Protests have morphed in Egypt since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. What used to be expressions saved for the most egregious governing or regional offenses are now commonplace. The base of protesters widened across the political spectrum nationally as resistance became explicitly directed against Hosni Mubarak and his regime. State repression used to be deployed to control and discipline those opposing the political order. The aim was to not allow dissent to fester. Recently, however, the Egyptian state has been exchanging violence for legal repression. Egypt’s new elite – led by the heir apparent Gamal Mubarak – are repackaging authoritarian rule. The younger Mubarak’s elite is trying to constitutionally impose the political system’s will over the citizenry by adopting governing strategies and language from Western democratic systems to underpin their rule. This is distinctly noticeable by their creating an imagined America to justify their monopoly of political power in Cairo. The argument of this paper is that the rebranding performed by Egyptian elites extends beyond the usual violent tactics and strategies of authoritarian containment. This is an overarching and ambitious shift to keep the state politically unchallengeable but in a less overtly repressive way. Rather than fragmenting dissent with force, the state is relying on new laws and discourse framing techniques to achieve a similar end. The state remains wholly repressive – just less visibly so. The paper’s purpose is to contribute to the existing theoretical literature on authoritarianism by advancing research that examines changes in discursive governance practices and state violence. To prove this argument, I will make use of extensive interviews and field research conducted in Egypt between 2004-2007 as well as of primary documents. The findings complement the wider debate on contemporary Egyptian politics as well as the work by a larger group of scholars currently researching the relationship between dissent and repression. Similarly, it adds to elite politics and authoritarianism generally.