Fascism was coveted and promoted like never before. In the same way that white supremacy and racism and bullying were normalized for Trump supporters. Many media figures accompanied the president to China. They came back marveling at how strong China is. “China was doing just fine with no democracy,” they said. “They even shut down social media and Facebook and YouTube. They don’t need it there. We should do the same.”
In Egypt, North Korea was not a joke; it was an example to follow. In one incident an Egyptian judge sentenced more than five hundred people to death in less than twenty minutes. They were all accused of killing one police officer. One!
Young people were taken from their houses in the middle of the night and disappeared for months. They then appeared in a propaganda video produced by the military, in which they “confessed” to taking part in terrorist plots, and pictures were taken of them with a variety of weapons, as though they were being photographed for a spread in a monthly publication of “Terrorism Today.” They were later filmed “confessing” to their evil deeds. Many of their families came out and said that those confessions were tortured out of them.
You didn’t even have to participate in a political activity to be taken into custody. A twenty-two-year-old college student was arrested for photoshopping Mickey Mouse ears onto Sissi’s head. They looked really good on him. Still, that kid was sentenced to three years in jail.
Army generals appeared on television to claim there is a “Supreme Council of the World” that controls everything, that decides which country they want to bring down.
Sissi warned Egyptians that we are facing a “Fourth Generation war”—whatever the hell that means—and hinted that those who opposed his rule were spies or were affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The media were creating a new breed of citizens. We were now a nation of informants.
Border control officers in the Cairo airport bragged about their “catch of the day” on the pages of newspapers. That “catch” could be little remote-control helicopters and drone toys, you know, those toys being sold at Brookstone? The photos appeared under a headline saying BORDER CONTROL EXPOSES A DEVIOUS PLOT TO SMUGGLE SPY DRONES INTO THE COUNTRY.
The paranoia spread like wildfire among regular Egyptians. All they heard on television was that there was a global conspiracy against Egypt, so it is only natural that they would go out into the streets seeking to save their country.
English once again became a dangerous language to speak in public. A British couple was captured and delivered to the police by “concerned citizens” in the subway who’d overheard the two talking in their own language, you know, English.
You see, America, you are not the only country to throw people off planes for speaking another language.
I still had a share of accusations directed at me too. Although I was thousands of miles away from Egypt, the media hit men were all over my case. They would refer to me as the “American poster child.” One TV host said, “America always takes care of its men in Egypt, and Bassem Youssef is living proof of that.”
Madness is now everywhere. It is the kind that makes people believe anything out of fear and hysteria. Like that time the army told the Egyptian people that they had defeated the American Sixth Fleet . . .
That’s right. We defeated your troops in a war you never knew anything about. One of the famous pro-military TV hosts appeared on his show holding a copy of Hillary Clinton’s memoir Hard Choices. He announced that according to this book America tried to send the Sixth Fleet to invade Egypt and reinstate Morsi. However, the Egyptian army under Sissi prevented this invasion and even managed to capture the commander of the Sixth Fleet through a special operation. We threatened that we would expose America’s defeat to the world if they didn’t retreat, which they did. And that would have been so, so, so cool. If only it had happened.
The TV anchor actually had an easy time getting away with this by citing Clinton’s book, because not a single person has read that book. Have you read that book? I haven’t. Literally, no one.
Everyone was living in a parallel reality. But something had to give. Everything in the country was falling apart. The economy was going down the drain; prices were rising by the minute. Many were starting to see this regime for what it really is, a failure. But the military wouldn’t accept that. In their book and the book of their staunch supporters the country was fine.
When they ran out of tricks and people started to really feel the hardship with the worsening economy, the police announced they had arrested twelve people who they accused of plotting to spread a “pessimistic mood” in the country. According to the government there were no shortages of goods, no devaluation of currency, and no collapse in services and infrastructure; it was all an illusion propagated by twelve traitors. As usual they had people on camera confessing (probably out of fear of torture) that they had plotted to spread rumors daily to destroy the “morale of the public.”
You might ask yourself, how come the supporters of such a regime don’t see all of this? Well, the military always had an explanation for everything, even for the most absurd things. They would believe the military no matter what happened. Even if the military’s lies were exposed. I will give you an example.
In the fall of 2015 the military proudly announced that they had a successful airstrike, killing a terrorist cell in the Egyptian Western Desert. This was a common occurrence. Some people would be killed somewhere and the military or the police would simply say they were terrorists. There was no other source than the military, and no one dared to question that. After all, the people killed in these raids or attacks are Egyptians who are worth nothing to the regime. Everything was justified by “national security.” But this time, those who were killed in the airstrike turned out to be Mexican tourists who were on an off-road trip. Since there was a foreign government involved they couldn’t say that those people were just some terrorists.
The Mexican foreign minister flew to Egypt to deliver a very harsh message to Sissi for this fuckup. What happened then was absolutely ridiculous. As Sissi was photographed with the Mexican minister, with his face showing that he was shitting in his pants, the Egyptian media pushed the narrative that Mexicans are known to be drug dealers and those who were killed must have been there illegally. Even after the military’s initial lie about the victims being terrorists was exposed, the military supporters just believed the new narrative that we killed a bunch of drug dealers. Hmm, Mexicans being drug lords? Supporters who would believe anything? Why is this so familiar?
