Revolution 2.0. Wael Ghonim

Discussions proliferated through this e-mail group, but fieldwork remained limited.

      On ElBaradei’s Facebook fan page, both AbdelRahman and I tried hard to improve his public image in spite of the government’s vicious defamation campaigns. We searched through state press archives available online and extracted articles that praised ElBaradei’s efforts. These articles made the recent defamation look absurd: how could a “despised traitor” be a celebrated hero abroad? I found many pictures of ElBaradei with such world leaders as the American president, the French president, the German chancellor, the king of Saudi Arabia, and others. I deliberately published them to stress the fact that ElBaradei was not simply an “apolitical scientist,” as his detractors sought to portray him. AbdelRahman even translated and posted the full transcript of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which ElBaradei affirmed his loyalty and allegiance to both his country and his faith.

      The core accusation of the smear campaign was that ElBaradei was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, having misled the United States into believing that Saddam Hussein secretly harbored weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We were adamant about proving this to be a blatant lie. I found an online video of the UN Security Council meeting at which ElBaradei presented his report asserting that Iraq was free of any weapons of mass destruction. The report demanded more time for inspections and rejected the military intervention proposed by the United States. I added Arabic subtitles to the video and published it, hoping it would show ElBaradei’s innocence regarding allegations that he had somehow facilitated the U.S. war on Iraq.

      On April 6, 2010, less than three months later, the number of members of Mohamed ElBaradei’s page exceeded 100,000. The April 6 Youth Movement also attempted to celebrate its anniversary on that day by organizing a demonstration, but the attempt failed. The security forces were watchful and well prepared.

      Online, AbdelRahman and I were restrained. After all, we were writing on behalf of Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei. Our language was formal. We rarely posted our personal opinions, and we were convinced that the page had to present him in a formal light. Most contributors thought that Dr. ElBaradei was personally managing the page. The experience taught me a lot. I had never before managed a Facebook page.

      On April 15, I received an encouraging message from Dr. ElBaradei himself, sent through his son. He wrote: “Spent some time browsing the fanpage today. It is wonderful. Many thanks for a very creative and professional job. Keep it up.” I replied, thanking him for the support and telling him that it meant a lot to me. I cc’ed AbdelRahman Mansour in the e-mail thread and introduced him as the page’s second admin, who deserved as much recognition as I did for all his efforts.

      One of the important activities I initiated on the ElBaradei page was the use of opinion polls to make decisions. Despite the fact that Internet polls are far from scientific, they still offer a good means for testing trends of opinion. Besides, in Egypt, offline opinion polls, carried out through actual interviews, were possible only with a permit from the Ministry of Interior. Needless to say, the ministry had no interest in helping political activists gather information from the public.

      I located a good polling site that supported Arabic and subscribed to its services. The first poll I developed aimed to measure the page members’ level of satisfaction with Egypt’s status quo and to explore why many of them had not signed the seven-demands petition. More than 15,000 participants completed the questionnaire. I aggregated and analyzed the results, then sent a message to the e-mail group as well as to Dr. ElBaradei with many recommendations to help increase public support for the petition.

      After I provided these comments, Dr. ElBaradei invited me to meet a group of young men who had been working to promote the petition. First I met Dr. Mostafa al-Nagar, who had succeeded Abdel Rahman Youssef as the general coordinator of the “ElBaradei President of Egypt 2011” campaign. Mostafa came across as a sincere person who had a real desire for change. We became good virtual friends. We chatted online frequently about current events, encouraging each other and sharing disappointments. Mostafa was a dentist and political activist of my age who was quite dynamic, and State Security used the emergency law to arrest and detain him for his political dissidence on more than one occasion. He certainly had an abundance of street smarts, and I was admittedly lacking in that department.

      We constantly argued about the role of the Internet in the process of change. He believed that the Internet was a virtual world with limited impact on reality, while I found it to be the key vehicle to bringing forth the first spark of change. The Internet is not a virtual world inhabited by avatars. It is a means of communication that offers people in the physical world a method to organize, act, and promote ideas and awareness. The Internet was going to change politics in Egypt, I wrote on Facebook and Twitter, and the 2011 elections would not be similar to those in 2005.

      I will never forget the cynical remarks I received in response. A friend joked that the Egyptian regime would change the Internet before the Internet managed to change anything. Many actually believed that the regime would censor the Internet if it represented any sort of threat. Egypt would follow the Saudi Arabian example, they thought, where accessible websites are strictly controlled and citizens are unable to visit antigovernment sources. I did not agree. The Egyptian regime needed to be seen as a progressive, welcoming country to the outside world. Its economy depended in part on tourism, and the regime cared deeply about its global reputation.

      Things were moving quite slowly with Dr. ElBaradei’s campaign, and most of my recommendations were not implemented. My frustration increased, particularly as the rate of new signatures dropped. Yet I separated my personal feelings from the Facebook page. There I tried to spread hope. Both AbdelRahman and I followed all of ElBaradei’s news stories and his field campaigns. We published photos of his campaign visits to places like Old Cairo and Fayoum, and we continued to write his opinions and track the number of signatures on the statement as well as expose the political situation in the country. Many comments on the page demanded that Dr. ElBaradei take more practical steps on the ground and not limit himself to Facebook and Twitter.

      One of the decisive moments for me was meeting Dr. El-Mostafa Hegazy, who owns a strategic consulting firm, in his office. He invited me, Dr. Hazem Abdel Azim, and other activists to talk about change in Egypt. He was against the idea that political change should be personified or reduced to a single person’s campaign for presidency. His opinion was that it was critical at this phase to focus on change as a goal in and of itself. He wanted to establish the notion that Egyptians owned their country. It would inspire resistance to injustice and corruption across the board. I remember this meeting vividly. I was arguing that promoting ElBaradei was in essence promoting change. But I also agreed with Dr. Hegazy’s opinion — before ever meeting him — that positioning ElBaradei as a savior might end up hurting the real cause. After the meeting, the words “This country is our country!” rang loudly in my ears, and they continue to do so to this very day. I wanted every other Egyptian to shout them out as loudly as they could.

      A few days later we received an e-mail, in English, from Dr. Abdel Azim apologizing for not being able to continue with the political campaign for change.

      Dear All,

      I am very sorry to inform you that I will not be able to be engaged in any political activity related to our hope for change. My position is extremely sensitive as a senior government official.

      Although this is known from the beginning, but there was a miscalculation from my side. I was having a very firm position in the last weeks that I would like to continue in this initiative, and I can and willing to resign from my job any time to be free, and actually I prepared the resignation.

      Yet the equation was not that simple and my issue was very highly escalated to the extent that I heard signs of real threats of different sorts, on my well-being and on my family.

      It was sad to see Dr. Abdel Azim renouncing the efforts to bring about change in Egypt, but none of us could really blame him. We knew that these threats were very serious. Witnessing this firsthand only amplified my conviction that it was very important to work anonymously as much as possible. I kept contact with Dr. Abdel Azim, and occasionally we would chat online and share our thoughts on current events.