Speaker 1: Welcome to take it up in here.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrew of the Channel Andrewism and I'm here.
Speaker 3: With Mia who didn't.
Speaker 2: Miss them learning today. I just wanted to shed lights
Speaker 2: on just some of the interesting history of the anarchists
Speaker 2: move went in Egypt. This is part two, first part really,
Speaker 2: but just went into the historical context and progression and
Speaker 2: how the anarchist community emerged in Egypt, you know, fueled
Speaker 2: by this growing Mediterranean network of migration, labor, mobility and communication.
Speaker 2: Of course, it started with the Italian community, known for
Speaker 2: their anarchism in that time, but they soon gained the
Speaker 2: support of other groups sharing a radical vision of social emancipation.
Speaker 2: I learned all this from the book Anarchism and Syndicalism
Speaker 2: in the Colonial and Post Colonial World, particularly the section
Speaker 2: written by Anthony Gorma on Egyptian history. In the years
Speaker 2: leading up to World War One, anarchos cynicalism, represented by
Speaker 2: the International Union, played a leading role in organizing and
Speaker 2: developing a militant labor movement, advocating for international solidarity among workers.
Speaker 2: They adapted well to Egypt's diverse society, embracing ethnic and
Speaker 2: religious pluralism and internationalism while opposing capitalism. Anarchists, along with
Speaker 2: socialists and liberals, contributed to the advancement of secular thoughts
Speaker 2: and Egyptian intellectual life, the even significant impact on their society. However,
Speaker 2: the anarchist movement faced challenges due to the state's coercion
Speaker 2: through surveillance, prosecution, and deportation.
Speaker 1: The authorities portrayed.
Speaker 2: Them as dissolute political adventurers pushing an alien ideology. Despite
Speaker 2: their achievements in formulating and anti capitalist discourse and advocating
Speaker 2: for social emancipation, other forces like the Egyptian Communist Party
Speaker 2: and the National Movement would take on some of the
Speaker 2: ideas with a louder and more prominent voice. Do they
Speaker 2: just want to give more details on the movement and
Speaker 2: what exactly they were doing in their heyday?
Speaker 1: Clearly, the anarchists move went in.
Speaker 2: Egypt was not confined to the local It was all
Speaker 2: about connected with anarchists from different countries, making international friendships
Speaker 2: and fighting for their shared ideals. The anarchists in Egypt
Speaker 2: got involved with the conference in Verva's and conferences in
Speaker 2: London and Italy and hung up with anarchists from Istanbul, Greece,
Speaker 2: Tunisia and more. Egypt became the spot for anarchists in
Speaker 2: the eastern Mediterranean, and they'd made connections all the way
Speaker 2: to the United States and South America.
Speaker 3: It's kind of interestingly playing a similar role to like
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundreds Japan in terms of the anarchist movement,
Speaker 3: where yeah, it's you know, you get these sort of
Speaker 3: like regional hubs that develop and people sort of like
Speaker 3: moved through and around them, which I think is really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, agreed, Agreed, and each of being in a hub,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of big name anarchists to are visiting, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, big name talking people like am Claire Cypriani,
Speaker 2: Elised Recluse, Aricoma ro Testa, Luigi Kaliani, and Pietro Gory.
Speaker 2: And of course with these agitators in the mix, the
Speaker 2: authority has called it the new of Us. But the
Speaker 2: real life flood of the movement with not these influential figures,
Speaker 2: they were the publications that this community was producing and
Speaker 2: reading and distributing. The anarchists in Egypt didn't just read
Speaker 2: from newsletters all around the world, though that was a
Speaker 2: part of it, but they also contributed their own articles.
Speaker 2: But always happening in Egypt they're connected, informed and motivated
Speaker 2: by the international community they had built. There are a
Speaker 2: bunch of publications dedicated to work as issues, offering insights, debates,
Speaker 2: and discussions on common difficulties on matters of labor, organization,
Speaker 2: and strategy. Facilitated by an increasingly developed international transport system,
Speaker 2: particularly steamership services, the International Anarchist press served as a
Speaker 2: vital channel the dissemination and diffusion.
