If there was any doubt that the goal of the Egyptian military coup was to roll back the Arab Spring it should be put to rest this morning with the news from Reuters that Hosni Mubarak will be released from jail in a couple of days.
There is something sickly comical about supporters of the coup government arguing that General Sisi has to be supported in his bloody crackdown on pro-Morsi demonstrators because the military junta is all that stands between Egypt and chaos. Well, chaos is already reigning in Egypt. Thirty-six Islamists were slaughtered in the custody of security forces; 24 police were killed in an ambush by militants outside Rafa in Sinai where an insurgency is underway.
Israel is lobbying aggressively on behalf of the coup government, while the coup government is cracking down on the foreign media. The West will mouth platitudes about democracy and human rights, but continue its support for el-Sisi. The United States will nibble around the edges, as it did with the announcement that it plans to suspend non-military aid (it should be the other way around) to Egypt; this will allow Obama to claim that he is working with the junta to restore democracy as soon as possible.
The news of Mubarak's release is going to make the West's charade much more unbelievable. We'll see how Europe responds now that the cat is out of the bag. Can time be made to flow backwards? You would think that the answer from the birthplace of Hegel would be a resounding, "No!" But neoliberalism is triumphant. And neoliberal thought imagines itself as the end of history, a delusion which bodes ill for the Arab Spring.
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