Here are some key events in Germany in the 1930’s:
- 1933-01-28 – The Weimar Republic collapses
- 1933-01-30 – Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany
- 1933-02-28 – Law for the Protection of People and State is enacted, suspending civil liberties and eventually forcing all other political parties to shut down
- 1933-03-23 – The Enabling Act is passed, effectively handing legislative powers of the Reichstag (German Parliament) over to the Chancellor
- 1934-06-30 – Night of the Long Knives begins (Note: many more than the 77 people mentioned in the video were murdered)
Here are some key events in Egypt in the 2010’s:
- 2011-01-25 – The Egyptian Revolution, a series of mostly non-violent demonstrations, begins
- 2011-02-11 – Vice President Omar Suleiman announces that President Hosni Mubarak will step down as president
- 2011-05-24 – Hosni Mubarak is ordered to stand trial on charges of premeditated murder
- 2011-11-19 – Clashes erupt between Egypt’s security forces and protesters, resulting in the deaths of around 40 protesters
- 2012-04-20 – In Tahir Square thousands gather to protest against the disqualification of several major candidates and to protest against the military generally
- 2012-06-02 – Hosni Mubarak is found guilty of complicity in the murders of protesters
- 2012-06-24 – Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi, is elected President of Egypt
- 2012-08-12 – President Morsi demands the resignations of the head of the country’s armed forces and the Army chief of staff; he also cancels the constitutional declaration curbing presidential powers
- 2012-11-22 – Mohammed Morsi issues a declaration banning challenges to all of his decrees, laws, and decisions
Any predictions on when the Egyptian Night of the Long Knives will occur? Or will the Children of the Arab Spring in Egypt recover their liberty through a series of really clever Tweets?
When will Kristallnacht for Copts arrive?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
It depends on who is holding the knives…
The Judges have no troops.
The Army has the troops, but which way do they fall?
For the record, I’m often the first one to condemn anyone who use the words “Nazi” or “Hitler” as a comparison to anyone in modern day times. Thus, please note that I’m not making any direct comparison between Hitler and Morsi. But the comparison of the timelines between the two leaders, and their parties, is fascinating.
Also, I do believe that any Egyptian who now thinks that they can reclaim back their full democracy and liberty is naive at best, and a fool at worst.
I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong about all of this.
When Swine Flu returns, will the egyptian knack for scientific excellence rise again?
*some other videos have shown the pigs being dumped into pits, having lime placed on them, then buried, alive.
Perhaps “Truthtube” or “Livelink” I haven’t been able to find it.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c42_1315077292
Robert W – Egyptians didn’t have a full constitutional democracy or liberties so they can’t ‘reclaim it back’ (you probably didn’t mean this).
They were working on it but don’t have a constitution, or gender equality or religious freedom or economic freedom and so on.
Morsi and the MB and the military and judiciary and various other power blocs and the people are engaged in a battle with each other for control of the future of Egypt.
If you want a near-real-time view of what’s happening in Egypt, take a look at https://twitter.com/Sandmonkey
He was one of the major players behind the original pro-democracy uprising.
They seem to be a senselessly and needlessly cruel and inhuman group of people. There seems to be an almost admiration amongst them for greater and greater sadistic brutality to both man and animal. Even their faith advocates brutality and torture. Sick MF’s
Best thing for us is that a civil war erupts and they spend the next twenty or so years killing each other off.
Perhaps all they need is for a young gov’t worker to walk out holding a sign that says “Stop Morsi”.
Or not,that only works in countries that actually have democracy and allow dissent. But still,it would be nice to see our silly senate page give it a try over there.
Beat to it,wallyj. However,I would chip in a few bucks to get her a one-way ticket to Cairo.(she’ll have to supply her own sign)
Similar timelines for the change from Tsarist autocracy through six months of democracy to six months of Bolshevik controlled democracy to a Bolshevik party dictatorship could be applied and used as comparisons to these.
Much more worrisome is whether timelines will be able to be applied sometime in the future to the loss of democracy in our neighbour to the south.
minuteman, they tried that in Russia between 1918 and 1922, and the basest guys won.
wallyj, various government bureacracies also tried that in Russia and a Chekist in a black leather jacket soon came to sit at the back of the main offices with a revolver laying on the desk and implied that there should be no objections to the new boss.
