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Egyptian Comedian TV Host: Muslim Brotherhood Are Nazis (“A Joke Is the Epigram on the Death of a Feeling”)

 

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COMMENT: Philoso­pher Friedrich Nitzsche once observed that; “A joke is the epi­gram on the death of a feel­ing.” That cer­tain­ly applies to our reac­tion to Egypt­ian come­di­an Bassem Yousse­f’s swipe at the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gov­ern­ment of Egypt.

Described as the Jon Stew­art of Egypt (and a some­time guest on The Dai­ly Show), Mr. Youssef has been on the receiv­ing end of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s puni­tive actions.

As we have not­ed so often, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is, indeed, an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion, allied with the Axis in World War II.

Fol­low the link below and be sure to view the seg­ment, accessed by the MEMRI orga­ni­za­tion and embed­ded in the arti­cle.

“ ‘Broth­er­hood Are Nazis” by Greg Tep­per; The Times of Israel; 4/16/2013.

EXCERPT: Egypt­ian satirist Bassem Youssef, host of a tele­vi­sion pro­gram that has been com­pared to Jon Stewart’s Dai­ly Show in the US, has pre­sent­ed a short seg­ment com­par­ing Cairo’s rul­ing Mus­lim Broth­er­hood par­ty to the Nazis.

“I here­by declare my total sup­port of all that is Mus­lim Broth­er­hood,” Youssef began.

As he spoke to his audi­ence Sat­ur­day, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood graph­ic with two swords crossed appeared to his left and began to slide upward, while from under­neath it anoth­er graph­ic – at that point it was still unclear what the graph­ic was — began to slide toward the bot­tom of view­ers’ screens.

“After all,” he con­tin­ued, “they are our mas­ters now. Where else can you find such a supe­ri­or race, pur­er than rain­wa­ter?”

By the time Youssef spoke the word “race,” it was clear­ly vis­i­ble to view­ers that the down­ward-slid­ing graph­ic, revealed from under­neath that of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, was a Nazi swasti­ka.

Youssef con­tin­ued to jab at the Broth­er­hood. ”It is a supe­ri­or race,” he said, “which declares that nobody else belongs to Islam. It is an Aryan race, a supe­ri­or race, a race that deserves to rule us, to mount us, to dan­gle its feet over our backs.

“It is a race that is pre­des­tined to remain pure and clean, so it can­not mar­ry your kind.

“These Mus­lim-Broth­er­hood genes do not come free of charge. Do not resist. Are you crazy? Stand still, do not cross the line. They are your mas­ters.” . . .

Discussion

5 comments for “Egyptian Comedian TV Host: Muslim Brotherhood Are Nazis (“A Joke Is the Epigram on the Death of a Feeling”)”

  1. In this mad world it’s good to see that an over­ar­ch­ing prin­ci­ple can be found that is shared among the Chris­t­ian cor­po­rate west, the Zion­ists and the rad­i­cal Islamists of the mideast. The late Reverand Moon expressed that prin­ci­ple sim­ply — ver­ti­cal soci­eties (those that are ruled from above) are God’s design, while hor­i­zon­tal soci­eties, gov­erned by democ­ra­cy and con­cen­sus. are Satan’s pref­er­ence. This prin­ci­ple — call it the psy­chopath option — is evi­dent­ly a pow­er­ful enough binder to overide any more local mutu­al antipa­thy or loy­al­ty. It is the cur­rent dri­ving force of glob­al­iza­tion.

    Posted by Dwight | April 17, 2013, 6:01 pm
  2. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/35/70459/Arts–Culture/Stage–Street/Play-satirising-Islamists-forced-off-Hurghada-stag.aspx

    Play satiris­ing Islamists forced off Hurgha­da stage
    The­atre offi­cial says that after threats of vio­lence from Islamists, the author­i­ties have decid­ed to relo­cate the play
    Ahram Online, Tues­day 30 Apr 2013

    In an inter­view with Al-Ahram’s Ara­bic lan­guage web­site, chair­man of the Cul­tur­al Palaces Author­i­ty, Saad Abdel Rah­man, said that the author­i­ty did not ban the play ‘Diwan Al-Baqar’ (Salon of the Cows) by Mohamed Aboulela El-Salam­ooni, as was report­ed in the media, but rather decid­ed to “relo­cate the show, to avoid prob­lems.”

