Cairo's Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt's Football Culture 9774169212, 9789774169212

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S ’ O R I CA S A R T L U

CLOSE

with the Ultras groups in Cairo, 2012–2015.

“A timely and detailed account of the birth, life, and afterlife of one of Egypt’s most important youth movements. Cairo’s Ultras tells a tale of triumph and turmoil, revealing how the Ultras bridged leisure and politics to pose as much of a threat to Egypt’s militarised police-state as it did to its sports establishment and football big-business. Historically rich and theoretically compelling, this is a must-read for anyone interested in Egyptian youth cultures.”—Ramy Aly, The American University in Cairo “Of all the events that occurred during the recent Egyptian Revolution and its aftermath, few were more horrifying than the February 2012 massacre of more than seventy Ultras Ahlawy football fans following a match in Port Said. Ronnie Close knows many of the club members personally, and with the help of these connections he records an important story for posterity. He also offers a daring assessment of Egypt’s present-day political landscape.”—Graham Harman, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles

Cover photograph by Ahmed Gawad Jacket design by studio medlikova ISBN: 978-977-416-921-2

Printed in the United States of America

The American University in Cairo Press 9 789774 169212

www.aucpress.com

CAIRO’S ULTRAS

Ronnie Close is a writer, filmmaker, and assistant professor of visual media at The American University in Cairo. His work includes the documentary More Out of Curiosity, a project that involved shooting and gathering video and other archival materials over a three-year period

“This is a lively and authoritative account of the counter-culture of the Egyptian Ultras, full of richly detailed observations of their collective behavior, their aesthetic, and their performances. It is also much more than this. It is a study of resistance to the forms of power of late capitalism. Ronnie Close succeeds in using this material to develop a convincing and original argument about the force of the aesthetic moment and of collective action to challenge and to disrupt hegemonic power.” —Charles Tripp, SOAS, University of London

RO N N IE CL O SE

ION T U L O V E R D N A E C N RESISTA ULTURE C L L A B T O O F ’S T P IN EGY

The history of Cairo’s football fans is one of the most poignant narratives of the 25 January, 2011, Egyptian uprising. The Ultras Al-Ahly and the Ultras White Knights fans, belonging to the two main teams, Al-Ahly F.C. and Zamalek F.C. respectively, became embroiled in the street protests that brought down the Mubarak regime. In the violent turmoil since, the Ultras have been locked in a bitter conflict with the Egyptian security state. Tracing these social movements to explore their role in the uprising and the political dimension of soccer in Egypt, Ronnie Close provides a vivid, intimate sense of the Ultras’ unique subculture. Cairo’s Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt’s Football Culture explores how football communities offer ways of belonging and instill meaning in everyday life. Close asks us to rethink the labels ‘fans’ or ‘hooligans’ and what such terms might really mean. He argues that the role of the body is essential to understanding the cultural practices of the Cairo Ultras, and that the physicality of the stadium rituals and acerbic chants were key expressions that resonated with many Egyptians. Along the way, the book skewers media clichés and retraces revolutionary politics and social networks to consider the capacity of sport to emancipate through performances on the football terraces.

CAIRO’S ULTRAS

CAIRO’S ULTRAS RESISTANCE AND REVOLUTION IN EGYPT’S FOOTBALL CULTURE

RONNIE CLOSE

The American University in Cairo Press Cairo New York

First published in 2019 by The American University in Cairo Press 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt 200 Park Ave., Suite 1700, New York, NY 10166 Copyright © 2019 by Ronnie Close All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Dar el Kutub No. 23525/18 ISBN 978 977 416 921 2 Dar el Kutub Cataloging-in-Publication Data Close, Ronnie Cairo’s Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt’s Football Culture / Ronnie Close.—Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2019. p. cm. ISBN: 978 977 416 921 2 1. Football—Egypt 796.33 12345

23 22 21 20 19

Designed by Adam El-Sehemy Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgmentsvii Introduction1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Football, Nationalism, and Spectacle The Catastrophe Apparatus Hooligan Days of Sporting Dissensus The Aesthetic Economy of Revolution Ultras Utopia, Bodies of Possibility Errant Futures (#trash_ahlawy)

7 35 71 105 135 165

Notes191 Glossary207 Bibliography209 Index219

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

am grateful to the Ultras groups in Cairo for their support over the course of writing this book, in particular to Virus from the Ultras Ahlawy group for his long-term assistance in the research process. I am especially grateful to The American University in Cairo Press and Anne Routon for setting the book in motion, and to the American University in Cairo for enabling the writing process. I am indebted to my friends, Mark Curran and Maurice O’Connor, and other academics who kindly read drafts that guided me through the project. Finally, my wife, Yvonne Buchheim, for her crucial support and unswerving belief in a scallywag like me.

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INTRODUCTION

I

encountered the Ultras soon after my arrival in Egypt. I remember the sunny February morning when I heard the news about Port Said—seventy-two massacred. It was a year after the revolutionary events of 2011, when the smell of teargas once again permeated around Cairo’s downtown streets. In the days that followed, I took my camera to the demonstrations held over the Ultras fatalities and met cheering local football fans. In this carnival-like atmosphere, beset by anger, all I experienced were boisterous pulsating crowds, a kind of ‘chorographic community’—the fusion of football stadiums with street politics. The atmosphere was impulsive, as the crowds carried hundreds of flags and images of those killed and injured. It was also sobering to see family members display these images, and to realize that this was about more than football. From outside al-Ahly club, I began a six-year journey, reflected in this book, to convey the beguiling mix of revolutionary impulse with the extraordinary vitality and vulnerability of this time. This book explores the short history of the Cairo Ultras in Egypt as a collective movement that became part of the momentous street politics that overthrew an autocratic ruler. Formed in 2007, the Ultras Ahlawy and Ultras White Knights 1

2

Introduction

became key actors in the revolutionary opposition against Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year rule. His dramatic removal in early 2011 was part of a tidal wave of widespread revolt across the Middle East and North Africa that affected the world. However, in the violent turmoil that followed, the Ultras have been locked into a bitter conflict with the Egyptian security state. This led to the horrific deaths of seventy-two fans in the Port Said massacre alone, and the imprisonment of many Ultras in Egypt’s notorious prison system. Football is a popular force in Egypt, and world famous players such as Mohamed Salah have inspired a younger generation beyond the quagmire of national politics. Cultural practices are at the core of the Ultras’ sense of community, and their activities can be seen as a form of resistance against mainstream sports culture. This fan phenomenon in Cairo has challenged the football media spectacle and the rigid structures of the country in remarkable ways. Embodying a visceral imagination—human and libidinal— the Ultras pulsated stadium terraces with group displays of banners, flares, chanting, and dancing. On the football terraces, choreographed body movements unified the Ultras in Sufi-like rituals, taking hold as collective experiences, and transforming soccer into an ecstatic event. In this way, football culture can remind us of the universal appeal of sport, and its role in uniting people and dissolving differences. This book starts with a detailed profile of the Cairo Ultras, and expands outward to look at other marginal and autonomous collectives. In their own way, these football fans have developed a distinctive social history and become wrapped up in radical street politics on a global stage in the lead up to

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a brutal military crackdown. The story of the Ultras begins at local matches. In this space, aesthetic experience is key to the group creativity, a form of the utopian impulse to dissolve labor and play into daily life. The writings of philosopher Jacques Rancière are essential to qualify the concept of dissensus, and to position the Ultras phenomenon as a process. The logic of dissensus is in disruption that is a counter-point to consensual politics. Dissensus does not accept police order, that is, the conventions for how to behave in a given society at a particular time, as underwritten by hierarchy. Rather, dissensus sets out to challenge such an order, because it acts under the presupposition of one’s own equality and common experience. This book is concerned with interpreting and expressing what is inscribed in marginal football communities. Sport is often thought of as a regulatory device to serve the status quo. However, many soccer cultures repurpose fan behavior as a form of resisting regressive politics. In the case of Egypt, the Ultras have offered alternative modes of being, in contestation over the corrupting influence of the patriarchal order that is personified by military rulers and their networks of business cronies. The heterogeneous Ultras football organizations are leisure-based collectives, at times socially progressive agents, who can embolden sporting communities as self-organizing, sustaining units. This book is divided into six themed chapters. Chapter One looks at the political history of football in Egypt and, most recently, the emergence of the Ultras as a social phenomenon over the last decade, within the rich heritage of football-based

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Introduction

activism. This chapter provides important context, allowing the reader to appreciate the focus of the book on exploring how football in Egypt has, in many ways, always been political. This leads to the role that Ultras groups played in the historic 25 January 2011 uprising, a revolt against long-standing ruler Hosni Mubarak. Chapter Two examines the tragic events surrounding the Port Said massacre in 2012. This incident was a key factor in the formation of the unique political identity of the Ultras football-based movement, and the demise of hope among a revolutionary generation. The catastrophic event was severely felt by Ultras members and those within the wider street-activist culture. In addition, twenty-two comrades of the other Cairo organization, Ultras White Knights (UWK), were killed in a violent clash with security forces at a domestic league fixture in 2015. Both of Cairo’s Ultras groups have been harassed and repressed by the regime of Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, which has used emergency legislation against them. Chapter Three more broadly explores the common identity of football cultures in different parts of the world. The solidarity expressed by Glasgow Celtic’s Ultras fans for the Palestinian cause provides a framework to examine the political activism embedded in football cultures in general. The political theory of dissensus is interwoven into the discussion as a key concept that undermines the perception of hegemonic authority. The word ‘hooligan’ often predisposes the Ultras as mindless thugs, and this section of the book looks at how collective sports culture has been utilized as an imaginative commons.

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Chapter Four sets out to define what aesthetics can mean for football subcultures, and how appearance is political. The role of the body is essential to the ritualized cultural practices of the Ultras in Egypt and, in turn, how they create aesthetic experiences in stadium spaces. These group activities and the use of objects can configure communal bonds of collective solidarity. The fusion of free expression and open play is fundamental to understanding the allure of these football communities. In this regard the history of social art practices becomes important in exploring how objects or events can impact the public sphere. Chapter Five draws on the collective impact and history of the Cairo Ultras over the last eleven years, and outlines their capacity to speak back to power. Their newfound political agency—embedded in the revolutionary moment and other radical social projects—is examined within the context of a utopian impulse. Chapter Six returns to the current stalemate in Egypt, and how the Ultras as a phenomenon have been crushed by the military state complex, along with all oppositional voices. Despite the far-reaching impact of the Ultras movement for a young, revolutionary generation, street politics is over—for now. This final section details how the Ultras groups were forced to accept a humiliating surrender and disband both Cairo organizations in 2018. This conclusion to the Ultras narrative provides a glimpse into harsh times ahead for collective disobedience and political activist movements in Egypt. Although imperfect in many ways, the Ultras football groups function as a process to suggest something more visceral to the imagination; a potency to reshape the communal

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Introduction

beyond the corpse of late capitalism. The Ultras of Egypt defy the dominant Middle East stereotypes of religious zealots or secular activists. The unique culture they have created was adopted into the visual repertoire of the 2011 spirit of street activist culture: The stenciled face of the martyr, the protest leader raised on shoulders overlooking a crowd, or the acerbic chants against military power were all key cultural objects that enabled freedom of expression for many disenfranchised Egyptians. The Ultras, perhaps, are suggestive of the immanence that is inscribed in the world and whether such potentiality can be embodied in football communities.

1 FOOTBALL, NATIONALISM, AND SPECTACLE

Egypt continued to suppress political dissent in 2009. The Emergency Law (Law No. 162 of 1958) remained in force, providing a basis for arbitrary detention and unfair trials. The government has never confirmed the number of those detained; Egyptian human rights organizations estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 people are held without charge (Human Rights Watch Annual Report 2010, 34).

A

mong the key street agitators in the 2011 ousting of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak were the Ultras football fan groups. Although affiliated to different teams in the domestic league, they often joined forces in street protests in the capital that eventually brought down the bankrupt rule of the National Democratic Party (NDP) and its towering leader of over thirty years. The subsequent tragic Port Said incident a year later, on 1 February 2012, when seventy-two al-Ahly Ultras died in a violent attack at a football game in the Suez Canal city, projected the Ultras back onto the political stage, but this time as revolutionary martyrs. There have been speculations that this coordinated attack—allegedly with the involvement of remnants of the 7

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Football, Nationalism, and Spectacle

Mubarak regime—may have been a vendetta, or pay back for the key role some of the Ultras played in the protest movements of 2011. However, the long-lasting effect of the Port Said violence diminished with the revolutionary impulse of activists and opposition groups, as they reformulated their demands for political and social change. Moreover, the panic caused in the public sphere by such a violent incident led many Egyptians to believe more firmly in the military narrative to reestablish stability in the uncertain post-2011 vacuum. This tragic football incident came a year after another infamous attack on protesters in Tahrir Square in 2011, when armed henchmen on horses and camels attacked the peaceful anti-Mubarak protesters with swords and knives, in a direct attempt at suppressing the widespread calls for Mubarak to step down. Both of these human rights violations, set apart by a year, were designed to undermine the emergent Egyptian spirit of resistance, and to normalize a level of state violence that displaced the demands of democratic street politics. The remarkable appeal of the Ultras football groups lies in the social and economic stagnation that pervaded Egyptian society. Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and other rights-based organizations, have documented the lack of democratic values in Egypt—including freedom of expression—and criticized the level of state neglect.1 Successive regimes have well understood the role football can play in unifying people and maintaining social order and political stability. The president’s youngest son Gamal addressed the National Democratic Party Conference in 2006, advocating for the need to promote Egyptian football. In the same year, the Africa Cup of Nations was held in

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Egypt, and Mubarak renovated the impressive Cairo International Stadium to encourage people to attend matches. Ahead of this tournament, the perception of a ‘good fan’ was manufactured with the support of a compliant media industry, which depicted images of upper middle-class fans of mixed genders, celebrating together in first- or second-class seating. This intentionally excluded the newly-formed Ultras fans in talta shimal (third on the left) seating, who were considered loutish and offensive by the regime. The FIFA World Cup fixtures between Egypt and Algeria in 2009 were played in Cairo and Khartoum as part of the African qualifying rounds of the competition. Mubarak’s two sons, Alaa and Gamal, attended both games; a gesture many perceived as a popularity stunt within an intention to bequeath the rule of Egypt from father to son. Such moves demonstrate the manipulation tactics employed by the Mubarak regime to harness the popularity of football, and to diffuse public frustrations by fusing support for the national team with an attempt to prop up the class of the political establishment. In the general election held in December 2010, Mubarak’s personal political tool—the National Democratic Party— secured 420 of the 508 seats in the country’s lower house of parliament, Majlis al-Sha‘b (People’s Assembly). This parody of an electoral process eliminated most other representative voices, including the highly-popular Muslim Brotherhood representatives, from the political process and public debate. Social issues, like the commonplace police brutality, unemployment, and low-paid jobs, were rarely addressed in public, as pervasive media censorship added to the sense of deeprooted societal frustration felt most severely by Egyptian

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Football, Nationalism, and Spectacle

youth. In this taut hiatus, the emergence of an angry footballbased youth movement such as the Ultras, operating with a clear horizontal organizing philosophy, was highly appealing to many. The Egyptian Ultras blended the ‘hooligan’ mentality with opposition to the status quo, offering a badly needed escape inside a pressurized social environment. These Ultras organizations were quickly seen as being subversive to the Egyptian state, because they declared a form of social autonomy and deviance from military rule that characterized the foundation of the Arab Republic of Egypt. The Ultras “politics of fun” helped destabilize Mubarak’s authority and the police apparatus through civil disobedience within a football context (El-Sherif 2012, 21). As the Ultras groups expanded across the nation and attracted legions of young supporters, the state retaliated to their perceived threat by tightening up control of football stadiums and public spaces. Police targeted the newly-formed Ultras fans in particular, and, starting in 2008 and increasing in 2009, the authorities set about confiscating Ultras’ regalia, such as banners, megaphones, and flares at stadium entrances—although many Ultras members were able to smuggle in such items regardless. Such state suspicion was not unique to this time, as it emerged from a distinctive political history and culture of football in Egypt. A rich sporting legacy was bound up with the establishment of the game as a nationalist movement against colonial rule. The first official Ultras group to appear was the Ultras Ahlawy, also known as UA07, who are affiliated with the country’s most successful club al-Ahly S.C. Egypt. Al-Ahly means ‘national’ in Arabic, and the team was established in

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April 1907 by Amin Samy, after Omar Lotfi initiated the idea of a football club open to local membership—preexisting clubs at the time prohibited Egyptians from joining as members. The club’s name, the ‘National Club,’ and its popularity coalesced in a period of anticolonial struggle. Ahl in Arabic also means ‘people,’ and Ahly at the end of the word is the pronoun ‘my’—to become ‘my people’s club.’ Nationalist student unions self-organized within football crowds to conceal political debate and mobilize activism.2 In 1919, this nonviolent movement for full independence emerged from university student unions to agitate against British occupation and the colonial administration of Egypt, following the forced exile of proindependence leaders. Organized at a grassroots level and using the tactics of  civil disobedience, nationalist leaders such as Sa‘d Zaghlul of the Wafd Party enjoyed massive support among the Egyptian populace. Wafd Party emissaries went into towns and villages to collect signatures authorizing the movement’s leaders to petition for the complete independence of the country. Moreover, Zaghlul was selected to be honorary president at the inaugural general assembly of al-Ahly Football Club. Somewhat incongruously, the first chairman of al-Ahly was an Englishman, Mitchell Ince, who facilitated the foundation of the club, and helped obtain planning permission to establish grounds in the center of Cairo. In order to curtail this nationalist sentiment and the popularity of football, the pro-colonial forces founded their own club, King Faruq Club (later renamed Zamalek Club) in January 1911, on Gezira Island in the middle of the Nile and under the British protectorate. In time, the popular revolt movement against British

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rule eventually resulted in conditional sovereignty for the imperial power, along with the formation of limited independence for Egypt on 28 February 1922. The Wafd Party drafted a new constitution in 1923, based on a parliamentary representative system, but Egyptian independence at this stage was nominal, since British forces continued to be physically present in the country and to control national resources. Zaghlul became the first popularly elected prime minister of Egypt in 1924. However, Britain retained several key areas under its supervision, and during this period King Fuad was installed as monarch, against the popular will of many Egyptians. Relations between the unelected monarch and Zaghlul deteriorated after his son Faruq succeeded his father to the throne. A new quiescent treaty, signed in 1936 between the king and the British, further alienated the Wafd Party, and in 1928 Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood organization. Two dominant visions of self-determination (among others) took shape in Egypt—through the religious conservatism of the Muslim Brotherhood and the secular direction adopted by the military institutions and its officers. Al-Ahly’s Arab nationalism embraced both versions of sovereignty, and was validated by the success of the team, who went on to dominate the Egyptian football scene. The political orientation of the team is evident in the stance taken by team captain Mahmud Mukhtar al-Titsh in 1943, when he accepted an invitation from the Palestinian nationalist leadership to play a short match tournament in support of the Palestinian independence cause against the British Mandate in the region. The colonial administration in Egypt attempted to prevent al-Ahly team from participating

