Conflating Foreign and Domestic Enemies: The Fascism of the Young Egypt Party

Fascism is, at its core, oppositional. It is predicated upon the elimination of an enemy—be it racial, cultural, or political—that threatens the very well-being of the nation. But this frightening foe that rallies thousands of black- and brown-shirted troops, authorizes deportations and concentration camps, and strengthens violent nationalisms is often little more than a myth. After all, the Jews were not a “mass tuberculosis” that would cause Germany to “[die] of an infected lung,” as Hitler staunchly proclaimed (Griffin 116). Cornelius Codreanu’s relentless anti-Marxist campaign in Romania attacked not a menacing ideological adversary but rather a paltry political party whose membership never exceeded 1,000 (Ioanid 410). And Mussolini could never quite timestamp the “parasitic encrustations of the past” he so desperately wanted to scour (Griffin 44); they were nothing more than words the Italian leader vehemently spewed to restless crowds.

But what if this enemy is real, leeching economic wealth and infringing upon political autonomy? What if, in other words, this enemy is a colonial power? Most fascist regimes were, in fact, the ones doing the colonizing; Mussolini’s regime occupied Libya and Ethiopia and Hitler’s empire expanded throughout the greater part of Europe during World War II. But the fascist movement in Egypt, a country under British imperial rule during the 1930s, tells a different story. During its political heydey from 1933 to 1940, the Young Egypt Party engendered violence and exclusionary notions of national identity—fascist trademarks—in the name of anti-colonial independence—a context markedly atypical of European fascist movements. In order to bring their vision of an Islamic ethno-religious state to fruition, Young Egypt conflated a repressive foreign enemy, Western ascendancy, with an innocent domestic enemy: bar owners, sex workers, Copts, and Jews. And so its platform provides a telling demonstration of fascism’s potent intermingling of real and perceived threats in order to propel its agenda forward.

Securing political, economic, and cultural sovereignty from Western power was the crux of Young Egypt’s party’s platform. Ahmad Husayn, the leader of the movement, was ardently against British imperialism, and believed that Europe was solely responsible for Egypt’s deterioration. According to Young Egypt, the British did not only dominate Egypt’s “administrative, legal and economic arrangements” by interfering in the country’s politics and deploying their troops throughout cities; their influence ran much deeper, eroding the very essence of what it meant to be Egyptian. The British had taken command of Egypt’s “social and cultural life,” “domesticat[ed]... [Egyptian politicians] to go about in awe and veneration of them,” and "instill[ed] it with doubt in its own capabilities and the capability of the country” (Janowski 47-48).

And many of these accusations were true. After all, British troops were stationed at the Suez Canal—an important waterway facilitating trade between Europe and Asia—from 1882 to 1956 and largely retained authority over Egypt’s economy for more than 50 years (Kenawy 282). By 1909, in fact, Britain was already importing half of all Egyptian exports and providing 30% of all Egyptian imports (Toledano 274). What’s more, Middle Eastern Studies professor Vickie Langohr succinctly writes: “until 1952 the British remained intimately involved in Egyptian domestic politics” (165). So although Egypt officially became independent in 1922, well before the Young Egypt Party was created, Husayn’s statements were by no means ill-founded; Britain still “maintained a degree of control over the country's military, political, and economic status” (Botman 290).

Young Egypt Party’s antidote for this Western hegemony, however, was incongruous. Their ultimate goal was that “Egypt become over all, a mighty empire composed of Egypt and the Sudan, allied with the Arab states” (Janowski 13) to “liberate the Islamic fatherland, returning glory to Islam and raising its banner on high everywhere” (Janowski 55). They believed that Egyptian society should be rebuilt “on the basis of Islamic virtue, cooperation, and brotherhood, [all of] which should become the foundation of Egyptian life” (Janowski 74). Young Egypt planned, in other words, to combat European imperialism with an Islamic brand of Egyptian imperialism.

And because Young Egypt viewed Western supremacy not only as material but metaphysical, depleting the moral “virtue” of the country and “depriv[ing] it of all its spirit” (Janowski 48), rooting out the British meant rooting out anyone or anything else they deemed to be un-Egyptian—or, more specifically, un-Islamic. With this homogenous ethno-religious state as their aspirational model, the Egyptian people themselves more so than actual British imperial power became the target of Young Egypt’s violence. Fighting against a real foreign enemy was soon equated with fighting against a mythologized domestic enemy—one that usually took the form of the Jewish and Coptic minorities in Egypt. “Scorn anything foreign,” the party implored, and “cling steadfastly to [your] nationalism, making it an obsession” (Janowski 69).