There’s a nice article which suggests that Obama and Hillary are supporting Morsi’s move into dictatorship.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2132/us_chooses_stability_over_democracy_in_egypt
The headline is suggesting that this is a choice for stability, but will it really do so? And is despotism actually a framework for, not merely stability, but for the deep economic and political changes so desperately needed in Egypt?
Morsi will follow Erdogan in Turkey and sack and if necessary jug generals, officers and bureaucratic management who are not Muslim Brotherhood. Unless Obama loudly supports the opposition to Morsi, which he won’t. There will probably not be an official or public Night of the Long Knives.
Morsi is, like the Democrats, focusing on social issues, ie, introducing Sharia Law, focusing on authoritarian rather than legislative control.
But the basic problem in Egypt is the economy. It is statist, with Suez revenue providing subsidies to all for basic needs. That is, there is only a limited, an insufficient small business economy to provide wealth for the people. This is what is needed in Egypt. What is Morsi doing about this?
Egypt can’t live off tolls and IMF and US aid. Plus, since Obama won’t align US aid to Egypt with their actions, just as he has done nothing to stop Iran going nuclear, then Morsi is free to do as he wishes.
But, we are unsure of his wishes! He wants Assad in Syria to step down; he wants a Palestinian state, and Egypt still recognizes Israel. But will Morsi continue to accept Israel?
There has been several “Kristallnachts” since the Arab Spring. The Copts have always been a target and that will not let up. I wold like to know when the generals’ coup/assassination attempts begin.
The US is pouring a Billion a year into this garbage can, but they obviously have more money than they know what to do with.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/world/middleeast/white-house-move-to-give-egypt-450-million-in-aid-meets-resistance.html?_r=0
The long knives has been going on for months. The victims this time, the Copts.
If the war on terror has been won, as Obama claims, perhaps he could explain to us why we still have the real terrorists….the TSA, and maybe even make ONE honest admission to this.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/why_obama_chose_to_let_them_die_in_benghazi.html
Anologies?
The most powerful, effective political force in Egypt is the military…respected and feared.
A Comparison to 1930’s Germany and 80’s Chile is relevant. What we do not know is how sucular the army is.
Will a Bonoparte or an Allede arise?
ET, good point. I didn’t word that precisely enough. I meant “recover their liberty from the perceived liberty they felt they achieved after forcing Mubarak to resign”.
One wonders if the democracy loving Egyptians of today were to compare notes with the democracy loving Iranians of 1979, if they’d find a lot of similarities?
“Or will the Children of the Arab Spring in Egypt recover their liberty through a series of really clever Tweets?”
Heh… brilliant line. The children re-elected to run this country seem to think Twitter is a vital tool for nation building. Only socialists would attempt to subvert social networking into formatted political infrastructure.
The children of the Arab Spring will soon realize that their tweets are chaff in the wind. Perhaps they can trade in their I-phones for old AKs and two-way radios.
(can’t tweet that)
The comparison to Germany is pretty weak. I think a better analogy is that of France during its periods of perpetual revolution before and after Napoleon.
There will most certainly be Long Knife event.
It will be poorly coordinated, in the historical sense, because in a brigandage culture political conflict always ends up killing more bystanders than actual enemies.
But we won’t hear about it over here. The Obama Support Media will package the slaughter as “random isolated acts of extremists” while pushing Morsi as the “stability” person.
The Muslim Brotherhood IS the administration choice for Egypt. Make no mistake about it.
its more apt to compare the marginalization and isolation of the Christian Copts to the prelude to Kristalnacht – in Germany. Night of the Long Knives was for Hitler to eliminate his political rivals, and was carried out by his loyalists in the military, and by his personal bodyguards, the Waffen SS.
When Morsi makes a move to eliminate his ‘sometimes allies’ who could switch allegiances and perhaps threaten his rule, that will be the Egyptian ‘Night of the Long Knives’. Right now hes mobilizing everyone’s animosity to the Jews and later the Copts to take powers from the other branches of Government. When hes accumulated enough, he will outlaw other political parties and draft a new Constitution, one that gives him power in all things. The only way for us to change that would be to pull the rug out from under him now, while his economy is weak, and build a sanctions regime against him with other countries. I doubt that Turkey or Saudi Arabia would go along with it, and the Chinese would surely use their influence to buy food and ship it to Egypt to prop up the regime. There is no good way out of this, and short of subsidizing them, we have no certain way of buying influence with them. Morsi will try and trade influence for favors with whomever will increase his stature at home. I expect him to keep Mubarak alive long enough to wring every drop of fear from the people of Mubarak’s return, long enough to cement his rule and then execute him (Mubarak). So we either make friends with Morsi, or we try and bring him down now.