Oh yes . . . The Trump wagon!
When I came to America, I witnessed all of Trump’s scandals, including the famous tape in which he was bragging about grabbing women by the pussy. I saw a Trump supporter listening to the tape and saying that she still supported Trump. He had been chosen by Jesus to save America. No matter what Trump (or Sissi) does, their supporters will never change their positon.
Stupidity is not exclusive to the Middle East.
I was watching all of this and thanking God I didn’t have my show. I would have had endless material, but every joke I would’ve had to make would’ve brought me closer to jail.
And yet, they asked me to come back. The intelligence service contacted me this go-round. What a shocker.
MY OWN LITTLE CURSE
It was early 2015, three months after I escaped the country, and I was watching the lunacy that is the Egyptian media and regime from Dubai. I was still there trying to make ends meet. Dubai isn’t the cheapest city in the world, and I was slammed with legal fees fighting that stupid verdict to prevent the authorities from confiscating my belongings in Egypt.
The funny thing was that I was struggling financially while huge contracts were thrown my way. I was offered the slot as host for “SNL Arabia” in the Middle East, under one condition: no political satire. I was living a paradox of struggling financially while refusing multimillion-dollar deals for light comedy shows and offers for game shows. Hell, I was ev
en asked to be a judge on the Arab X Factor.
Albernameg was my blessing and my curse. I knew that if I were onscreen people would expect me to talk about the political madness and not politely joke about some trivial celebrity gossip or fluff piece. Many accused me of selling out and not continuing with the show abroad. I had seen people follow the fervor pushing them to do more, who ended up in jail, and all they got was a hashtag for their name. People will dare you to fight their battles but in the end you will find yourself alone.
I received yet more devastating news: my dad was hit by a car in Cairo. He died immediately.
After years of dealing with death within this revolution I was numb. I actually saw my dad’s death as a blessing, a way to take a rest from this maddening world, a break from the Zombie Land Egypt has become. My dad belonged to that older generation that yearned for “stability.” A military dictatorship for them is better than the uncertainty and the chaos that a revolution brings.
My dad and I had our arguments but they were far less heated than the ones I had with my mom. They were always solved by a couple of free tickets for the show! In less than eighteen months I lost both of my parents. This might have been a sign. Maybe it was better to break whatever ties I still had with the place I used to call home. Maybe it was my parents bidding me farewell and asking me to look forward instead of looking back at the past. My parents left this life healthy, strong, and independent. How many people can say that? They were the best parents. They carried my burden all their lives and when they left, they left easily and swiftly and without burdening others.
I wanted to go back and bury my father but I was afraid of being arrested upon arrival. My brother urged me not to come back. I had to comply but couldn’t help but feel guilty. Only a few months earlier a friend of mine, an activist, was arrested on arrival because he had come back to visit his sick mom. Egypt for me had turned into Hotel California: you could check in anytime you like, but you can never leave!
WE ARE SORRY, WE WANT YOU BACK
Over the nine-month period since I’d left Egypt, I was approached three times by the Egyptian intelligence service urging me to come back. I would get a call or a request to meet people connected to the intelligence service, telling me that they were “authorized” to find out if there was a possibility for me to come back to Egypt.
This has been a strategy all too familiar in Egypt. Get ahold of the dissidents and give them a spot to show the world that the regime is democratic. But bit by bit this dissident will be tamed and eventually controlled. Here we are back to the dog analogy.
When I was fighting with my previous channel a famous anchor with the channel called me and asked me to take it easy. “We all know that you are right to speak up,” he told me, “but sometimes when the wind is too strong, you need to bend down. We need to stay in the game, to push forward other issues. We can’t solve everything at once.”
This guy had been on the airwaves for more than fifteen years. He represented everything I hated about media in the Arab world.
“Well, with all due respect,” I answered, “when you bend down once, you stay bent, you never stand tall again. You have been around for too long not to know that.”
I wonder why he stopped calling . . .
Time after time, the intelligence service sent their people to talk to me. By then the huge popularity of Sissi was slipping. The economy was going to the crapper and even the rich, well-to-do people were getting fed up with everything. Their media tools were losing their credibility fast and the regime needed a face-lift.
“They realize that the way they dealt with you was wrong, they are willing to give you whatever guarantees you need,” the mediators told me.
I asked them if I would have absolute freedom with my content and they answered that there should be some sort of “understanding” and that we all needed to work for the “good of the country.” The “understanding” would basically mean that I would be appointed some officer looking over my scripts, and the “good of the country” would be a thick black marker. I didn’t trust them. I knew they would use me to whitewash their tyrannical acts.
The last time they approached me, I had had enough. I told the caller that if the regime didn’t intend to release the people in jail and ask other journalists and activists who fled the country to come back, in addition to starting a real investigation into their human rights violations, they should just go fuck themselves. I didn’t hold back with the Sissi bashing either. The guy on the phone was appalled at the number of F-words I threw his way.
