Egypt’s Second Republic: A Counter-Revolution That Built Something New

“From the outside, Egypt looks like a very opaque country… but you can always find your way if you decide to become innovative.” Hosam el-Hamalawi, a journalist and socialist from Cairo who helped organize the 2011 uprising, knows this firsthand. He conducted this interview from Berlin, not Cairo—he had to leave Egypt in 2015 and cannot return as long as the current regime exists. His new book, Counter-Revolution in Egypt: Sisi’s New Republic, argues that the regime that emerged from the 2013 military coup did not simply restore Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarianism. It built something fundamentally different, and understanding that difference matters for anyone trying to grasp what Egypt looks like today and what might come next.

The Old Order’s Failure—In the Eyes of Its Successors

The standard way people think about counter-revolutions is that they restore the old order. el-Hamalawi argues this is wrong. “A victorious counter-revolution does not restore the old order simply because the old order has failed,” he explains. But the failure the generals saw was not that Mubarak’s regime was undemocratic or unequal. “In the eyes of the counter-revolutionaries, the old regime failed because it failed to repress the revolution.”