Thugs

Another good video, also produced by Egypt's new online journalism. This is a series of interviews with protesters (many of them well-known activists) who all identify themselves as beltagiya ("thugs"), then go on to give their real professions (university professor, dentist, journalist) and the demands for which they have come to the square -- mocking the many who dismiss most protests and all clashes with the police as the work of the ubiquitous, infamous "thugs." (Reports suggest that the only verifiable thugs involved were plain-clothes reinforcement on the Ministry of Interior's side). 

The word beltagi refers to hired muscle--to neighborhood toughs (who have been part of Cairo neighborhoods forever), who under Mubarak were most often employed by the state, to intimidate voters and beat up demonstrators; but also by private individuals who needed something (say a business disagreement) taken care of and preferred to bring in their own men rather than the police. These days the word is a catch-all whose main effect is to obscure the real grievances and difference underlying any clash, casting a dismissive (class-inflected) smear over all participants. It can refer to anyone young, male, and of lower-class extraction; any protester whose views you don't understand or share; anyone engaged in or caught up in in violence. Every time a clash happens, this and a few other overused terms (the "remnants of the regime," "infiltrators") are thrown around -- lazily, fearfully and unhelpfully. 

Comments

[Jay Ulfelder]

In the USSR in the late 1980s, if street protests were reported in state newspapers, they were often described as gatherings of "hooligans." This impulse to dismiss politically by labeling pejoratively may be universal.

[Vendetta]

Great video! The term baltageya's use in the last year has become a catch-all phrase to discredit one camp or another. While at one time it was a weapon firmly in the hands of the protesters and opposition groups during Mubarak's time, today, the security and military apparatus has hijacked it and use it to undermine the public, the revolution and anyone who continues to make demands. Here's a great article about the emergence of the term in the post-Mubarak period.
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/438943

[forsoothsayer]

I notice the video maker didn't interview anyone who looks poor or is uneducated. They're the ones most often labelled as baltageya. Actually this video reinforces the classism you refer to.