an analysis with which I disagree

I’m reading a few analyses of the events in Egypt depicting this as a new wave of “pan-Arabism” reminiscent of the 1950’s, and I just don’t see it.

The Nasserism of the immediate post-colonial period was vehemently and aggressively nationalistic; by contrast, the nationalism we’re now seeing in Egypt is just a simple, clean, patriotic pride in the dignity of the nation. Foreigners are utterly welcome among the protestors in Tahrir. Indeed, they seem to want to share this experience with foreigners. Žižek got this right in his article: there is no demonized “Other” in this revolution. A few Western media reports described hearing a few anti-American and anti-Israeli chants and blew it way, way out of proportion, given that there’s been very little talk of America or Israel on the whole.

Also, Nasserism had a large element of class warfare to it; that wasn’t the case with the January 25 movement, though I do think we’ll start to hear a separate primal scream from the Egyptian lower classes soon enough. Nasser was confiscating from the rich just because they were rich, and redistributing the wealth freely. In the present case I’m only hearing calls for the corrupt rich to be expropriated (and there are more than enough of them to keep the courts occupied for awhile).

Furthermore, although Tunisia was indeed the spark for Egypt, I don’t see pan-Arab nationalism as being the driving force in that imitation. Tunisians remind Egyptians of themselves in some way, sure, and that encouraged the Egyptians to think of revolution as possible in their own country. But at the moment I think Egyptians would be delighted to see their revolution copied in any country, Arab or not. They’re simply proud of having shaken off their chains, not of having freed some Arab essence.

And incidentally, that’s what made this revolution fairly safe for foreigners in Cairo. The foreigners who were beaten or detained were beaten or detained by government thugs, not by revolutionaries. That contrasts markedly with the 1950’s revolution, in which dozens of foreigners were lynched on the streets of Cairo. 2011 simply wasn’t an anti-foreigner revolution at all. It was a cleaning away of the rot within Egypt’s own system. And they’re as happy and magnanimous about it as one could hope.