The shared identity of Tahrir: Four years on

The air on that Friday was like no other, a mix of tear gas and adrenaline that filled the raging streets of Cairo. This unique scent was an elixir of life that triggered a sense of mobilization and unity that some had been dreaming of for years. The march was dispersed close to the police hospital, but something told me this was not the end and that such an extreme use of force by the police would actually backfire.

The regime had managed to provoke Egyptians, known for millennia for their patience and pharaohs, into coming out onto the streets. All communication was cut, paving the way for a possible massacre of those who had been “obedient” for years, and now, suddenly, were a threat to order. Police stations, for years a symbol of evil and torture, were attacked by the locals as Egyptians tried to reclaim their dignity. Many fell at the gates of these stations as snipers shot at them from the rooftops.  

By the time I reached Galaa Square I was certain there was no going back, that our destination was liberation. Thousands of protesters were heading toward me from all directions. The clashes were very intense and so a group of us, doctors and dentists, decided to cordon ourselves by the Arab League building at the entrance of Tahrir Square, where we created our small makeshift hospital.

He was tall and lean and quickly became a regular at our little hospital, as he repeatedly asked me to clean his wounds before he was off again. Birdshot had already covered his back and chest and nearly blinded his left eye. The fourth time he showed up, I had to ask him why he wanted to die.

“My brother is one of those who died in Suez on January 25. I could not even say goodbye, as Suez has been off-limits since. You see doctor, without him I am just a half. He is not just my blood, he is my soulmate, my face in the mirror, as he is my twin.”

That face haunted me in the days that followed. I prayed he would not die, I prayed their mother would not lose two sons. Several months later I visited Suez, and was relieved to find no death record of twin brothers. I still dream about him sometimes, and in my heart I continue to hope he is still part of that collective identity born in Tahrir. I still pray that my brother in revolt remembers our pact and our shared identity, and has not settled for a half fight, victory, life or freedom.

Empowerment and the collective behavior in conflict leading to social change

Steven Reicher, a social psychologist who was concerned with issues of collective identity and mass mobilization, identified a common pattern across a variety of crowd events he studied, including a student protest, a mass demonstration and cases of football crowd “disorder.” These events would start with a heterogeneous crowd (different identities and goals). A minority were “radicals” who antagonized authorities. The majority, however, identified themselves as moderates who simply wanted to express their views to the authorities.

Reicher based a lot of his findings regarding social identity and crowd behavior on the Poll Tax Riots in 1990. The conservative government of Britain led by Margaret Thatcher introduced a poll tax which led to a series of protests in many British cities. Things soon escalated into violent riots. Crowd members understood their initial behavior as “legal and legitimate protest,” while police defined it as a “threat to public order.” Police understood their actions as a defensive response, the crowd understood the police action as unprovoked and “heavy-handed.”

Although this crowd was heterogeneous, they were perceived by authorities (especially the police) as a homogeneous threat. Self-proclaimed moderates were oppressed, which, in turn, led to their radicalization. They came to change their views about the authorities, and hence about their own identity in relation to authority. The need to escalate became organic.

Police assumptions concerning the homogeneity of the crowd imposes a common and brutal fate on all crowd members. It lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy on a collective scale: the initially heterogeneous crowd became homogeneous. Cutting off communication on January 28 and the massive use of force created a violent conflict out of a non-violent protest. Being treated as radicals, people came to see themselves as such and united in opposition as radicals. A common radical self-categorization emerged within the crowd, leading to feelings of consensus and empowerment: to take on the police and remove a tyrant.

But Reicher’s findings raised a broader question about psychological and social change: How is it that people entering a crowd event with one perception of identity emerge

from it with a different identity? Such a question resulted in the social identity model of crowd behavior that can be used to explain what happened on January 25 that lead first to January 28, then the Tahrir sit-in.

In Tahrir, the sense of unity in the crowd was evident in our behavior, as we oriented together, focused on the same goals, sang and chanted together, and pushed in unison, rather than remaining in our small ideological or social subgroups. Many, including myself, voiced how we felt psychologically empowered. Most of us felt more support from others once there was this new sense of shared identity vis-a-vis the regime. We fell in love with the idea of a commune that can function and prosper. We took pride in Tahrir, liberated through belonging and collectively fighting the regime.