There is nothing wrong with a comparison of Nazi Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood of today are direct descendants of the Grand Mufti who allied with Hitler during WWII. Part of that deal aside was using Nazi forces to drive the British out of Egypt.
Is the comparison valid or not?
Well I see the sides lining up as lumpers vs. splitters. In general, I think lumpers offer better hindsight.
Those with the tendency to separate sociopolitical incidents due to analytical contrasts never see history repeat itself; and in their writing fail to identify lessons from the past. Often, this is a constructed oversight… exhibit the predominant pop culture association of fascism with conservativism.
Those who look to similarities, while often ridiculed in the world of literary criticism, provide better foundations to understand history and avoid the pitfalls of the past. Their works are often dismissed as ‘not scholarly’ for failing to indulge in minutia. This is a fallacy.
Other examples cited here are great, but there certainly is enough to draw comparison to the brief stay of the transitional Wiemar Republic; and there is good reason for it. While Neville Chamberlain Obama is in office there will be little done to diminish Mursi who, no doubt, will attempt to establish a Muslim Brotherhood (Islamofascist) empire.
Is the comparison valid or not?
Well I see the sides lining up as lumpers vs. splitters. In general, I think lumpers offer better hindsight.
Those with the tendency to separate sociopolitical incidents due to analytical contrasts never see history repeat itself; and in their writing fail to identify lessons from the past. Often, this is a constructed oversight… exhibit the predominant pop culture association of fascism with conservativism.
Those who look to similarities, while often ridiculed in the world of literary criticism, provide better foundations to understand history and avoid the pitfalls of the past. Their works are often dismissed as ‘not scholarly’ for failing to indulge in minutia. This is a fallacy.
Other examples cited here are great, but there certainly is enough to draw comparison to the brief stay of the transitional Weimar Republic; and there is good reason for it. While Neville Chamberlain Obama is in office there will be little done to diminish Mursi who, no doubt, will attempt to establish a Muslim Brotherhood (Islamofascist) empire.
It was so drearily predictable, and I did, (if I may quote myself from February 2, 2011):
It is said that a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. Right now, the optimism that I hear from the administration and the MSM in the midst of a very fluid situation sounds very much like the hope for the second marriage.
The problem with the optimism that many are expressing for the revolutions in the Middle East is that, while there are many examples of happy marriages, there are no examples of democratic Islamist regimes. The Middle East was substantially converted to Islam following the dictates and example of Muhammad whose rule and religion was spread by the sword. This situation has not changed substantially since Mohammad’s death in 632. Before Mohammad the region was ruled by Romans, king and Pharaohs; after him it was ruled by Caliphs. There is no – zero – example of Democracy in the Middle East with the exception of Israel and a very shaky state – Iraq – which was created, nurtured and shaped by the American military following the invasion under George Bush. To repeat, there is no history or political culture of representative government in the Middle East.
The one unifying factor in the region is Islam, a religion that demands submission to its political and theological dictates on pain of death. Not since Henry the Eight created the English church and became its political head have rulers held such secular and religious power.
And now it has come to pass.
Egypt’s Mursi called “pharaoh” for seizing new powers
Egypt is once again a dictatorship, but this time the dictator is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, an assembly of Muslim fanatics who hate the West and think that Hitler’s solution for the Jews did not go far enough. And he has essentially been crowned by the “smart diplomacy” of the Worst President Ever.
Looking around me, does it seem strange that most of the people who are paid to write or opine on developments around the world were so wrong? And if you are Roger Cohen, remain so wrong? There are a few professions where being wrong – drastically, incredibly, extremely, extraordinarily wrong – is not an impediment to success. One is politics, the other is opinion writing.
Here is NY Times columnist Tom Friedman: Lessons From Tahrir Sq. in which he advises the Israelis and the Palestinians to look to the revolution that took place in Egypt and emulate it.
Colum McCann catches the spirit in this NY Times photo essay on the Arab Spring. It’s a virtual love song to the Arab Spring that would be x-rated if it were any more explicit.
