problem.

Successive governments have sought to control the narrative of events since the fall of former dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011. This manipulation of truth can easily lead to a rise in collective paranoia and scapegoating, as without truth, “society will continue to live in confusion and illusion.”

However, I would like to argue that truth-seeking is vitally important before such human rights violations occur, and this can only happen in egalitarian societies. In other words, without a political climate that supports truth-telling, human rights violations are likely to eventually occur. And, this cannot happen in class-structured societies which--almost by definition--make such violations happen at sometime during their rule.

This is obviously true because they have established one segment, their own class, in control all of society to serve their interests. It is in the DNA of humans to resist such an arrangement; thus it is imperative for the ruling segment to indoctrinate its subjects in the virtues of their rule, or to disguise the fact of their rule, and to suppress any truths about it being unjust. Thus, I would alter one sentence in this article to establish an important political principle:

A typical facet of ~~authoritarian regimes~~ [ruling classes] however, is their enthusiasm for writing and rewriting history and controlling the truth for the purposes of self-legitimisation.