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| It's all part of a vast conspiracy to defame Egypt's leaders according to, er, Egypt's leaders. |
One thing that usually unites all conspiracy theories is that they lack logical coherence. At the broadest level, it is doubtful that so many entities would be conspiring to be against
you specifically Similarly, it is often doubtful whether others would go to such extreme lengths to put
you down. It is unfortunate that both are operational in modern-day Egypt after the downing of a Russian aircraft. Yes, it's apparently being called a Western plot to defame Egypt's leadership. While even Russian authorities have now
concluded that the plane was brought down by a bomb, Egyptian ones are still
in denial:
Instead, Mr. Sisi and his supporters have shut down any
discussion of possible terrorism, and rallied patriotic passions against the idea, portraying Western alarms as a plot against Egypt. “Of
course we are talking about a conspiracy,” Dr. Alaa Abdel Wahab, an
adviser to the minister of tourism, said Thursday in a telephone call to
a morning talk show. Dr. Wahab argued that Western governments were
trying to harm Egypt because they resented “the popular support for
President Sisi.”
This sort of pattern has a long history:
Egyptian
officials have invoked similar themes for decades in response to
crises, from Egypt’s defeat in the Arab-Israeli War in 1967, blamed on
the United States and Britain, to the deadly floods this fall in
Alexandria, blamed on the plugging of sewers in the city by Islamists.
But
with so many jobs at stake — and so many other countries watching the
investigation — some say the government’s response to the crash may be
testing the limits of Egyptians’ willingness to suspend their criticism
and to unite against an ambiguous foreign threat. After
Mr. Sisi’s bellicose talk of going without food, “people are just
making fun of him,” said Hisham Kassem, a veteran Egyptian journalist
sympathetic to the president. “I am disappointed.”
The
government has approached every crisis as a shadow war against foreign
enemies, Mr. Kassem said, perhaps reflecting Mr. Sisi’s years in
military intelligence before he led the ouster of President Mohamed
Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood two years ago. “The president and all of
his advisers are from the security services,” Mr. Kassem said, but “if
you are going to handle a P.R. crisis using the security services, you
are going to bungle.”
If you devote even a smidgen of thought to the matter, it is easy to poke holes in this conspiracy. The most basic one is: if Egyptian leaders hate vile, conspiring Westerners so much, then why do they lament the loss of W
estern tourists? Theirs is
Eddie Murphy logic all over again:
kill the white people / but buy my record first. Except here it's...screw the white people / but visit my tourist traps first.
Should you really hate Europeans and all the rest, well, perhaps you shouldn't attempt make a living catering to their tourists to begin with.
PS: Also see Rob Brotherton's new
book on the
Psychology of Conspiracy Theories that is rather more forgiving of their logical inadequacies as a byproduct of cognitive limitations.
