- The
Arab Spring in 2011 and theGeorge Floyd protests in the US are two of the largest popular movements in the last decade. - Business Insider asked journalists, academics and activists who lived the Egyptian revolution and are watching the US protests for comment on the two.
- Despite very different backdrops and causes, the protests have in common police brutality, huge numbers of protesters, and the influence of authoritarianism.
In both cases, the death of a brutalized man appalled and mobilized whole nations.
The systemic injustices that killed Mohamed Bouazizi — the Tunisian fruitseller who burned himself to death, sparking protests across the Middle East — and those that killed George Floyd in Minneapolis are not the same.
But the Floyd protests, now in their third week across the US, have caught the imagination and stirred the memories of people who lived through the Arab Spring.
In 2011, I lived and worked in the center of Cairo, about five minutes from Tahrir Square. When Egypt's uprising sparked on January 25, the city became the focal point for the entire Middle East's uprising against its dictators. Many of my friends became involved, and I tried my best to ally with them.
Now, nearly 10 years after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stood down, I asked academics, activists and journalists who saw the protests in Cairo what parallels they are drawing with the US.
Some of my sources were understandably cautious. Not only is it difficult to compare the democratic struggles of an entire region's people with specifically racial inequality in the US, the two places have very different histories and structures.
An official government estimate says 846 Egyptians died in the first weeks of their uprising. Many more died later.
But the scale, reach and imagery of both events are prompting immediate comparisons. Egyptian graffiti artist and graphic novelist Mohamed Fahmy — known professionally as Ganzeer — has been exiled in the US since 2014 for his government-critical art and activism in Egypt.
He has been watching events unfold closely from his base in Houston, Texas.
"It feels 100% familiar," he said.
US militarized response echoes the Egyptian clampdown
"Some of the actual visual set pieces of these protests in America have been eerily reminiscent of some of the big protest set pieces in Egypt," said Jack Shenker, former Egypt correspondent for The Guardian
Shenker is also author of "The Egyptians," a book about the revolution.
He mentioned the Maspero massacre in October 2011, when armed vehicles plowed into peaceful protesters in a district of Cairo — a scene which echoed on May 31, 2020, when an NYPD vehicle appeared to drive right into protesters in Brooklyn, New York.
Egypt's military is far more deeply embedded in political and public life than in the US. Several Egyptian presidents have come from the army, which itself has control over many non-military industries.
Not only that, a paramilitary guard that answers to the Ministry of Interior, the Central Security Forces, kept control over a state-of-emergency law imposed over 31 years.
President Trump has mobilized at least 17,000 National Guard troops, but without the same sweeping powers as in Egypt. He has been at odds with the Pentagon over the question of sending more.
Tear gas, rubber bullets and brutal policing
Ganzeer was 28 when the revolution broke out on January 25, 2011, in Egypt, and like many others he was relatively new to protest. He said he noticed a similar spirit of cooperation in the US.
In Tahrir Square, protesters organized "take what you need" shops, medical stations, and even a media center. There have been many reports of similar in the US.
It does not make it any easier to deal with harsh policing, however.
"I remember the first time we saw a tear gas canister being shot at us on January 25," said Ganzeer. "No-one knew what it was, right," he said, miming a person watching the arc of a teargas canister soaring through the air. "There was a pause where like everyone's like: 'Oh, what is that?' And then it lands and then it's letting out the gas, and everyone starts panicking."
Beyond the controversial use of tear gas, which is outlawed in war, the misuse of crowd control ballistics is another common issue.
On May 30, freelance photographer Linda Tirado lost her left eye covering the Minneapolis protests after she was shot with a rubber bullet by police officers. Although police denied these were in use, there were multiple reports of similar injuries.
—Linda Tirado (@KillerMartinis) May 30, 2020
It is unclear if Tirado's eye was targeted. But the injury had immediate echoes of protesters who were deliberately blinded during the battle of Mohamed Mahmoud Street — a six-day wave of running skirmishes in Downtown Cairo, November 2011.
Some Egyptian police called themselves "eye hunters,", according to Dr Sherene Seikaly, a historian at University of California Santa Barbara who was based in Cairo at the time.
Attacks on the press
When a Black CNN reporter was arrested midway through a to-camera report in downtown Minneapolis on May 29, the studio anchor narrated: "That is an American television reporter, Omar Jimenez, being led away by police officers."
There was a very slight emphasis on "American."
The US retains a strong ranking on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, unlike most Middle Eastern countries. Nonetheless, the US Press Freedom Tracker has verified more than 300 violations since the protests broke out.
"Trump has spoken now for almost three years about journalism as the enemy of the people," said Seikaly, the historian.
Shenker, the former Guardian reporter and a British man, knows what it is like to see those press privileges disappear. On January 26, 2011 — the second day of the Egyptian revolution — he was arrested by Egyptian police who, as he put it, "beat the crap out of me."
Just as with CNN's Jimenez, he said, it was a process of "realizing that the protections and privileges it seemed you could count on had melted away."
A backdrop of creeping authoritarianism
Dr Hesham Sallam, a researcher at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, described Trump to me as "an honorary member of the club of Arab autocrats."
"We're talking about a leader who publicly scolds members of the press, rejects science, and incites hatred against minorities and his opponents more generally," he added.
For Sallam, this was established long before Trump dubbed himself the "president of law and order" at a press conference on June 1, as he called for greater military intervention on the George Floyd protests, with roots in his 2016 campaign.
Mubarak offered a similar vision to Egyptians on February 10, 2011, the day before he was ousted.
He made a broadcast designed to appeal to an assumed silent majority of non-protesting Egyptians with vested interests.
"That fear-mongering strategy ... which happens to be common among autocrats in the Arab region — has been very much a hallmark of the Trump presidency during and before the current crisis," Sallam said.
Exhausting and 'dizzying' lessons for protesters
Shenker described watching the US protests unfold as "a very powerful and disturbing sensation."
There is a very familiar sense from his experience covering protests in Cairo. He framed it as: "How it feels when the ground tilts, and power seems to slide down from behind darkened windows, and lines of riot shields, and tumbles into something that feels more collective."
"It's dizzying," he added.
Seikaly, the historian, said there is now a sense of "PTSD" around the Egyptian protests — not just physical trauma, but emotional.
"The thing that was so incredible about the Egyptian revolution was that it gave us the sense of political hope," said Seikaly. "And that was something that most of us had never experienced.
"I think it's traumatic in this moment because we want to believe again, that systematic change is possible. And we're afraid to."
Ganzeer, the graphic novelist, said the US protests raised the possibility that, even though the Egyptian uprising didn't result in meaningful change, "maybe this experience we've been through wasn't for nothing. Maybe it actually serves a purpose that is a bit more beyond ourselves."
He said: "Now, I'm just taken to a place where I feel ..."
I waited a long time. He didn't finish the sentence.