THE BREATH AND HUM of democracy seemed almost a libidinous thing in parts of the Middle East, but, in truth, the body heat had been simmering for years. The protests took hold in Tunisia in late 2010 after the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. The kindle caught and the spirit of his self-immolation lit a fuse across the region. A wave of protests struck Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan. Almost as soon as protesters in Cairo were being herded away from Tahrir Square, they were dancing at the news of Mubarak’s resignation.
In December of 2011 the editors of the Washington Post still believed.
Keeping the Arab Spring alive
The best cure for what ails the Middle East is what it has lacked: free debate and democracy. In the short term, that may lead to mistaken policies or greater friction with the West. But over time extremists and fundamentalists are more likely to be discredited. The Arab world’s huge and rising young generation wants the freedom and prosperity it sees spreading in much of the rest of the world — and the rest of the world should be betting on that.
It looks like that bet just lost. The question is why anyone would bet their lives and the lives of millions of people on an outcome that had no remote chance of happening? Liberals really do live in their own universe where their wishes, hopes and fantasies are reality.
Actually the situation does somewhat describe Germany, as we must remember Germany was a -monarchy- until 1918. Their fling with republican democracy was quite short, and then German people chose a new monarch.
Its called cows going back to the barn after its burnt down.
Germany became a proper republic after the second monarch managed to get all their f-ing cities burnt down around their ears with his ill-advised bullsh1t. Probably things in Egypt will loosely echo that result.
Barry will play the part of Chamberlain in this pantomime.
I think the MENA situation is complex and can’t be analyzed within the actions of one nation.
There are so many variables jostling each other, and they can’t be ignored.
The first, as I always maintain, is the material reality. Not the conceptual but the material. That’s the demographics, the size of the population that must be maintained by, the second reality which is both material and social: the economy.
The MENA’s population is too large to be sustained within the statist one-industry economies of the MENA: oil and Suez tolls. They have to move to a small business wealth producing economy. These private business owners are the middle class – and the must be given political power, which is only found in a democracy.
And no, despite suggestions that populations can be reduced, this is just kicking the can down the road.
Moving from a statist to a capitalist economy is a tectonic change, requiring shifts in every aspect of society.
This area has been tribal for millenia. Getting rid of the kin networks and hereditary power blocs will be as hard as getting rid of identity bloc politics is in the West.
Then, there is Islam, which is an ideology that functions only in a tribal system. Can it be modernized, since its texts functions as its walls, whereas in the West,the church not the texts, functioned as the powerful walls against freedom.
And then, there are the familiar national agendas of power, economic and political, in an area. In the MENA, there is not simply Egypt to be cautious about; there is Iran. Iran is Germany and Russia rolled into one. Don’t forget its ambitions in the area.
And, there is Saudi Arabia, which is far more pragmatic than Iran and Egypt, wealthier, but, it too has reached a crticial threshold in its social and political organization.
I still maintain that the population size is too large for a statist distributive economy and a one-industry one at that. They must move into capitalism. And that requires democracy.
Not to be sounding racist here, but the Egyptians are not Germans
Egyptian culture is nowhere near the German work ethic, the German will
Which is a boon for those on the sharp end of their efforts
Downside? With modern technology and casual abettance from Obama, they can achieve with far clumsier hands what the Germans did with precision
Remember, in Rwanda the Hutu killed over a million in 4 months with machetes. The Germans had to resort to indirect salughter because the mass murders were causing the killers to have psychological breakdowns
ET said: “I still maintain that the population size is too large for a statist distributive economy and a one-industry one at that.”
I agree that the practical requirements are as you say, ET. However the cultural component weighs heavily against that. I’d be very interested to know how nations in the past have fared when they hit this demographic/industrial wall.
If I’m not mistaken, when the Russians did it they went from Tzarist tyranny straight to Communist tyranny and solved the problem by killing 20 million people. The Chinese did essentially the same thing, going from the Dowager Empress to the Maoists and then killing off 100 million inconvenient peasants. IMHO of course, you’d likely know better than I, but it seems similar doesn’t it?
I’m of the opinion that this is a very great danger in the Middle East. The old tyrants are falling one by one, being replaced by the MoBros and their Wahhabist lunacy. These MoBro types are not sane men from any perspective, I can easily see them reducing the population of Egypt and Syria etc. by several million. If you recall the old Iran/Iraq war, Saddam and the Mullahs killed off a couple million guys between them. Don’t forget Saddam nerve-gassing the Kurds either. These clowns -love- killing each other.
