FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Expulsion and Explosion: How Leaving the Internet Fueled Our Revolution

_By Haisam Abu-Samra_ CAIRO - Ten days ago, I was re-tweeting anti-Mubarak sentiments and signing up for his tongue-in-cheek Farewell Party event on Facebook. I had no idea that the ideas expressed on these sites would ignite a whole country and...

By Haisam Abu-Samra

CAIRO – Ten days ago, I was re-tweeting anti-Mubarak sentiments and signing up for his tongue-in-cheek Farewell Party event on Facebook. I had no idea that the ideas expressed on these sites would ignite a whole country and lead all hell to break loose. Make no mistake: Facebook and Twitter helped connect thousands of frustrated Egyptians and united them under the single goal of overthrowing the regime. By underestimating a bunch of privileged, opinionated and fed-up vanguards, the Egyptian regime overlooked their impact on the rest of the people, and didn't guess that crowds of middle- and lower-class Egyptians would follow their lead and unshackle the system's long, strong grip.

Advertisement

But when the ruling system realized the magnitude of what's happening, they took no chances. Our entire communication system was shut down; Egyptian websites disappeared from the global Internet. Cell phones were no longer working. Same goes for texting, Internet, and Blackberry services. I first tried proxy sites or attempting an emergency calls, but there was no way around it — the services where shut down and we were walking in complete darkness. I had no idea what my family was up to, if any of my friends were caught or beaten by the police, and if we were regrouping again to go out and continue our demonstrations. Not to mention that I couldn't watch Colbert take jabs at Mubarak. Getting to see my country being satirized alongside Glenn Beck gives me a sense of pop culture camaraderie that I find immensely comforting.

But cutting us out from the rest of the world, from ourselves even, didn't dismantle the revolt. If anything, it removed distraction and gave us a singular mission to accomplish. It was also seen as a desperate measure, one that could only be committed by a withering regime, and it empowered us.

And yet, while the Internet cut-off boosted our will to fight, it hurt us in ways that the government and even we may not have expected. Stranded in Tahrir, the center of Cairo, we were simultaneously so together and alone. With no access to information, we became susceptible to rumors. News about the international reaction and the White House response didn't matter; but the whereabouts of loved ones and whether or not snipers were gunning down protesters were much more pressing concerns. We were left to wonder, and by the end of each night at Tahrir we would be worn out by doubt, uncertainty, and a deluge of conflicting reports. One prominent sign in Tahrir covered the entire front of a KFC joint and simply said "WE WANT INTERNET."

Advertisement

The decision to cut protesters from the rest of world also didn't take into account the millions of people who stayed home, in the hopes of protecting their households. These people would later face hundreds of looters in the street without any means to call for help. On the first day of looting, with all forms of communication down, I was out on the street holding a baseball bat in front of my uncle's car dealership. A clearly shaken man came hurling at us with a samurai sword yelling at the top of his lungs "You turned it into a revolution of muggers," he shouted, mistaking us for looters. Trying to organize grassroots vigilante units was challenging amidst exaggerated reports of rampant looting, so people took extreme measures against any unfamiliar faces entering their neighborhoods. While I was standing on the street a beat-up car approached. Our first reaction was to run towards it and surround it aggressively. We beat the exterior and broke the windshield. A family was inside.

Another frustrating development in the aftermath of isolation came when we saw news networks not carrying our side of the story. With the government controlling most of the local media outlets, there were very few images of what was really unfolding on the streets. People chiming in were mostly Egyptians living abroad, and images showed the events from a preserved distance. We felt stifled, unfairly represented, and angry for being painted as a group of misguided rioters wreaking havoc in Cairo without a sense of reality or purpose.

Advertisement

I've taken a lot of things for granted: the opinions I read online, the disgruntled tweets, the simple ability to stay in touch with friends. The façade of freedom we have in Egypt gave me a chance to engage in ongoing dialogues that – for better or for worse – eventually helped me push myself outside of my comfort zone. Government-controlled media have long marginalized – if not ignored – human rights reports and police brutality stories, but social media is full of links to those reports. The Guardian's excellent Comment is Free section routinely publishes stories about the region appended by a slate of articulate and insightful comments.

After suddenly getting thrust into an offline world not only did I learn firsthand how irreversibly entrenched the Internet has became in my life and the lives of other Egyptians: I saw how its loss could help us focus our attention on what was happening in reality. The disconnection gave us the chance to prove that we were just as strong, if not stronger, in the face of an authoritarian self-imposed embargo – a decision that itself illustrated the government's fears, not its strengths.

The web is in many ways a more modern, much larger version of the kinds of public spaces and forums that have made citizenship possible throughout history. Losing it for a week didn't stop Egyptians from protesting or airing their frustrations; we still know how to use physical public spaces, after all. But it did remind us that a forum for the open exchange of words and ideas is central to any sustainable democracy; alternatively, we end up in a perilous cycle of control and chaos. Instead of expressing pent-up opinions with fists and bullets, as is happening now in the streets of Cairo, people who can express them freely in conversation, even in a virtual one, have a chance to hear one another and deliberate together about the future.

Never mind the vacant symbolism of "Twitter revolutions": losing the Internet at the hand of our own government didn’t hurt our will to fight, but it did offer us a smarting reminder of why we actually care about the Internet to begin with, about what we value that our government does not.

Haisam Abu-Samra is an Egyptian comedy writer who spends most of free time gobbling American pop culture.

More on the Egyptian revolution:

The Revolution is Being Televised: Where and What to Watch from Egypt
Egypt, Net Neutrality, and the Ethics of Internet Suicide
The Last Days of Cairo: A Dispatch From the Capital in 70 Text Messages