Mubarak Unleashes Thugs

Extract: Self-evidently, Mubarak and his regime are utterly despised by the overwhelming majority of Egyptians. The contrast with Abdel Nasser's Egypt could not be greater. Though Egypt under Nasser was hardly a democracy, let alone 'socialist' (more an authoritarian, state-capitalist bureaucracy, which crushed dissent to its left or right: eg, the Muslim Brotherhood) it still retained mass support through the perception that it was acting in the interest of the masses, whether it be nationalising the Suez Canal or standing up to Israel militarily (even if it did get creamed each time). But Mubarak's Egypt is the exact reverse, seen by the masses as a state for others - principally the US, Israel, France, the UK and a tiny sprinkling of home-grown neoliberal nouveaux riches. An everyday living insult, and humiliation, to ordinary Egyptians and the very idea of pan-Arabism in general. Therefore the explosion of anger and hatred, which had always been there, bubbling away underneath the surface of Egyptian society, just waiting for a spark to ignite a mass uprising. And, of course, that spark was Tunisia.
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