At the second anniversary of the January 25 revolution, ‘polarization’ is a dominant perception of the political situation in Egypt. The word is used to convey frustration about a state of affairs where progress towards building a functioning democratic system appears blocked by insurmountable distrust between two ‘polarized’ fields: ‘Islamists’ and ‘secularists’. On the internet, this is often expressed in the form of flaming and undisguised hate speech. Both sides engage in this, and interestingly, in many Arab countries ‘secularist’ voices are more perceptible on the social web than elsewhere in the public sphere. While Islamic activists had been early adopters of internet technology since the 1990s, often outshining their liberal and secularist counterparts, they have been relatively less prominent on blogs and social media. The Web 2.0 strength of the liberals is a relative one, however. In a survey of the Facebook-popularity of the major Egyptian political parties that I undertook just before the parliamentary elections began in November 2011, Brotherhood-affiliated parties scored 38%; in the actual elections, the Freedom and Justice Party received 37% of the popular vote. The Facebook-popularity of liberal (23%) and leftist (20%) parties, however, was not matched by a corresponding electoral success. In other words, there are indications that the social web may be relatively more critical of political Islam than the general electorate. When on 7 Feb. 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood Twitter account asked: “Why do you hate us?”, this reflected both the increasing polarization and the perception that the Egyptian Twittersphere was dominated by anti-Islamist voices. Answers were quickly syndicated under the hashtag #WhyIHateIkhwan that lived on for over two months, together with its antipode, #WhyEgyptiansLoveIkhwan. Eventually, anti-Brotherhood sentiment was rebound into the older hashtags #FuckIkhwan and the more sober #Ikhwan that is marked by a majority of anti-Brotherhood voices. My presentation first aims to analyze the image the Muslim Brotherhood has among its foes on Twitter. My sample are tweets harvested via above hashtags in 2012; a selection will be subject to systematic quantitative analysis, supplemented by incidental material collected in 2013. Secondly, I shall use similar data from Twitter and Facebook to profile cliché images that supporters of the Islamist camp have of their opponents. Having sketched mutual stereotypes, I will try to establish if there is a ‘middle ground’ of social media users that distance themselves from such polarization, and what strategies they suggest or pursue to overcome it.

For many years, not least following the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, great attention has been paid to activists’ use of the internet and social media in the Middle East. And rightfully so; activists working online and offline have demonstrated their ability to affect both social and political dynamics. Naturally, this raises questions regarding both the use and influence of online platforms, as well as activists and groups’ abilities to influence social and political change, which will be explored in this paper. Within the field, an emerging consensus points to the internet as changing the public sphere, as an important but not sufficient tool for activists, as well as to the importance of both online and offline actions. Beyond this general consensus, however, there has been a dearth of detailed case studies. This paper aims to address the lacuna through a study of the actual usage and contributions of online platforms as employed by select groups currently working against sexual harassment in Egypt. The groups studied include Harassmap, Imprint, OpAntiSH, Tahrir Bodyguard and Anti Harassment. It is much thanks to these groups that this ongoing problem has become a more prominent issue in Egyptian public debate. Through testimonies, videos, flyers and the like, these groups seek to spread information, change attitudes and promote openness both online and offline, More practically, through organized and trained teams, they seek to protect and rescue female protesters attacked in Tahrir. They do, however, face an uphill battle, with the current MPs blaming the victims rather than the culprits, and the attacks in Tahrir reportedly increasing. Through an analysis of online material from a variety of platforms, combined with qualitative interviews conducted through extensive fieldwork during the spring of 2013, I seek to address the questions raised above. As such, my study moves beyond more general accounts to a detailed analysis of online social and political activism and organization in the ever-changing context of post-revolutionary Egypt. In doing so, I will be able to evaluate trends in the current theoretical debate against day-to-day usage and specific events. To this end, the paper suggests a framework for assessing the impact of online campaigns. I argue that although online activism has changed with Egypt’s transition to a more open and diverse society, it remains crucial and efficient for organization and for providing access to the public for groups and individuals who might otherwise have been marginalized.

