“Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater Than the People in Power, a Memoir”
by Wael Ghonim
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $14.04
BUY NOW
Egyptians love to commemorate their triumphs and tragedies using dates. There is 26th of July Street, honoring either King Farouk’s abdication in 1952 or Gamal Abdel Nasser’s move to nationalize the Suez Canal four years later, depending on whom you ask. There’s the May 15 Bridge across the Nile, whose name marks Naqba Day, or the “catastrophe,” when Israel declared its independence in 1948 and the Palestinians were displaced. There’s even 6th of October City, a Cairo “suburb” of half a million people that celebrates the Egyptian military’s relative success against Israel in 1973. The coup d’état that brought Nasser to power, arguably the event that got Egypt into its current mess, is sometimes called the “July 23rd revolution.”
So it was only fitting, when Egyptians collectively decided to rise up against Hosni Mubarak after 30 years of misery, that they did so by announcing the date in advance: Jan. 25. The main hub of revolutionary activity was a Facebook page dedicated to the memory of Khalid Said, a young Alexandrian beaten to death by police in June 2010. It was there that a state holiday lionizing Egypt’s brutal and corrupt police forces became a date for nationwide protest. The obsessive, anonymous moderator of the page, “We Are All Khalid Said,” was Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive who grew up in Saudi Arabia, was educated in Egypt, married an American convert to Islam, and lived in Dubai, where he increasingly put everything — including his family — on hold to dedicate himself to the Facebook page.
Though it’s become something of a cliché that Facebook overthrew Mubarak, it is one with a kernel of truth. Social media tools proved a powerful way to motivate and organize disaggregated hordes of young people — the hundreds of thousands of wired Egyptians who distrusted political parties and belonged to no particular opposition group. And as Mubarak’s security thugs cracked down with deadly force, it was online activists who spread blurry cellphone videos of the carnage, which quickly made their way to sympathetic satellite channels like Al Jazeera. When I was reporting in Tahrir Square last February, I saw many protesters waving banners simply saying “Facebook” or “Twitter,” as if to thank Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey for their services.
So would the Egyptian revolution have happened without social media? Would the Soviet Union have fallen without the fax machine? A more interesting question is whether the Egyptian revolution would have happened without Wael Ghonim. His memoir, “Revolution 2.0,” is duly humble and self-effacing. He spreads credit for the uprising far and wide, detailing his interactions with on-the-ground organizers and hat-tipping Facebook page members who made key contributions. But he is careful to leave us clues about what made him such an effective champion for his cause.
One important factor is Ghonim’s cautious, even moderate personality — perhaps strange attributes for a revolutionary. But it is important to remember that ElShaheed — the pseudonym Ghonim adopted as his online identity, Arabic for “the martyr” — didn’t set out to overthrow the Mubarak regime, nor did most Egyptians at first. The page was mainly devoted to denouncing police brutality, something Egyptians of all political stripes detested.
In a long, passionate post several days after Khaled Said’s death, Ghonim explained what he wanted: “I really love my country and really wish to see us living under better conditions … and I do not wish to start a revolution or coup.” When a series of silent stands along the Alexandria corniche, organized on the page in Said’s memory, failed to spark much in the way of real change, “activists” — Ghonim’s term for more radical veteran campaigners — mocked him for what they alleged was his passivity. He refused to cover the growing anger that erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, worried about raising expectations in Egypt, where it seemed impossible to put more than a few thousands in the streets. “I was worried that everyone would get excited and the Tunisian protesters would then be suppressed, leading to a new wave of frustration and hopelessness among our members,” he writes.
Only once Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fell on Jan. 13 did Ghonim get swept up in the excitement. “January is Police Day and it’s a national holiday,” he wrote the day afterward, in a post that was viewed more than 175,000 times. “If 100,000 take to the streets, no one can stop us.” Over his wife’s objections, he flew to Cairo to join the demonstrations he had helped organize, effectively becoming a revolutionary.
