What happened at the Port Said stadium is a massacre that, according to evidence, eyewitnesses, and video clips, was indeed premeditated. However, it would be naive to limit our understanding to the simplistic narrative of police and military retaliation against the Ultras, ignoring the broader political context. A revolution occurred, but the regime did not fall. Meanwhile, a vast army of forces, pretending to publicly support the revolution while secretly striving to crush it, remains active. This is only logical, as their options are limited to either clinging to the immunity of power or facing the bars of Tora Prison.
Let us draw a lesson from the failed Romanian Revolution. When Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were overthrown and executed in 1989, power was immediately transferred to Ion Iliescu, a former ally of Ceaușescu. Iliescu and a massive group of turncoats claimed to support the revolution, yet worked relentlessly to thwart it and shield themselves from potential repercussions had events taken their rightful course.
They all celebrated the revolution alongside the public while branding anyone who posed a threat to them—youth, students, and intellectuals—as agents of chaos and destroyers of the economy. They succeeded in convincing public opinion of this false choice: either security and stability or chaos. Tragically, the naive masses turned against the revolutionaries, targeting them with violence and murder, granting unchecked authority to the remnants of the old regime, who then did as they pleased—and they succeeded.
Now, 23 years after Ceaușescu’s fall, what is the state of Romania? Unfortunately, worse than before. The people remain oppressed by poverty, governed by a system competing for the title of the world’s most corrupt. The country is one of the biggest sources of emigration in Europe, and its streets are littered with Romanian beggars.
“Us or Chaos!” That is the message being sent in Egypt today. This reflects the mindset of Egypt’s security apparatus—military, police, and remnants of the old regime. It’s an oppressive, outdated mentality bred by Soviet butchers in the past and modern American corruption, now employed by an elderly, caricature-like state.
They replicate conspiratorial lessons from here and there to impose control over the country and cling to the immunity granted by their power, which precariously dangles above the law. A law which, if applied, would leave them with no place other than behind the very bars of their prisons. Yet, they constantly miss the mark. Their clock seems frozen in 1989, a time when fax machines were seen as devilish and the Romanian people relied on a single government-controlled source of information, which successfully misled an entire nation and turned it against its revolution using the fear of chaos and economic collapse.
The poor Romanian masses didn’t have the luxury of mobile phones with cameras, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms. Here, the conversation isn’t just about the speed of spreading ideas and exposing cheap and clumsy conspiracies. There is also the critical element of legal and historical documentation. Do they ever ask themselves how they will escape the overwhelming evidence and undeniable records that cannot be hidden?
Perhaps the Egyptian people are split into two groups: a digitally savvy audience with a high degree of independence and the ability to discern and select between sources, and another, not insignificant, group that continues to absorb state media narratives blindly. However, lies always have short legs. The crimes, fabrications, and conspiracies documented today thanks to modern technology will inevitably place every perpetrator where they belong, no matter how long it takes. Eventually, the digital audience and the “loyal citizens” who are enslaved by fear-driven propaganda will align. It is merely a matter of time. But the cost has become staggering—in blood and in time.
This article is originally published by AlBorsa in Arabic and later AI-translated by South Push.