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in this football solidarity tour, and demanded that al-Titsh, as captain, persuade his team players not to travel. Despite this pressure, the team and club asserted its right to play in the tournament in Palestine. In retaliation, Egyptian Football Association President Muhammad Haidar Pasha was instructed to intervene and revoke players’ passports. At the last minute, with the assistance of Fuad Sirag al-Din, then minister of interior, al-Ahly were issued new passports in time to travel to Palestine. The short visit was extended to three weeks, and al-Ahly played five games in defiance of colonial rulers in both countries. Soon after, al-Ahly team was scheduled to return to play a game against their archrivals and pro-British administration team, King Faruq Club, in the King Faruq Cup (later the Egyptian Cup Championship). The Palestinian trip had deeply angered a football obsessed King Faruq, who blamed Egyptian Football Association (EFA) president Haidar Pasha for the situation. Such pressure led the football association to issue a decree suspending al-Ahly from all sporting activities for ten months. Fans protested outside Abdin Palace in Cairo, chanting against King Faruq, British imperialism, and the Egyptian Football Association. Before long, the National Party president Mustafa Kamel intervened to resolve the problem and the king was forced to rescind the order and reschedule the fixture between the clubs. However, Haidar Pasha insisted on a personal apology from al-Ahly’s team captain al-Titsh over the Palestinian tour. Al-Titsh responded to the request with what became a famous letter, parts of which are still remembered by al-Ahly Ultras. He wrote, “If nationalism requires an apology, I am not honored to be a football

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player in the Egyptian Football Association that you [Haidar Pasha] are the head of” (Ibrahim 2015, 33). As these examples demonstrate the development of a football league in Egypt throughout the twentieth century was interwoven with nationalist movements against British colonial rule and the forces of the monarchy. The fusion of football and politics was personified by the al-Ahly S.C. organization. The inaugural Egyptian League Championship was founded on a national standing in 1948–49, and al-Ahly won the competition—the first of nine successive national championship titles—laying nationalist foundations for the autonomous Arab Republic of Egypt. On 22 October 1948, eleven teams from Cairo, Alexandria, and the Suez Canal region competed for the new national football title. The teams were: al-Ahly, King Faruq (Zamalek), al-Sikka al-Hadid, Tersana, Ismailiya (Ismailiya), al-Masry (Port Said), Port Fuad, Olympic and al-Ittihad (Alexandria), Tiram and Yunan. Following the popular overthrow of  King Faruq in the military-led revolution in 1952, al-Ahly appointed Egypt’s new ruler,  Gamal Abd al-Nasser,  as club president. Both Cairo-based teams—Zamalek (formerly King Faruq) and al-Ahly—moved into the iconic, 75,000 capacity Cairo International Stadium as a shared home ground, and both continue to this day to use the venue for football fixtures. The stadium was designed by German architect Werner March, who also designed the Olympic Stadium in Berlin for the Olympic Games in 1936. Nasser inaugurated the new mega stadium in 1960, on the eighth anniversary of the 1952 military-led revolution, and the space has since hosted presidential ceremonies and other related political rallies, in addition to

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sports events. Notable visitors to the stadium include Soviet Union President Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, and the Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Muhammad Morsi. In June 2013, Morsi severed Egypt’s diplomatic ties with Syria during a controversial conference in the stadium, just a few weeks before his ouster in another military-led coup by his defense minister General Sisi. Through such events, Egyptian presidents have appropriated the sporting spectacle, and utilized the architectural and cultural capital of the vast stadium space in order to consolidate and project the appearance of power, thereby fusing sports with politics. The evolution of the domestic league in the 1960s, under the influence of the Nasserist government, at times exposed tensions in the social formation of the new Egyptian state. Some animosity was regional in nature. As Cairo expanded, it tended to absorb the limited economic resources over the smaller, regional cities or the rural hinterlands. Such tensions were also evident in football at the time. For example, when in 1962 star player Rida Sika moved from the southern Suez Canal city of Ismailiya to al-Ahly in Cairo. However, under immense pressure from local fan communities in Ismailiya, where protests extended to setting fire to the player’s family house, he shortly returned to the Suez Canal city club. To smooth over social tensions, al-Ahly President Salah Shishtawy personally chauffeured the young football star back to his hometown club. Others animosities and disturbances were evident between the Suez Canal city clubs of Port Said and Ismailiya, and the metropolis teams of Cairo. The distinctive nationalist history of the canal region, and its sense of autonomy and unique identity was present in the intense football rivalries

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against the dominant role of the two major Cairo-based clubs, Zamalek and al-Ahly. Frequently, these defining incidents were infused with the politics of the time. Popular Cairene perceptions of Port Said and Ismailiya residents were strongly influenced by the displacement that occurred during the War of Attrition with Israel in 1967–70, which led to a mass civilian exodus from the Suez Canal region to Cairo. Many people from Port Said and Ismailiya lived transitory lives of impoverishment and unemployment in the capital, existing on the margins of the megacity. A popular myth exists that al-Ahly refused to host Ismailiya training sessions and home games after the forced displacement from the Suez Canal area in the war with Israel. While the majority of hardcore Ismailiya S.C. fans acknowledge that this legend is inaccurate, the myth is still able to antagonize intercity fan rivalry. The origin of the Ultras movement is often disputed in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, but evidence exists of nascent fan groups in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The transformation in the perception of Egyptian football fans, from that of the boisterous supporter—known as terso—to the Ultras subculture, occurred during this period of time. A forerunner to the Ultras phenomenon, terso emerges from the Italian word for ‘third,’ in reference to the enthusiastic fans commonly occupying third-class tickets in football stadiums. Nonetheless, in the Egyptian context, the first self-defining Ultras group was noted in 2007, with the formation of the Ultras Ahlawy, or UA07 of al-Ahly S.C. Another al-Ahly support group, Ultras Devils, was formed soon afterward in

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the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, and intercity rivals of Zamalek S.C. established the Ultras White Knights (UWK) in the same year. The Ultras phenomenon was adopted in rapid succession, with strongholds in the major regional clubs across Egypt, in particular, the Suez Canal cities established the notorious Ultras Green Eagles of the al-Masry team in Port Said, and the Ultras Blue Dragons of Ismailiya S.C. in Ismailiya. The third most supported team in Egypt, Alexandria’s al-Ittihad club, is supported by the Green Magic Ultras organization. Given al-Ahly’s popular nationalist role historically in Egypt, dating from the foundation of the club and its role in supporting sovereignty, the UA07 membership remained only a minority of the total fan-base, but was able to establish a network of Ultras squadrons across the vast country; the al-Ahly club is estimated to have a supporter base of millions around the world. The founding narrative of the Ultras Ahlawy in Egypt is a contested story, although one plausible hypothesis emerged from an interview with one of its founders and leaders, Assad, as part of the documentary film project, More Out Of Curiosity.3 Assad is from a privileged, upper-class Egyptian background, and was a university student studying abroad in Bologna University, Italy, when he started attending local games in the Italian league. After his study abroad program concluded, he returned to Cairo with an idea, modeled on his experiences in Italy, to form a small group of young, passionate and militant fans among the existing al-Ahly Terso organization. In general, the Ultras movement began to recruit supporters via young fans on social media networks on the Internet, operating within different football fan forums. This new Ultras

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Football, Nationalism, and Spectacle

football fan entity in Egypt differed in attitude from the typical Terso fan, and the nascent group first raised their banner at a match on 13 April 2007. Soon, this new Ultras-styled group drew attention from fellow al-Ahly fans and caught the attention of other supporters in the domestic league. Early Ultras members have commented on how the atmosphere at domestic football league games was often monotonous, lacking flair on the pitch, and the stadium space felt lackluster in feeling or collective spirit, unlike many European football cultures. Although this militant football fan behavior was essentially a mimetic form of other Ultras groups, mostly in Spain and Italy, the Egyptian authorities misread the youthful expression as a political threat toward the state, and tended to react aggressively toward this use of ritualized, choreographed choral group identity. The UA07 and other Ultras in Egypt adapted the core components of similar international football groups. They upheld raucous attitudes that are antiauthoritarian, collectivist, and opposed the commodification of sport. This fusion of bravado posturing and antagonistic displays was an explosive combination within a tightly-controlled political state like Egypt, as the Ultras commanded the football terrace space through their visceral display of collective power. Mubarak’s police system regime perceived this new brash and youthful attitude as a subversive threat to state power. Enduring animosity between the police and the Ultras escalated in the early years. In one key incident, thirty-eight members of the Ultras Devils, an offshoot of the UA07 based in Alexandria, were arrested at a protest outside the courthouse in Shibin al-Kom in the Nile Delta, accused of ‘belonging to an illegal group.’

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Over time, Ultras fans were regularly arrested, harassed, or tortured in Egypt’s infamous police stations; thereby intimidated and harassed for emulating the Italian form of Ultras-style behavior. As a consequence of such oppressive obstacles and restrictions, the Ultras’ appeal expanded across the Egyptian football league, as rival groups in other cities evolved cultural activities of fanatical football behavior. Soon there were, in total, twelve recognized Ultras groups in Egypt, some affiliated to the same team—such as in the case of al-Ahly—with the majority of their fans drawn from the lower social classes. Ex-Ultra Muhammad Gamal Bashir’s book, Kitab alUltras (The Ultras’ Book), published in Arabic in November 2011, offers a unique first-person narrative of this new social phenomenon at the time, and details an incipient political awareness in the lead up to 2011. Bashir describes how many Ultras became more politically aware and active, and began to display banners about political causes, such as the Israeli military invasion of Gaza in 2008. Despite their own rhetorical disclaimer of ‘just being fans,’ the majority of members were increasingly antagonistic toward the Mubarak government, both within and outside the stadium performance space. Beyond football issues, the Egyptian authorities also arrested Ultras at political protests, forcing them to operate within highly-controlled, shifting parameters in public space. In one case, Zamalek’s UWK, of which Bashir was a member, demonstrated in support of the second Palestinian Intifada. The Egyptian police responded by arresting members and imprisoning fans for a couple of days. Rather than intimidate the Ultras groups and persuade them to move away from political

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Football, Nationalism, and Spectacle

activism, such levels of state harassment further politicized these organizations, which began to self-identity with resistance against the police as a key component of their character. Indeed, police aggravation unified Ultras under the collective slogan of A.C.A.B (All Cops Are Bastards), written in English. This slogan expanded the focus outward in solidarity between rival Ultras in Egypt and across the world, shaping a collective identity. Police harassment produced deep-rooted resentment and unified the Ultras squadrons against a common enemy and the authority figure of Mubarak. During his tenure as Egyptian president, the Ultras and other youth organizations were radicalized, becoming emboldened as shabab al-thawra (revolutionary youth) through an archipelago of state repression. This newfound activism opened up as a self-reinforcing cycle that drew many into the ranks of the Ultras ideology. The callous murder of Khaled Saeed in Alexandria in the summer of 2010 while in police custody helped coalesce further these widely-felt sentiments into a makeshift opposition movement to the Mubarak regime, eventually spurring the 25 January uprising in Tahrir Square in 2011. Images of Saeed’s battered, disfigured face spread throughout online communities, and incited outrage over allegations that he was beaten to death by members of the Egyptian police force because of insubordination. A prominent Facebook group, Kulluna Khaled Saeed (We Are All Khaled Saeed), was moderated by political activist and Google executive Wael Ghoneim and focused attention on Saeed’s death to support public discontent with the regime.4 Ghoneim was known as an online activist for Egyptian opposition figure and moderate

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politician Mohamed ElBaradei. He created the Facebook page Kulluna Khaled Saeed in Arabic to reach a widespread audience and it was dedicated to the murder of a twentyeight-year-old Egyptian citizen in police custody. In his memoir Revolution 2.0, Ghoneim describes vividly encountering the photograph of Saeed’s battered corpse online. Later, Saeed’s mother suggested that her son was killed because he possessed a controversial video on his mobile phone allegedly showing local police officers dividing drugs and money for their personal gain. The Egyptian Interior Ministry, by contrast, claimed that Saeed had died of asphyxiation after swallowing an entire package of marijuana that none of the three direct eyewitnesses reported observing. The ministry claimed that Saeed was wanted for dealing drugs, possessing a weapon, sexual harassment, and evading military service. His mother later countered this final charge by producing her son’s certificate of completion of the compulsory military service in Egypt. For Ghoneim, Saeed’s death was emblematic of the brutality and impunity of the security forces and the corrupt influence of Egyptian politics on a young generation. He created the Facebook page to protest against police torture and financial extortion, which would become a catalyst for the uprising during the anti-Mubarak protests of January and February 2011. Ghoneim was imprisoned by state security forces on 27 January 2011, and the following day internet and cellular phone communications were shut down temporarily by the State Security Investigations Service. However, other local activists updated the Facebook page in Ghoneim’s absence, and the torch of the protest movement had been ignited. Khaled Saeed’s murder acted as a catalyst, drawing

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public support from the football groups. The Ultras were now poised to become active in the 25 January uprising. As Bashir comments in his book: On the 20 January 2011 to be precise, a video appeared on YouTube, posted anonymously, assuring those committed to going out on 25 January, as well as [assuring] those who were fearful of police brutality and its repression, that there would be an Egyptian squadron [Ultras] capable of defending them on the streets, [while] showing images of clashes between Egyptian groups, in particular al-Ahly and Zamalek fans, with the police (Bashir 2011, 78).

The extraordinary global events of January and February 2011 challenged the Egyptian Ultras movements in new ways beyond their adopted football culture, and influenced revolutionary politics in the overthrow of Mubarak—the figurehead of a vast military complex. Initially, the Ultras organizations remained publicly ambivalent to the nascent mood of street protest in Cairo and elsewhere, reiterating their apparent apolitical stance as ‘fans only’ on social media platforms. Despite widespread claims to the contrary, there is only circumstantial evidence to enable us to affirm their particular role in the epic political drama of the eighteen days that led to the removal of Mubarak (25 January to 11 February 2011) and played out in public spaces in Egypt. Certainly, they had considerable reason to confront the security forces, and as individuals they were, like many of the youth in Egyptian society, moved to support if not participate in the new

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spirit of street revolt at this time. Moreover, the Ultras membership appears to have been involved in clashes with police, and as experienced and organized street agitators, they were able to defend the protest camp around Tahrir Square from violent attacks. However, questions remain about any deeper and direct political engagement, and the Ultras’ Facebook pages remained largely ambivalent about impending revolt, sending conflicting messages to both support and resist the demands for large-scale action. Both Ultras Ahlawy and Zamalek’s UWK groups denied, at this time, any role in shaping political events on the public stage. Indeed, their core memberships distanced themselves from the immanent political conflict, as their social media pages and street graffiti attest to in the run-up to the demonstrations planned for 25 January 2011. This date coincided with National Police Day, a holiday to honor the service of the police to the state. The protests involved the activist movement April 6 Youth, formed in 2008 to mobilize support for striking textile factory workers in al-Mahalla, and other opposition groups, with the aim of highlighting police brutality and ending emergency laws, plus other social demands. Inspired by the sudden social upheaval in Tunisia when a popular uprising ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after twenty-three years, tens of thousands of Egyptians rose up across the country. The demonstrations in public spaces were emboldened in the days that followed, described by opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei as: “The people have broken the barrier of fear. There is no going back” (Baradei 2011). Other signs of revolutionary militancy were there before this breaking point, and, on 23 January 2011, in a game

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Football, Nationalism, and Spectacle

between al-Ahly and al-Maqassa, just two days before the eruption of the revolution, Ultras Ahlawy went to the stadium with their group banner. This act defied a nine-month ban by the security forces prohibiting all Ultras groups from raising banners during football matches. This provoked the police at the stadium to attempt to confiscate the banner, but the UA07 managed to raise it and clashes erupted, resulting in widespread injuries and arrests. The Ultras held responsible were remanded in custody for two days, but somewhat ironically released on 25 January, in time for the demonstrations in downtown Cairo. Moreover, Ultras videos at the time were posted on social media channels, which included video footage at a football match where fans were heard screaming ‘Tunis! Tunis!’ incessantly, suggesting that Egypt would soon face the same fate. The volatile period under discussion makes it hard to distinguish fact from rumor. Historical narratives are generally constructed in hindsight to appear to determine the social composition of the popular uprising against Mubarak. Fluid phases in history make it impracticable to establish beyond doubt the role that particular groups performed on the ground at the time. This is especially true of the football fans in Egypt, and many of the oppositional groups. The Ultras’ political ambivalence, evident in contrasting social media statements examined earlier, adds to the uncertainty, because the groups employ a code of secrecy for collective protection that strives to keep the authorities strategically guessing their true intentions or their next moves. In this regard, their prominence as political actors complicates any attempt to provide a reliable narrative, since the Ultras members exchanged roles between

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being football fans to street agitators, as they became part of larger political demands for regime change and social justice. The popular notion of the Ultras as political beings, acting on long-held grievances, like much of the youth population, has shaped certain aspects of the 2011 revisionist postrevolutionary narrative in Egypt. Despite the Ultras’ political appearance of impartiality, there were notable signs of a new tacit social awareness that emerged as a new class consciousness among the membership rank and file. The Ultras were clearly cautious about publicly declaring their official organizational support for the popular demonstrations led by activist groups, like the April 6 Youth Movement, that started in the run-up to the 25 January demonstration. Regardless, they did, however, play a key role in shaping events on the ground in support of anti-Mubarak momentum. Moreover, the Ultras preferred to propagate a paradoxical stance, between a collective public image versus each member’s own individual action; a somewhat soft political position in accordance with codes of behavior drawn from international precedents among other Ultras groups. In such a narrative, passionate and loyal support of the team overshadows any ideological concerns, since direct political action is generally frowned upon. One example is the Real Oviedo club in northern Spain, supported by the Symmacharii Ultras (named after a local tribe in the Roman era). These hardcore football fans are resolutely nonpolitical, and do not allow banners or flags in support of either right- or left-wing orientation during matches. A simple logic operates here, one in which the Ultras movement retains its guise of being sports fans only, but simultaneously allows individuals to challenge the military state and defend

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Football, Nationalism, and Spectacle

the microutopia protest camps from violent attack by state forces. In the eighteen days of the 2011 uprising that left at least 846 civilians dead and thousands injured (Human Rights Watch, 2014),5 the violent overthrow of Hosni Mubarak was one of the most momentous events of the Arab Spring. As dramatic and sudden as this may have seemed, it was only one further episode in an ongoing power struggle against the three components of Egypt’s authoritarian regime: the military, the security services, and the government. The first day of protest, 25 January, saw UA07 members die in street battles. The first—an Ultra known only as ‘Hussein’ in Alexandria, and later as Muhammad Makwa—was killed in clashes in the city of Suez. A few days later, Ultras sections came together for the significant Friday of Rage demonstration on 28 January. In the hours prior to this protest, Mubarak had severed Internet access across Egypt and continued to defy protesters’ demands for him to resign. To prepare for demonstrations, Ultras members led twenty smaller groups of front-line activists to Tahrir Square and leaders guided these units separately to avoid being noticed before arriving. According to famous Egyptian activist and blogger Alaa Abd al-Fattah, who stated in a 2011 interview, “The Ultras have played a more significant role in the Egyptian Revolution . . . than any political group on the ground” (Zirin 2012, 12). The Ultras played prominent roles during the violent Interior Ministry clashes on 27 and 28 January, and in the infamous vicious attacks by pro-Mubarak provocateurs on Tahrir Square, in what became known as the Battle of the Camels in February 2011. As events on the Egyptian street became more volatile, the football stadium spaces became increasingly boisterous,

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and at times dangerously violent. In April 2011, members of Zamalek’s UWK invaded the football pitch in Cairo’s International Stadium during the last minutes of an African Champions League game against their Tunisian rivals Club Africain. This was the first encounter between the two teams since the removal of both countries’ oppressive leaders, where both sets of supporters had played significant roles in respective protest movements in Egypt and Tunisia. The referee canceled a goal for Zamalek, enraging local fans, at which point they stormed the pitch, firing flares, and attacking players. Five of the Tunisian team reported being physically assaulted by some of the local fans. It has been suggested that a reason for this attack may lie within internal power struggles among the UWK. The leadership immediately disassociated itself from the incident, and maintained the outburst was the result of “a lack of discipline and unity of their group” (Dorsey 2011). In the turmoil of the post 2011 period, the UWK leadership was challenged and eventually ousted by a militant faction within the group, which staged a series of phased takeovers. The controversial Sayed ‘Moshagheb’ Faheem aggressively pushed out the original founders of the group, who had a more ideologically defined position and direction for the movement. He staged the first phase of his takeover during this historic match between Zamalek and Club Africa at the Cairo International Stadium. Emboldened by the absence of police in the stadium, when the referee disallowed a last-minute goal, Moshagheb led the violent pitch invasion that left almost half the Tunisian players injured and the UWK’s founders in shock.