    The play, which was sched­uled to run for sev­en nights at the Hurgha­da Cul­tur­al Palace, report­ed­ly satiris­es Islamists and pokes fun at the wardrobe and beards of mem­bers of the trend.

    Abdel Rah­man said that fol­low­ing two nights of the show, it was brought to the atten­tion of Islamist fig­ures that the play was crit­i­cal of them, “which led them to threat­en to stop the show and destroy the the­atre.”

    “In response, the play’s troupe called for help from mem­bers of the 6 April Youth Move­ment and the anony­mous Black Bloc, which was when we decid­ed to move the show to a dif­fer­ent loca­tion, to avoid vio­lence,” said Abdel Rah­man.

    Abdel Rah­man admits that the direc­tor of the Red Sea Cul­tur­al Cen­tre called him to delib­er­ate over the sit­u­a­tion, and togeth­er they decid­ed to relo­cate the show. He denies that the play has been banned, and describes the move as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure.

    Lib­er­al polit­i­cal par­ties have rushed to show their sup­port for the play. Accord­ing to its offi­cial Face­book page, the left­ist-lib­er­al Egypt­ian Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (ESDP) held a sem­i­nar at the par­ty’s head­quar­ters in Hurgha­da ear­li­er today about Salon of the Cows, in the pres­ence of its actors, to show sol­i­dar­i­ty in the face of “intel­lec­tu­al ter­ror­ism.”

    Posted by Vanfield | May 1, 2013, 8:28 pm
  3. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/69772/Egypt/Politics-/Declarations-of-war-Islamist-vs-private-media-in‑E.aspx
    Dec­la­ra­tions of war: Islamist vs. pri­vate media in Egypt
    First 200 days of Mor­si pres­i­den­cy sees 24 legal com­plaints against jour­nal­ists accused of ‘insult­ing pres­i­dent,’ lead­ing many to believe Egyp­t’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is tar­get­ing local media
    Lina El-War­dani , Thurs­day 2 May 2013

    “I stopped watch­ing tele­vi­sion. Now I watch car­toons with my chil­dren, movies and reli­gious ser­mons only,” said Qutb Sayed, 40, a dri­ver who lives with his wife and four chil­dren in a small one-room flat in Cairo’s indus­tri­al city of 6 Octo­ber. “I’m tired of this charged atmos­phere: you’re lib­er­al, you’re sec­u­lar, you’re a kafir [an unbe­liev­er], you’re pious – every­one thinks they have the whole truth.”

    Many Egyp­tians share Sayed’s frus­tra­tion with tele­vi­sion talk shows and the appar­ent war between Egyp­t’s pri­vate and Islamist-lean­ing media. Dai­ly talk shows fea­ture con­stant heat­ed debates between oppo­si­tion fig­ures and Islamists, be they face to face or via tele­phone.

    War on the air­waves

    Some talk shows on pri­vate tele­vi­sion chan­nels begin with long lec­tures in which the pre­sen­ter crit­i­cis­es the pres­i­den­cy and gov­ern­ment; some mock author­i­ties; oth­ers attack politi­cians using lan­guage that could be deemed offen­sive, scream­ing at the cam­era in loud voic­es; oth­ers go so far as to urge the mil­i­tary to resume admin­is­tra­tion of the coun­try.

    Many Islamist talk shows, on the oth­er hand, attack oppo­nents of Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mor­si and crit­ics of the gov­ern­ment, make fun of them, insult them, ques­tion their patri­ot­ic cre­den­tials or per­son­al ethics, or even accuse them of athe­ism.

    Amid the spate of insults and per­son­al attacks, Egyp­tians often find them­selves emo­tion­al­ly charged, con­fused, angry or indif­fer­ent.

    “I know exact­ly what tele­vi­sion hosts Mah­moud Saad, Reem Magued, Gaber El-Armo­ty, Youssef El-Hus­seiny, Motaz El-Demer­dash or Mona El-Sha­z­ly will say, but I watch them every day, sim­ply because the Broth­er­hood deserve their crit­i­cisms – even though pre­sen­ters some­times go too far and use insults,” said 40-year-old state employ­ee Heba Mohammed refer­ring to talk show hosts who appear on pri­vate tele­vi­sion chan­nels.

