Astonishing is this hatred conveyed by the Egyptian media outlets and social communication websites towards the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) group, on the day the two sit-ins were dispersed in the Rabiaa Adawiya and Renaissance areas. Indeed, the official and privately-owned television channels agreed to consider the protesters as being terrorist murderers who can only be dealt with by force, while gloating and retribution prevailed when talking about their dead whose numbers reached the hundreds within a few hours of clashes with the security forces. In addition, the MB was prevented from responding to the media campaign which targeted it, after the closing of its television channels following the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi on July 3. Some would say that the Brotherhood brought it upon itself after it incited violence when Morsi was deposed - reaching the point where some of its members claimed responsibility for the attacks against the security forces in Sinai – and that the army was assigned by the people to fight terrorism via million-man demonstrations that took to the streets upon the call of Defense Minister Abdul Fattah el-Sissi. This is not said out of sympathy vis-à-vis the Islamists' experience in power and does not aim to justify their resounding failure in public policy. But the aforementioned response places the Egyptian crisis before questions surrounding the meaning of the state that is wanted after two revolutions against two regimes, i.e. a non-religious tyrannical one and a religious exclusionist one. And while the clashes are ongoing on the street, the state which the participants in the January 25 revolution dreamed about does not seem imminent, but rather the opposite. The press conference held by Interior Minister Muhammad Ibrahim, his slow answers, his dodging of the few serious questions that were asked and his premeditated monologue which goes in line with the groveling of journalists who apparently master the art of telling the minister what he wants to hear, all reveal that the tank of the authoritarian Nasser-Mubarak state is still full. On the other hand, tragicomic was the naïveté which prevailed over the members of Rebel Movement and pushed them to think for a moment that the Egyptian army will imitate its Portuguese counterpart of the Carnation Revolution and surrender power to the civil opposition. At the same time, whoever believed that El-Sissi would follow in the footsteps of the Portuguese army's captains were disappointed, as it was clear since the issuance of his warning to Mohamed Morsi that he wants to repeat the experience of Gamal Abdul Nasser, while avoiding the mistakes of Field Marshal Muhammad Tantawi and his military council. And what is extremely frustrating is that the Egyptian street did not pick up on the clear signal sent by the MB regarding its assimilation of the shock of Morsi's ousting and willingness to either negotiate or engage in the confrontation. Hence, the army's intervention spared the Egyptian civil powers the trouble of continuing their security revolution until the end, and subsequently assuming the responsibility of managing the state, the country, and the necessary reforms. It is easy to talk about "the return to the pre-January 25" stage and the resumption by the authoritarian state of its usual behavior. But a second look reveals that the state – in its broader sense and not just its authoritarian one – is proceeding towards disintegration and decay, due to the insistence on reviving a lifeless body. And saying that El-Sissi, or any other army officer, can continue the course of the two confiscated revolutions and pave the way before an era of prosperity based on some sort of Nasseri revival, goes against the nature of military institutions in Third World countries, ones which are drowning in politics, business, and the authority that falls between the two. At this level, the Egyptian institution is no exception. In that sense, it would be wiser to wait until the army and its allies enhance their authority, while primarily benefitting from the popular hostility brought by the Islamists upon themselves and provoked by the media campaigns aiming to convince the citizens about the virtues of safety and security, even if they come from the army barracks, in the face of current anarchy. But all this reveals that the state in its modern meaning is a deferred project until a new and distant revolution erupts.