Even then, Ghonim’s doubts gnawed at him: Would they come? On Jan. 25 itself, he was initially trapped in a small demonstration just blocks from Tahrir Square and thought he had failed. “I felt then that the day might end up being like any other, when small protests were easily thwarted.” Only later that afternoon did he realize that Egyptians had flooded the streets by the tens of thousands, and were chanting “The people demand the fall of the regime,” just as the Tunisians had — a slogan he had never promoted.
It was two days later that Ghonim, who lived in fear of the security forces, was finally caught leaving a restaurant in the upscale Zamalek neighborhood, beaten and relentlessly questioned about his role in the protests. In hindsight, the regime’s failure to comprehend what had just happened is comical. “You have betrayed your country and become an agent of foreign intelligence,” he says his interrogators told him. “Your job with Google is just a cover.”
Meanwhile, outside the dungeon in which the revolution’s “mastermind” was being held, millions of Egyptians had poured into the streets as the flailing security apparatus turned off cellphone service and the Internet. When Ghonim was released after 12 days in solitary confinement, the once-anonymous Facebook page admin had become the unlikely face of a youth revolution. But it was still far from clear that Mubarak was going down; it was Ghonim’s emotional appearance on a popular talk show, where he defended the revolution and broke down in tears as he was shown pictures of young men and women killed in the protests, that turned the tide of public opinion.
We are nearing the one-year anniversary of Jan. 25, 2011, and much has changed in Egypt. The long-banned Muslim Brotherhood has won a plurality of votes in the country’s first free and fair elections in memory, and Mubarak is on trial. Yet the Egyptian military has retained the commanding heights of power, imprisoning thousands of activists, raiding the offices of human rights NGOs and engaging in deadly clashes in and around Tahrir Square.
Leaderless, angry and dejected, many “Facebook youth” now wonder whether theirs was even a revolution at all or just a military coup by another name. Various groups have called for a massive day of protest this Jan. 25, but, like last year, nobody knows what’s going to happen. Ghonim, who maintains a low profile despite his global celebrity, has canceled his book tour to stay in Egypt for the big day. Time for Revolution 3.0?
Blake Hounshell is managing editor of Foreign Policy.
by Wael Ghonim
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $14.04
BUY NOW
Egyptians love to commemorate their triumphs and tragedies using dates. There is 26th of July Street, honoring either King Farouk’s abdication in 1952 or Gamal Abdel Nasser’s move to nationalize the Suez Canal four years later, depending on whom you ask. There’s the May 15 Bridge across the Nile, whose name marks Naqba Day, or the “catastrophe,” when Israel declared its independence in 1948 and the Palestinians were displaced. There’s even 6th of October City, a Cairo “suburb” of half a million people that celebrates the Egyptian military’s relative success against Israel in 1973. The coup d’état that brought Nasser to power, arguably the event that got Egypt into its current mess, is sometimes called the “July 23rd revolution.”
So it was only fitting, when Egyptians collectively decided to rise up against Hosni Mubarak after 30 years of misery, that they did so by announcing the date in advance: Jan. 25. The main hub of revolutionary activity was a Facebook page dedicated to the memory of Khalid Said, a young Alexandrian beaten to death by police in June 2010. It was there that a state holiday lionizing Egypt’s brutal and corrupt police forces became a date for nationwide protest. The obsessive, anonymous moderator of the page, “We Are All Khalid Said,” was Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive who grew up in Saudi Arabia, was educated in Egypt, married an American convert to Islam, and lived in Dubai, where he increasingly put everything — including his family — on hold to dedicate himself to the Facebook page.
Though it’s become something of a cliché that Facebook overthrew Mubarak, it is one with a kernel of truth. Social media tools proved a powerful way to motivate and organize disaggregated hordes of young people — the hundreds of thousands of wired Egyptians who distrusted political parties and belonged to no particular opposition group. And as Mubarak’s security thugs cracked down with deadly force, it was online activists who spread blurry cellphone videos of the carnage, which quickly made their way to sympathetic satellite channels like Al Jazeera. When I was reporting in Tahrir Square last February, I saw many protesters waving banners simply saying “Facebook” or “Twitter,” as if to thank Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey for their services.