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The security forces benefitted from a growing sense of public anxiety during 2011, when autonomy and liberty seemed attainable, even for the marginalized. Indeed, state representatives cited football disorder as evidence that law and order had broken down in the aftermath of the 25 January uprising. Police forces largely withdrew from public view in many areas, embarrassing some within the ranks of the police who were humiliated, or demoralized, by the violent support for Mubarak’s regime. This conflict within law and order, in turn, helped sway public support for the renewal of full police control in public spaces. Intense rivalry exists between supporters from different teams, and, as a result, the Ultras movement does not comprise a homogenous group. Indeed, from their 2007 inception onward, Ultras occasionally engaged in fistfights with rivals over game results, fomenting early hostilities between groups. A disturbance at a game in Port Said between al-Ahly and al-Masry in the summer of 2011 is frequently cited as the forerunner to the February 2012 stadium disaster. A video made by the Ultras Ahlawy shows them being attacked and retreating on the defensive, after violent clashes initiated by the Ultras Green Eagles of al-Masry. Later, the Central Security Forces (CSF) riot police appear to join in, attacking the Cairo Ultras. Similar incidents followed in other domestic league fixtures during 2011, in particular involving the two main Cairo Ultras groups (UA07 and UWK). The UA07 clashed with the CSF again in a game against Kima Aswan S.C. on 6 September 2011, leaving many Ultras Ahlawy members badly injured and resulting in dozens being arrested. The boundaries appear to have been broken by the police, as they escalated

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the confrontation into a street fight in which 130 people were injured. A photo from al-Masry al-youm newspaper shows Central Security Forces invading the Ultras’ terrace area of the stadium in Aswan. In another incident the same year, alAhly S.C. and Ghazl al-Mahalla S.C. fans clashed in Mahalla on 31 December, when al-Ahly equalized with a late goal that resulted in al-Mahalla fans rioting and invading the pitch with flares. Social media videos of the event show the referee and stadium staff fleeing the pitch after suspending the game. Al-Masry’s Ultras Green Eagles fans invaded the home pitch several times during 2011, and assaulted al-Ittihad fans from Alexandria in January 2012, ominously just a few weeks before the Port Said massacre. The apparent breakdown in discipline and violent behavior in the aftermath of the 25 January uprising within the ranks of the Ultras groups emerges within the context of a political vacuum, at a time in which the postrevolution state was ruled by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) military command. Certain ex-Mubarak regime actors needed to manufacture a sense of deepening public anxiety about law and order in order to mount a counter-revolution campaign to return conservative values. Because the Ultras had gained notoriety following the removal of Mubarak, many shabab al-thawra (revolutionary youth) were attracted to their image and growing street prestige, and sought to join the Ultras movement. At this time, the Ultras became, according to sports journalist James Dorsey, “the second largest civic organization in Egypt, succeeded only by the Muslim Brotherhood movement” (Dorsey 2012). However, with increasing membership levels, the organic Ultras’ networks

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struggled to manage this newfound profile. This posed a fundamental problem for the Ultras in terms of how to instruct new members, who often lacked the innate commitment and knowledge of the longer-standing membership. As a result, during 2011, football games could easily involve sporadic outbreaks of unplanned violence and ill-disciplined behavior by some Ultras sections. Football stadia became increasingly volatile, with regular toxic clashes and violence. As the historic year of 2011 drew to a close, a growing sense of trepidation took hold as a result of a series of vicious street clashes between activists and military forces. These clashes, alongside sectarian attacks, led to the unnerving of the Egyptian public’s revolutionary gusto. Many young members of Ultras groups were ensnared in battles at football stadia and in public spaces, as progressive politics began to fade. In October 2011, a peaceful protest against SCAF rule outside the Egyptian Television Network national center in Maspero resulted in the military murdering twenty-five Coptic Christians. Riots on Muhammad Mahmud Street, near Tahrir Square, a month later additionally saw twenty-three protesters killed by the state, and a sit-in camp outside parliament was violently disbanded by the police in late December 2011, with seven fatalities. A well-known member of Ultras Ahlawy was one of the casualties of this violent finale to a turbulent year. Young engineering student Muhammad ‘Karika’ Mustafa was shot dead on 21 December, when police moved in to clear the protest camp on Qasr al-‘Aini in front of the national parliament. Karika was a prominent figure, and his murder by state police was the first Ultras fatality since the beginning of the political uprising in January that year. His

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death abruptly forced the UA07 leadership to respond, and to revise the impartiality of their guiding principles, as seen in statements issued over the course of the year. This tragic killing affected the Ultras movement and was also focused on by the national media, in part because of Karika’s upper-class background. The street clashes over the course of 2011 had generated much public debate in Egypt about who made up this emboldened revolutionary youth and, in turn, the social background and motivation of those involved in the clashes with police forces. The local media speculated that the protest movement on the streets was somewhat lawless, if not made up of baltagiya—a title for Egypt’s petty criminals or street thugs. The murder of UA07 member Karika reset the narrative and upset this perception, as he was a member of the country’s respectable upper-middle classes, who could afford to play an expensive sport like tennis in Egypt. As anthropologist Dr. Carl Rommel has stated in his paper on the Ultras: The contrast between the dead engineer, Mohamed Mustafa had been an engineering student, and the baltagiya who killed him, referring not so vaguely to the Ministry of Interior and the military, had an important function. In the days that followed [his murder], Mustafa’s educational qualifications and the fact that he had been one of the country’s best tennis players were constantly reiterated in the media (Rommell 2016, 39).

Two days later, on 23 December, al-Ahly played Misr lil-Maqassa at Cairo International Stadium in the national league. The UA07 overshadowed the sporting event by

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transforming their curva (stands) into a tribute tifo (a display of banners or signs before each match) in memory of Karika. This emotional event became an intense manifestation of the Ultras’ anger against the state violence that had killed him. The majority of the Ultras fans attended the game in black, instead of their usual red clothing—the traditional color of al-Ahly team. The opening tifo, also referred to as dakhla (Rommel 2016) in Egyptian Arabic, was performed before kick-off, and consisted of a giant black-and-white image stencil of their lost comrade that filled the entire terrace space. The team coach, Portuguese Manuel José, displayed his solidarity with the Ultras by wearing a T-shirt under his jacket with “R.I.P. Mohamed Mustafa” written on it. Over the course of the match, the Ultras sang nonstop, chanting their now familiar antimilitary council SCAF slogans and parodying the minister of interior in a more virulent and explicit manner than ever before. Above the terrace space, an enormous banner had been hung from the rooftop to display the message to the world that the Ultras were unequivocal about who was responsible for the murder of Karika. The message on the banner read, “al-Muhandis Muhammad shahid al-hurriya. Qataluh bi-l-rusas al-baltagiya” (The engineer Muhammad, martyr of freedom. The thugs killed him with live ammunition) (Ultras Ahlawy Facebook 2011). The historic removal of Mubarak in the eighteen-day drama of 2011 created a powerful cohesive bond between those who opposed him, through the simple popular demand for equality that stemmed from years of state neglect and oppression. Publications on the rise of street politics across the globe at the time drew comparisons between the apparent

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solidarities of Tahrir Square activism and New York’s Zuccotti Park Occupy movement. During this time, Western media labeled the revolutionary spirit in Egypt as part of the ‘Arab Spring.’ The early stages of the Syrian revolt were inspired by the visual impact of Egypt’s tens of thousands of protesters, and the city of Homs renamed its urban center Tahrir Square. These microutopian spaces materialized as plausible instances of Habermas’ public spheres concept, wherein people gathered under new rules of conduct, free from the “inequality that constrains human communication in normal life” (Kester 2004, 9). While the Occupy movement in the West emerged most evidently within global cities, many Arab nations saw public protests that demanded modest reforms and social change throughout the region. Here the populace attempted to revitalize the political sphere across the entire Middle East against preexisting authoritarian regimes. Political theorist David Harvey has taken up Henri Lefebvre’s earlier writings on the production of space in his 2012 book Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Amid this renewed sociopolitical agency, the Ultras’ sudden appearance seemed to confront such ideals head on, albeit under a particular Egyptian calibration, demanding the right to protest space and freedom of expression in public centers. Such unifying moments of global solidarity between the West and Arab nations were mostly misread, if not untested, because the deep-rooted, culturally specific circumstances and reasons for revolt were crucially contingent to each situation. Moreover, the use of digital communication technology to arouse and synchronize the masses in Egypt and beyond was proclaimed, somewhat prematurely, as a new

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dawn of people power through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. In hindsight, such digital communication tools can just as easily serve as agents of the conservative establishment, despite their sparkly appeal.

2 THE CATASTROPHE APPARATUS

Personal experiences can be enclosed by the frame of the television screen. One doubts whether the world can. One suspects, pace Baudrillard, that there is life after and beyond the television. To many people, much in their life is anything but simulation. To many, reality remains what it always used to be: tough, solid, resistant and harsh. They need to sink their teeth into some quite real bread before they abandon themselves to munching images (Zygmunt Bauman 1992, 155).

T

he full consequences of the Cairo Ultras’ political posturing was dramatically felt in the following year, when the 2012 Port Said massacre resulted in the callous murder of seventy-two Ultras Ahlawy fans. This would propel them back onto the streets. This time, though, they would appear openly as a collective force, moving from a focus on the individual to shared resistance, from the margins to more mainstream street politics. Egypt’s unifying 25 January 2011 uprising against Mubarak’s rule was traumatically undermined over the course of the year in a catalogue of brutal attacks by the military state complex on large crowds of street agitators. Despite the 35

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The Catastrophe Apparatus

removal of Mubarak as a figurehead, much of the repressive regime remained in place, and the military targeted al-Ahly Ultras in particular. On 1 February 2012, approximately a thousand UA07 fans traveled from Cairo to the Mediterranean city of Port Said to enjoy a midweek national league match against the local al-Masry team. This fixture was of no special significance to the domestic league or competition cup, but there had been a history of animosity and sporadic fan violence between the clubs, which had built up through intercity rivalries between the capital and the main Suez Canal cities. As the match concluded, al-Masry were rather unusually ahead 3–1 when the home crowd invaded the pitch, armed with various weapons, including knives, clubs, and firearms. The ensuing violence resulted in the serious injury of hundreds of UA07 fans, broadcast live on the national broadcaster Nile TV to a vast audience of millions across Egypt. This violent rerouting of the football game, from sporting fixture to murderous spectacle, served to prevent or deny the political viability of the Ultras movement. This single, traumatic attack had a devastating effect on the collectivity of the Ultras phenomenon and displayed the violent impunity and disregard for human life associated with the worst excesses of the military regime. It served to remind the general public of the brutality of the deep state, as national media could do little but broadcast this scene live on TV channels. Despite the emotional response from the general public to the Port Said incident, the impact was to divert the Ultras from becoming complete political beings. The incident acted as a blockage of progressive politics, ultimately serving the interests of the hegemonic influence of the state. In the

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short term, this catastrophe awarded the Ultras newfound notoriety and global visibility, but at the expense of collective autonomy. Furthermore, it made them somewhat comparable to the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the eyes of the military state. The police investigation of the Port Said incident was flawed. Security forces collected poor forensic evidence and there were no arrests of potential suspects made at the football stadium at the time, nor later on that day. Forty forensic examinations were referenced during the court case, but only four full-body autopsies were performed on UA07 victims. Their deaths resulted from asphyxiation, blunt force trauma, or as a result of falling from a height. According to a Century Foundation report by Karim Medhat Ennarah, “the [police] investigation was deeply flawed, and the sentencing might present a miscarriage of justice” (Ennarah 2017, 16). In the aftershock of the Port Said massacre, the military council suspended, with immediate effect, the Egyptian domestic football league for the remainder of the season. This forced the Ultras to translate their collective displays from the stadium terraces onto Cairo’s streets, and, eventually, even this was prohibited. Through demonstrations, occupation of public spaces, and social media campaigns in 2012, the Ultras pushed a judicial inquiry to investigate the Port Said incident, and garnered much public support across the nation for their cause. For many ordinary Egyptians, Port Said symbolized the disintegration of the ideals that came to life with the 2011 uprising. The sudden removal of the football stadium space disconnected the Ultras from their sports context, as it forced them to occupy parts of the city strongly associated with the 25 January uprising—Tahrir Square, among other

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The Catastrophe Apparatus

locations—allowing them to become temporary custodians of radical street politics. This newly-found position in street protests, however, was to be easily destabilized by the resurgence of the ex-Mubarak military and political elite through the rise of Sisi and the fate of the political narrative post 2011. In the lead up to the match between al-Ahly and alMasry, tensions had been high on the football terraces, particularly in Port Said. The highly anticipated game on 1 February 2012, came just weeks after al-Masry’s Ultras Green Eagles attacked the Green Magic Ultras fans of the Alexandria team, al-Ittihad. Significantly, the game fell on the first anniversary of the key Battle of the Camels in Tahrir Square. This violent ambush of anti-Mubarak protesters was one of the crucial turning points in the 2011 uprising, when groups of pro-Mubarak supporters and violent provocateurs stormed Tahrir Square in daylight, riding camels and horses, and armed with swords, knives, and clubs. Undercover police threw Molotov cocktails and stones, and fired live ammunition at protesters in a brutal attempt to scare the public away from the growing public momentum calling for Mubarak’s unqualified resignation. Eyewitness reports documented the presence of baltagiya (thugs), who were bribed to attack protesters. Middle East expert Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institute suggested the attack provided additional evidence that the regime’s strategy of “hired muscle” had been used on the day. At least five people died in the clashes, and almost nine hundred were injured6 (Hamid 2011, 2). This date holds special significance in revolutionary narratives and supports widespread conspiracy theories that the Port Said massacre was, most likely, politically motivated. As Hamid suggests, the

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use of undercover heavies was not a new strategy deployed by Egypt’s security apparatus against political opposition. Previous regimes had intimidated their foes by using and abusing the baltagiya affect, and, historically, the baltagiya figure dates back to the Ottoman Empire. Egyptian novelist Youssef Ziedan detailed this in an article published in the daily newspaper al-Masry al-youm, in which he discussed how baltagiya have always operated in the shadows to assist the ruling elite in maintaining control. The word derives from the Turkish word balta, meaning a heavy weapon. The baltagi was tasked with carrying or guarding this weapon in times of war and at public executions in the Ottoman era. However, this agent provocateur has always been somewhat problematic, due to his association with illegal acts, physical strength, violence, and money. The ambivalent relationship between the Egyptian military system and the baltagiya was evident not only in the Port Said massacre but also in the horrific attacks on anti-Mubarak protesters during 2011. These paid counterinsurgency mobs were part of a security archipelago that used vicious tactics. Notable among these was the widespread use of sexual violence against women in public spaces during this period, in an effort to undermine the collective solidarity and reputation of the street activists’ movement. This was an effective way to intimidate many citizens and persuade them from participating in civil disobedience actions against the Mubarak regime. Moreover, political commentators described random gangs of men descending on Tahrir Square in 2011, flooding the public space and shouting extremist slogans in order to undermine the unity of the protesters, and to alternatively wreak havoc by damaging property and viciously

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The Catastrophe Apparatus

beating civilians. Many have reiterated claims that the Ministry of Interior recruited these gangs and deployed their use to sabotage the progressive politics of the revolutionary youth movement in Egypt at this time. Fan-on-fan violence had been expected between al-Ahly and al-Masry Ultras groups, and early signs were visible in the insults traded on social media and the banners displayed around the stadium. In the west stand, al-Masry Ultras Green Eagles carried banners with death threats on them. One read, in English, “We Are Going to Kill You All,” threatening alAhly fans for daring to come to Port Said. This display of bravado was not out of the ordinary, and had become common in social media battles, but such threats had never been actually enacted in the past. The Ultras Ahlawy added to the tension, when they displayed a provocative, taunting banner during the game, questioning the virility of Port Said fans. There were pregame scuffles and before kick-off, al-Masry fans invaded the pitch, delaying the match by half an hour. A video clip online documented some key moments during the halftime break, showing al-Masry fans invading the pitch again. A local reporter was heard commenting that al-Masry fans were mostly acting responsibly, but that ominously some of the home crowd appeared to have been seen with weapons, trying to attack the Cairo Ultras at the eastern end of the football stadium. Also during halftime, an Ultras Green Eagles fan ran down the pitch with a flare in his hand. A lone police officer half-heartedly tried to stop him by putting out his arm, before giving up as the fan continued to run toward the stands where al-Ahly fans were. A fellow Green Eagles fan eventually stopped him.

