…about “political clocks” not running backwards applies
in spades when the times are revolutionary. In fact, in such times, this is a
necessary law of historical
dialectics. The law applies precisely to the counter-revolutionary moments (in
the sense of turnings, as of a pendulum) that follow moments of revolutionary synthesis.
The Brotherhood’s
revolution represented such a synthesis. It stood as an endpoint of the actions
of all the revolutionary parties of the Arab Spring in Egypt when it achieved
fundamental, thus revolutionary, change in the state. But the Brotherhood’s
grasp of the state apparatus never grew strong, and at the same time, its basis
as a revolution of the whole people grew narrower. The resulting contradictions
– on the one side between the Brotherhood and the pre- or counter-revolutionary
state apparatus, and on the other side between them and the secular/liberal revolutionists
– created a new synthesis, and this was the lever El Sissi pulled.
The lever the
Brotherhood pulled in the first place, the lever that came into existence in
Tahrir Square, doesn’t exist anymore. Perforce it can’t be pulled again. That is, as the Secretary-General says, in
politics you can’t go backwards.
The Brotherhood
did not pause at disbelief before going over to anger, and they would do well
to move on to acceptance equally quickly. Staying with anger will not restore
the former situation. They need a new synthesis, and they can’t do it by
holding onto old contradictions with elements that will only become more
opposed the longer opposition is kept up. They’re already in danger of being
outlawed again.
Frankly, the
longer the Brotherhood stays in the past and fails to seek a new revolutionary
synthesis, the surer the success of the counter-revolution.
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