Is the rising number of strikes in Egypt a friend or foe to democracy? In this paper, I challenge existing perspectives on trade unions in transition, and argue that Egyptian case represent a new kind of unionism, namely ideologically independent unionism, with a focus on pragmatic politics and bridging of ideological divides as its main features. While most research so far has focused on causes for the strike wave pre-revolution, the labor movement’s effect on democratic transition post-Mubarak remains understudied. I seek to fill this gap, through a study of Egyptian doctors and transportation workers, relying on in-depth interviews, ethnographic fieldwork and archive material collected in 2012-2013. In addition to contributing empirically by presenting fresh data on post-revolution trade unionism, my study reveals a new way to understand and analyze the relation between trade unions and democratic politics. Existing theories on trade unions in transition focus on two dimensions. First, the “transiology”-theories argue that the degree of institutionalization is paramount. There will be no political stability without compromise, so the more moderate and non-militant trade unions are, the more constructive they are for democratic politics. In opposition to this perspective, the “social movement unionism”-theories claim that trade unions contribute to democracy, not through compromise, but through remaining militant and cooperating with broader social movements who share their progressive ideology. I argue that Egyptian trade unions post-Mubarak do neither. The unions I studied fear institutionalization because of their negative experience with the pro-Mubarak Egyptian Trade Union Federation. They are also skeptical of broader social movements, like 6th of April, as they do not believe they share their goals. Rather, my data suggest that Egyptian workers contribute to democratic politics in a third way, through what I call ideologically independent unionism. Instead of risking co-optation through institutionalization, they build up structures independent of the state, challenging corrupt and undemocratic institutions. And instead of building alliances with social movements who agree with their ideology, they remove the ideological basis for their struggle, focus on concrete goals and adopt pragmatic strategies. They build a political space where people belonging to different ideological camps, from salafis to socialists, are included. Thus, the Egyptian unions under study do not represent a threat to the transition, as some claim. Rather, by trying to redefine the rules of the industrial relations-game, they contribute to pushing Egyptian politics away from ideological stalemates, and towards pragmatic politics.

Palestinian youth are growing increasingly disillusioned with their political leadership, and conditions seem ripe for new youth movements to appear. In the occupied territory (OPT), young Palestinians have serious and shared grievances: Occupation and almost daily loss of land to the Israeli state, deteriorating economic and social conditions, and repression from their own authorities. However, it has proven hard for youth activists to gain an independent voice, let alone to mount a challenge to the established and discredited political factions. Inside Israel disappointment with the assertive so-called Stand-Tall Generation and its limited actual influence in particular after the fatal October 2000 events has created a vacuum that Islamist student groups are currently exploiting successfully. The present paper explores the contrasting experiences of youth activism in OPT and Israel. It starts by describing what forms of activism Palestinian youth are engaged in, as well as their political views and strategies. This description is wedded to an analysis that is carried out in terms of political opportunity structures, movement framing and social networks. In OPT, Palestinian politics is complicated by the fact of Israeli occupation. Secondly, the unusual situation of a divided political entity that is also under occupation makes it difficult to formulate a simple, forceful message. Palestinian politics in Israel is complicated by their paradoxical predicament as Palestinian citizens of the Jewish state that affords them equal rights in theory but not in practice. Lastly, in both cases, youth activists have to navigate a complex political landscape, involving resource-rich, but foreign-funded NGOs and a political culture of vertically organized trust networks. Both make it difficult to create horizontal networks that can overcome internal Palestinian divisions. The paper analyzes how youth activists deal with these challenges, and what similarities and differences are found between Palestinian youth activism in OPT and in Israel. The analysis draws on in-depth interviews with youth activists in Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron and Gaza city, as well as in Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv and Beersheba. In addition two small surveys, one of 400 youth in the West Bank and Gaza from 2011 and another of 60 student activists in Israel, are employed to situate the data from the interviews in a wider context of youth concerns. Finally, data about activism from Palestinian and Israeli news sources are utilized.