So would the Egyptian revolution have happened without social media? Would the Soviet Union have fallen without the fax machine? A more interesting question is whether the Egyptian revolution would have happened without Wael Ghonim. His memoir, “Revolution 2.0,” is duly humble and self-effacing. He spreads credit for the uprising far and wide, detailing his interactions with on-the-ground organizers and hat-tipping Facebook page members who made key contributions. But he is careful to leave us clues about what made him such an effective champion for his cause.
One important factor is Ghonim’s cautious, even moderate personality — perhaps strange attributes for a revolutionary. But it is important to remember that ElShaheed — the pseudonym Ghonim adopted as his online identity, Arabic for “the martyr” — didn’t set out to overthrow the Mubarak regime, nor did most Egyptians at first. The page was mainly devoted to denouncing police brutality, something Egyptians of all political stripes detested.
In a long, passionate post several days after Khaled Said’s death, Ghonim explained what he wanted: “I really love my country and really wish to see us living under better conditions … and I do not wish to start a revolution or coup.” When a series of silent stands along the Alexandria corniche, organized on the page in Said’s memory, failed to spark much in the way of real change, “activists” — Ghonim’s term for more radical veteran campaigners — mocked him for what they alleged was his passivity. He refused to cover the growing anger that erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, worried about raising expectations in Egypt, where it seemed impossible to put more than a few thousands in the streets. “I was worried that everyone would get excited and the Tunisian protesters would then be suppressed, leading to a new wave of frustration and hopelessness among our members,” he writes.
Only once Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fell on Jan. 13 did Ghonim get swept up in the excitement. “January is Police Day and it’s a national holiday,” he wrote the day afterward, in a post that was viewed more than 175,000 times. “If 100,000 take to the streets, no one can stop us.” Over his wife’s objections, he flew to Cairo to join the demonstrations he had helped organize, effectively becoming a revolutionary.
Even then, Ghonim’s doubts gnawed at him: Would they come? On Jan. 25 itself, he was initially trapped in a small demonstration just blocks from Tahrir Square and thought he had failed. “I felt then that the day might end up being like any other, when small protests were easily thwarted.” Only later that afternoon did he realize that Egyptians had flooded the streets by the tens of thousands, and were chanting “The people demand the fall of the regime,” just as the Tunisians had — a slogan he had never promoted.
It was two days later that Ghonim, who lived in fear of the security forces, was finally caught leaving a restaurant in the upscale Zamalek neighborhood, beaten and relentlessly questioned about his role in the protests. In hindsight, the regime’s failure to comprehend what had just happened is comical. “You have betrayed your country and become an agent of foreign intelligence,” he says his interrogators told him. “Your job with Google is just a cover.”
Meanwhile, outside the dungeon in which the revolution’s “mastermind” was being held, millions of Egyptians had poured into the streets as the flailing security apparatus turned off cellphone service and the Internet. When Ghonim was released after 12 days in solitary confinement, the once-anonymous Facebook page admin had become the unlikely face of a youth revolution. But it was still far from clear that Mubarak was going down; it was Ghonim’s emotional appearance on a popular talk show, where he defended the revolution and broke down in tears as he was shown pictures of young men and women killed in the protests, that turned the tide of public opinion.
We are nearing the one-year anniversary of Jan. 25, 2011, and much has changed in Egypt. The long-banned Muslim Brotherhood has won a plurality of votes in the country’s first free and fair elections in memory, and Mubarak is on trial. Yet the Egyptian military has retained the commanding heights of power, imprisoning thousands of activists, raiding the offices of human rights NGOs and engaging in deadly clashes in and around Tahrir Square.
Leaderless, angry and dejected, many “Facebook youth” now wonder whether theirs was even a revolution at all or just a military coup by another name. Various groups have called for a massive day of protest this Jan. 25, but, like last year, nobody knows what’s going to happen. Ghonim, who maintains a low profile despite his global celebrity, has canceled his book tour to stay in Egypt for the big day. Time for Revolution 3.0?
Blake Hounshell is managing editor of Foreign Policy.
