美国国家公共电台 NPR--'Tahrir's Youth' follows the trajectories of some young revolutionaries in Egypt

'Tahrir's Youth' follows the trajectories¹ of some young revolutionaries in Egypt

Transcript²

NPR's Leila Fadel talks to author Rusha Latif, who embedded³ herself with Egyptian revolutionaries, and writes about what the world can learn from a defeated revolt in Tahrir's Youth.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

In 2011, a popular uprising in Egypt captured the world's imagination. Young activists⁵ gathered by the thousands and drew hundreds of thousands more. Eighteen days of protests led to the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak after more than three decades in power. But a counterrevolution brewed⁶, revolutionaries once united against Mubarak fought about the country's future. The military staged a coup⁷, and many of the faces of that revolution now languish⁸ in prison. Rusha Latif is the author of "Tahrir's Youth: Leaders Of A Leaderless Revolution." She embedded herself with young activists and writes about what the world can learn from a defeated revolt.

RUSHA LATIF: I think this is actually a very good time to look back on that experience. So the Egyptian revolution, you know, it kicked off a wave of mass uprisings that kind of spread across the globe, you know, over the past decade. And a lot of these movements have, in some way, you know, shared characteristics with the Egyptian revolution or have mirrored it or replicated⁹ it, right? And one of those things are, like, its organizational form. You know, these kind of mass horizontal movements that don't really have a visible, clear leadership or organizational structure. And the Egyptian revolution, that had its advantages, like, in the early days of the revolt, but later, the issue became - after, you know, they got what they want, this lack of organization kind of became a liability.

And I think there's a very clear pattern that's been kind of emerging around these movements. And I think stepping back and thinking, like, OK, well, we know that there's these huge flare-ups that can happen. It could be an incident like the murder of George Floyd or Khalid Saeed in Egypt, right? But the question is...

FADEL: Which is the young man who was beaten to death by police. That sparked the 2011 uprising.

LATIF: Yes. And so then the question is, how do you prepare for those moments? How can you make sure that you're prepared and have an idea and a clear project and vision for the change that you want so that when the masses - right? - the public is ready to get behind something, there's something there for them to keep them invested? So I think that imagination kind of needs to happen, that thinking, that strategizing and preparation for those moments.

FADEL: One of the themes of this book is really muddying this assumption that the revolt, as you mentioned, was leaderless, which it was often written about in that way, and that it was a Facebook or Twitter revolution. But you write that's reductive and actually cheapens what actually happened and how these people got to the square.

LATIF: I think the story is more complicated than that. Sure, you could say that the, you know, revolution or the movement was leaderless and that it didn't have, like, traditional leadership that we kind of associate historically with revolutionary movements. It didn't have, like, the sort of male charismatic figure at the helm of the movement. It didn't have an organization running it. But that's not to say it was without leaders. It definitely had leaders who took the initiative in the weeks before January 25, who were planning and strategizing for that day and who were trying to sustain the movement in the weeks that followed.

So I would argue that that's probably not the best term. Some have used the term leader-full (ph), which I think maybe better captures what happened on the ground. And it's a good term in that it helps us kind of analyze¹⁰ to what extent, you know, the movement was led and not led.

FADEL: As soon as that common goal of ousting¹¹ Mubarak was gone, like you say, a lot of these activists took different paths, and the different revolutionary groups split. But it was more than just splitting. You know, there was one moment in your book where you understand that some people didn't see even Muslim Brotherhood¹², the Islamist group that ultimately won the elections - more organized than these other groups - as human. And I'm thinking of Rabaa, in 2013, when more than a thousand pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters were killed in the middle of the city. And one of the activists you follow is completely unempathetic about, really, what is a massacre¹³ in the middle of Cairo.

LATIF: Yeah, that was hard to write about. I think it was just very representative of what was happening in Egyptian society at the time. And it's true. There were activists who kind of share those sentiments with the larger public. You know, I wouldn't say they were a minority or majority. I don't know. But...

FADEL: I mean, I definitely heard that a lot at that time.

LATIF: Yeah.

FADEL: Yeah. I mean, I remember coming out of that square and people having seen people who'd been killed and then a bunch of other people saying, oh, they deserved it, or it's because they're trying to destroy the country or...

LATIF: Yeah, exactly. And I think that was the sentiment of the one activist⁴ that I mentioned. I think there's a lot of factors, too, that probably shaped, you know, his personal trajectory¹⁴. You know, the fact that they didn't have this very clear idea of what they were doing from the beginning just made it very easy for, you know, some of them, I think, to lose their way from, like, their original positions, you know?

So my own impression of that one activist is I don't know that - I mean, he seemed like a very different person to me in that interview than my earlier interviews with him. And I can't help but wonder if it was because, as a group, as a collective, as revolutionaries, they never really had a clear ideology¹⁵. Like, the conflicts between different political actors, it was really difficult to maybe see the course that they were, you know, marching on and to stick to it.

FADEL: I think I walk away wondering, was anything actually achieved? Was any of this worth it? Because many of these activists that you write about have been exiled, silenced, imprisoned¹⁶. Some are still in prison...

LATIF: Yeah.

