Once Again, on Terrorism and National Alignment

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists

The reactions to the recent wave of terrorist attacks, especially those targeting military sites in Sinai, highlight the depth of the crisis within the Egyptian opposition. The regime’s response is clear and direct: sweeping emergency laws to strengthen the iron grip of security forces, unleashing a new wave of repression, killings, arrests, and torture against anyone who dares to express even a slightly dissenting view from the intelligence agencies’ official narrative. Anyone who opposes the regime in its so-called “war on terrorism” is labeled a traitor and a terrorist. “Whoever is not with us is against us” — a direct line from George Bush’s war on Afghanistan and then Iraq to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s ongoing and open-ended war against the Egyptian people and their revolution.

All of this is expected. Every authoritarian regime exploits terrorism as a pretext for intensified repression, creating a climate of national hysteria and fear that pushes the broadest sectors of the population to rally behind the dictator. But what is truly astonishing—and appalling—is that this hysteria has even spread to specific segments of the regime’s opponents, including liberals and leftists, who theoretically oppose Sisi’s coup and his counter-revolution.

Some have openly sided with the regime from the outset, justifying all its crimes under the pretext of combating terrorism or out of fear of the Muslim Brotherhood. These individuals threw themselves into the arms of the military and counter-revolution from the beginning, without hesitation—even if some occasionally criticize certain security excesses, mainly when directed at non-Brotherhood figures.

However, some position themselves in the middle ground, rejecting the counter-revolution just as much as they reject the Brotherhood. They argue that both are factions of the same counter-revolution—one a military-Mubarakist faction, the other an Islamist-Brotherhood faction—and that both are equally unacceptable. These individuals attempt to remain equidistant from both warring sides, believing they can ignore these battles and instead focus on building a third alternative—one that opposes both the military regime’s repression and the policies of the Islamist opposition. In doing so, they conflate all Islamic movements, regardless of their approaches—whether violent or peaceful—treating bloody terrorism in Sinai and a peaceful protest in Nahia as mere variations of the same dark Islamist counter-revolution, which they deem just as dangerous and reprehensible as the existing military dictatorship.

This so-called “third way” may appear oppositional in form, but it is practically and implicitly aligned with the military regime.

The recent terrorist attacks have further eroded this third-way position, pushing many of its adherents to close ranks with the state against the “barbarism” of what they now perceive as the real enemy—ISIS. Suddenly, they abandon even the appearance of neutrality between state terrorism and the terrorism of Islamist groups, boldly declaring the necessity of national alignment and proclaiming that we are indeed at war. They parrot the regime’s rhetoric and its media mouthpieces, shedding tears when soldiers in Sinai are killed by the treachery of “religious fascism,” yet remaining silent as stone when peaceful protesters are gunned down after Eid prayers.

Once again, we, the Revolutionary Socialists, reaffirm: We reject terrorist operations because they serve to strengthen our primary enemy—the military dictatorship leading the counter-revolution—by providing it with justification and propaganda to escalate its crimes against the masses and against everything that represents the revolution. We reject terrorism even when directed at figures of power because it ultimately reinforces the very authority we seek to dismantle while sending a catastrophic message to the masses: “There is no need for your sit-ins or strikes.” For these reasons, we stand firmly and unequivocally against all forms of terrorism.

However, at the same time, we do not forget—even for a moment—that the most potent and most dangerous form of terrorism is the terrorism of the military dictatorship itself. This dictatorship is the root cause of all forms of terrorism. The path to eliminating ISIS and its likes does not lie in rallying behind Sisi’s state, which is nothing more than a continuation of Mubarak’s state, nor in adopting a naïve neutrality that sometimes appears innocent but is, in most cases, complicit in balancing between the state and terrorist groups. The only revolutionary path forward is to revive the tools of mass struggle—sit-ins, protests, and strikes—against a corrupt military dictatorship that has brought nothing but more poverty, oppression, violence, and terrorism.