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As the second half resumed, the atmosphere darkened. Al-Masry team scored three goals in the second period, and each time the home fans celebrated by storming onto the pitch. The referee had lost control of the situation, and riot police and club officials ignored the ensuing chaos. As the last minutes of the game concluded, thousands of home spectators ran onto the playing field. Al-Masry Ultras, armed with sticks, clubs, knives, and fireworks, first targeted al-Ahly players, who fled to their changing rooms under diminished police protection. Al-Ahly forward Muhammad Zekri described the scene in a TV interview. Zekri heard police tell al-Masry fans to “go and beat the shit out of them [Ultras Ahlawy fans]” (Observer 2012). He went on to state that he saw, “about ten armed thugs gathering right in front of the police,” armed with swords and other weapons, “but not a single one of them [the police officers] moved” (Observer 2012). Al-Ahly team coach Manuel José was kicked and punched by al-Masry fans, while attempting to return to the team’s locker room. The team captain and iconic player Muhammad Abu Trika  reported that he witnessed al-Ahly fans die in the team’s changing room. He is said to have held a dying fan in his arms, and it is estimated that four fans died as they were trapped inside with the team, injured and traumatized. Abu Trika said in a media interview, “Some security officials and policemen [are] involved in this” (al-Masry al-youm 2012). Eventually, the Egyptian army airlifted soldiers into the stadium by helicopter to rescue the players, who were stranded in the away team’s locker rooms. As an immediate reaction to the disaster, national team captain and football legend Abu

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The Catastrophe Apparatus

Trika, known as Amir al-Qulub (Prince of Hearts), decided to retire from football, along with other Egyptian international football stars Muhammad Barakat and Emad Met‘eb. However, Abu Trika would return to professional football with al-Ahly in 2013, to help the team win the league. His political activism and criticism of the current government has, however, since led to his forced exile from Egypt. In January 2017, he was added to a terror list for alleged connections to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. In another incident, al-Ahly striker Ahmed Abd al-Zaher was sanctioned by his club, after he celebrated a goal by displaying the four-fingered gesture, representing support for the hundreds killed during the security forces’ violent dispersal of a pro-Morsi sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square (meaning fourth in Arabic) in August 2013. Zaher was shipped off on loan to a Libyan team, although he was later brought back to al-Ahly. In the aftermath of Port Said, then-team coach, Portuguese Manuel José, reportedly considered leaving Egypt and retiring from football coaching. In the east-end stand of the stadium, al-Ahly fans were trying to hold off al-Masry attackers with flares and other improvised defensive objects. The ferocious scene was broadcast live on national TV to a horrified nation, as the commentator attempted to deal with the violence of the game. Then, the stadium lights were cut and the television images struggled to broadcast. At this stage, a thousand or so al-Ahly Ultras were trapped on the upper terrace, trying to escape. Many were forced into the only blocked exit tunnel available, the only gate out of three on that side of the stadium that had been open before the match. However,

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to the horror of the Ultras, they discovered the gate had been locked from the outside during the game, and in the stampede people were being crushed, and others were suffocating or bleeding to death in a collision of bodies. As one Ultra told the media afterwards, “Bodies piled up over each other. I was standing there listening to the sound of people’s bones being crushed” (al-Masry al-youm 2012). In the ensuing crush of bodies, one Ultras member outside the gate tried to break open the door lock. Known as Youssef, this young Ultra, from the Maadi section in Cairo, saved the lives of many by finding a brick and breaking the padlock on the door. The immense pressure of the bodies behind the door caused it to burst open and the heavy gate fell on top of Youssef, killing him instantly. At the same time, other Cairo Ultras were cornered on top of the stand, either jumping off, or being thrown off, by their attackers. One of the casualties was a politically active member of the Ultras Ahlawy, twenty-two-year-old Omar Mohsen, an economics student at the American University in Cairo. University students staged a number of events in his honor, and the administration established a memorial scholarship and inaugurated a campus entry gate as a tribute to him.7 An Ultras survivor later recollected in a daily newspaper interview: They were attacking and running after those who were in red exactly like raging bulls. I saw them pointing guns to people’s heads. Three or four people would be cutting one’s head with knives. I saw my friends were being thrown from the upper seats of the terrace (Ultra Mino 2012).

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* Violent brawls between rival football fans, in particular between the Suez Canal cities and Cairo, are not uncommon in Egypt, but such fights generally occur when fans from the losing team lash out at those from the winning side. Yet, alMasry had unexpectedly won the match against al-Ahly 3–1 when the crowds invaded the pitch and the murderous attack began. The weight of evidence gathered indicates that state security forces were most likely complicit in this violence. On one hand, it is true that security forces sometimes sought to avoid interacting with Ultras after being embarrassed during the January and February demonstrations that removed Mubarak. Neglect played a role too, as numerous security officials and riot officers were present at the stadium when violence erupted against al-Ahly fans, but they failed to prevent the mayhem. According to witnesses, these officers did not intervene to stop the dozens of men who attacked al-Ahly Ultras. According to Ali, a twenty-year-old student who witnessed the pleas to Port Said police inside the stadium for help from al-Ahly Ultras, the officers responded, “Don’t you say you protected the revolution, protect yourselves now” (Egypt Independent 2012). As a result of these suspicious circumstances, the Ultras Ahlawy stated that the attack was not a manifestation of football hooliganism but, rather, was carefully calculated revenge, orchestrated by pro-Mubarak forces against them. They considered the ambush to be retribution for their prominent role in the 2011 uprising, which occurred almost exactly one year prior to the Port Said massacre. Another Ultras member who spoke anonymously in an interview for a masters thesis said of the attackers:

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I could also see dead people being robbed of their valuables, and others getting photographed by their murderers. Al Masry fans are not innocent. I have seen them, just as I have experienced the conspiracy we got trapped in (Taha 2015, 81).

Considering the fact that Mubarak himself was at this time in custody under charges of conspiring to kill protesters in collusion with others, the revenge motive is indeed reasonably plausible. Many Egyptians thus claimed that pro-Mubarak actors instigated the Port Said massacre, with state security forces purposefully neglecting to intervene. The media narrative in the first few days of the aftermath strongly favored the theory that the massacre was orchestrated rather than tolerated. This view was espoused by both supporters of UA07, and by al-Masry’s Ultras Green Eagles themselves. Further speculation ensued when one of the paid saboteurs, al-Sayed Muhammad Refaat, nicknamed al-Danf, claimed in newspaper interviews that the plan involved hiring six hundred baltagiya from outside Port Said to carry out the crime for as little as le150 Egyptian pounds (US$9) each. Media commentators and street activists claimed it was all part of an organized plan to undermine the political process, a theory echoed by politicians in the newly-elected parliament, who were just beginning their term at the time of the disaster. Concrete evidence never emerged to support such a theory, despite eyewitness accounts and video materials from the stadium and game that show the open violence. Testimonies from Cairo Ultras and media reports, however, did suggest that police blocked stadium exits and turned off the stadium

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lights to prevent video footage being captured (al-Masry al-youm 2012). Rudimentary examination of the facts does point toward suspicious circumstances, based on the simple point that almost all the deaths and injuries were of al-Ahly Ultras, suggesting a degree of premeditation on the side of the aggressors (al-Masry al-youm 2012). Hisham Sheha, an official in the Egyptian health ministry, said the seventy-two fan deaths were caused by stab wounds, brain hemorrhages, and concussion. The UA07 survivors waited outside the stadium alongside the injured and the dead for ambulances to arrive. A train brought the five hundred Ultras who were able to travel back to Cairo, as worried relatives and friends called to check on individuals. One Port Said survivor said in a media interview: Mothers started to call to ask about their children. I was responsible for this trip along with others. People would ask, “Where is Karim? Nobody knows. His mother calls, “Where is Karim?” (Ultra Maged 2012).

As the Ultras boarded the train at night from Port Said to Cairo, the young fans first noticed the mood of the nation. Even Port Said locals were waiting to offer food and condolences to them, as news of the tragedy spread across the country. A survivor commented, “When we reached the train station there were so many people from Port Said telling us it wasn’t us and offering us food” (Ultra Kimo 2012). The train transporting al-Ahly Ultras finally arrived at Ramses train station in Downtown Cairo in the dark early hours of the winter morning. There were tens of thousands of Ultras

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from across the city waiting to help the traumatized group of survivors from the train, and others had come to search for missing friends and relatives. The emotional scene brought together the two rival groups of Zamalek and al-Ahly in Cairo under a common cause, and a new spirit of solidarity had been created. The shocked Ultras were greeted by a noisy and chaotic scene, with support for them coming from other football fans and the public. As one long-standing Ultra recounted in an interview: Egypt did not sleep that day. There were families coming to look for their sons without knowing if they were alive or dead. I saw families who thought their sons were dead and then they found them alive. There were like fifteen or twenty people coming for each one of us. Friends came searching for their friends. People were crying and hugging their sons and they were in hysterical conditions (Ultra Kimo 2012).

Whatever the reality behind the motivation and organization of those responsible for the Port Said massacre, the event had two primary ramifications for the Ultras. Firstly, the Port Said event paradoxically strengthened the position of the police, renewing calls for law and order. Secondly, the massacre brought the Ultras more visibly into politics than some members perhaps intended, and its brutality reinvigorated the radical urgency of Ultras membership. The Cairo UA07 led several demonstrations at Egyptian Football Association headquarters and organized an occupation camp in front the People’s Assembly to pressure the authorities to investigate

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and initiate a transparent judicial process. The Ultras’ Port Said encampment occupied a new space in Cairo for more than two weeks: from 25 March to 9 April 2012. The camp was small, with around a hundred people sleeping there overnight and a few thousand more visiting each day, particularly at night, when the gathering would become akin to an Ultras football stand. The collective gathering also became therapeutic in nature, as Ultras members publically grieved, families visited, and Cairene fans displayed their support and solidarity. The official investigation into the Port Said incident began a few days after the attack, when the prosecution and a parliamentary fact finding commission visited the stadium and interviewed eyewitnesses. Finally, the football organization supported the families and friends of fallen comrades in a collective grieving process. Two weeks after the tragedy, several senior police officers were detained: Abd al-Aziz Fahmy from the Central Security Forces; General Essam Samak, the chief of the Port Said Security Directorate; his two assistants—General Abu Hashem and General Kamal Gad al-Rab—and Brigadier General Muhammad Saad, the head of the maritime police in Port Said, who was in charge of security in the eastern stands of the stadium, where the away fans were seated. Subsequently, the prosecution referred seventy-two defendants to criminal trial, more than forty of whom were thought to be members or affiliates of the Ultras Green Eagles and the various different al-Masry fan groups. The remainder was made up of the aforementioned senior policemen, alMasry club officials, the club’s security directors, and others who were thought to be hired petty criminals. Many of the

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accused were arrested weeks after the investigation and not at the crime scene, with little forensic evidence captured to support convictions. The main criminal investigation officer was from Port Said, Khaled Nimnim, who led the investigation. He proved to be an extremely controversial character, and many people insisted that he should have been one of the accused himself, since he was part of the security forces responsible for the eastern stands where the Ultras away fans were positioned. Regardless of the compromised nature of the investigation and character of the court cases, some useful insights were revealed about the circumstances behind the fatalities. The majority of the deaths appeared to have occurred during a stampede, when the Cairo Ultras tried to exit the stadium and discovered all three gates were locked and the exit tunnel began to fill with panicked fans. Therefore, whoever was responsible for locking the gates is key in the attribution of blame. The parliamentary fact finding committee was hastily formed, and had little experience in such investigations, since it was composed mostly of members of parliament with no particular expertise in criminal investigation. The committee published its preliminary report about ten days after the event, noting that the security measures outlined by FIFA for local football governing bodies and stadium management, such as ease of access and exit, were not followed. The main gate where the crush happened opened to the inside, in violation of stipulations for ease of access and safety guidelines issued by FIFA. The first trial began in April 2012 and lasted less than a year. It was established that clashes broke out toward the

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end of the match because “the police did not intervene,” as one account claimed. “... Instead, they [the police] withdrew from the stadium, welded the doors, and turned off the stadium lights” (Ultra Assad 2012). There were two doors that were welded shut, which confused people in the stadium, but, according to multiple accounts— corroborated by the inquiry of the fact-finding committee—the gates had been welded shut weeks before this game. The justification given for such a dangerous act by stadium officials was the recent clashes between al-Masry and al-Ittihad fans, when the home fans had stormed the pitch. Of the three gates, one—known as the Social Club entrance—was not welded shut before the game, but was locked during the match by Saad, the security officer in charge. The small tunnel leading to this last gate is where most of the Port Said deaths occurred. During the trial, Saad’s legal defense called on the court to charge Khaled Nimnim, since he was just as much responsible for the security at the eastern gate as the security officer himself. Indeed, placing Nimnim in charge of the investigation was inexplicable, and creates an abiding sense that whoever the real culprit or culprits are, they will never easily be convicted. The authorities in charge of security at the game should have foreseen trouble, given the antagonistic history between the Cairo and Suez Canal clubs, and, the knowledge that al-Masry fans had attacked away fans during their previous home game; an indication they were likely to repeat this behavior against al-Ahly. The reasons why Port Said stadium authorities welded two of three exits at the UA07 fans’ terrace shut before the game, and later locked the third gate before the conclusion of the match, were not systematically investigated beyond

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blaming the gate security worker, Saad. Blocking two main exit gates in advance of a game was a reckless act that might result in the deadly entrapment of the Cairo Ultras, if al-Masry fans attacked, as they did. Moreover, eyewitness testimonies confirmed that before the match, security personnel allowed some of the home crowd to enter unchecked, reported to be openly carrying various weapons that were barely concealed, before the violence erupted. These simple facts above all point toward a miscarriage of justice, and suggest a cover-up in the legal proceedings, which did not lead to the apprehension of all those responsible. The limited nature of the investigation remains suspicious; the criminal charges against police officers and club authorities proved a degree of willful neglect, and displayed a remarkable ineptitude to prosecute those behind the Port Said conspiracy. As such, the case fell short of establishing the premeditated organization of the brutal attack and any political collusion behind it. The deficiency of crucial forensic evidence and the unsatisfactory police investigation undermined the potential of the inquiry to reveal the hidden truth in this case. In the immediate aftermath of the Port Said tragedy, alAhly Ultras and supporters took to the streets to demand a transparent investigation and badly-needed police reform. This led to direct conflict with riot police, and twelve people were killed and hundreds injured across the country in the first few days. The UA07 acted with the support of Zamalek’s UWK, along with a number of other groups, as they unified to mobilize large numbers and staged huge protests in many cities, especially around trial sessions and leading up to the announcement of the first verdict.

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The days between the first verdict, on 26 January 2013, and another on 9 March 2013, saw the highest escalation in protests and counter-protests in Cairo, the Delta cities, and the Suez Canal region. When twenty-one provisional death sentences were announced as part of the first verdict, families of the defendants protesting outside Port Said prison clashed with prison guards. In the ensuing violence, two prison guards were shot and more than fifty residents of Port Said were killed by the police in the subsequent days of mayhem. Regardless, the court verdict did not stop the UA07 from escalating street tensions, as they attempted to put pressure on the government. The most confrontational protest was outside the Giza Security Directorate in Cairo, where thousands of protesters chanted insults directed at the minister of interior. Protesters set a police car on fire, making it clear they still considered that the police were culpable for the Port Said massacre. On 4 March 2013, the Ultras Ahlawy staged a major street blockade on one of Cairo’s main highways, Salah Salim, causing massive congestion across the city. At that point, the UA07 and UWK were the only movements in Egypt that were still capable of staging protests in such numbers with such consistency, a point noted by the arms of the security state forces. Spring 2013 saw the first round of sentencing by Port Said Criminal Court, as it reached a final verdict in the slow-moving trial. The presiding judge, Sobhi Abd al-Maged, sentenced twenty-one of the seventy-two accused to death. In addition, it sentenced one senior security officer to fifteen years in prison and another to a life term, but found seven of the nine accused policemen to be innocent (al-Ahram 2013). This judgment was appealed, opening

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up a prolonged legal process that continued until 20 February 2017, when the Court of Cassation, the highest court in the Egyptian common court system, brought criminal proceedings against fifty-one defendants. The sentencing confirmed ten death sentences and forty-one lengthy prison convictions. The death sentences stemmed from a retrial in June 2015. However, only two of the nine police officers that were originally charged were finally convicted, including the chief of Port Said Police Station, each receiving a five-year sentence (Mada Masr 2017). Furthermore, despite the visibility of the Port Said trial, little attention has been focused on the fact that few judicial and no police reforms had occurred since the 2011 uprising. On the wider political level, Muhammad Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood apparatchik, was put forward by the group’s leadership as their presidential candidate in the first fully open, democratic elections in the history of Egypt. In a suspicious turn of events in 2012, the original Muslim Brotherhood candidate—the respected Khairat al-Shater—was disqualified and declared ineligible because he had recently been released from prison.8 In a decisive move, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the military’s ruling body, foiled al-Shater’s candidacy in order to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite this, the Brotherhood’s second-favorite candidate, Morsi, went on to win the presidential election in June 2012. The basic principles of democracy appeared to be working. However, behind this veil of transparency and hope, political progress during Morsi’s one-year tenure was destabilized through the impairment of economic growth, and by discord among the various oppositional movements. Moreover,

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the Muslim Brotherhood antagonized Mubarak-era cronies by threatening to retry cases involving the murder of protesters dating back to the 2011 uprising. Bessam Momani wrote, “The day after Mr. Morsi was removed from power, Egypt’s fuel shortages were no more, its electricity supply went uninterrupted and traffic police suddenly went back to work” (Momani, Brookings Institution, 2013). Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood isolated itself from other oppositional organizations once in power, and attempted to ensure a firm grip on the shape of post-Mubarak politics. A bloody military-led coup in the summer of 2013 deposed Morsi and dispatched him to prison, as the newly-emboldened military machine violently dismantled the Muslim Brotherhood organization and all other oppositional groups. This audacious move reinstated direct military rule in Egypt, when General Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi won the election in 2014. Similar tensions occurred in an attempted army purge in Turkey in July 2016 by sections of the military establishment. This exposes some of the regional stresses between political Islam and military-dominated forms of statehood. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded to the overthrow of Morsi by stating, “I am saying that state terrorism is currently underway in Egypt” (Tisdall, Guardian 2018). Despite condemnation from parts of the international community, the military regime in Egypt displayed scant regard for democracy in Egypt, as the violent takeover withstood criticism and al-Sisi’s election justified his regime. Echoing the Mubarak period, the official figures showed that 25,578,233 people voted in the elections, a turnout of 47.5 percent, with al-Sisi appearing to win over 23 million of the votes cast—or a staggering 96.91 percent

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of the election count. Crucially, to validate the military propaganda, this amounted to ten million more votes than were garnered by former Islamist president Muhammad Morsi in 2012. Amid the political uncertainty of the violent transfer of power—from Mubarak’s regime, to Muslim Brotherhood rule, and then back to al-Sisi’s version of a democratic state— the Ultras, like many Egyptians who were caught up in street activism, became even further disempowered. The year 2011 marks only the briefest revolutionary aperture of emancipation that lured Ultras groups into the full optics of politics. This period of transition, in contrast, exerted a heavy price on their collective unity and capacity to resist. The temporary sense of positive freedom that had allowed millions of Egyptians to enter the public sphere for the first time and to have their voices heard, demanding social and economic change, was replaced by authoritarian rule that disenfranchised the majority of the population. This sudden removal of visibility is what Jacques Rancière describes as, “… not understanding what they (marginalized) say, by not hearing that it is speech coming out of their mouths” (Rancière 2001, 4). The history of the Ultras in Egypt reveals an attempt to confront power in a direct transition from the margins to the mainstream, from alienation to assimilation. In a society governed by vertical power relations and a chronic lack of socioeconomic development and mobility, the Ultras football fan groups were formed around radical horizontal social relations, albeit compromised by gender issues common in Arab cultures, but nonetheless subversive to the status quo. In the book Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, Rancière identifies