Paul at November 26, 2012 2:26 AM
BINGO!
We need to understand the historical connections because these groups have LONG TERM plans.
Phantom, yes, tectonic changes in societal infrastructure are violent. Very violent. Essentially, you ‘must’ kill off or reduce the power of the population operating in the old system, to allow adherents to the new system to take power.
And even though the material substratum, that is, the population size and economic mode required to sustain that population are invincible forces, the cultural or ideological ‘normative habits of life’ of the people will put up a tremendous fight against these two inexorable forces.
But facts trump fiction, or, reality is stronger than the mental.
It took the West 400 years to move from a two to three class socioeconomic mode. Plagues and famines reduced or transformed the population more than wars. The conceptual battles were vicious but even as they were fought, the economy was changing to allow a market economy. Finally, a middle class emerged.
You are exactly right. For the Soviet Union and China to move from a tribalist, two-class, non-industrial economy, in ONE generation, ‘required’ massive murders. They tried to make this transformation from the ‘top down’ rather than as a slow change as was done in the West.
But, notice what happened. They first removed one tribal system, the hereditary one, but then could not move into a free middle class economy. They moved into yet another tyranny, that of communism.
What communism did, is that it destroyed the old local peasant agriculture and moved the economy into industrialism. But a statist industrialism. So it was still two-class, no middle class capitalism. This would be economically insufficent to deal with the population.
The next step would be to remove the two-class and allow a middle class small business capitalism. That is what Russia is struggling with now.
China, interestingly enough, has been able to make the transition to allow small business capitalism because it was never as authoritarian centralized as Russia was. China has always operated within local regimes and local economies; even the dialects spoken are so different that people cannot understand each other – which is why they are trying to spread the use of Mandarin.
A big problem with China, and this local regionalism, is not the movement to capitalism, which is strong, but how it operates. It’s heavily corrupt; bribes are the norm for getting any government certificate.
As for the MENA, I think we’ll see the same two-step change. I don’t think they can move in one step from a two to three class system. People here expect it to happen! But if there are no middle class institutions to allow such an economy, it can’t happen!
They’ll replace one dictator with another, but as he is ruling, the economic institutions and a conceptual mode that supports private businesses will be emerging in a more gradual fashion. Then, he’ll be overthrown when that deeper economic infrastructure of small businesses has reached a critical threshold of strength.
The problem with the West ‘sitting back and watching’ is not merely Israel’s existence there as the sole economy operating with a middle class capitalism, …but the fact that the old guard are using Islam, which can’t function within a capitalist economy, to prevent the change. And Iran, which is persian and not arab, has imperialist ambitions as a political power.
Two of these three agendas have to disappear – and it’s not going to be a gentle ‘going into the night’.
You could just as easily transpose the Reichstag takeover by a national socialist tyrant to the degenerating US presidential office in the last 4 regimes. Between the Bushes, Klinton and Obama they have, through executive fiat, reached stage 3.
All Obumbles needs is a few food stamp or “bamaphone” riots or a constitutional state’s righs secession – and he can turn on martial law unilaterally, suspend the constitution and obliterate posse comitatus (NDAA). Removing a right wing rival party and political opposition is a natural course once unilateral control is established (Congress will become a rubber stamp) and certainly the UN gun registry Obumbles is secretly signing as well as (now legal)total internet surveillance/censorship will aid in the round up of any civilian armed opposition.
History repeats itself a lot closer to home than we would like.
I watched the latest redo of “Red Dawn” and it struck me how naïve US patriots are who think the attack that would bring American freedom down would come from foreign invasion and not from within their own borders.
“Or will the Children of the Arab Spring in Egypt recover their liberty through a series of really clever Tweets?”
Denial isn’t just a river 200 metres west of Tahrir Square.
I could envision a similar time line forming up in the next 4 years to allow Obumbles to become president for life.
I love your comparison – looks like we are going down the same path – even people’s reactions are the same. The US’s reaction reminds me of Chamberlains in the late 30’s. I have very strongly felt that another war was coming for almost 18 months two years, now I am looking at months. Morsi will back the Hamas, his track record shows that – the extremists. Jimmy Carter once said that war is an unfortunately reality of mankind. If we do not stand up to the bullies they will run, and we can not allow that. To quote a famous poem –
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Let us not let them down.
Bev Ascah