Sunday, August 14, 2011

He Who Wins the War

History has a way of changing over time. By the time historians are done with it, it may hardly resemble what really happened. This is not the case for all of history, but perhaps when there is a battle of sorts. The history of our revolution will be written largely depending on the outcome of this war, which we have not yet won.

It has taken the regime six months to recover from the devastating blow delivered by the people in the Jan 25 revolution. It was knocked down but not knocked out. It’s up again with full force, responding to our earlier blow. Make no mistake, the SCAF is the backbone of the corrupt regime we continue to live with today.

Past regime figures are re-emerging, telling us false tales of what we saw unfold before our eyes. Figures like Osama Saray, the editor and chief of the venomous Ahram, are emerging to tell us fantasies of what they did during the revolution. Hossam Badrawy, briefly head of NDP, is emerging to give us a dramatization of the last days of Mubarak. State Security is working full throttle too. The amount of videos defaming activists and the revolution are increasingly worrying. The media is full of falsified facts accusing April 6 Movement , revolutionaries are being tried in military courts, and there are no signs that the rulers are in any way supporting the values of the revolution.

It has taken the regime six months to come up with its version of the truth. Now it’s trying to sell it to Egyptians once again, trying to tell them that what they saw wasn’t true. They’re back there, playing victim. No, it was some foreign hand, they tell us, that caused the revolution as if we had nothing to complain about before it, as though the foreign hands were in charge of corruption, murder and misinformation. They’re trying to tell us that some unknown elements killed protesters, as though Khaled Said wasn’t killed at the hand of the police force, as if the forensic reports were not forged to get the culprits off the hook. They’re trying to tell us Mubarak was in the dark, as if he were not a dictator who ripped the country apart and deprived us of our freedoms.

They’re trying to retell the story we just told. They’re trying to take away our victories, as though we’re not entitled to even that. They even want to deprive us of the place that symbolized the collapse of their leader and our dictator. They’re trying to take back everything we gained through truth with their lies.

The good news is that we’re fighting back and we’re writing our own history. We hold some ground despite some defeats. We’re still hanging in there. The bad news is that they might succeed in the end. Remember how Mohamed Naguib was erased from history books? Remember how Nasser was glorified? Remember how King Farouk was defamed?

The regime might succeed because they control the tools necessary for writing history. They control media, state TV, weapons, books and they have all sorts of powers. We, on the other hand, possess only the truth. But the truth isn’t always enough. The truth needs the tools, needs the medium and it needs belief.

Our truth will be buried if we do not fight for it. It seems that those we aimed to bring down are taking credit for the revolution today. They remain at their posts and pretending they revolted against corruption and injustice. We have no choice but to win, because as the saying goes, “He who wins the war, writes the history."

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