Speaker 1: Of the movement's ideas.
Speaker 2: It was the anarchist Library before the anarchist Library in
Speaker 2: terms of.
Speaker 1: How they went about organizing and propriation.
Speaker 2: In Egypt, the anarchists there recognized the unique challenges of
Speaker 2: the local situation.
Speaker 1: That they have to deal with.
Speaker 2: For the European anarchists, promoting the message of emancipation and
Speaker 2: combat and the exploitation, ignorance, and injustice caused by capitalism,
Speaker 2: the states and religious authority would be no easy task
Speaker 2: in a region where, for one, they're already being seen
Speaker 2: as part of the onicle and attempts of political domination
Speaker 2: by Western powers, and also in a region with very
Speaker 2: deep historical religious divisions, you know, such as the Crusades
Speaker 2: and the British French colonization. It's really one of the
Speaker 2: major projects I suppose the European anarchists needed to communicate
Speaker 2: to the local population was that their ire did not
Speaker 2: lay with Europeans as a whole. It lay primarily with
Speaker 2: the European ruling class, and so when it came into
Speaker 2: critique and societal issues and has strongly attacked the evils
Speaker 2: of capitalism, and of course that had the best reception
Speaker 2: among the Egyptian workers. Of course, this isn't to say
Speaker 2: that the European workers in Egypt were like completely in
Speaker 2: common with the Egyptian workers, despite the fact that the
Speaker 2: ire of the Egyptian workers should really lie primarily with
Speaker 2: the European ruling class that was responsible for the imperialization
Speaker 2: of their country and the expectation of their people. The
Speaker 2: presence of the European workers did also contribute to the
Speaker 2: exploitation because those European workers were paid so much better
Speaker 2: than native worn workers were. It was experienced and privileges
Speaker 2: that the Native one workers did not have access to. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: although anarchists typically advocate for emancipation from all religious authorities,
Speaker 2: Islam wasn't specifically targeted in their literature, and there was
Speaker 2: probably a pragmatic consideration for whether anti religiou rhetoric would fly,
Speaker 2: considering they could just be reported because of course that
Speaker 2: was a crime. They still took on a hostile attitude
Speaker 2: towards the Egyptian state, though, condemn its course of actions,
Speaker 2: surveillance culture, and abusive power, but they didn't confront it
Speaker 2: head on. The program of action was far more focused
Speaker 2: on the goal of social transformation through the use of propaganda, education,
Speaker 2: and workers associations. Because of the mixed conditions in Europe
Speaker 2: and in Egypt, the ideal of people of different races, religions,
Speaker 2: and nationalities united in solidarity had some real potency to it.
Speaker 2: So the internationalist mission was a very central component in
Speaker 2: their messaging at public conferences and at labor meetings, But
Speaker 2: it really was more so about the speaking the propaganda
Speaker 2: of the word rather than the propaganda of the deed.
Speaker 2: In fact, interestingly, for that time, the anarchists in Egypt
Speaker 2: didn't really engage in much propaganda of the deed at all,
Speaker 2: Propaganda the deed being you know, political violence and assassination attempts.
Speaker 1: For those who know you know a bit about.
Speaker 2: The anarchists of that time, propaganda of the deed was
Speaker 2: what they were known for. They had some some big
Speaker 2: name assassinations in the books. For example, Franz Fudinan I
Speaker 2: believe was assassinated by an anarchist.
Speaker 3: No hold on Franford nand is the guy he was
Speaker 3: killed by. Gavya Princett, the guy who started World War One.
Speaker 2: Right. I've seen some sources call him a nationalist, souses
Speaker 2: call him an anarchist.
Speaker 3: I don't think he was an anarchist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was exposed to socialist, anarchist and communist writings
Speaker 2: when he was younger, through school and through his roommate
Speaker 2: danielo Iriech, but he was more so associated with nationalists,
Speaker 2: particularly when he got around to assassinate in Franz Ferdinand.