    Some tele­vi­sion shows and news­pa­pers are devot­ed to crit­i­cis­ing the Broth­er­hood, reflect­ing the anger of both pre­sen­ters and audi­ences. Oth­er tele­vi­sion pro­grammes and arti­cles try to dis­tance them­selves from the ongo­ing cir­cus and stick to the ABCs of jour­nal­ism.

    Despite their appar­ent mil­i­tan­cy, media per­sons believe they are being tar­get­ed by the author­i­ties.

    Lil­iane Daoud, host of the Soura Al-Kam­la talk show on pri­vate chan­nel ONtv, describes the sit­u­a­tion as an “organ­ised cam­paign” by the author­i­ties to under­mine the role of pri­vate media.

    “Media is the last tow­er stand­ing fac­ing the regime,” she said. “It opens files that dis­turb the regime; Islamists have all the author­i­ty except for a few par­ties and some talk shows, so they want these too.”

    Gamal Eid, human rights activist and head of the Cairo-based Ara­bic Net­work for Human Rights Infor­ma­tion (ANHRI), recog­nis­es the prob­lem, but refus­es to call it a media ‘war’ per se. Rather, he sees it as an attack on inde­pen­dent and pri­vate media by the pres­i­den­cy, the gov­ern­ment and its allies.

    Accord­ing to an ANHRI report released two months ago, 24 legal com­plaints were filed against jour­nal­ists and TV hosts for “insult­ing the pres­i­dent” dur­ing the first 200 days of Mor­si’s pres­i­den­cy, com­pared to 14 cas­es referred to Egypt­ian courts for the same charge through­out the past 115 years, from the late 19th cen­tu­ry until the end of the Mubarak era.

    With­in the past two months, the num­ber of such com­plaints and law­suits rose to 30. The most famous was the recent arrest war­rant issued for tele­vi­sion satirist Bassem Youssef over his week­ly com­e­dy show Al-Bernameg.

    Even though pri­vate media suf­fers from prob­lems, Eid explains, “They aren’t crim­i­nals.”

    “Islamists con­trol over 40 per­cent of the media. If pri­vate media makes a mis­take, Islamists should­n’t sue them, they should pro­vide a good exam­ple by reform­ing their own pri­vate chan­nels or state tele­vi­sion and refrain from using hate speech them­selves,” said Eid.

    Over the last nine months, the Islamist camp has used sev­er­al tac­tics to intim­i­date jour­nal­ists, includ­ing vio­lence, threats, dis­tort­ing their image and legal action – whether by mem­bers of the Broth­er­hood or its allies. Media Pro­duc­tion City, where most pri­vate media stu­dios are locat­ed, was seized twice dur­ing the last year, with Islamists camp­ing out­side its doors and threat­en­ing to beat tele­vi­sion hosts and guests. Some cars were smashed, while guests were barred from enter­ing.

    Ehab El-Zalaky, man­ag­ing edi­tor of dai­ly news­pa­per Al-Mas­ry Al-Youm, agrees with Daoud.

    “I can safe­ly say it’s a war on the pri­vate media. In fact, the Broth­er­hood are try­ing to stop the media from crit­i­cis­ing their poli­cies, both by fil­ing legal com­plaints against them and always ques­tion­ing their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and cred­i­bil­i­ty,” he said. “Their news­pa­pers and tele­vi­sion chan­nels do noth­ing but crit­i­cise the media sit­u­a­tion, so view­ers would think there’s noth­ing wrong in Egypt except the pri­vate media.”

    Egypt­ian pri­vate media, how­ev­er, is far from per­fect.

    “It’s true the Egypt­ian media suf­fers prob­lems, but you can’t hold it 100 per­cent respon­si­ble for the coun­try’s crises,” assert­ed El-Zalaky. “The media only sheds light on what’s hap­pen­ing on the street. We don’t cre­ate it.”

    “For exam­ple, the media did­n’t invent the Halayeb and Sha­la­teen issue. There were state­ments by the Sudanese vice pres­i­dent. Should we ignore them?” he asked. “Now the gov­ern­ment should be trans­par­ent and issue a state­ment, but instead they attack media and claim we made up the sto­ry.”

    The pres­i­den­cy recent­ly came under fire after it failed to respond to state­ments made by Sudanese offi­cials who said that the regions of Halayeb and Sha­la­teen were Sudanese ter­ri­to­ry fol­low­ing a vis­it by Mor­si to Sudan in ear­ly April.

