Taking A Look At The Five Stages Of Egyptian Revolution

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On January 25, 2011, Egypt dissolved into protests--a revolution thirty years in the making. The quasi-middle class (not comparable to the American standard of a middle class) of college educated youths and the working class united based on the culmination of years of corruption and abuse and the sparks that the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution and the 2011 Alexandria New Year’s Day bombings represented. The “Five Stages of Revolution” model can be applied to Egypt’s revolution, as well as some aspects of the J. Brown Paradigm of National Development, such as the Identifiable People Group, presented themselves throughout Egypt’s conflict.
J. Brown’s Paradigm for National Development define the Identifiable People Group of a Nationalistic movement …show more content…

Aspects of the long term causes for revolution acted as unifying forces between the classes. For example, a “strong sense of solidarity [occurred] among the Egyptian population after the bombing of the Saints Church in Alexandria on New Year's Eve” (Elghayesh). Also, once the nationalistic identity shaped by the revolution began to grow, the government served as an antagonist to unite the middle and working classes (Goodman). The IPG’s cultural nationalism came in the form of social media. It became the new cultural norm and helped them to celebrate, share, and understand their culture and also served as a platform to unify them. The use of social media proved unique to Egypt’s IPG as they were the first to utilize this innovation on a broad and generally successful scale to unify themselves and spread the revolution. Consequently, social media has been used to a greater degree as an agent of change throughout the world following Egypt's revolution. The Kony 2012 movement, for example, shows how putting an issue on social media can lead to an international response. Most IPG’s have specifics symbols and things unique to their revolution due to their identity and cultural nationalism. While many protesters held up their shoes, a sign of deception in Egyptian culture, with …show more content…

The most obvious long term cause of the Egyptian Revolution is the nation’s historical and ongoing rampant government corruption. Mubarak ruled after being elected in a series of rigged elections, like the rest of the government. Just as the corruption of the government pressed the Egyptian people towards revolution, corruption and torture policies of the police force bred discontent throughout Egypt. The beating of Khaled Saeed exemplifies this mismanagement: “ Saeed was a 28-year-old Egyptian from Alexandria who was beaten to death on 6 June 2010 for refusing to show his ID to two policeman. He was abducted in a police vehicle, taken to a police station, tortured to death and his corpse was later dumped in the street” (Elgahayesh). Another cause was uneven demographics. Although high population growth is characteristic of a country in stage three, “Take Off” of Rostow’s Stages of Growth, in Egypt this led to a“youth bulge.” Additionally, high unemployment rates, urbanization, and the rapid growth of the university system all skewed Egypt’s demographics. Technology played a large role in setting up Egypt for its revolution as the internet became a standard part of daily life in the twenty first century and encouraged global interconnectedness that allowed information to be freely, to a degree, shared and spread all around the world. The widespread

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