Speaker 2: Nazis and fascists did call him an anarchist and a socialist,
Speaker 2: But it seems as though although he was inspired by
Speaker 2: nationalists anarchists, he was more so in the nationalists side
Speaker 2: of the equation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean they did kill a few Habsburgs, which
Speaker 3: always always a good thing to have less Habsburgs in
Speaker 3: the world. You can you can you can make you
Speaker 3: can make a chart over time and what access is
Speaker 3: good and the other axis is Habsburg. You can see
Speaker 3: that they're adversely correlated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, habspurgs or something else.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the anarchists in Egypt not too much into
Speaker 2: the political violence and assassinations. They were focused really on
Speaker 2: promoting the ideas through spoken and written communication, you know,
Speaker 2: like public meetings, demonstrations in the press, and the press
Speaker 2: was really the crucial axis of their efforts and disseminating
Speaker 2: the ideas and sustaining their identity. They had local properly,
Speaker 2: they had local publications like that Tribuna Liberal, Lepero, Looks
Speaker 2: and others, which save to spread anarchist thought and discuss.
Speaker 1: Ideas and issues of social emancipation.
Speaker 2: The weekly paper l'apero mostly promoted anarcho syndicalism, and then
Speaker 2: the paper Ill Dominant Dominie came up and decided to
Speaker 2: adopt a more tridently libertarian tone. And then you have
Speaker 2: Rise Again Or, which is another people another weekly that
Speaker 2: promoted a very strong anti clerical line. And then there
Speaker 2: was the people who Ergatis, which was or the Worker,
Speaker 2: and that was an organized organ for the emancipation of
Speaker 2: women and the worker, and it provided primarily for a
Speaker 2: Greek language readership. Are see a lot of these seapers
Speaker 2: will tailor towards specific languages, so that Greek had Italian
Speaker 2: and you also had French like Legnon and l Idea.
Speaker 2: But despite its polygod character, the anarchist press in Egypt
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to have included an Arabic language newspaper, which
Speaker 2: is kind of weird when you're surrounded by Arabic speaking people. However,
Speaker 2: anarchism had regularly featured in the mainstream Arabic newspapers since
Speaker 2: since the eighteen nineties, usually however in reports and the
Speaker 2: activities in the movement abroad, not locally in Egypt. At
Speaker 2: the same time, there were also journals like Al Muktataf
Speaker 2: and Al Hilal, which carried articles discussing the origins and
Speaker 2: development of anarchist thought and practice. It seems as though
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety seven there was also a figure who
Speaker 2: engaged with socialized ideas, but that particular publication seems to
Speaker 2: have been closed down quite quickly by the authorities, particularly
Speaker 2: for feature in the work of Salama Musa and Shibili Shumayu,
Speaker 2: who were two Egyptian writers who were clearly influenced by
Speaker 2: anarchist ideas. Something that just occurred to me is that
Speaker 2: what it could be influencing this is that the Italians
Speaker 2: and the Greeks and the French and all these different
Speaker 2: people who are writing about these anarchist ideas in Egypt.
Speaker 2: It's possibly they had a bit more leeway when it
Speaker 2: came to the local authorities that locals themselves would not have.
Speaker 2: Their foreign status may have provided them with slight immunity
Speaker 2: in comparison. And this is just me spitball in, but
Speaker 2: it's possible that Arabophone writers and speakers would be taken
Speaker 2: on significantly more risk if they were to agitate in
Speaker 2: the same ways that these you know, migrant workers were advocating.
Speaker 2: And then there's also the component and that speculation, but
Speaker 2: there is a proven component of financial difficulties and limited
Speaker 2: literacy rates among the Egyptian population that made it difficult
Speaker 2: to distribute Arabic language material, religious and anarchism because a
Speaker 2: lot of the workers in Egypt who spoke Arabic were
Speaker 2: not literate. What did help, though, because you know, the
Speaker 2: anarchists were about that life. They would go to cafes
Speaker 2: and read the newspapers out loud to reach their target audience.