    Hazem Ghorab, head of the Egypt 25 tele­vi­sion chan­nel, which is owned by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, believes the prob­lem is that “when you find those who made their for­tune from an unof­fi­cial mar­riage with the Mubarak regime head­ing news­pa­pers and pri­vate chan­nels that don’t fol­low jour­nal­is­tic stan­dards, this must pro­voke any­one who cares for our pro­fes­sion.”

    “I promised that the Egypt 25 chan­nel would be a role mod­el for media stan­dards. I invite the youngest researcher to review our mate­r­i­al and he will know how cred­i­ble I am,” said Ghorab, who says his chan­nel main­tains the high­est pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards, although many media crit­ics con­sid­er it one-sided.

    Ghorab denies the chan­nel is biased. It is, he said, more like “a mir­ror that shows soci­ety for what it is. The own­ers of the chan­nel belong to a polit­i­cal cur­rent that is the largest in the coun­try and they appear on our shows in pro­por­tion to their size. The Com­mu­nist Par­ty, the left­ist Tagam­mu Par­ty and the rest are minor groups that lack the Broth­er­hood’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, thus they appear in our shows in pro­por­tion to their small size.”

    E‑militias

    “Any­one who works in online media knows that there are pres­sure groups in the form of hun­dreds of e‑militias, who sign up using fake accounts and have a recur­rent inter­ac­tion method,” said El-Zalaky. “It usu­al­ly hap­pens when opin­ion pieces or fea­tures tack­ling top­ics like a new deci­sion by the pres­i­dent or Broth­er­hood lead­ers like [Khairat] El-Shater, which are usu­al­ly sen­si­tive issues for the Broth­er­hood.”

    “Also, when there’s a poll, for exam­ple, ask­ing if you are hap­py with the pres­i­den­t’s or gov­ern­men­t’s per­for­mance dur­ing the past 100 days or so, sud­den­ly you find an orches­trat­ed attack by some groups to change the poll results,” El-Zalaky added. “It’s strange that the Broth­er­hood are pre­oc­cu­pied with the media and Inter­net so much that they think it is their num­ber-one pri­or­i­ty. If they put half this effort into solv­ing the coun­try’s prob­lems, it would have been much bet­ter.”

    Online cam­paigns on social media don’t end with com­ments or polls; some use YouTube, Face­book and Twit­ter.

    Both Daoud and tele­vi­sion host Dina Abdel-Rah­man were recent­ly attacked for abrupt­ly end­ing tele­phone calls with Broth­er­hood sources. In Daoud’s case, she had to stop her source because she was ten min­utes behind in her pro­gramme; in Abdel-Rah­man’s case, because the Broth­er­hood source accused her of incit­ing vio­lence and refused to com­ment on a video show­ing Islamists tor­tur­ing oppo­nents in a mosque in Cairo’s Moqat­tam dis­trict fol­low­ing clash­es out­side Broth­er­hood head­quar­ters in March.

    Dif­fi­cul­ties find­ing sources

    Even though some pri­vate news­pa­pers and tele­vi­sion pro­grammes are biased against the Broth­er­hood, oth­ers who try to main­tain the bal­ance and do their job writ­ing bal­anced sto­ries face great dif­fi­cul­ties find­ing Broth­er­hood sources.

    “It is almost impos­si­ble to get a source on the record from the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. You might get a source who answers you but refus­es to give his name, prob­a­bly so he can lat­er retreat from what he said. Or they will decline to com­ment alto­geth­er or trans­fer you to anoth­er source,” said El-Zalaky.

    Abdel-Rah­man, host of the Zay El-Shams morn­ing show, echoes El-Zalaky’s con­cerns, say­ing that, even if you get the right Broth­er­hood source on the record in the stu­dio or over the phone, they usu­al­ly have a scheme to waste air time with­out say­ing much.

    “They start with their famous state­ment, ‘Please don’t inter­rupt,’ but then go on for half an hour with­out answer­ing the ques­tion,” said Abdel-Rah­man. “So you inter­rupt and they tell you ‘I asked you not to inter­rupt, let me fin­ish my idea or argu­ment.’ You tell them, ‘But you need to answer the ques­tion,’ and they are ready with the next famous accu­sa­tion: ‘You are biased, the chan­nel you work in is feloul [rem­nants of the for­mer regime], where do you get your mon­ey from?”