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the political process with the establishment of ‘the police,’ a term borrowed from Michel Foucault and describing the mode of government that originated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the same time, Rancière also insists that the political process refers to “ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of saying” (Rancière 1999, 29). His writings have used aesthetical positions to challenge hegemonic order, and ‘dissensus’ is a key term in his philosophical discourse. For Rancière, politics is not a matter of what people receive or demand. To challenge such a hierarchical order is to act under the presupposition of one’s own equality. What is disrupted by challenging the hegemonic power, is not only the power arrangements of the social order, but the perceptual and epistemic underpinnings of that order, the obviousness and naturalness that is attached to this order. Such a disruption is what Rancière calls dissensus, and it is also the revelation of the contingency of the entire perceptual and conceptual order in which such arrangements are embedded, the contingency of what Rancière calls le partage du sensible— the partition or distribution of the sensible. Hence, the dramatic murders in Port Said, broadcast live on TV networks, can be seen as an extreme manifestation of police power, a traumatic spectacle played out in the media, designed to prevent the Ultras and other radical actors from assuming public roles or political agency. The public appetite for social change, a key part of the popular 2011 demands, has been replaced by the politics of fear, as the newly-born unity of the Ultras movement was fractured to facilitate the rehabilitation of the old military regime under the new guise of General al-Sisi. This situation left the Ultras, among other

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entities associated with revolutionary politics, with no room or potency to become political beings, without public street space or football stadia to perform in. With the disruption of the domestic football league since the Port Said incident in 2012, football fans have been prohibited from attending matches, as most games are played to empty stadia, and harsh protest laws have further curbed the right to public assembly. As part of the sweeping parliamentary legislation enacted by the military, the Ultras were classified as a terrorist organization in 2015, and record levels of human rights abuses under al-Sisi have surpassed the worst excesses of Mubarak’s thirtyyear rule. The politics of fear has replaced the short-lived optimism of the newfound chorus in 2011, as this monumental period has been airbrushed from official historical narrative by the military and media establishments. Such a stark analysis of Egypt presents the vision of a fragile, tenuous national state in perpetual crisis, trapped within economic free fall. In 2016, the Egyptian pound halved in value overnight as part of an imposed International Monetary Fund austerity package. These extreme economic measures have been coupled with the violent threat emerging from radical domestic Islamic terrorist groups, embedded within an increasingly improvised and polarized society. This disconcerting state of affairs in contemporary Egypt derives from the policies of the military machine and media apparatus; a cruder model of Noam Chomsky’s manufacturing consent theory, which reproduces the narrow perception of order, of what is conceivable within a given place or situation. In the aftermath of 2011, Egyptian society became fatigued by years of social turmoil, economic recession, and

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political unrest. The public sought consolation in a return to the familiar, simple narrative of patriarchal military rule and, after such revolutionary upheavals, became a seductive sedative for many in the 2013 takeover. This quick fix, for all ills, enabled and emboldened the military apparatus to further exploit national resources and extract international funding for their own profit, reproducing a pattern all too common across the African continent. This bleak reality is, of course, in contrast to the revolutionary utopian reverie of the 2011 uprising, as the postrevolution atmosphere faded and the attempt to create equality was replaced with a police logic that substituted autonomy for heteronomy. The uninspired 2014 general election victory by the soldier-turned-politician Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi reflected this endemic societal malaise in the post-2011 landscape. The destruction of the Ultras football-based movement and the violent suppression of all other oppositional entities, echoes the course of other counter-revolutions in history. Commentators have described the Egyptian situation as a type of deep state, which reasserted its control on the nation through the manipulation of public opinion, by undermining Muslim Brotherhood-led governance (Momani, Brookings Institution 2013). Public anxiety heightened, in particular among non-Islamic actors; most strongly espoused through a newly-formed organization, Tamarod (Rebellion), which campaigned against President Morsi’s rule, and eventually sleepwalked into the 2013 military coup d’état. The chronic political condition has been perpetuated, because the needs of the 2011 popular uprising remain unsatisfied and generally unaddressed by al-Sisi’s regime. Like many other Egyptians,

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the members of the Ultras organizations have endured an epic drama filled with pathos, as momentous events hardened a young generation to the harsh realities of establishing a new societal order to bring about political transformation. The Ultras movement is invisible in the current situation, but Cairo’s football communities may still retain a latent unifying capacity that continues to offer an alternative to the vision of military governance in al-Sisi’s Egypt. Although both Cairo based organizations, the UA07 and UWK, have now officially disbanded, there remains a considerable level of marginalization and disaffection among elements of Egyptian youth, who are drawn to the aura of the Ultras in urban culture. On the fourth anniversary of the Port Said incident in 2016, President al-Sisi, in a media interview, seemed to publicly appease the Ultras Ahlawy, when he offered them a role in a new governmental investigative committee into the Port Said massacre. In a phone call to the popular television show al-Qahira al-yawm (Cairo Today), he said: “I call on the Ultras to choose ten of their members whom they can trust to be part of an [investigative] committee and determine what more can be done” (Sisi 2016). This hypocritical reconciliation was rejected by the Ultras outright on their social media forums, as they remained skeptical that such a government committee would have any genuine investigative powers. Rather, the UA07 suggested that they would only support a fully independent, transparent, and public inquiry into the events at Port Said. The relationship with the government deteriorated further when a small section of the Ultras gatecrashed an official ceremony for the Port Said victims at al-Ahly Club Stadium in central Cairo. The squadron of

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Ultras occupied the small stadium space and staged animated displays with flares; chanting against the current regime, and provocatively rejecting the presidential olive branch. Al-Sisi’s interview comment, like much of the rhetorical posturing of the government, was unchallenged by mainstream media, and, unsurprisingly, no such Port Said committee was ever formed, appearing to confirm the Ultras’ suspicions about the true motives behind the offer. A year later, in 2017, in a preplanned police operation, military intelligence arrested one hundred and seventeen Ultras Ahlawy from their homes and workplaces, right before the Port Said anniversary. The Ultras were charged with protesting and joining an outlawed terrorist group. This abuse of human rights means that many Ultras, along with other antistate actors, are being framed for being members of subversive organizations, within a slow-moving legal system. Many were released over the coming days, after the anniversary had elapsed. The military move proved to be a precursor for the more brutal and sustained harassment of these radical football fans that followed. Although the vast majority of Ultras reject terrorism, some members have been radicalized into Islamist politics, and the on-going low intensity war in Egypt, in particular within the Sinai Peninsula and Western Sahara, where several armed militant groups are based. Rami Iskanderiya, a former leader of Ultras Ahlawy in Alexandria, joined the Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria, in 2015. Other Ultras members, such as radical UWK leader Sayed ‘Moshagheb’ Faheem, have been drawn into local groups affiliated with the Islamic State, purportedly smuggling arms from Sinai, and participating in violent attacks across Egypt (Dorsey 2015).

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Indeed, Moshagheb, of the UWK in Cairo, has been a controversial figure, leading a takeover of the movement and introducing a militancy that resulted in clashes with the state. The UWK, albeit with fewer members than Ultras Ahlawy, was the second largest football fan movement in the capital, with approximately one million followers on Facebook by 2016. They reflect the sentiment of a young generation that has progressively lost hope. If anything, the UWK’s short history, similar to their counter-parts Ultras Ahlawy, expresses the sense of frustration among Egypt’s youth with the successes of the security forces, dissolving the achievements of 2011. The repressive policies of Sisi’s government fueled this dissatisfaction, which erupted in a tragic confrontation on 8 February 2015 at the military-owned facility, the Air Defense Stadium on the outskirts of Cairo, in an area surrounded by military-owned land. Twenty-two UWK fans—aged between seventeen and twenty-three—died in the incident, ahead of a Sunday evening game, after police fired teargas and shotgun pellets at supporters who were queuing to enter the stadium. The massacre was another episode of state-led violence, echoing that of Port Said in 2012. The clashes prompted the government to again postpone the Egyptian Premier League indefinitely. The violence reportedly started as police dispersed members of the UWK in front of the stadium, a few hours before the start of a regular Egyptian Premier League game between Zamalek S.C. and the Engineering for the Petroleum and Processes Industry Sporting Club, better known as ENPPI. However, the game was unusual, because the authorities had announced in advance that only a limited

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number of fans could attend the game, the first occasion of this sort since 2012. Access had been permitted to only 10,000 fans (the full stadium capacity was 30,000), and ticket allocation was through public sale and the Zamalek Club, headed by the infamous club president Mortada Mansour. It appears only five thousand tickets were sold and the remaining tickets were held back by Mansour for ‘guests.’ His son and board member Ahmed Mansour said on his Facebook page, “You do not understand anything. You are not allowed to get in by force. No disrespectable fans. No thugs are allowed here” (al-Ahram 2015). As the expectant Ultras fans arrived hours before the game, they encountered a heavily policed area with restricted entry access to the stadium. In addition, a new specially constructed barbed wire cage, with a single-turnstile entry gate, was the only access available to fans. The metal structure was compact and video footage taken by neighbors in buildings overlooking the stadium show the cramped conditions, as young fans were compressed in a small space and harassed by large numbers of police. The security forces corralled the spectators seeking access, with or without tickets, and the escalating tension was recorded and posted on social media. As the cage filled up, more and more fans were compressed into the small metal structure with sharp edges, surrounded by wire, and without any exit route. Obviously, some Ultras had tried to enter without tickets, given the limited number available, with the intention to pay a bribe for entry, a common practice at football games in Egypt. The football fans kept arriving and entering the caged space, while at the other end, only the few with tickets were permitted to enter the stadium.

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Frustration exploded and Ultras started to climb out and over the structure. At this point, riot police opened fire with teargas and birdshot. A vicious stampede and battle ensued, as the UWK, armed with flares, fired back at the police in an attempt to escape. The amateur video circulated online shows hundreds of fans hemmed in by the barbed wire, as the police fired straight at the crowd, resulting in the death of twentytwo UWK fans. Later, when the Zamalek team bus arrived in a police convoy, the UWK fans tried to prevent the bus from entering the area, to dissuade team members from playing as a mark of respect for the dead and dying Ultras. The disturbed fans pressed phone images of what had happened against the bus windows, appealing to the players and team to cancel the game. However, the match went ahead, despite the deadly events outside the stadium. Only the fullback, Omar Gaber, a favorite figure among the UWK, withdrew from the game in support of the fans. Later, the Zamalek Club management suspended Gaber for “sympathizing” with the Ultras. The match was played amid an eerie mood, while the media captured emotional scenes, as UWK Zamalek fans inside the stadium started to realize what had happened and reacted to the news of injured or dead friends. The fans wept and displayed makeshift banners, calling for the game to be halted. Outside the stadium, the violence escalated into the night, as thousands went to the stadium area, and the UWK took revenge on police by rioting, resulting in police vehicles being set alight. Only club president Mortada Mansour seemed satisfied with the game, and laid the blame firmly on the UWK. In an interview with a national newspaper he said:

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Some hooligans stood in front of the club bus and prevented it from moving forward. The situation inside the stadium was great. But the White Knights stormed the stadium with the aim to massacre, and this is what happened. The Ultras have harmed Egypt and vowed to burn the Zamalek Club. They are criminals (al-Masry al-youm 2015).

Deputy Minister of Interior Abd al-Fattah Osman, speaking on national TV, CBC’s news program Huna al-‘asima (Here Is the Capital), rejected accusations that the police fired on Ultras fans outside the stadium as they were tightly confined inside the metal cage, despite video evidence clearly showing fans panicking as police fired at them. While the minister was speaking on the phone, the program aired live on TV the controversial video footage, showing UWK fans being shot. A statement from the Health Ministry later confirmed most of the deaths seemed to have been caused by the stampede, reportedly from injuries, asphyxiation, and several broken necks. In the aftermath of the football game, Hesham Barakat, the general prosecutor, charged members of the UWK over the incident, and dispatched an investigative team to review the video footage from the stadium’s security cameras. Meanwhile, Zamalek Club took no responsibility for the violence in an official letter to the Egyptian Football Association. However, the EFA countered that no less than 10,000 tickets were given to the club, while the number of fans inside the stadium was below that number. The football association went on to accuse Zamalek Club of withholding the unallocated tickets, and through neglect, being responsible for

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creating a dangerous situation in which fans could be injured or killed. Cabinet ministers urged the introduction of new legislation in the wake of the disaster, and sent condolences to the families of the deceased. The incident was unlikely to have been premeditated and the deaths were more a result of police incompetence, disregard, and sense of impunity. Police investigations led to three UWK members being sentenced to ten years in prison, and five others to seven years for a range of crimes linked to the 2015 Air Defense Stadium incident. One defendant was also sentenced to five years, and two others to three years in prison. Two other defendants were also sentenced in absentia to twenty-five years in prison, and two more were acquitted of all charges. Among those sentenced was Sayed Moshagheb, a leader of the UWK. Despite initial public outrage in 2015, immediately after the disaster, the level of public condemnation and anger declined over time. The UWK tragedy at the Air Defense Stadium did not significantly impact the general public to the same extent the Ultras Ahlawy incident in 2012 in Port Said did. Regretfully, other pressures on the majority of Egyptians soon overtook the event, at a time of economic hardship and anxiety over national security: Libya to the west and Syria to the east aided the Sisi regime’s repressive apparatus in stifling any dissent, as the public was reminded of the price of protest and civil disobedience in the Middle East. The worsening human rights situation hampered the UWK’s capacity to mobilize against the government in public spaces, as emergency laws re-emerged to restrict the right to protest and prohibit public assembly. Therefore, the political fallout of the tragedy was limited, and the UWK

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were left to restore their collective unity and mourn their lost comrades without widespread support. By 2015, militant leader Moshagheb and his followers had steered the organization in a hardcore direction toward full-on conflict with the state, and some commentators suggest his alleged links to armed Islamist terror groups in Egypt influenced this course of events. It was stated in the media that he tried to encourage protests in marginalized neighborhoods of Cairo, such as Matariya—a well-known Muslim Brotherhood stronghold. The radicalization of the UWK happened simultaenously with the height of armed resistance to Sisi’s government, as well as a series of high-profile bombings in Cairo and other cities. In one high-profile blast on 24 January 2014, a truck carrying 750kg of explosives was detonated outside the Police Headquarters in Cairo, killing four people, and was heard 17 kilometres away (al-Ahram 2014). This large-scale attack was the first of three subsequent bombings on the same day, and was part of an intense campaign by local Islamic insurgents. An insurgency movement with a particular stronghold in northern Sinai, the Province of Sinai, has carried out a number of high profile attacks in Egypt over the last years, and poses a considerable threat to the military regime. A Woodrow Wilson Centre report lists foreign fighters operating in the Sinai Peninsula, cataloguing over one-hundred-and-thirty terrorist attacks in four years (New Yorker 2017). In 2015, the militant group claimed responsibility for the shooting down of a MetroJet flight of Russian tourists, resulting in over two hundred casualties; this jihadist insurgency became affiliated to the Islamic State in November 2014. Such terrorist violence, for the most part,

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cowed the general public into supporting Sisi’s position and nationalist narrative, which argued for the need to oppress all dissenting voices in the name of security. These governmental policies antagonized the legions of disenfranchised youth disappointed with the failure of 2011, and some became attracted to the antigovernment militancy offered by Islamist groups and other associations at the time, such as Students Against the Coup, or the Ultras Nahdawy (renaissance in Arabic). The Ultras Nahdawy was formed from disillusioned Ultras Ahlawy and UWK members, who supported opposition to the state and protests on public university campuses. The Ultras Nahdawy had over 71,000 followers on Facebook, and was a unique football group because of their political formation and their objective to restore a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government, after it was ousted by the military takeover in 2013 led by Sisi. Moshagheb and other UWK radicals were arrested in March 2015, and charged with a wide range of crimes, including the assault on Zamalek Club President Mortada Mansour, and a fire at the Cairo Convention Center, in addition to the serious charges related to the Air Defense Force Stadium incident. Moshagheb was held in the notorious Aqrab (Arabic for scorpion) maximum security prison in solitary confinement, and was denied all visits except with his lawyer. In court hearings, he was often photographed with a clenched fist as he was removed from the court, and after seven months of confinement he began a hunger strike. This became an online activist-led campaign using the hashtags #no_to_solitary_ confinement and #Freedom_for_Moshagheb. His supporters would photograph themselves with a clenched fist, and a

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written slogan of solidarity with politically motivated prisoners. Moshagheb, Mustafa Tolba, plus other prominent UWK members remain in the Egyptian prison system, and, although Moshagheb was acquitted in the Mortada Mansour case, a military court sentenced him to seven years in 2017 over the Air Defense Force Stadium incident. Media reports on leaders such as UWK’s Moshagheb helped label the Ultras organizations as terrorist groups, and formed a narrative of their threat to the state. This government agenda helped mask a critical demand at the time to address the dire economic conditions that prevail for the vast majority of the impoverished one hundred million people. Among the concerns of the poor, the cost of living has risen steeply, due to the rapid devaluation of the local currency, making it exceedingly difficult to make a meager living. The fleeting social emancipation of 2011 and sense of hope for a different future is no longer permitted or visible in the public imagination. Autocratic rule and emergency laws operate as a normalized state of affairs, while the acquiescent media attempts to subdue, stifle, and distract public dissatisfaction with the political system. “Under Sisi’s leadership, the authorities have waged a witch-hunt since 2013,” described the Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders 2018). The Human Rights Watch annual report in 2016 documented cases of torture and state violence, commenting that in Egypt, “National Security officers were responsible for dozens of enforced disappearances, often targeting political activists” (Human Rights Watch 2016 34). In the transfer of power from Mubarak to Sisi, the new regime made cosmetic changes to the security

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apparatus. The Amn al-Dawla  (State Security) of Mubarak became the more benign sounding  Amn Watani  (National Security). HRW continued its research on the Sisi regime’s human rights record, provoking the Egyptian state to block its website, according to the monitoring group, Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP), which lists around five hundred online platforms that have been blocked, including news websites, blogs, and nongovernmental organizations. This marks another phase in the clampdown on freedom of expression between 2017 and 2018. The Ultras football groups have become victims of targeted state oppression, along with other entities: human rights groups, Internet bloggers, feminist advocates, trade unionists, art spaces, educational centers, and other progressive social groups. It is worth noting that most activist groups and key organizational figures from the revolutionary events of 2011 have been annulled, as key members languish in the infamous prison system to await court proceedings across the country, or have been forced into exile. Many ordinary citizens who discovered a newfound voice and activism in the freedom of 2011 have paid a heavy price. During their short lifespan of eleven years, the Ultras attempted to emerge as political beings, self-aware and self-determined as communities reinterpreting the cultural parameters of what it means to be a football fan in Egypt. The military establishment set about permanently dismantling the Ultras as a social phenomenon, along with other similar groups, in order to consign this football movement to a historical past in Egypt.

3 HOOLIGAN DAYS OF SPORTING DISSENSUS

Knowledge is considered as a common resource of social and political organisation, but also as a speculative asset and commodity; it is critically framed as the medium of colonial dominance exerted through epistemic control, to be contested through acts of de-linking the global south from Western philosophical traditions while creating different, independent, self-determined ways of knowing (Tom Holert 2015, 99).

