Ed O’Loughlin learns the lessons of a thoroughly modern revolution in 'Revolution 2.0' by Wael Ghonim
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Wael Ghonim: Google executive, revolutionary, and author of 'Revolution 2.0', addresses the crowd in Tahrir Square, February 2011 Photo: AP
By Ed O'Loughlin
7:34PM GMT 13 Jan 2012
In 2011, Wael Ghonim, the web activist who played a leading role in protests against the Egyptian regime, did most of his work anonymously, online and from the safety of Dubai. His newly published memoir, Revolution 2.0, recounts how, back in Egypt for the height of the crisis, he felt the need to tear himself away from the action because he wanted to update his Facebook page.
Revolutionaries aren’t what they used to be. Vladimir Lenin, a ruthless and daring intellect, studied the history and practice of revolution in the great libraries of London, Munich and Geneva. Ghonim (now 31) trained in computer engineering and marketing. He works for Google, shows little interest in history, and finds his revolutionary ideal in the masked avenger of the film V for Vendetta.
In future, revolutions will be televised, tweeted and – who knows? – beamed directly into our heads, but don’t expect any more great books like To the Finland Station.
This won’t matter much to those who buy Revolution 2.0, which is likely to be required reading for web geeks, media experts, political scientists, advertising executives, activists, anarchists, confidence men, secret policemen, dictators and corporate strategists.
A typically fatalistic and apolitical member of Egypt’s young middle classes, Ghonim began to drift into online activism when he set up a Facebook page for Egypt’s Great Liberal Hope, Mohamed ElBaradei – cheekily, before ElBaradei himself even knew about it.
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Soon, however, Ghonim realised that the best way to unite online Egyptians was to avoid divisive ties to any of the established political groups or figures. He went on to achieve anonymous fame – a post-Warholian condition – as the “admin” of a Facebook page seeking justice for Khaled Said, the 28-year-old Alexandria man whose murder by police sparked the unrest.
In the dying days of 2010, after successfully organising several flash-mob protests, he called for an ironic, hipster-style celebration of Egypt’s National Police Day, a month in the future. But in the meantime, news broke of the self-immolation by Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street hawker who had been humiliated by police. Tunisians rose up against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who faltered then fled.
Suddenly Egypt’s own western-backed dictator, Hosni Mubarak, looked vulnerable. The decisive moment had come. Would anyone grasp it? An online pessimist chided Ghonim: “No one will do anything and you’ll see. All we do is post on Facebook. We are the Facebook generation. Period.” Ghonim logged on and changed the name of the planned protest from “Celebrating Egyptian Police Day – January 25” to “January 25: Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption, and Unemployment”. The rest is history. Which these days means that if you don’t know what happened, you can Google it.
Ghonim bravely flew back to Egypt on the eve of the protest, but proved less adept at operating in the real world. Although still undetected by the authorities, he unwisely met two American Google executives for dinner in a prominent Cairo restaurant. The security police picked him up afterwards on the street outside. They may not have even known who he was.
Confronted with the old “we know what you did” line, he immediately confessed. There followed 11 harrowing days blindfolded in solitary confinement, while the revolution started without him. He was then released by the government, which seemed to think it could use him to appease or disrupt the insurgency.
Unlike Ghonim himself, the authorities still hadn’t grasped that the uprising had no leaders that they could arrest or suborn: at that point, the demonstrators in Tahrir Square didn’t even know who Wael Ghonim was.
The rebellion existed somewhere in the matrix of marketplace, mosque and old and new media – a cloud revolution. That was its strength, and later its weakness.
“The rapid pace of events drove home one of the key strategies I learned from the revolution: to achieve your vision, you need friends and communication channels more than you need plans,” Ghonim writes. “The world moves too fast for even the best-laid plans to hold up.”
But what exactly was the vision of Ghonim and his fellow travellers, other than to bring down the old regime? What would they put in its place?
Mubarak is on trial now, but his fellow generals still cling brutally to power. Recent parliamentary elections have given first and second place to the conservative Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic extremists of the Nour party.
Ghonim, who became a public hero after his release, has commendably refused to enter politics himself, instead founding an NGO to promote education for the poor. Predictably, he now faces an online backlash from some of his erstwhile followers, over various perceived tactical and personal failings.
British comedian John Oliver recently joked on The Bugle podcast that if the internet ruled the world, then government would mostly consist of imposing the death penalty on bands that people don’t like. Lenin would probably have liked that one.
Revolution 2.0: A Memoir from the Heart of the Arab Spring
Wael Ghonim
Fourth Estate, £14.99, 320pp
Read on
1 Inside Egypt: The Road to Revolution in the Land of the Pharoahs by John R Bradley (Palgrave Macmillan). A comprehensive account of an Egypt crippled by corruption, autocracy and poverty.
2 The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim (Penguin). This inside history of Arab-Israeli relations is an ideal starting point for anyone seeking to understand the wider geopolitical context of the Middle East.
3 Playing Cards in Cairo by Hugh Miles (Abacus). Miles manages to infiltrate the underground world of Egypt’s most secretive and downtrodden subculture: its women.
Ed O’Loughlin is a former middle east correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age of Melbourne. His most recent novel is 'Toploader' (Quercus, £12.99)
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