In order to transform Egypt into this aforementioned “Islamic fatherland,” Husayn urged his followers to “wage war against wine, and against gambling, and against prostitution, and against all forms of sin” (Janowski 38), which he saw as manifestations of Western materialism that were degrading Egyptian society. In 1938 the party began storming bars and threatening their owners to stop selling alcohol, and in January and February of 1939 alone there were “more than a dozen attacks on bars in Cairo, Alexandria and provincial cities, ranging from youths entering a cafe and destroying its stock of liquor to actual arson against taverns” (Janowski 38-39). As part of this crusade for cultural and religious purity, the Young Egypt Party also organized and sponsored numerous protests against sex work, another supposed hallmark of Britain’s corruption. And, as characteristic of the Young Egypt Party, these demonstrations were often violent; in April of 1939 a university student was killed during one of them (Janowski 39).

The Copts, a Christian minority that makes up about 10% of the national population and have historically faced discrimination from both the government and Egyptian society at large (Hackett), were certainly not immune from Young Egypt’s hypernationalist scrutiny. Although little was said about the Coptic population in the early years of the party, they were eventually barred from Young Egypt’s construction of national belonging. In 1938 the party accused their political opponents, the nationalist liberal Wafd Party, of corruption and “Coptic domination,” claiming that “ninety percent” of their supporters were Coptic (which was unlikely given their small overall population percentage) and indicating, according to expert on Egyptian fascism James Janowski, that “the Wafd and its Coptic element were well on the way to being excluded from any concept of national ‘unity’” (57-58).

The Young Egypt Party was also violently anti-Semitic; Jews, just like drinking and the Copts, sullied their vision of Egypt as an Islamic empire. In July of 1939 the party began targeting the country’s native Jewish population by creating the Committee for the Boycott of Jewish Commerce, which distributed pamphlets and published lists of Jewish merchants to avoid (Janowski 39). But Young Egypt’s actions went beyond economic disenfranchisement; many party members even bombed Jewish districts as well (Janowski 39).

This is not to say that Young Egypt did not take any substantial measures against imperial presence. The party, for example, launched aggressive boycotts, protests, and propaganda “against foreign firms, foreign products and the foreign economic position in Egypt” (Janowski 38). But the bulk of its action—and violent action, at that—was aimed toward Egyptian people themselves. Raiding bars, demonizing Coptic people, and bombing Jewish communities did not assuage British control of the Egyptian economy, Egyptian politics, or Egyptian society as a whole. If anything, the divisiveness of the Young Egypt Party (particularly aimed towards the Wafd Party, which was actually the most influential anti-colonial political group at the time) harmed the country’s prospects of autonomy. But by co-opting the real problem of imperial subjugation in their quest for an Islamic ethno-religious state, they were able to justify their own violent and discriminatory actions.

When looking at the entire scope of Egypt’s history, Middle Eastern history, or even all of fascist history, the Young Egypt Party seems to be a relatively small and insignificant movement. After all, it existed for only seven years before becoming the Nationalist Islamic Party in 1940 and in its short lifespan never secured mainstream political support.

But its movement speaks volumes about what fascism can be and how we should reconfigure our understandings of it. Young Egypt shows us that fascism is not just the political project of white supremacist right-wingers paranoid about innocent Jews and communists. It is not forever cemented in histories of Hitler and Mussolini. Rather, it is continuously changing and adapting, morphing into different shapes in different sociopolitical conditions.

What’s more, the Young Egypt Party provides a striking example of how fascists make their ideology compelling to a mainstream audience, how they can co-opt real problems—even ones that seem directly counter to fascist goals, like anti-imperialism—into their movement to gain supporters, how they can exploit people’s genuine fears for their own political pursuits.

When we think of fascism, images of swastika-cuffed Nazis come to mind. But fascism is not a monolith, and it is certainly not confined to the continent of Europe. With Egypt being under dictatorial rule for nearly 40 years and narrowing understandings of Egyptian identity becoming all-the-more apparent, it is clear that Young Egypt and its envisaged ethno-religious state is still strikingly relevant. Furthermore, in a (mostly) postcolonial world, the party’s movement—its rhetoric, its strategy, its targeted violence—can provide a framework to more accurately identify and more complexly understand fascisms bubbling up not only in the Middle East, but throughout the rest of the Global South and beyond.