    Abdel-Rah­man added: “The base­less accu­sa­tions go on and they try to put you on the defen­sive and make it per­son­al not pro­fes­sion­al. In the end, they usu­al­ly waste so much air time and rarely answer the ques­tions.”

    Some tele­vi­sion shows have stopped host­ing Islamists because they can’t get any­thing out of them or because they declare them­selves biased and refuse to host ‘liars,’ ‘trai­tors’ or ‘mur­der­ers,’ which both camps accuse each oth­er of being.

    “When the Broth­er­hood can­di­date won pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and before that the Islam­ic major­i­ty won par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, some left­ists, sec­u­lar­ists and lib­er­als could­n’t accept the demo­c­ra­t­ic result of the polls and rushed to use their TV sta­tions and news­pa­pers as weapons against the peo­ple’s choice,” said Ghorab.

    Cen­sor­ship fears

    “The legal aspect is the most wor­ry­ing thing for me now that the Islamist-major­i­ty Shu­ra Coun­cil [the upper house of Egyp­t’s par­lia­ment, cur­rent­ly endowed with leg­isla­tive pow­ers] is prepar­ing media laws that could come out any time,” said Daoud. “We could see more jour­nal­ists going to jail.”

    Abdel-Rah­man, on the oth­er hand, is not so wor­ried about the future.

    “Media free­doms, espe­cial­ly for pri­vate­ly-owned media, which we have strug­gled for dur­ing the past few years, can­not be tak­en away now,” she said. “We host­ed 6 April Youth Group founder Ahmed Maher and 6 April mem­ber Israa Abdel-Fat­tah when they got out of prison in 2008; we cov­ered the rev­o­lu­tion; we were not afraid when the police with­drew in Jan­u­ary 2011 before the [Mubarak] regime fell.”

    She added: “The media is much stronger. We now have very diverse shows: inves­tiga­tive pro­grammes, talk shows, seri­ous pro­grammes, come­dies, every­thing. Egyp­tians can choose from a wide spec­trum; they’re not forced to watch only one thing.”

    Posted by Vanfield | May 2, 2013, 10:47 am
  4. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/70623.aspx

    New mob killing in Egyp­t’s Shar­qiya: Son of Broth­er­hood leader beat­en to death

    Son of Broth­er­hood par­ty leader beat­en to death by revenge­ful mob in Egyp­t’s Nile Delta city of Zagazig for shoot­ing two men over online post
    Ahram Online, Fri­day 3 May 2013

    Scores of res­i­dents beat to death the son of a leader of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s polit­i­cal arm Fri­day in Zagazig city in Egyp­t’s Nile Delta Shar­qiya gov­er­norate, which has seen a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of mob killings recent­ly.

    Secu­ri­ty sources told Ahram Online that hun­dreds of El-Qataweya vil­lage res­i­dents ran­sacked the house of Free­dom and Jus­tice Par­ty (FJP) leader, Rabie Lasheen, in the ear­ly hours of Fri­day, set­ting his fur­ni­ture and three cars on fire apart from killing his son. Revenge was their motive.

    Lasheen’s son, Youssef, was accused of shoot­ing a 28-year-old man mere­ly for insult­ing his father in a Face­book post for his affil­i­a­tion with the FJP. An auto rick­shaw (tok tok) dri­ver in his 40s was acci­den­tal­ly gunned down too.

    The revenge­ful mob, includ­ing mem­bers of both men’s fam­i­lies, dragged Lasheen’s son to the street and used blad­ed weapons while assault­ing him, accord­ing to Al-Ahram’s dai­ly cor­re­spon­dent. The assis­tants then left him for dead in the street.

    Youssef was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal, where he suc­cumbed to the fatal injuries.

    The police forces were com­plete­ly absent from the scene until dawn on Fri­day, where only two police­men were dis­patched to Lasheen’s house after the end of the melee, accord­ing to Al-Ahram’s cor­re­spon­dent.

    Mob killings have been recur­rent in vil­lages and rur­al areas across Egypt, thanks to a secu­ri­ty vac­u­um seen after Egyp­t’s 2011 upris­ing.

    The Shar­qiya gov­er­norate is con­sid­ered to be the most plagued with bru­tal unof­fi­cial exe­cu­tions.

    Posted by Vanfield | May 3, 2013, 1:05 pm
  5. Pal­ly­wood goes to Egypt:

    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0b4_1375922321

    Posted by Vanfield | August 8, 2013, 4:32 pm

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