T

he ostensible ‘wrong thinking’ of the hooligan mentality, associated commonly with the notion of the football fan, is arguably an original form of knowledge, developed on the margins, and operating rather erratically. It is this network-like capacity for wrong thinking and resistance that makes the Ultras social phenomenon potentially subversive to consensual politics, be they authoritarian regimes or liberal democracies. The hooligan figure can be seen to stand in opposition to controlling ideological forces at play in the world. The etymology of the ‘hooligan’ is Gaelic in origin, and became popularized in the nineteenth century by British newspapers’ obsession with youth street gangs in London at this time. The word can be found in music hall songs about 71

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rowdy Irish families, or in Clarence Rook’s 1899 book, The Hooligan Nights, among other everyday cultural forms. In ancient times, fan violence in the context of sports was noted in the Nika Chariot riots of ad 532 between the Blues and Greens in Constantinople, and resulted in the deaths of thousands on both sides. One of the original and most infamous football fan groups in the world is the Brazilian Torcidas, founded in 1939, and the creators of the globally popular Samba football culture. The group’s social history reveals a darker series of violent incidents at stadia, including bombings, as well as the famous exuberant carnival-like terrace performances renowned the world over. The hooligan figure was later incorporated into European football fan culture, to emerge as part of the Italian-based Ultras movement. Although many experts dispute their origin, Ultras groups were first founded in the early 1960s in Torino F.C. and Lazio F.C., and later expanded across the football world. In the European context, the marginal hooligan figure stands in opposition to consensual centralist or progressive liberal values, as the political consensus of societal norms are temporarily abandoned. It is this spirit of dissent that continues to hold a strong appeal for generations of alienated youth, as irrational forces of libidinal creativity guide through formative stages in life. Extreme English football fans have been closely associated with hooligan violence in the past, and continually aggravate the English Football Association’s policy agendas to neutralize such irrational behavior in order to secure further capitalist investment in the English domestic league, one of the most commoditized sporting products in the world.

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The 2016 Euro Football Championship in France was marred by violent behavior that began with the English fans’ aggressive intimidation of public space in French cities. Later, in the same month, the UK voted to leave the European Union. While surprising the metropolitan elite and European political classes, the Leave campaign’s success reflected the frustration felt in disaffected postindustrial communities within overlooked sections of the society. Although support for Brexit is not exclusive to such marginalized communities, demographic differences did play a significant role in galvanizing support for the break with the European Union. Both events were arguably manifestations of strongly felt anti-European sentiment and isolationism among some disillusioned sections of society, who attempt to resist, on their terms, the erosion of national identity and sense of belonging. The prevailing media-driven perception and public opinion commonly associates violent nationalism with football hooliganism, often in reference to English football culture, to infer that all football fans groups are the same. However, the Ultras fan phenomenon is more complex in nature, and each football group can hold diverse identities and a wide spectrum of ideologies. Both conservative, right-wing, nationalist Ultras, and activist, leftist groups exist in the spectrum of contemporary football culture, formed around particular collective identities that infiltrate the typical fan base of major football clubs. All Ultras groups employ similar-looking symbols, organizational structures, and terminology, and thus can appear analogous on the surface. Some explanations for this diversity could be understood through the particular history of each club and the context in which such groups flourished.

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For instance, the Ultras Sur of Real Madrid F.C. was formed from historical support for fascist dictator General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Despite the political and social transformation of Spain since the collapse of the dictatorship with the death of Franco in 1975, the Ultras Sur has opted to remain reactionary, and to stay locked into right wing, monarchist nostalgia, holding onto a one-sided historical vision of Spanish Civil War identities. In 2013, the Russian Landscrona Ultras, part of the successful club Zenit St. Petersburg, published a manifesto demanding that the management refrain from signing black and homosexual players. These types of xenophobic and homophobic outbursts emerge from right-wing nationalist politics, all too common in contemporary Russian football communities, and are influenced by the political atmosphere controlled by the Putin leadership. Similar incidents have been common in the spread of violent Ultras groups in Italy; Mafia criminality troubles many ordinary fans, and hampers the development of historic football clubs. However, the political tendencies of the Egyptian and Italian movements vary considerably because Italian Ultras generally have right-wing tendencies, whereas Egyptian Ultras have developed an antiauthoritarian position vis-à-vis the government. Another notable exception to these right-wing trends in today’s football culture are the Green Brigade Ultras in Scotland, who were formed within part of the Glasgow Celtic F.C. support base, a club with a specific Irish migrant history and distinct culture since its foundation in 1887. The new Green Brigade Ultras group started in 2006, with a clearlydefined set of political objectives embedded in their Irish

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diasporic character. They describe themselves as “a broad front of anti-fascist, anti-racist and anti-sectarian Celtic supporters” (Ultras Green Brigade 2013). One of their most controversial political campaigns and antagonistic positions remains toward the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and their expressions of solidarity with Palestinians. In August 2016, Glasgow Celtic played two games against the Israeli club Hapoel Beer Sheva in the UEFA cup. At the first game in Glasgow, the Green Brigade Ultras group organized a display of a thousand Palestinian flags and produced other politically charged gestures during the game. However, outside of this tifo performance at the football game, they also organized an online support campaign, #matchfinepalestine, to raise awareness for the Palestinian cause, and collected over £174,000 (US$221,216) in financial donations from their support network. The money was given to support the charity Medical Aid Palestinians and the Lajee Cultural Center in Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem. This charitable act was not an isolated incident for the Ultras group; rather it is part of an ongoing campaign to raise awareness through the display of tifos as political gestures, and to raise funds in order to have real life impacts on Palestinian communities. For some Celtic supporters, this is a radical reinvention of their own cultural identity, stepping out of the sectarian ghetto of Glasgow’s past toward a new global view on football. This new Ultras fan movement has transformed the Celtic football community through the reinvention of the Ultras Celtic fan as a political being, far from the narrow Glaswegian sectarian fault lines, toward a new awareness, oriented around contemporary cultural values.

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This activist Ultras fan base in the Celtic club may appear to be responding along time-honored antagonisms by expressing their sense of solidarity with the Palestinian resistance struggle. The fixed allegiances of the Northern Ireland conflict throughout the twentieth century were often played out in Glasgow’s football culture, during the ‘Old Firm’ derbies between Celtic and Rangers fans. The Israeli isolationist and settler mentality can appeal to and appears even compatible with the fanatical nature of Ulster Loyalism embedded within the Rangers F.C. fan culture. This support for Israel rubs against the identity of Celtic F.C. fans, whose political choreography is in parallel with the Irish Republican ideology. However, this somewhat one-dimensional vision of the binary between Rangers and Celtic in Glasgow oversimplifies the situation. In the shifting identities of contemporary football culture, even some Rangers fans applauded the Celtic Palestinian support campaign. The superficial categorizing of football fans along sectarian histories or convictions can also easily distract from genuine social concerns about global football organizations themselves, and their covert economic tactics, as is shown by the Israel case. After the two Celtic and Hapoel Beer Sheva football fixtures were played out in 2016, and as the Green Brigade’s Palestinian online support campaign concluded, a new Human Rights Watch investigation into the Israeli Football Association (IFA) was published. This report revealed the construction of at least six new football club stadia and training facilities inside Israeli settler bases on the Palestinian West Bank. In interviews with officials from the six settlement clubs, Human Rights Watch was able to review financial

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records and protocols of the Israeli Football Association, as well as the founding documents of these new football clubs. International football structural funding was channeled to the IFA from FIFA and UEFA grants to build sporting facilities on these disputed territories. By assisting in the construction and the validation of these new Israeli football clubs, FIFA and UEFA organizations are, therefore, directly complicit in support for the Israeli state’s illegal settler occupation of the West Bank. Also, UEFA and FIFA benefit from financial revenues generated from the IFA activities in national and international games, Champion League fixtures, and in domestic ties. As is clear, football clubs and fans vary in political ideology and cultural origin. Depending on the particular history of a club, each team has supporters with particular alliances and solidarities. Founded in 1936, Beitar Jerusalem Football Club fans are openly racist, and the club has become a symbol of the Israeli Zionist movement. Beitar’s hardcore fan group, known as La Familia, is infamous for its anti-Muslim hatred. When club owner Arcadi Gaydamak bought two Chechen Muslim players for the 2012–2013 football season, La Familia fans reacted violently in a series of attacks. In one notorious incident, La Familia members burned down the team’s clubhouse in Jerusalem. Eventually, over the season, the club was forced to release the harassed Chechen players, and the owner sold the club. The UEFA mandates and polices on equality are hard to reconcile with their position toward these new Israeli settler clubs, which have been incorporated into the Israeli Football Association leagues, and should offer their youth training

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facilities and access to regular league fixtures. The situation, however, is enacted at the expense of the Palestinian population, who are banned from entering the clubs located inside the settler compounds. They are unable to avail themselves of the facilities, or even to watch the club games, despite the obvious fact that Palestinians make up the majority of the immediate local population in the West Bank. UEFA’s support exposes the hypocrisy of its principles, and Glasgow’s Green Brigade Ultras exposed this UEFA–IFA policy position. In the aftermath of the Celtic and Hapoel Beer Sheva game, the Scottish club was disciplined with a fine of £10,000 (US$12,872). Moreover, in the ruling, UEFA went on to describe the Palestinian flag as an “illicit banner” in a statement. In another incident in 2014, Celtic was fined £16,000 (US$20,900) after a single Palestine flag was displayed at a Champions League qualifier against KR Reykjavik of Iceland. In the past, the Scottish champions have been punished eight times in five seasons by the European governing body for what UEFA labels supporter misconduct. This clearly demonstrates the double standards of both the UEFA and FIFA organizations, which aspire to promote football as an inclusive global culture, underpinned by human rights and social justice directives, but which at the same time fund and promote activities in the West Bank that are in opposition to these values. The duplicity of the UEFA position ignores the Israeli use of football stadia for political objectives, while at the same time applying severe disciplinary measures against the Celtic club and their Ultras football fans for taking an overt political stance. The Green Brigade Ultras of Celtic are part of a wider progressive global fan trend in football culture that rejects this

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neoliberal vision of the sport. In similar fashion, German football has a growing culture of high profile Ultras factions and radical fans, such as St. Pauli F.C. in Hamburg, many of which have battled against anti-immigration movements. Indeed, despite media stereotyping of football fans as mindless hooligans, some of the most ardent support for the refugee issue in Europe in recent times has come from this new Ultras fan base. In Turkey, the Ultras also played a role in the 2013 street protests, as fans from Istanbul archrivals Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, and Beşiktaş shielded protesters in Taksim Square and allied against state violence. Police responded with raids in the Beşiktaş neighborhood, the main stomping ground of the infamous Carsi Ultras. The Ultras horizontal social phenomenon has emerged across the football world at the same time as financial speculation in football clubs has escalated. Anonymous financial cartels or oligarchs, often from distant parts of the globe, regulate these long-established clubs as marketdriven products to be floated on stock trading systems. This financial speculation is at the expense of the organic support base and has increasingly alienated earlier generations of football communities, originally composed of the heritage and cultural capital of particular clubs. Sports culture can be perceived as having a regulatory function in society, as discussed in Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s well-known book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. They assert that, in the US context in particular, sporting events can coerce the general public and they learn to be submissive to authority, what Chomsky refers to as an “indoctrination system” (Chomsky

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1992). Hence sports organizations belong to a network of powerful corporations, an ideological apparatus to channel and manipulate the event in order to serve the status quo. Susan Sontag criticizes how societies have confused the change and dissemination of images in culture for real social change, in essence confusing the real with the mediated (Sontag 1977). In this case, progressive Ultras football groups can be seen rejecting such a consensus and the capitalist definition of the spectacle as a global commodity. Football culture has become a stultified leisure activity, rebranded by capitalist visions and underpinned by powerful media corporations who monopolize and engineer tournaments in order to maximize TV network exposure, thereby increasing financial revenues. Ultras reclaim the spectacle from this logic of capitalist passivity that renders the body in suspense, devoid of movement. The sense of common space has been made null and void by the sports event in the name of bland consumption, to be mediated as a detached experience. The Ultras collective displays appear, in contrast, as a different type of spectacle, freed from the controlled commodity vision, and repurposed as a spectacle of community. In Egypt, because of the six-year ban on football supporters, spectators were prevented from attending live games in the domestic league. All that remained for this Ultras fan community was to attend in limited numbers, the occasional, highly-controlled Confederation of African Football (CAF) championship games that often resulted in confrontation with the police and Egyptian Football Association. As a consequence of this situation, the expanded social media online space has become a virtual substitute for the physicality of

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the terraces. In the real shared space of the football stands, the Cairo Ultras behaved as a choreographed community, somewhat like a Greek chorus, to define, in their own indeterminate way, the coordinates of what is say-able, do-able, and see-able. The Ultras use of tifo communal displays in orchestrated events destabilized power relations, and in Egypt in particular, have been violently oppressed by conservative state actors. The event object takes on a role itself, and through image and sound disrupts the social order in original ways. Anonymous roles can appeal to the sense of imaginative play, organically reintegrating creativity in the entity to feedback into the fabric of everyday social life. Collective activities allow for the group to decode their own personal experience and shape social order, while encoding challenges, masking them from authority. The Ultras formation involves roles as narrators and translators of their own experience to shape the equality of a shared language. From an outside perspective, there is a significant gap between this fleeting subjective freedom and the reality of power. However, such gaps stand between the domination doctrine of autocratic rulers and collective communities, which can reposition and threaten power relations. The rituals on the football terraces undermine the authority of the capitalist spectacle to dissipate the allure of such mediated experience. In such a situation of visceral body motion and muscle, a collective expression of kinetic force counteracts the alienated, individualist narcissism in contemporary life. Through their own powerful performances, the Ultras group collectivity has repositioned the spectacle of contemporary football from capitalist interests that strives to undermine another way of

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being. As the Egyptian Ultras have been tested in extreme ways, their spectacles in stadia and performances of street protest have converged to dispute the influence of state power. Similarly, the Green Brigade Ultras of Celtic were able to salvage their football culture from Glasgow’s sectarian traditions and look outward for new solidarities. The appeal of the Ultras football communities can be attributed to the practice and lure of this indeterminacy, where social life is unknown and unfixed. This collective logic is set against the consensual age, associated with the forces of cultural and political homogeneity. Activist bell hooks discussed this sense of potentiality in her vivid essay, Marginality as a Site of Resistance. For her, the outsider space is key to empowerment and emancipation, involving an identity emboldened through the marginal rather than diminished, neither excluded nor inferior. She argues for radical perspectives that can only come about and be imagined as new worlds, in opposition to the consensual center of mainstream political thinking. Dissensus nourishes resistance, shapes the new and is critical for alternative communities. She maintains, “I was not speaking of marginality one wishes to lose, to give up, or surrender as part of moving into the center but rather as a site one stays in, clings to even” (hooks 1990, 341). The absence of any Ultras movement manifesto or clearly-defined objectives is, in fact, deeply alluring to many of the disaffected youth in Cairo and other cities in Egypt. Given the religiously inflected nature of social relations in the Arab world, alongside other regulatory apparatuses, the Ultras remain unswayed by sectarian differences afflicting the social construct of the nation. However, the question of

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gender equality remains unresolved, and, despite some notable exceptions in more cosmopolitan city districts, there is little possibility of renewing gender relations to include men and women in open spaces or free commons. This contentious gender issue was evident during the Tahrir Square protests in 2011, where the sexual harassment and violent attacks (either random opportunistic assaults or as a counter-insurgency tactic by paid thugs) of female protesters occurred, along with forced virginity tests under SCAF rule, and the then-head of military intelligence and SCAF member General al-Sisi. Such harsh measures became divisive to collectivity and the ideals of the street activist movements. The Ultras Port Said sit-in protest camp outside the People’s Assembly lasted for just over two weeks (25 March to 9 April 2012), and was a disciplined space with a set of six common rules. Rule two referred to gender dynamics and stated: ‘dm mibayat al-fatiyet ‘li in yekown tawaged hena b’ad aqsa 10 pm (Girls should not stay over after 10 pm) (Ultras Alhawy 2012). The Ultras did have many female activist supporters who attended the camp in solidarity with them over the Port Said case. Historically, they had also formed female-only sections at games to allow women to attend football matches and participate in tifos and other cultural activities, as a step toward greater gender inclusion and equality. However, their position during the camp caused friction with feminist campaigners, who sprayed graffiti and argued with Ultras leaders about this female-only curfew, deriding it as a ‘Cinderella’ rule. Wider Egyptian culture remains locked into a domain of masculinity, mostly refracted through patriarchal cultural beliefs. Despite the antagonism of the gender gap, there is in the Ultras a new,

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striking fluid masculinity and body language forming, which threatens the old ruling order in Egypt and, as such, other proxy states in the Arab world. The endless interplay between state repression and the aims of political activist groups, both secular and Islamic in ideology, antagonizes global tensions across the Middle East and North Africa, to the point at which some activists resort to desperate and violent measures. The new masculine identity of the Ultras position, in places like Egypt, acts as an alternative to the patriarchy of the region used by these politically regressive regimes. The Ultras represent an acute contrast to the life model for the archetypical twenty-first century technocrat, a latterday bourgeoisie, who evokes the new aspirational norm. This frictionless figure is caught in the façade of freedoms and of what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman described as “liquid modernity” (Bauman 1992, 250); a kind of liberal existence without obstacles, like sexual orientation, race, or gender. Arguably, the Ultras groups might even be seen to suggest new coordinates to what economist Peter Drucker termed the “universal educated person” (Drucker 1993, 192); prophetic of the idealized global worker and organizing principle for many in the Western world. Rather than create consensus, the Ultras groups produce new forms of dissonance to resist the distribution of authority, space, and function. This fluid position, at times violent or ‘wrong thinking,’ can unhinge the fragile equilibrium, and even challenge the perceptual power at the heart of the ruling order. The momentous eighteen-day period of Egypt’s 2011 uprising has faded from the world’s concern, but the experiences and mental images are retained, vivid to the eidetic

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memory of some, and a more abstract feeling for others, but still lucidly real for many ordinary Egyptians. The antiauthoritarian stance of progressive Ultras groups across the football world, emerging within their own contingencies, can antagonize the police order. As such, politics is not a simple matter of what people receive or demand, for instance the 2011 removal of Mubarak in Egypt, but what people wish for in challenging the hierarchical order of social arrangements. Dissensus is to act out against the consensual, in order to work under the presupposition of one’s own equality, and such action, if it is political, is usually more collective than individual. Such innovative sets of social arrangements generally only concern people who have been presupposed unequal or marginal by a particular order, and by acting as though they are indeed equal to those above them, they disrupt the dominant social order itself. What is altered is not only the power relations of the hierarchical order, but also, more deeply, the appearance of normality that the dominant order upholds.9 Dissensus is not merely a disagreement about the injustice of particular situations or arrangements, although it is that as well; it is fundamentally the revelation of the contingency of the entire perceptual and conceptual order in which such arrangements are embedded. This radical contingent position allows for aesthetics to play a role in challenging what is accepted in society as being ‘sensible,’ or permissible. The apparent paradoxical position of the Ultras groups—between political beings and aesthetic actors—is a manifestation of a dissensus-based hooligan mentality that seeks to articulate a voice from the Global South. This collective addressing of the structure of hierarchical order through aesthetic experience