FADEL: ...Under a much more repressive regime in some ways than Mubarak's regime was.

LATIF: You know, yeah, that was a question I posed to the activists themselves...

FADEL: Yeah.

LATIF: ...Like, you know, given everything that you guys lost and sacrificed, and there was so much death. I mean, I asked one of the - the one activist I asked, his brother was - you know, he was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood himself, and his brother was massacred. He was killed in the massacres¹⁷ in 2013. And his response was, you know, they didn't have any regrets about what they had started because, you know, in that moment, it was the right thing to do. And so in terms of the gains, I mean, it's hard to talk about when the cost has been so high.

FADEL: Right.

LATIF: But definitely what they've done was they've created a really powerful memory for themselves and for the country that can't easily be put out. You know, there's this idea still that's latent, I think, that, like, it's still possible. Like, we didn't think it was possible back then, but we can still do it. We can still come out of these conditions that we're in collectively. I think that's a really powerful idea that they introduced into their country and into the world. And at a time, I think, where we still really kind of need that hope, that memory is there for them and for us to draw on.

FADEL: Rusha Latif is the author of "Tahrir's Youth: Leaders Of A Leaderless Revolution." Thank you so much for your time.

LATIF: Thank you.

1 trajectories   

n.弹道( trajectory的名词复数 )；轨道；轨线；常角轨道

参考例句：

• To answer this question, we need to plot trajectories of principal stresses. 为了回答这个问题，我们尚须画出主应力迹线图。 来自辞典例句
• In the space program the theory is used to determine spaceship trajectories. 在空间计划中，这个理论用于确定飞船的轨道。 来自辞典例句

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 embedded   

a.扎牢的

参考例句：

• an operation to remove glass that was embedded in his leg 取出扎入他腿部玻璃的手术
• He has embedded his name in the minds of millions of people. 他的名字铭刻在数百万人民心中。

4 activist   

n.活动分子，积极分子

参考例句：

• He's been a trade union activist for many years.多年来他一直是工会的积极分子。
• He is a social activist in our factory.他是我厂的社会活动积极分子。

5 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 brewed   

调制( brew的过去式和过去分词 )； 酝酿； 沏（茶）； 煮（咖啡）

参考例句：

• The beer is brewed in the Czech Republic. 这种啤酒是在捷克共和国酿造的。
• The boy brewed a cup of coffee for his mother. 这男孩给他妈妈冲了一杯咖啡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 coup   

n.政变；突然而成功的行动

参考例句：

• The monarch was ousted by a military coup.那君主被军事政变者废黜了。
• That government was overthrown in a military coup three years ago.那个政府在3年前的军事政变中被推翻。

8 languish   

vi.变得衰弱无力，失去活力，（植物等）凋萎

参考例句：

• Without the founder's drive and direction,the company gradually languished.没有了创始人的斗志与指引，公司逐渐走向没落。
• New products languish on the drawing board.新产品在计划阶段即告失败。

9 replicated   

复制( replicate的过去式和过去分词 )； 重复； 再造； 再生

参考例句：

• Later outplant the seedlings in a replicated permanent test plantation. 以后苗木出圃栽植成重复的永久性试验林。
• The phage has replicated and the donor cells have lysed. 噬菌体已复制和给体细胞已发生裂解。

10 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。

11 ousting   

驱逐( oust的现在分词 )； 革职； 罢黜； 剥夺

参考例句：

• The resulting financial chaos led to the ousting of Bristol-Myers' s boss. 随后引发的财政混乱导致了百时美施贵宝的总裁下台。
• The ousting of the president has drawn widespread criticism across Latin America and the wider world. 洪都拉斯总统被驱逐时间引起拉丁美洲甚至全世界的广泛批评。

12 brotherhood   

n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊

参考例句：

• They broke up the brotherhood.他们断绝了兄弟关系。
• They live and work together in complete equality and brotherhood.他们完全平等和兄弟般地在一起生活和工作。

13 massacre   

n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀

参考例句：

• There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中，这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
• If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀，大屠杀就有可能再次发生！

14 trajectory   

n.弹道，轨道

参考例句：

• It is not difficult to sketch the subsequent trajectory.很容易描绘出它们最终的轨迹。
• The path followed by a projectile is called its trajectory.抛物体所循的路径称为它的轨道。

15 ideology   

n.意识形态，(政治或社会的)思想意识

参考例句：

• The ideology has great influence in the world.这种思想体系在世界上有很大的影响。
• The ideal is to strike a medium between ideology and inspiration.我的理想是在意识思想和灵感鼓动之间找到一个折衷。

16 imprisoned   

下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was imprisoned for two concurrent terms of 30 months and 18 months. 他被判处30个月和18个月的监禁，合并执行。
• They were imprisoned for possession of drugs. 他们因拥有毒品而被监禁。

17 massacres   

大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 )； 惨败

参考例句：

• The time is past for guns and killings and massacres. 动不动就用枪、动不动就杀、大规模屠杀的时代已经过去了。 来自教父部分
• Numberless recent massacres were still vivid in their recollection. 近来那些不可胜数的屠杀，在他们的头脑中记忆犹新。