Speaker 2: The first podcasters exactly exactly, the first podcasters for real,
Speaker 2: as the anarchist movement in Egypt was really commemorating important
Speaker 2: political events, celebrating new principles through posters, leaflets, and flyers
Speaker 2: celebrating the animal history of events like the Paris Commune
Speaker 2: in May day truly spread that message of international solidarity
Speaker 2: among the workers, and anarchists in Egypt are also very
Speaker 2: fond of showing solidarity to their international figures like Francisco Ferrer,
Speaker 2: who was a very influential Spanish anarchist thinker who did
Speaker 2: a lot of work in the field of anarchist education.
Speaker 2: He created for their schools, which influenced figures like Goldman
Speaker 2: to create their own modern schools in the US and elsewhere.
Speaker 2: And he was arrested and then executed, which led to
Speaker 2: a lot of protests both locally and internationally, making him
Speaker 2: something of a martyr for the anarchist cause. And so
Speaker 2: the outrage expressed at the execution of Ferver was not
Speaker 2: simply just a protest against the attorney, but also recognition
Speaker 2: of his status as an advocate for cycle education, which
Speaker 2: is an important vehicle for you know.
Speaker 1: Social emancipation.
Speaker 2: Before Francisco Ferrera was executed, though anarchists in Egypt were
Speaker 2: already working on educational programs. In fact, they launched their
Speaker 2: most ambitious project, the Free Popular University or Universita Popularity
Speaker 2: Liberal or UPL, in alexand Andrea in nineteen oh one.
Speaker 2: The UPL aimed to provide free evening education to the
Speaker 2: popular classes and received great support across alexandri and society.
Speaker 2: Courses included you know, the works of Tolstoi and Bucunan,
Speaker 2: the arts, and pragmatic topics like worker negotiation strategies. However,
Speaker 2: the upl's radical nature also brought criticism, with the Italian
Speaker 2: authorities initiating legal proceedings against the UPL lecturer for some
Speaker 2: remarks he made about the assassination of the Italian king Umbelta. First,
Speaker 2: I of course leave you to speculate what those comments
Speaker 2: and remarks may have been. But despite some initial public support,
Speaker 2: its critics accused the UPL of being based on depraved principles.
Speaker 2: Now I mentioned this school before, and the episode did
Speaker 2: on Islam and anarchism, and like I said in that episode,
Speaker 2: Ouric speakers would quickly marginalized from the education, and the
Speaker 2: UPL gradually became more aimed toward and controlled by upper
Speaker 2: class interests. In fact, within a year, reliably bourgeois elements
Speaker 2: had arrested control of the UPL from its anarchist founders
Speaker 2: and had wrested controlled the UPL from its anarchist founders
Speaker 2: and proceeded to transform it into a vocational college that,
Speaker 2: among other things, taught shorthand, accountancy, and languages. So, despite
Speaker 2: its very brief existence as a revolutionary project, the UPL
Speaker 2: marked an important movement for anarchism in Egypt and inspired
Speaker 2: other movements seeking educational reform. The upl's impacts and vision
Speaker 2: influenced Egyptian nationalists, who established the Higher Schools Club in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five, which also emphasized educational means.
Speaker 1: For political purposes.
Speaker 2: Anarchism in Egypt had a significant impact on the development
Speaker 2: of the labor movement. As a new working class emerged
Speaker 2: towards the end of the nineteenth century, anacho cynicalism emerged
Speaker 2: as a powerful force advocating for formal collective organization as
Speaker 2: the instrument of social revolution. Of course, each just's labor
Speaker 2: movement wasn't entirely new, as killed have been part of
Speaker 2: the traditional Ottoman order, regulating trade and provide mutual lead
Speaker 2: but the modernization efforts of Muhammad Ali no Relation and
Speaker 2: Egypt's integration into the international capitalist system changed that landscape,
Speaker 2: affecting the role of guilds and shape in the working class.