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and expression is a visceral vibration of the social order toward something new. The Ultras’ aesthetic objects act on the everyday world through the network of community, to break with repressive states at the heart of the neoliberal agenda. Although the street movements of M15 in Spain and the Occupy protests thrived in the aftermath of the 2008 financial recession, both failed to convert political momentum from the micro stage. The surge of grassroots support for popular leftist political leaders, like Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, or Democratic Party candidate Bernie Sanders in the 2016 United States presidential elections, was partially dependent on activist movements, whose politicization occurred mostly through street protests fused with social media campaigns in the wake of the banking crisis. In a manner similar to Egypt, antiausterity campaigners in Spain, Los Indignados (The Indignants), filled Madrid’s Puerta Del Sol Square and other cities across the country in the summer of 2011. This popular grassroots protest movement of eight million Spaniards transformed into Podemos (We Can), a new political party, and entered electoral politics. Regardless, over the years, the momentum subsided, and, in 2016, the right-wing Partido Popular (Popular Party) regained majority control of the Spanish parliament, to the detriment of left-wing voters and organizations. Ironically, the effect of the alternative Podemos was to fragment and divide the general leftist electorate base, and open the way for conservative politics to again control the government. This unraveling of hope for change occurred at a critical point, when radical politics was mapped onto the macro level of wider demographic support. In 2018, the corruption scandals involving the Popular Party engulfed the

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organization, and a marginal political figure, Pedro Sanchez, from the previously discredited Party of Socialist Workers of Spain (PSOE), gained control of the Spanish parliament by calling for a vote of no confidence in the right-wing government led by Mariano Rajoy. Remarkably, this daring gamble worked, and the pendulum of Spanish politics has swung again suddenly toward the traditional left-wing party, without Podemos. However, the future of left-wing politics in Spain remains uncertain, and Catalan separatism, among deeprooted tensions in other autonomous regional areas, means the new PSOE-led government faces an uncertain future. A key dilemma here is in the move from the heterogeneous protest camp space to the full nation state political actor, exposing the strategic shortcomings of collective grassroots politics that is based on the streets. Antiestablishment movements can too often become the establishment ideology in their struggle to sustain cohesion within their own center when they attempt to become the political mainstream. Temporal activist protest movements have become compromised by the scarcity of materials in scaling up, and thereby fail to sustain momentum. Other immaterial factors further undermine the utopian urge and moment of autonomy, as locality-based thinking is often strategically inconsistent. Open, shared, common spaces are based on social equality, and are often confronted by larger systems of conventional politics. In addition, the use of social media networks raises awareness, brings people together quickly in immediate, spontaneous, and technological ways to collectively share and reclaim the public commons. However, arguably this technology has failed to deliver anything more politically useful

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beyond a collective impulse, as new ways of being together become diffused over time, and the original social cohesion erodes under the pressure of opposition forces. The implosion of these new forms of radicalism appears to serve the haggard argument that trying to step out of the neoliberal system is, beyond a certain point, ineffectual. New social movements only serve as short-term prototypes, venturing toward possible utopian worlds, without the apparent realistic vigor of capitalism’s mettle. The utopian imagination has been rerouted by Capitalism’s recuperation of leftist visions, industrializing culture, and controlling spontaneity through popular mass media entertainment. The standardization of cultural products has become the dissolution of meaning in the regularity of life, signifying the bleak pessimism of our age. It would seem that the leftist, wishful thinking of localism, and the horizontalism of resistance movements has had little lasting impact on the course of globalization under neoliberal dynamism. Appeals to universalism too often come from a position of Western privilege, and, as such, undermines the radical potential of universalism itself. Microutopias struggle to manifest themselves in the dawn of digital communication networks, and the fascination with the spectacle can remove real events of authentic significance from their context, projecting them to the world. The flow of images shapes our “achievementsociety” (Han 2017, 3) into refurbished ideals, placed in neat consumerist packages. Discourse and protest so often become devoid of purpose and ineffective in impact, annulled by the endless appetite for monotonous entertainment and noise in global networks. The

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media spectacle governs the image world, and influences common perception in a more insidious way than political will. Communication systems have made instantaneous street gatherings possible through the latest digital technologies, linking people in new ways. Regardless of the remarkable spontaneity and solidarity evident in these events, like Tahrir Square or Occupy Wall Street, the same communication network technologies have failed to affect the progress of real, collective political aims. Algorithmically wired, capitalist devices certainly serve the basic human desire to communicate, quickly and endlessly, but don’t appear to pass the heuristic test at the inspirational, immanent moment of social revolt. The Wall Street banking elite looked down on protesters from their skyscrapers, following social media feeds of radical hashtags, unshaken and mostly unthreatened by the heterogeneous gatherings taking place in the space below. Regardless of how liberating the moment appears at ground level for the activist crowds below, hegemony remains in place. Traction in the capitalist commodification of football clubs and their cultural value has been challenged by the Ultras fans, who have acted as oppositional forces, and articulated a collective voice through radical aesthetic expressions. Ultras groups have refined this communal position and capacity for resistance, to develop new bonds against repressive apparatuses. This arrangement brings into question what Rancière defines as the “distribution of the sensible,” what can be considered collectively permissible, say-able, or doable. His theory of sensible forms argues that an aesthetic is always inherently political, not because it represents political issues, but because of “the type of space and time that it

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institutes, and the manner in which it frames this time and peoples in space” (Rancière 2009, 23). This formulation is a reworking of Kant’s sensus communis, or common sense/ taste, where judgment is tacitly and collectively agreed on. In addition, the aesthetic theory of the senses can be complimented by Friedrich Schiller’s notion of beauty not just as a symbol of freedom, since it is “through beauty that we arrive at freedom” (Schiller 1910, 4). The contemporary face of the consumerist driven society is what Mike Watson has labeled in his book Botox Ghosts, “a chiseled-out artifice from within a rigid expressionless cipher of neither happiness nor youth” (Watson 2015, 64). In key cultural terms, the new Ultras communities reverberate with alternative social relations in ways beyond rigid class distinctions, to act as a locus for opposition to the monotony of neoliberalism’s consumer culture. The collective praxis of the Ultras exists as a model of a vibrant everyday life and community outside of the regimented control of work and the overregulated leisure industry in modern society. Into this paradigm, the use of play is a central way to appeal to the notion of the utopian promise of what is inscribed in the present and actual in the future, what is possible and conceivable. If art is based on creativity and is in essence creative play, building on the ideas of sensible forms from Schiller’s beauty, communal creative practices can dissipate the work and life boundaries beyond neoliberal calculations or regressive politics. Bio-politics situates the body as an object of control, to be disciplined and used in the domination of societies and cultures. Outside of this definition of the body, there can exist ways to forge ephemeral utopias. Such open social

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spaces allow for creativity of expression, as, momentarily, the Ultras football terraces become analogous to autonomy, born within utopian ideals. This can reposition the body back into a role to reshape collective potential through movement and energy, beyond fixed hierarchical disciplinary systems. In this sense, the Ultras fans have gathered in numbers to empower each other, and embolden a younger generation to imagine that authentic social relations are indeed possible and importantly needed. In the Ultras’ culture, the visceral energy of the body is channeled through choreographed dances and creative practiced routines, performed in collective unison, on football stands and in street protests. Egypt operates based on a kind of dual system, mostly Islamic in terms of culture, but deferential to neoliberal globalization. Generations of young Ultras fans could play a role in any new social upheaval, as football still retains a degree of autonomy from these regulatory apparatuses. The most visible and adherent oppositional forces to Sisi’s regime since the 2013 coup d’état have been on the country’s vast public university campuses, including Cairo University, as well as many others nationwide. Among them the al-tullab didd al-inqilab (Students Against the Coup) movement emerged out of the Ultras phenomenon, and street activists grouped together to form splinter formations, such as Ultras Nahdawy—with over 65,000 followers on Facebook in 2018. Twitter accounts @SAC_ASU and @EgyptSAC have posted updates on Ultras in prison, and students detained under emergency legislation. These youth movements have had many members imprisoned and tortured during the demise of revolutionary politics and intensification of the state clampdown on oppositional voices.

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The violent confrontations with police and private security on Cairo’s university campuses have been vicious, and Anas al-Mahdy, a twenty-one-year-old second year Cairo University physical therapy student, died from injuries caused by clashes with riot police in 2015. The situation has worsened under Sisi’s tenure over the last few years, and large numbers of young football fans are still languishing in prisons across the country. As mentioned earlier, the regime does intermittently allow conditional releases of tension by permitting small numbers of football fans a limited number of tickets to attend, on occasion, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) competition, contingent on the government’s view of the ‘security situation.’ Furthermore, in defiance against the curtailment of football fan expression, the Ultras groups have been forced to participate in other club sports, such as handball or volleyball league matches. These less prestigious sporting disciplines and arenas act as surrogate events for the grandeur of the football stadium space. Both Cairo-based football clubs have used the impressive Cairo International Stadium—which has an official capacity of 75,000, but has held 130,000 spectators for key fixtures in the past. This iconic arena has been almost completely unused for football fixtures since the Port Said incident in 2012, emphasizing the regime’s anxiety in relation to the Ultras movement and their use of aesthetics in stadium arenas. In comparison, the low-key performance space of an indoor basketball court does, despite its limitations, enable the aesthetic tifo displays to be sustained as a ritual. Moreover, there is an end in sight to the stadium prohibition on spectators. In the summer of 2018, the government

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granted fan access for a trial period of the 2018–2019 football season. This concession by the authorities is part of negotiations with the two main Ultras configurations, Ahlawy and UWK, who officially disbanded their organizations in May 2018. The return of fans, albeit in restricted numbers and under tight security control, will, over time, provide the potential reignition of the terrace space as an autonomous football fan zone. These spaces are heavily contested, and the authorities will monitor signs that the Ultras’ cultural practices may be resuming. A return to the terraces could also provide two key functions for the remnants of Ultras groups in Egypt: It may enable them to reclaim the communal spectacle from the regulatory influence of capitalist control, and, through the intensity of collective rituals, break with representation in a rearrangement of aesthetics, reordering social relations. Tifo displays can be understood as part of a collective action that evokes other traditions, such as Sufi ritual ecstasy, and even the discourse in contemporary art as a social practice. In turn, the Ultras’ cultural practices are a creative fusion of influences in response to the locus of aesthetics and politics in the Global South. Aesthetics in art has often questioned the nature of spectatorship itself, and looked at ways of bringing audiences closer to the locus of art, and of inviting them to go deeper into the creative process. Artistic works have debated the status and role of the artist and art object, at times in its social context, positioning art practices as a way of building communities based on equality. This vivid tradition and heritage, arguably evident in the work of Gustave Courbet’s social realist

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paintings, includes the contemporary practices of radical artists. In his project The Social Organism as a Work of Art, Joseph Beuys suggested, provocatively, that everyone is or can be an artist. This vision of equality followed an age in which anything could be configured as art, thanks to Michel Duchamp’s intervention, and the later gusto of the Conceptual Art movement. Pioneers of innovative social practices in art and culture have expressed a desire to further explore the status of the object, or cultural practice, as art can no longer occupy a realm outside of society. From this perspective, it is seen as fusing with society, thereby seeking to transform it. Moreover, this process occurs through a horizontal vision of the artist as a member of a creative commons, not through a hierarchical avant-garde. Radical artistic legacies can be best understood in the Documenta Art event, held every five years in Kassel, Germany. In the 1980s, with the help of volunteers, Joseph Beuys started a project to plant seven thousand oak trees over several years, each with an accompanying basalt stone. Initially, locals viewed this project skeptically, but over time took up ownership and maintenance of the concept, theoretically setting forth Beuys’s belief in the everyday world. The representational form of the oak tree and stone serves a purpose, over time, to appropriate utopian possibilities into the everyday fabric, beyond the commodity production system in contemporary art as sponsored by corporate financiers. This suggests that real social agency through artistic processes can only form outside the professional contemporary art world itself, thereby delinking cultural politics from capitalist concerns. The current Documenta Art fair operates to endorse similar

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social concerns and transforms the city of Kassel into a vast exhibition opportunity, mostly, however, for A-list artists and audiences of art tourists. Debatably, this current perception is to the detriment of Beuys’s radical vision, since, for the general public, it becomes just another co-option of art into cultural capital, falling short of the original sense of political agency or societal transformation. In Documenta 11 in 2002, the artist Thomas Hirschhorn created an art installation project, Bataille Monument, which appeared to edge toward bridging the gap between local communities and international art culture.10 In this project, Hirschhorn designed a temporary, ramshackle looking cardboard museum building in a Turkish immigrant neighborhood of the city, dedicated to the French intellectual and literary figure Georges Bataille. Hirschhorn stated that he was an admirer of Batille’s work, and wanted to employ the local community to carry out necessary duties during the three-month installation of his art. This incorporated the local community in running a taxi company that used the same cardboard aesthetic attached to the outside body of the car. Another method was to exhibit artifacts in a gallery café. However, despite his best intentions, this art project was little more than a bombastic spectacle that spoke more to the art visitor or professional, and was, in essence, another of contemporary art’s antagonistic endgames. There is disequilibrium between the object and the audience, as the spectator’s gaze is renewed at the expense of the local community, which is suspended in the exchange. In most cases, such projects ultimately increase the celebrity stock of the artist at the expense of dispossessing the collaborators. This is caused

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by the celebrity of the artist, which is so immense that the art object cannot be dissolved back into the everyday world of the community; flawed in its own social artwork criteria. In such cases, the discourse remains one-sided, in a vertical power exchange, as artists like Hirschhorn use the everyday world as a raw material for their practice, but remain within the contemporary art system, beyond the social community. Antagonist art, at its best, is not just an everyday experience; it is a critical gesture, an act of communication, and even a social event. Global business corporations eagerly fund contemporary art, however, not to disrupt the social equilibrium or disturb societal normative values, but because culture is valuable capital under neoliberal modernity. The ethical debate concerning who actually benefits from collaborative social art practices was addressed by Iranian-born Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi, when he reviewed Iranian artist Sherin Neshat’s Egyptian portraiture project Our House Is on Fire for Al Jazeera. The artwork consists of a series of large-scale photographic prints, dramatic portraits of Tahrir Square protesters, taken in a studio near the square when the artist visited Cairo in 2012. The portrait work was then displayed in commercial art galleries across the Western world and traded by the artist’s New York gallery. Dabashi imagined the plight of those framed by the camera lens as “victims remaining right where they are: disconnected, unequal in disequilibria” (Dabashi 2014). Indeed, no voice was given to the protesters to account for their demands or reasons for being there, and no contextual information was included. By this stage, the infamous protest square had become occupied by diverse and desperate

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Egyptians from across the country, as leftist secular and Islamic groups contested the space over the course of 2012. In his review, Dabashi poses significant questions on the role and usefulness of contemporary art, as he ponders about a “work of art [that] is aesthetically provocative but metaphysically daunting” (Dabashi 2014). To imagine aesthetics as offering alternate ways of being recalls the convictions of Sri Lankan philosopher A.K. Coomaraswamy, who suggested that “the artist is not a special sort of person, but every person is a special form of artist” (Coomaraswamy 1989, 34). Football culture, like art practices shaped through everyday creativity, can harbor latent capacities to impact the social, form communities, and rethink political agency into the future. Situationist Asper Jorn devised the notion of Triolectics, a refinement of dialectics, as a potential football game consisting of three teams instead of the usual two. Played on a hexagonal pitch, the game was determined through the number of goals conceded rather than scored, with the winning team conceding the fewest goals. The game purports to deconstruct the combative nature of conventional football models as an analogy of class struggle, in which the referee stands as a signifier of the state and media apparatus, posturing as a neutral arbitrator in the political process of on-going class struggle. Revolutionary Catholic-Marxist filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was a fanatical amateur football player and believed football to be a sacred ritual, even beyond the influence of capitalism, and the only pure form of social relations remaining in the world. What is transcendental for Pasolini and conceptual for Jorn is the transformative dimension in the aesthetic practices within football culture, which

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can be understood as a pure object distilled into a collective nonrepresentational entity, antagonistic and anticipatory. The marginal Ultras hooligan figure can portend something of the utopian impulse through the use of ecstatic events and an open sense of play. The conservative regime in Egypt attempts to subdue and block the imagination of its revolutionary youth, because it fears the capacity of horizontal movements and heterogeneous thought. Such emancipatory collective imaginations can operate outside of the regulation of society and undermine mainstream political discourse. In this political sphere, the horizontal social equilibrium of Egypt’s 2011 uprising gave way to the return of vertical power relations of military rule, personified through the cult of al-Sisi. The 2011 historical event provides clues as to why such political reversals take place, and, in some ways, had already played out in leftist revolutionary radicalism through political struggles in the West in 1968. In particular, the Situationist group in Paris wanted to reconsider the spectacle of street politics as an awakening of the people from a state of sleep walking in the catatonic of capitalism, wrapped inside the media machine. The immediacy of their graffiti street slogans encouraged the public to reject capitalist values, for instance, in calls to “reclaim the beach beneath the pavement” (Watson 2015, 78). This immediacy, however, was not appreciated by other ideological groups that were opposed to capitalism, for whom such radical and instantaneous calls for transformation, at the time within the Communist Party, among others, failed to find accord with the velocity of the student movement. This tipping point dilemma opens up a key paradox of the revolutionary impulse. On the one hand,

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the impulse itself can become too highly valued or precious to risk in the heightened atmosphere of emancipation, while, on the other hand, utopia can never really come into play unless such gambles or leaps of faith are taken. While the revolutionary moment hesitates, the police order hovers on the border of silence. Utopian theory expands to address the ways in which people are socialized in particular societies to accept normative views. Utopia can be seen to shatter these perceptions. Philosopher Ernst Bloch, in his influential books, Spirit of Utopia and Principle of Hope, defined two significant understandings of utopia: abstract utopia and concrete utopia. The latter is more relevant in this case, as it is embedded in an understanding of current reality, and connected to the possibility of actual social change. Concrete hope must manifest itself in the world, contingent but existing in material or immaterial heterogeneity. Bloch emphasized imagination when he stated, “Thinking [utopia] means venturing beyond” (Bloch 1986, 4). The decline of potency in leftist politics can be traced back to the 1872 Hague Congress of the International Working Men’s Association, dominated by a struggle between two visions of a socialist future. Karl Marx’s Communist faction argued for the use of state-like structures to bring about a new society, whereas Mikhail Bakunin’s Anarchist dissension advocated for the replacement of the state with federations of self-governing workplaces and communes. Bakunin did not attend the congress in person, and was subsequently expelled by Marx. His nonhierarchical ideology was excluded from the mainstream course of leftist politics, and anarchism was further marginalized during the twentieth century. There is a

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certain historical irony in how the horizontal network mode of anarchism gave way to the more orthodox Communist approach, which attempted to achieve social transformation through collective state-bound authority. As Bakunin famously declared, “Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality” (Bakunin 1953, 269). The contemporary challenge for street politics and activism in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and beyond is to find a way to secure sustainable, antiestablishment thinking beyond the micro phase, to embrace a network of collaborative, sharing actors. The Ultras football project rests on the very extreme fringes of such imagined, fantastical paradigms, retaining a cohesive energy outside orthodox socialist or leftist political configurations. Arguably, this football-based phenomenon appeals to something that is more human, more visceral, as well as popular, to help create separate forms of knowledge on the margins. A key epistemic concern here is how the possibilities of thought and knowledge in the Global South can supplant the ongoing influence of Western-biased discourse. In 1955, Herbert Marcuse’s book, Eros and Civilization, outlined a work free future, with modern technologies replacing labor and helping to curb social alienation at the core of human discontent. In addition, Marcuse used Freudian theories to explore the contours of trauma, which he believed to be the tension between ‘pleasure’ and ‘reality’ principles at the core of modern civilization. Marcuse defines this trauma in modernity as a deficit in the civilization process that stifles something more intrinsically human.

