The reaction of a segment of Egypt’s middle class to the opening of the new Grand Egyptian Museum, i.e the overstated celebration, is nothing new, nor is it different from their reactions to many previous events — beginning with June 30 protests that toppled President Mohamed Morsi and installed a military backed regime in 2013–2014, through the inauguration of the New Suez Canal in 2015, the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade in the opening of the Egyptian Civilization Museum in 2021, and the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement that concluded a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza. One could even extend the line further to say that we saw an aspect of this same moment during the demonstrations rejecting Gamal Abdel Nasser’s resignation on June 9–10 after the defeat by Israel in 1967.

This lies deep in the genetic makeup of the Egyptian middle class, which is unlike the Western European middle class. A large segment of it was not born out of the womb of the market, but rather out of the womb of the state — or within what Lebanese Marxist Philosopher Mahdi Amel called the colonial mode of production. Consequently, it remained attached to the state not only as employees in its bureaucratic apparatus but also as professionals and medium-scale entrepreneurs whose prosperity depended on the stability of state structures and on patronage and kinship ties with centers of power within its institutions, particularly its security apparatus.

The experience of January 2011 revolution that toppled years-long president Mohamed Hosni Mubarak was a harsh one for this broad segment of the Egyptian middle class, even though it was a remarkably gentle experience compared to revolutions and moments of change throughout world history — whether we compare it to major events like the French, Russian, or Iranian revolutions, or to regional moments such as the Syrian, Libyan, Sudanese, and Yemeni uprisings.

Its harshness did not stem from bloodshed or economic collapse, but from the condition of uncertainty amid the ambiguity surrounding the state’s position and capacity — a situation unfamiliar to a middle class accustomed to the overpowering presence of the state. The bloody course taken by some of the Arab revolutions as civil wars only compounded this sense of severity and deepened the Egyptian psyche’s attachment to certainty.

What we have lived through since 2013 — Egypt’s unique version of populism — is a populism not directed against the state or its institutions, but one that pleads for the state. People search for the state with tweezers; they are overjoyed when they catch a glimpse of it — whether in a police officer on the street, even if he takes bribes, or in the fleeting appearance of the director of the General Intelligence Service in mediating regional geopolitics, or in military vehicles stationed in front of vital facilities. The more the state disappears, falters, or veers off course, the more intensely people search for signs of it and exaggerate their celebration of its manifestations as a form of psychological compensation.

For that reason, this segment of Egyptians — specifically from the middle class — will remain enamored and eager for any manifestation of the Egyptian state, no matter how confused other indicators may be, and no matter how harsh the state’s policies might be in areas that directly affect their livelihood.

I once wrote an article in October 2022 about what I called the lust for renaissance — or, in more philosophical terms, what could be called Egyptian Hegelianism: a deep faith in the role and centrality of the state in shaping the nation’s future, and the ambivalent emotional stance that inhabits the Egyptian intellectual toward the state. He despises its despotism, yet melts with love for its “patriotism.” This state of ambivalence can only lead to a continuous tradition of political schizophrenia in Egyptian culture — a condition that the late Egyptian leftist critic Ghali Shukri described after the 1967 defeat when he said that he could neither support the state nor oppose it, as if he were, like Christ, suspended upon the cross.