Reicher notes that many interviewees explained how an unexpected sense of euphoria and empowerment stayed with people after the event. Some cited this as the reason they felt confident enough to resist the poll tax months after the event itself. Indeed, the poll tax collapsed when the riots and town hall protests were followed up with a successful campaign of mass nonpayment. A success story of collective opposition and disobedience that could have brought any regime to its knees.

Feelings of empowerment and collective victory can affect one's motivation for involvement in subsequent collective action. Having more confidence in the movement and themselves as actors can lead to more collective action, whereby people feel more and more able to participate collectively in protests, civil disobedience and other social movements. Tangible social change then becomes possible.

Some questions that still lack a solid answer: Why did some of the radicals — old or new — leave the homogeneity of the new shared identity of Tahrir? Why didn't palpable and sustainable social change take place following such empowerment, and what were the obstacles? How did our revolution lose the converted? In essence, what happened socially post-Tahrir? Where is my Suez brother in revolt now?

The regime assumed we were one threatening entity, when in fact we were still heterogeneous, when it was their assumption, and the actions they based on it, that catalyzed our homogenization. Perhaps it is therefore safe to assume that their weapon in the face of that assumed and fulfilled unity would naturally be fragmenting us into the heterogeneous state we are currently in: “Divide and conquer.”

Many fragmenting events took place in the years to follow. Maspero targeted the isolation of Coptic Christians and excluding them from the revolution. Shortly after, those who opposed parliamentary elections and fought in Mohamed Mahmoud were excluded too, and portrayed as anti-democracy thugs by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and Brotherhood leaders who secured a parliamentary majority. The Salafis who learned to protest and “go against the ruler” were subjected to what the Maspero Christians faced, and the Abbasseya clashes resulted in the slaughtering of many. As months and years passed, more of us were targets of smear campaigns and moral exclusion, in order to secure the extinction of our kind. Our collective identity born in Tahrir was subject to smearing, killing, detention, rape and even internal treason and sell-outs. And, of course, the polarization of Egypt aided the targeting of Brotherhood supporters and resulted in a carte blanche to kill thousands, and to wage war against our collective identity under the guise of the “war on terror.”

The fact that propaganda, torture and divisive tactics to fragment the social identity we established in Tahrir took place does not mean we too did not play a role, whether active or passive, in the events that happened post-Tahrir. Many would argue that our collective identity was naïve, or perhaps too pious for politics, or even too radical to negotiate real change. But maybe the change Reicher described never had the potential to be sustainable. A collective identity might just be related to an event, and is therefore intrinsically temporal and unstable.

What is even more astonishing is the fact that the police's actions that united us against them four years ago appear to not be as effective any more, although police violations and unprovoked violence is on the rise.

Thanks to Reicher and many sociologists, the mechanisms of crowd behavior and uprising can be explained, but what currently needs research and focus are the reasons behind our inability to sustain such a change from an individual identity into a collective.

Will it be possible to re-homogenize on our own again? Is our threshold now too high, or are we just desensitized in a way that makes provoking the moderate into a new shared collective identity out of reach? Will dehumanization of those still seeking change and the conditioning of people into passivity guarantee that no homogenization will be possible again?

Four years on, I will be protesting among other women in unison for our collective identity, defying fear as we stand in the same spot the “revolutionary flower” fell, covered in her own blood. Shaimaa al-Sabbagh marched on January 24 carrying flowers to commemorate our departed and to reaffirm her collective identity of Tahrir. Shaimaa was shot dead by security forces who perceived her as a threat and her peaceful marching as a provocation.  The police denies involvement, despite eye witnesses, pictures of officers with guns behind her and a video documenting her death. Shaimaa, as an individual, maintained the collective identity we created together in Tahrir. Many like her have not let go of this identity and are being punished for fighting to preserve it.

Could such a brutal action against Shaimaa re-homogenize us on the road back to liberation, or will she just become a name we add to the list of the departed we might soon be forced to erase? I have no answers yet, but I can't help but pray that many individual identities will once again integrate within the unity of a collective that ignites our souls and bodies into a sustainable force for real social change.