Sisi’s phobia

Al-Sisi’s latest brainchild is his orders to the Egyptian media, i.e. his media battalion, to deliver the phobia of the fall of the state to the Egyptian people. This is what he said in the youth conference he holds every month with a group of carefully chosen youths, who are in fact the children of the country’s elites who loot its wealth and resources. They are a group of young individuals dressed in the height of global fashion and sprayed with the world’s most expensive and well-known fragrances. They have no problems in their lives and they do not represent the real Egyptian youth who suffer the woes of injustice in prisons or the frustrated youth who have completed their university studies but cannot find work. The job market in Egypt is almost non-existent, as the companies and factories are closing down and laying off their employees, making the matter even worse and increasing the number of unemployed individuals in Egypt.

Anyway, he insists every month on meeting with these young individuals to appear to the world as if he cares about the youth’s issues, despite the enormous costs the state has to pay for such conferences in order to hold them in the biggest hotels for several nights, not to mention the costs of food and transportation. Since it is summer, he held the conference in Alexandria, which he had previously declared as very poor.

He invited a female student who is the daughter of a doorman and who was the top of her school to the conference. He sat her next to him, in a cheap show for the media in order to promote himself, and indeed, every newspaper and satellite channel shed light on this event in a disgusting manner characterised by repulsive discrimination and classism. The headlines read “Doorman’s daughter sits next to President”, and all we heard was the doorman’s daughter this, the doorman’s daughter that.

Read: Al-Sisi claims that his coup ‘ended fascism’ in Egypt

In this conference, Al-Sisi ordered the media to create a phobia within the Egyptian people of the fall of the state. As we all know, a phobia is a psychological disorder. This doctor of philosophy, as he called himself in one of his previous interviews, wants Egyptians to suffer from a phobia of the state falling by portraying the issues as being a cosmic conspiracy targeting the Egyptian state in an effort to overthrow it. Al-Sisi does not distinguish between the state and the government, as they are the same in his eyes. He sees himself as both. However, in reality, he is the one who is suffering from a phobia of him falling. He is well aware that there is no external force trying to overthrow him and that there is no external conspiracy against Egypt.

His fear is the spectre of the January 25th Revolution, which continues to haunt him. He has a phobia from the January revolution and considers it his main enemy. Therefore, he got rid of all of its icons, sought revenge on all of its leaders and elites, throwing them all in prison, except for those who were killed by the state’s bullets. He is constantly scaring the people making them fear a repeat of this and he has created a state of hostility towards the idea of the revolution, using the neighbouring countries and the internal conflicts in areas such as Syria and Iraq as a means to plant fear in the hearts of Egyptians.

#SisiEra 

He’s put it in their heads that his presence as the leader means the state will continue to exist and his removal from power would mean the fall of the state. This phobia suffered by Al-Sisi reassured us that the Egyptians’ revolution did not die and still haunts and scares those who wish us ill and the man who seized power by force in order to end us. This means that the revolution is ongoing and is capable of recovering from its wounds in order to continue its path; it is still alive. It is alive in the dreams and hearts of its people, just as Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque live in the hearts of the Palestinians and the Arabs. Sometimes we feel it dim and we think that the matter has been forgotten, but the fire is rekindled immediately in the face of any action or foolishness by Israel and they feel the earth quake under their feet, as we witnessed in recent events.

Read: Sisi’s terrorism

There are similarities between the occupation and the coup, as they both hate popular action and fear it because it is capable of overthrowing them. Al-Sisi is actually suffering from the phobia of his overthrow, not the over throw of the state!

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.