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Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Embraces Social Chaos

COMMENT: Short­ly before being dis­qual­i­fied as a can­di­date for the Egypt­ian pres­i­den­cy, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood [1] lumi­nary Khairat el-Shater expressed intent to reject an emer­gency IMF loan to Egypt.

One con­sid­er­a­tion this brings to mind is what the result of that rejec­tion will be and what the Broth­er­hood seeks to gain from that gam­bit. It also makes us won­der what oth­er Mus­lim Broth­er­hood [2] (and “for­mer” Broth­er­hood) can­di­dates will do on this issue. Per­haps “Pter­rafractyl” can enlight­en us on this point.

As not­ed in this col­umn, Egypt is in dire eco­nom­ic straits and, the obvi­ous warts and blem­ish­es of the IMF aside, exac­er­bat­ing the grave eco­nom­ic plight of that soci­ety can not be good for the Egypt­ian peo­ple.

The author notes the Nazi her­itage of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood [3] and the­o­rizes that the Ikhwan’s exten­sive social ser­vices net­work will win the orga­ni­za­tion mas­sive and enthu­si­as­tic sup­port in the social mael­strom that fig­ures to result from an eco­nom­ic col­lapse.

In this regard, rejec­tion of the IMF loan may be seen against the back­ground of the effect of chan­cel­lor Bru­en­ing’s defla­tion­ary poli­cies [4] (the “aus­ter­i­ty” embraced by Merkel, Rom­ney and oth­ers) on the Ger­man peo­ple. That aus­ter­i­ty was the engine that drove the Ger­man elec­torate into the arms of Hitler. 

In our For The Record series about the “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring”–FTR #‘s 733 [5] through 739 [6]–we expressed the thought that, in the absence of any real progress on the eco­nom­ic front, the Ikwhan’s agen­da would be “let ’em eat Jews (Israelis).”  One won­ders if eco­nom­ic col­lapse and result­ing social chaos will bring about that sort of phe­nom­e­non in Egypt

From the begin­ning, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any real eco­nom­ic progress in a coun­try in which 56% of the women and 33% of the men are illit­er­ate seemed like a reach.

It seems like reject­ing the IMF loan will only make a bad sit­u­a­tion worse.

“Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Choos­es Chaos” by “Spen­gler”; Asia Times; 5/11/2012. [7]

Egyp­t’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sig­naled its intent on Sun­day to push the coun­try into eco­nom­ic chaos. With liq­uid for­eign exchange reserves bare­ly equal to two months’ imports and pan­ic spread­ing through the Egypt­ian econ­o­my, the Broth­er­hood’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Khairat al-Shater warned that it would block a US$3 bil­lion emer­gency loan from the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) unless the mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment ced­ed pow­er.

“We told them [the gov­ern­ment], you have two choic­es. Either post­pone this issue of bor­row­ing and come up with any oth­er way of deal­ing with it with­out our approval, or speed up the for­ma­tion of a gov­ern­ment,” Khairat al-Shater said in a Reuters inter­view. [1]

The news ser­vice added that al-Shater “said he real­ized the coun­try’s finances were pre­car­i­ous and a severe crunch could come by ear­ly to mid-May as the end of the fis­cal year approached, but that this was the gov­ern­men­t’s prob­lem to resolve”.

Last week, Egyp­t’s cen­tral bank report­ed that total reserves had fall­en to $15 bil­lion, but — more impor­tant­ly — liq­uid for­eign exchange reserves had fall­en to only $9 bil­lion, equiv­a­lent to just two months’ imports. For­eign exchange futures mar­kets expect the Egypt­ian pound to lose half its val­ue dur­ing the next year, and Egyp­tians have respond­ed by hoard­ing diesel fuel, propane gas and oth­er neces­si­ties.

With half of Egyp­t’s pop­u­la­tion liv­ing on $2 a day or less, the expect­ed deval­u­a­tion would push a sig­nif­i­cant part of the pop­u­la­tion below min­i­mum nutri­tion lev­els, and bal­loon the gov­ern­men­t’s deficit as the cost of sub­si­diz­ing import­ed neces­si­ties rose. Egypt imports half its caloric con­sump­tion.

The IMF loan was a stop gap to delay deval­u­a­tion, but the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s al-Shater made clear that Egyp­t’s dom­i­nant polit­i­cal par­ty would spike it. “It is not log­i­cal that I approve a loan that the tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment would take for two or three months, then demand that I, as a per­ma­nent gov­ern­ment, repay,” Shater told Reuters.” I have to agree to a loan, some­body else gets to spend it, then I have to pay it back? That is unjust.”

As Egypt head­ed towards chaot­ic break­down, West­ern observers asked how its econ­o­my might be sta­bi­lized. This appears to have been the wrong ques­tion to begin with, for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood will not allow the West to sta­bi­lize Egyp­t’s finan­cial posi­tion. The right ques­tion is: who will ben­e­fit from the chaos?

At this writ­ing, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood appears to be the win­ner by default, for no oth­er actor has the courage and cold blood to exploit the emerg­ing cri­sis. Amer­i­ca, by con­trast, is locked into the defense of a dete­ri­o­rat­ing fixed posi­tion. And Egyp­t’s mil­i­tary lead­ers are more con­cerned with feath­er­ing their nests in exile, like the Iran­ian gen­er­als in 1979.

The Broth­er­hood believes that wide­spread hunger will strength­en its polit­i­cal posi­tion, and is prob­a­bly cor­rect to believe this. As the cen­tral gov­ern­men­t’s cor­rupt and rick­ety sys­tem of sub­si­dies col­laps­es, local Islamist orga­ni­za­tions will take con­trol of food dis­tri­b­u­tion and estab­lish a vir­tu­al dic­ta­tor­ship on the streets.

Amer­i­can ana­lysts mis­took the pro­tes­tors of Tahrir Square for rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood now reveals itself to be a rev­o­lu­tion­ary orga­ni­za­tion on the Lenin­ist or Nazi mod­el. . . .

. . .  As a rev­o­lu­tion­ary orga­ni­za­tion that rose under the influ­ence of Nazi Ger­many’s wartime for­eign min­istry, the Broth­er­hood has no qualms about exac­er­bat­ing Egyp­t’s eco­nom­ic mis­ery if it fur­thers its agen­da. Paul Berman’s 2010 book The Flight of the Intel­lec­tu­als sum­ma­rized exhaus­tive aca­d­e­m­ic research into wartime archives show­ing that the Broth­er­hood was shaped by Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. Berman’s report evoked out­rage, but has stood up well to its crit­ics. [3] The New Repub­lic essay that formed the core of Berman’s book is avail­able. . . .