I knew my calls were monitored but I didn’t care; I wanted them to hear it. I knew they wanted me on-air again, under their control, totally castrated. They wanted to show the world that “hey, your Egyptian Jon Stewart is back.” I was their decoy.
I couldn’t do that. Not because I was a freedom fighter or, god forbid, I had a conscience or even principles. No, I refused because when a satirist is not allowed to speak freely about what matters to the people, he ceases to be a satirist; he becomes a mere distraction. Many comedy shows launched after my show ended. All were simple, “safe” social comedies, where they totally ignored the disaster that is Sissi and just focused on making fun of the citizens. I couldn’t do that. I would have lost whatever self-respect I still had.
Since I didn’t have a regular show at the time, I put together a one-man show. It was a mix of a standup, storytelling, and a think piece to reflect on the madness of the media during the Arab Spring. I would satirize the media during the Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Sissi eras. The shows were all a great success but there was one problem. The intelligence service sent people to heckle me and try to spoil the show. This was a page right out of the book of the former Soviet Union propaganda machine. Intelligence used the same people to hold rallies for Sissi whenever he visited Western capitals.
I was warned of this before I got onstage. The hecklers’ aim was to get a thirty-second bite on camera; one would call me names or shout at me and try to get a reaction, while another would covertly shoot the whole thing on his phone.
Knowing this beforehand I maintained my composure and I even made fun of them, turning them into the laughingstock of the theater, but it didn’t matter. The video made it to the state-run media, and I looked as if I was about to be kicked out by the audience.
Headlines like EGYPTIANS REJECT BASSEM YOUSSEF JOKES AGAINST SISSI OR BASSEM YOUSSEF EVICTED FROM A SHOW BECAUSE OF ANGRY AUDIENCE made it into Egyptian newspapers. As per usual, the truth didn’t really matter. It was all for the propaganda.
I couldn’t believe that a regime with all of its resources had turned into sulking middle-school cry babies who just wanted to get back at people they didn’t like.
I didn’t feel safe in the Middle East anymore. I decided to take my “toxic” brand elsewhere. I saw that a certain country was experiencing its own version of hate, xenophobia, and fascism. Maybe not as widespread as in Egypt, but they were getting there. So I packed my bags and decided to move to America!
AMERICA: A DIFFERENT KIND OF CRAZY
I received an offer from Fusion Television, a part of a bigger network that includes Univision and the Onion. I asked them if they were serious or if it was a stunt for the Onion fake news! They were more than serious. They wanted me to host a show that satirizes American politics from a Middle Eastern perspective. The show would be called Democracy Handbook.
I got to travel around America, attend Trump rallies, the Republican and the Democratic national conventions, and the like. It was such a fun experience to see the American democracy at work. But as I was inside the Republican convention it was déjà vu for me—listening to Trump, Gingrich, Giuliani, and the rest of the who’s who of “who the hell are those people” taking the stage one after the other gave me the jitters. I would sometimes translate parts of their speeches in my head and they would sound exactly the same as the ones I heard back home. The fear, the xenophobia, the hate, they all came in different s
hapes and forms; only, they were wearing more expensive suits and had much pastier skin.
When I heard that many Americans, like many Egyptians, believe that Obama is a secret Muslim Brotherhood member, I never thought I would actually meet those people in real life. I interviewed people at Trump rallies who believe that there are at least thirty-five to forty ISIS training camps inside the United States, all sanctioned by the black Muslim president.
The stupidity was not limited to some “fringe” supporters. On Fox News I found an abundance of stupidity and ignorance. I discovered the simplistic way Americans look at the Middle East. And I get asked a lot if it is better to have a military or an Islamic government in Egypt, but people don’t realize that it is just one and the same. Many think that it is better to have a military dictator in the Middle East to protect against fundamentalists. The thing is, military regimes in the Middle East are fundamentalists. The way they used the religious groups and the Salafi sheikhs to keep people under control is in and of itself one of their strongest weapons. The way they use Al-Azhar Mosque (our own version of the Vatican) and the Coptic Church to curb people’s right to speak freely is no different from what the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to do. One used the gun to get to power then protects it with religion, and one used religion to get to power then protects it with the gun.
Under religious regimes, when things go really badly, people start to ask why God isn’t helping them now that they are pious and religious. (I mean, isn’t Islam the solution for everything?) When that happens, the religious authorities tell the people that it’s their own fault, that they are not religious enough and that this is a “test from God that we need to overcome.”
It’s the same under military rule. When Sissi’s regime destroyed the Egyptian economy and when people started to scrape for food, TV anchors, with their fat paychecks, told people that it was their own fault, because they were asking for too much: “It’s not the time to ask for three whole meals now,” one anchor said. “The country is in a critical situation and you should consider the worsening economic conditions as a test from God. Don’t you have enough faith?” The tricks are the same, the bullshit is the same.
Revolution for Dummies Page 21