In this interview with the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, co-founder of Egypt’s April 6 Movement Ahmed Salah talks about what strategies and tactics they employed, how they dealt with state violence, what role the internet and social media played in sparking the uprising and what the next steps are for Egyptians. To read a transcript of the interview, click here.
Eric Stoner is a co-founding editor at Waging Nonviolence and an adjunct professor at New York University. His articles have appeared in The Guardian, Mother Jones, Salon, The Nation, Sojourners and In These Times.
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In many ways the April 6 Movement was lucky to be able to use the internet to help coordinate their activism. In the UK, Facebook preemptively permanently disabled the pages of pro-democracy activists just before the royal wedding.
Yeah I heard about that. Pretty crazy. I think you’re right about the internet in that activists should not become too reliant on it and not forget how to organize offline, because as we’ve seen in so many recent cases, especially in repressive countries, certain websites can be blocked or the internet can be shut off entirely. I think when Mubarak shut off the internet though it actually backfired, because it drove more people into the streets.