June 30: The Revolution That Killed Politics in Egypt

Among the most significant outcomes and "achievements" of Egypt’s June 30, 2013 "Revolution" was that it delivered the final, knockout blow to the remnants and early signs of any organized political activity. This achievement guaranteed that Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — the man who led the military coup and has ruled Egypt since 2013 — could sell off the country and destroy it without fearing any meaningful public backlash, particularly since the only domestic force capable of removing him — the military establishment — had itself transformed into a ruthless capitalist corporation run by mercenaries, willing to sell anything so long as the price was high enough and the millions kept flowing. In fact, Sisi systematically and successfully entrenched this culture of selfishness, surrender, and indifference toward Egypt’s future and the fate of its people. As a result, the military became increasingly tied to him, and its own interests became dependent on keeping Sisi in power, even if the ultimate outcome meant Egypt itself and its people being pushed toward existential danger.

Even in terms of the military’s organic relationship with the United States, Sisi was careful to ensure that such ties passed exclusively through him personally, shielding himself against the possibility of betrayal should the institution ever conclude that its interests would be better served by removing him. This was achieved by ensuring that all Pentagon communications — acting as Egypt’s de facto governing authority within the framework of American power structures — with the Egyptian military took place under his knowledge and control. At the same time, he moved to eliminate existing and potential centers of power within the military itself, particularly among his old peers who had participated in the June 30 scene and who may have harbored ambitions that could threaten him in the future.

It has been said that Mahmoud Hegazy was removed from his position as Chief of Staff because he had presented himself to the Americans as a possible alternative to Sisi amid growing public anger against him. Sisi focused particularly on the positions of Chief of Staff and Commander of the Central Military Region, given that they are the two most influential positions in terms of power and operational capability. Many people may no longer remember his decision not to allow any senior military commander to remain in office for more than two years — especially the Defense Minister and Chief of Staff — specifically to prevent any one of them from emerging as a potential power center. People may also remember his dispute with Osama Askar, which ultimately ended with the latter’s departure, joining the ranks of Sisi’s former military peers who had already been sidelined. The death of Field Marshal Tantawi — Sisi’s mentor and political patron — may also have accelerated the urgency of getting rid of them.

Read also: The Great Exclusion Game: How Everyone Lost Egypt’s Battle

Sisi would never have been able to devote himself to purging the military establishment and institutionalizing its loyalty to him had Egypt’s streets remained politically alive, with functioning political life, parties, movements, unions, and organizations. For that reason, eliminating all of that became one of his first priorities. Here, his interests aligned perfectly with those of military leaders who had already made up their minds never to hand power back to civilians again, creating a shared determination to eliminate civilian political forces and extinguish even the earliest signs of any future organized political activity.

Sisi benefited from the death of political life by gaining a sense of complete security from the street, while institutionalizing security crackdowns and arbitrary arrests over the most trivial reasons regardless of political background or affiliation. Those who feel immune from punishment inevitably abuse their power. Since 2013, Egypt has witnessed an uninterrupted process of surrendering and sacrificing its resources, wealth, strategic assets, land, the Nile River, and national security. We have also seen more than 60,000 Egyptians lose years of their lives inside prisons, while hundreds of thousands more have watched their lives disappear on roads, in poverty, in hunger, and in despair. Throughout all of this, Sisi has shown absolute indifference toward the Egyptian people, whom he appears to view as politically dead — a society unlikely to awaken during his time in power — especially after dragging the military into all the betrayals that came before, while continuously feeding its appetite for money, privilege, and influence by elevating it into an elite class attached directly to the ruler.

In other words, June 30 — which some naïve Egyptian leftists claim brought down the Muslim Brotherhood and derailed Obama’s alleged plans — turned out to be nothing more than a condom worn by the military in order to eliminate all of its opponents at the time and all of its potential opponents later on, beginning with the left itself. In much the same way, the military successfully exploited January 25 to rid itself of the nightmare of political succession without directly confronting Mubarak and his security apparatus — especially the General Intelligence Service under Omar Suleiman, a rival of Tantawi and Sisi, and the State Security apparatus under former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly — in addition to the network surrounding Gamal Mubarak and his ties with the American Democratic Party, which had shown openness toward transferring power to a civilian face and a loyal disciple of neoliberalism such as Gamal Mubarak.

More dangerously, June 30 laid the groundwork and institutionalized every betrayal that followed to a degree that arguably surpassed even the role played by the Camp David Agreement in paving the way for later concessions and betrayals. Yet despite all this, some figures associated with the Egyptian left still celebrate "June 30" simply because it removed the Muslim Brotherhood — a movement the left itself failed to challenge through popular support. If free and fair elections were held tomorrow in Egypt between the left and any Islamist faction, that same left would likely fail to secure even 20 percent of the vote against the Islamists, and would once again run back to the military establishment to remove them from power.