Speaker 2: Foreign workers, like I mentioned before, came into Egypt alongside
Speaker 2: native Egyptian labor, but despite the differences between them, evidence
Speaker 2: does show a strong cooperation and collaboration between the groups.
Speaker 2: The native Egyptian working class was affected by a variety
Speaker 2: of factors, but there was a model of collaboration that
Speaker 2: was emersion between European and Egyptian workers. The Cigarette Rollers Union,
Speaker 2: for example, was initially a Greek body in Cairo, but
Speaker 2: later became more inclusive as their successful strike in eighteen
Speaker 2: and nine to nineteen hundred marked a milestone in Egyptian
Speaker 2: industrial militancy. However, their subsequent strikes fixed However, subsequent strikes
Speaker 2: faced brutal confrontations with the police, leading to divisions.
Speaker 1: Among the workers.
Speaker 2: By the end of the first decade of the century,
Speaker 2: the Anacos Syndicalist International Union had emerged as a significant
Speaker 2: force based on universalist principles and international solidarity. The optimism
Speaker 2: for the future of a socialist center in Cairo was
Speaker 2: a reflection of the broader movement within the working class
Speaker 2: led by anarchists and cynicalists. Anarchism first appeared in Egypt
Speaker 2: among Italian political refugees and workers during the eighteen sixties,
Speaker 2: nurtured by a development international network of labor transporting communications
Speaker 2: expanded beyond Italian circles, attract members from across Egypt's diverse
Speaker 2: communities the heterogynous through the discourse of radical social emancipation
Speaker 2: and propaganda and public action declaring the universality of humankind
Speaker 2: and the crime the evils of capitalism state power on
Speaker 2: the dogma, the anarchist movement would come into force in
Speaker 2: Egypt's history in the years after nineteen hundred. Anarchist cyndicalism
Speaker 2: played a central role in development of the labor movement
Speaker 2: or circulating the rights of workers in struggle against capital,
Speaker 2: against capital and promoting internationalists activism yet wildly rejected. Yet
Speaker 2: while they rejected nationalism as an organizing principle, anarchists did
Speaker 2: at times to make common cause of the nationalists against
Speaker 2: imperialism and arguably had a revie lub eats An influence
Speaker 2: on the strategy is antactics of the nationalist movement.
Speaker 1: That's all I have for today.
Speaker 2: On this brief month in Egyptian anarchist history, but I
Speaker 2: hope an illuminated, very interesting.
Speaker 1: Chapter and context. That's fair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think there's another kind of important, broader
Speaker 3: lesson from this that is I think mostly forgotten, which
Speaker 3: is that you know, from this period of I don't know,
Speaker 3: roughly the late eighteen hundreds through about nineteen seventeen, like
Speaker 3: in most parts of the world except for basically like
Speaker 3: Western Europe, or not even Western Europe, like apart from
Speaker 3: basically like the Germany's, if you're talking about socialism, there's
Speaker 3: like anywhere in the world, there's a very very good
Speaker 3: chance the thing you're actually talking about isism. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's been a sort of systemic attempt by both liberal
Speaker 3: and sort of later communists like historians to sort of
Speaker 3: like wipe the historical record clean and make it look
Speaker 3: like everything was always sort of like the sort of
Speaker 3: on rush of Marxism, but like that just wasn't true.
Speaker 3: And they were very powerful anarchist movements on every continent,
Speaker 3: and they did a lot, they did a lot of
Speaker 3: really interesting things, and yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 2: Really needs to be respected and recognized and it hasn't
Speaker 2: so far, So flee this and if folks check out
Speaker 2: the book they can get some more insights on some
Speaker 2: of the other actions that have taken place in that time. Again,
Speaker 2: the book is anarchism and syndicalism in the colonial and
Speaker 2: post colonial world. It really illuminates a lot of that
Speaker 2: lost history. Thanks for joining me and be young on
Speaker 2: this episode of It Can Happen Here Again. You can
Speaker 2: follow me Andrew on the YouTube channel andrewism on support
Speaker 2: on petare dot com slash Sandrew take Ko.
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