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Philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno cowrote the book, Dialectic of Enlightenment, first published in 1947, which presented the argument that key aspects of the modern self come at the expense of nature, through the process of reason. Furthermore, this can be constituted through a process of what they termed as ‘renunciation;’ the concept of giving up aspects of the self in order to defer the enjoyment of things. Renunciation is the delay of spontaneous impulses or the immediate satisfaction of impulse in exchange for continued, steady existence. In Dialectic of Enlightenment they write, “All who renounce give away more of their life than is given back to them, more than the life they preserve” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1947, 43). The point made here is that the continuous process of self-preservation delays the price of enjoyment, and can never be equal to what has been relinquished. The argument is that such self-preservation becomes self-destruction when human reason attempts to cut oneself off entirely from human nature. For Horkheimer and Adorno, reason is in conflict with nature, as Marcuse perceived the civilization process stifling off Eros’ energy and free will. In this way, the dominance of reason and civilization affects thought and actions in the experience of life, but also distances and estranges us from visceral contact with objects in the world around us. Such critical theories are foundational to bringing about awareness of the essential qualities of human nature over reason, which is the inversion of the modern self that has become estranged in an attempt to reconcile the human condition. In this way, Marcuse, Adorno, and other theorists, formulated a critical discourse on progressive thought and

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methods that aims to liberate humans from fear, and enable them to reflect on themselves beyond antagonism and anxiety. In the contemporary condition, the media spectacle and cultural industries may claim to, but rarely impart, genuine spontaneity or real choice. Fun has become transformed into a regularized commodity, as the distance between subject and object has become a barrier between the self and the other. The digital media machine dulls feeling to the detriment of genuine effort, cognition, and life force. According to these philosophers, thinking often destroys what it seeks to control. For knowledge-based critical thinking to flourish and operate outside of the Orientalizing Western gaze in the MENA region, the production and exchange of knowledge has to challenge the distribution of meaning and social relations across diverse societies. Also, this process needs time to be truly autonomous in thought, and left to develop in its own ways, its ideas undisturbed and not interfered with. In their contestation of authoritarian rule in Egypt, the Ultras groups successfully adapted an international football subculture to create a self-determined and culturally inflected model of a political being. The organic nature of this process enabled a new, younger generation to find a language of resistance, and a voice to speak back to patriarchal power through political awareness within a contested society. The natural sense of belonging within Ultras groups in Egypt is a communal one, involving an unbroken mode of aesthetic play that has developed as an alternative to the suffocating grip of the regime. Across the football world, Ultras groups have emerged in recent years to challenge the capitalist logic of the spectacle, and to offer alternative modes of being, as

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autodidact, heterogeneous entities. This possibility also reveals the potency of the wrong-thinking hooligan mentality as a dissensual force, because it offers a basis for effectively confronting the old democratic political order. This order is a rational based one, and a regulation system that appears to prefer its own destruction than the radical fulfillment of its own liberal principles in ‘liquid’ modernity.

1. Tahrir Square memorial to people killed in the 2011 uprising. Khaled Saeed’s image is on the left. Photo by Ronnie Close, January 2013.

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2. Ultras fans taunt the authorities on the fourth anniversary of the UA07 founding. In a game between al-Ahly and the Police Union team, the banners read, “Men in a Time of Repression and Heroes in Freedom,” and, “Al-Ahlawy 4 Years of Achievements.” Photo courtesy of Ultras Ahlawy, April 2011.

3. Ultras fans gather at a memorial event in al-Titsh Football Stadium Cairo for the Port Said martyrs. Banners refer to the deceased and blame security forces. Photo courtesy of Ultras Ahlawy, February 2012.

4. Friends carry posters of Muhammad ‘Karika’ Mustafa—member of the UA07, killed in clashes with police in 2011. Photo by Ronnie Close, February 2012.

6. UA07 capo leads chants at a protest in Cairo against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the military rulers when Mubarak’s rule ended. Photo courtesy of Ultras Ahlawy, February 2012.

5. Ultras tifo at the Muqawlun Stadium antagonizes the Egyptian Football Federation with a banner that reads, “We Are Defending Your Freedom, You Robbers Federation.” Photo by Ronnie Close, December 2010.

7. UA07 protest camp over Port Said in Cairo. Photo by Ronnie Close, February 2012.

8. Omar Mohsen, one of the seventy-two UA07 fans to die in the Port Said massacre. Photo by Ronnie Close, March 2012.

9. Ultras White Knights (UWK) fans clashed with the police at the Air Force Defense Stadium on February 8, 2015. Twenty-two fans died in the incident before a game between Zamalek and Enppi. Photo courtesy of Ahmed Gawad, February 2015.

10. UWK fans celebrate with a tifo, and a capo leads the group at Cairo International Stadium. Photo courtesy of Ahmed Gawad, April 2016.

11. UA07 mural (left) dedicated to a Port Said martyr in Muhammad Mahmud Street, central Cairo. Photo by Ronnie Close, April 2012.

12. UA07 members perform a hand tifo, protesting the Port Said massacre in central Cairo. Photo by Ronnie Close, April 2012.

13. Family members of UA07 learn the words of the Ultras chants during the protest camp over Port Said. Photo by Ronnie Close, March 2012.

14. UA07 song sheets are given out to nonmembers at the protest camp. The song “Our Story” is composed by the Ultras and made available on CD. Photo by Ronnie Close, March 2012.

15. UA07 members spray a stencil image of an eagle, al-Ahly club symbol, on a wall in central Cairo. Photo by Ronnie Close, May 2012.

16. A ramshackle tent of Ultras UA07 members protesting the Port Said massacre. Ultras often use English slogans as part of their regalia. A.C.A.B. stands for All Cops Are Bastards. Photo by Ronnie Close, March 2012.

17. At the Ultras UA07 protest camp, some members made drawings of the members killed in the Port Said massacre. A drawing of Omar Mohsen can be seen on the right. Photo by Ronnie Close, March 2012.

18. Ultras Devils honor their group leader, Ghandour, who died in the Port Said massacre. Photo by Ronnie Close, February 2012.

19. UWK fans celebrate winning the football league in 2017. Photo courtesy of Ahmed Gawad, May 2015.

20. Inside the Air Force Stadium UWK fans react, as news spreads of the fatalities outside. The fans tried to prevent the game from continuing, but the team continued to play. Only Omar Gaber, a full back, withdrew. Photo courtesy of Ahmed Gawad, February 2015.

21. UWK fans celebrate with a tifo, and a capo leads the group at Cairo International Stadium. This was the first public appearance by the UWK after the Air Force Defense Stadium violence in February 2015. Photo courtesy of Ahmed Gawad, April 2016.

4 THE AESTHETIC ECONOMY OF REVOLUTION

For the vast majority of the population, the scope and mode of satisfaction are determined by their own labour; but their labour is work for an apparatus, which they do not control, which operates as an independent power to which individuals must submit if they want to live. Libido is diverted for socially useful performances in which the individual works for himself only in so far as he works for the apparatus, engaged in activities that mostly do not coincide with his own faculties and desires (Herbert Marcuse, 2006, 45).

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he short, eleven-year lifespan of Ultras activism in Egypt—from 2007 to 2018—spans just over a decade of unparalleled oppression by the Egyptian state, through the use of draconian laws against these new football fan groups, among other youth-based movements. Despite a brief reprieve during the emblematic period of the 25 January uprising in 2011, when people took back power and temporarily overcame the military regime, Egypt epitomizes a highly-controlled society with scant regard for human rights, freedom of expression, or international opinion. The social role of this potent formation of football fans, as part 105

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of a patchwork of protest movements, constitutes a political narrative that reached a tipping point in the removal of Mubarak. However, significant questions remain concerning the motivational process behind the Ultras’ sense of organic collectivity and how they amassed the capacity to resist the dominant order. The Ultras Ahlawy come from a proud historical football tradition of al-Ahly Club, and, although their group manifesto is politically impartial—similar to young Ultras fan organizations in other parts of the football world—they have retained a radical social agenda beyond straight football concerns in Egypt. The popularity of certain players, such as Muhammad Abu Trika, who championed the Palestinian cause, among other Middle East issues, has made them emblematic figures in Egyptian football. Abu Trika even became national team captain, despite his political activism. Nonetheless, the control of football by the authorities seems entrenched, and the government is keen to ensure that all public spaces are restricted and monitored. Moreover, the use of display banners or group actions, common in conventional football fan behavior, is perceived as a threat to the ruling hegemony. Draconian emergency laws were used against Ultras groups to prohibit their public assembly, and, in 2015, they were reclassified as a terrorist organization, thereby labeling Ultras a threat to the security of the Egyptian state. Under such extreme circumstances, the Ultras movement was forced in recent years to operate in a clandestine fashion, without their unifying communal rituals in the football stadium space, and without the right to free association. The Ultras movement was seen as radical and pernicious to the ruling classes; a challenge to the perceptual order itself,

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rooted within the cultural contingency of the ominous situation in Egypt under al-Sisi’s rule. Are the Ultras’ cultural practices and aesthetic acts alone enough to bring about new imaginations of egalitarian social relations? Could these practices and acts become a locus for disputing hegemonic power and dissolving the distance between art and life? In globalization’s new spirit of capitalism, does the Ultras’ use of dissensus offer alternative ways to release the stranglehold over the human imagination and free up its potential? These questions evoke key definitions of the role of aesthetics in history, and its tentative use to define the self-determined culture of Ultras football communities. In this paradigm, the aesthetic tool or object serves as an emancipatory device to facilitate a heuristic play of uncontrolled energy and libidinal creativity to instigate the utopian promise. The term aesthetics is derived from the Greek words aistheta and noeta, meaning a distinction between two operations of the mind: perceiving and thinking. Apart from the perplexing matter of how two distinct processes in the mind are related to each other and can be observed, a related issue arises concerning which of the two to privilege. If we derive the aistheta (perceiving) over noeta (thinking), we privilege sensation; conversely if we derive noeta over aistheta, we privilege thought. Working within the rationalist tradition, Alexander Baumgartner’s 1750 publication Aesthetical defined aesthetics as an attempt to relate taste or judgment to an intellectual conception of beauty. Immanuel Kant later modified this interpretation in the book Critique of Judgment, which explores the canon of taste, and also develops the sensus communis or community of sense/taste to address the problem

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of variability in aesthetic judgment. This notion allows us to view aesthetic experience through judgments that operate on a universal level, and, in this way, indicate how aesthetic responses can acquire social meaning. The study of aesthetics undoubtedly underlies a certain primacy of Euro-centric discourse in Western forms of art history. Single-point visual perspective and other optical strategies of figurative realism are based on a mathematical organization of space, and are part of a mediation of the sensorium through the separation of the body and mind. However, all cultures have distinctive aesthetic standards, formed through their collective reasoning to be contingent on the specificity of place or time in historical succession. All perception of the world exists in sensible forms, and ideas about beauty are made up from objects conforming to these standards, and are fluidly shaped by cultural priorities. Such definitions are obviously not always universally accepted as the same, but there remains the need to establish standards, through cultural codes and conventions, of what can be considered beautiful as part of a collective process. While the objective world of nature is guided by its own laws to function independently of our desires or interests, as human subjects these codes and conventions are formed from our subjective understanding. This also enables us to share and shape a constructed social world to influence aesthetic judgment. Historically, such standards are what shape the production and knowledge of the object, forming an understanding of what constitutes beauty as an appeal to the senses. Since the affect is not determined to be specifically part of the Western art canon, the art object can be anything, a

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readymade item, and indeed, according to Joseph Beuys, anyone can be or create the art object. Conceptualism and social art practices have transformed contemporary artwork into not just an experience of the senses, but into a critical gesture, an act of communication in an information age and, more importantly, into a collective social event. Contemporary conceptual artist Liam Gillick has described his art as “like a light in a fridge,” needing a person to interact with it, otherwise, it is not a completed artwork, “just stuff in a room” (Gillick 2004). The Western analytical mode of aesthetics, possibly an exclusive and contemplative one, is often removed from the everyday flow of life, and overlooks those visceral interpretations of what constitutes the aesthetic effect of an object. Viewed from the position of aesthetic traditions, these more visceral, non-Western interpretations can be seen to contest the asceticism that commonly controls contemporary intellectual discourse. The paradox of Western theories of aesthetics is that its framework, once the domain of the sensory, has, through modern reuse of it, become detached from the immediacy of bodily praxis and creative libidinal energy. Hence, the critique of the primacy of the mind’s perceptual thought order over the potential for movement is often articulated within anthropological debates on Western forms of aesthetical representation.11 Anthropologist Christopher Pinney has coined the term ‘Corpothetic’ to distinguish between the cerebral, counterintuitive aesthetics of Western philosophy and non-Western corporeal aesthetic practices. This model fully immerses itself into the fabric of everyday life and can be described as, “a popular aesthetics that engaged with the senses fully”

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(Pinney 2001, 160). This unifying, communal approach to the aesthetic argument found in the Corpothetic is an aesthetic that mobilizes all the senses to involve bodily performance and visceral intensity, transforming both the object and the beholder in unison. In a somewhat similar fashion, Pierre Bourdieu developed theories on social stratification outside of this dialectical discourse to applaud the position of subaltern aesthetics in working-class culture. This othering view rejects the detached, disinterested aesthetic forms of the bourgeois in favor of lowbrow forms of hermeneutics that foreground the useful qualities of objects. However, a distinction must be made between the cerebral tendencies, which are dominant in Western definitions of aesthetics, in contrast to non-Western interpretations that often place the role of body at the core of aesthetic experience. From this perspective of the aesthetics debate, the Ultras’ cultural practices can be related to questions of usefulness. The Ultras present their football-based cultural practices as communal creativity at the core of everyday existence, embodied in a collective of narrators and translators engaged in open-ended play. This apparent dissolving of the boundaries between life, art, and play could be taken to overlap with contemporary artistic objectives, as if to elicit the envy of art practices that are so revered in the contemporary art world. In this context, awarding Assembly, a collective of nonartists who facilitated a housing restoration project in Toxteth, a deprived area of Liverpool, the 2015 Turner Prize, is appropriate. Assembly never contextualized themselves as a group of contemporary artists, nor are they original within the history of art itself. In the 1960s, the Free Form art collective

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did similar prosaic community-based projects, and mostly worked on the renovation of social housing estates in Britain. In contrast to Assembly, Free Form’s activities remained peripheral to the consensus of the art world and wider cultural establishment because of the break with representation, or the formal concerns, that are present in everyday culture. The working class, visceral energy of Ultras football groups can be situated in the aesthetic use of objects that emerge from a certain marginal position. They used their creative energy to form dissensus, to bind community against hegemony. The central role and form of the object in this context shapes a fluid aesthetic judgment process, which, in turn, affects collective identity. This process acts like a feedback loop to profile the group aesthetic, its boundaries and productions, while being able to strengthen social ties and relationships, mostly through the production of objects and performance-based (dis)play. Ultras commonly use a number of Italian terms to classify objects and types of actions, such as: terso, tifos, capos, and curvas. In addition, Ultras use flares in pyroshows, and chant songs composed by the different groups, to compliment the makeup of their aesthetic outputs. Each Ultra has a set of defined role(s) in the process, from the background, complex production of the group object, to the stadium display or the important documentation process to enable the dissemination of the event across social media platforms. The construction of intricate objects requires dedicated collective effort, and funding from large numbers of fans from the football community, in order to plan and produce the banners,

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pyrotechnic displays, and the high-quality productions of photographic and video documentation. The underlying purpose of the object-based activity is to place the body back into the site of knowledge production. This process signals a break with representation, since the object is of secondary importance to the group, and the live event becomes a fully immersive experience. The locus of the impulsive event in full motion brings about a form of emancipation, to reveal collective intelligence and force, thereby establishing social relations across large numbers of people. The antiauthoritarian stance of many of these aesthetic activities can challenge perceptions of old ruling orders, be they the football club institution, rival clubs, reactionary political regimes, or even the neoliberal consensual hegemony. Across the football world, few Ultras fan groups are endorsed or even supported by their host club’s official establishment, which often view the Ultras with suspicion because of the power of their collective capacity. In Egypt, an extreme example of such tensions occurred in Cairo with the UWK of Zamalek S.C., whose infamous club president, Mortada Mansour, accused them of attempted murder after an altercation outside the training ground. (Mansour claimed the Ultras threw acid at him; the UWK said it was in fact urine.) Mansour, who served as a high court judge, and was a long-standing crony of Mubarak, and now supporter of al-Sisi, is infamous for his political ambition and media profile. Mansour briefly declared his candidacy for the presidential elections in 2018 against al-Sisi, but later withdrew his application. UWK founder Sayed Moshagheb was tried for storming the club and the alleged assassination attempt

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on the club president. He was acquitted of the assassination attempt, but sentenced to one year in prison for storming the club (he was later acquitted on appeal). The charges against Sayed Moshagheb and the other prominent UWK members were filed by Mansour and the security forces. More than two hundred UWK members were imprisoned over a threeyear period between 2012 and 2015. Another Ultras clash with the football establishment occurred in 2016, when the leadership of al-Ahly S.C. was intimidated by the Egyptian government not to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Port Said massacre. This was the first time the club officially did not mark the day when seventy-two fans died, much to the grievance of the families of the victims and UA07 group. Police arrests also intimidated hundreds of Ultras Ahlawy, and a small group of capos (leaders) languished for longer in custody, charged as ‘terrorists’ under emergency laws. Some embarked on short-term hunger strikes because of media apathy and public indifference to their situation. The Ultras utilize a diverse range of objects alternatively in the background and foreground of their performances and often broadcast them later on their own social media portals, or occasionally through mainstream media channels. Tifo is an Italian word that means excessive delirium, in this case over support for a football club. It is derived from the word for typhoid fever, and used to indicate the “excitement and enthusiasm of cheering for their team” (Guschwan 2007, 250). The tifo has become associated with the large-scale choreography of banner displays inside the stadium before or after the kick-off of a match. The performance by Ultras before

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a game is called an introduction tifo, or dakhla in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, and a performance during the game itself is also referred to as a tifo. These can be relatively basic, or more complex in format, revealed on the sanctity of the Ultras’ terraces to communicate a written message, or a combination of written texts with visual images. Often these tifos poke fun at football authorities, rival teams, or media pundits, who regularly chastise the Ultras on their TV shows. In January 2012, al-Ahly played the low-ranking team Ittihad al-Shorta (The Police Union), sponsored by the Egyptian Police Confederation Cup in the domestic competition. As the teams lined up for the national anthem at the beginning of the game, broadcast live on TV, the Ultras’ terrace area, talta shimal (third on the left), displayed an enormous mosaic-style banner with A.C.A.B. (All Cops Are Bastards) emblazoned across it, accompanied by a giant drawing of a smiling Ultras face, resembling the mischievous Dennis the Menace figure from the Beano comic book. This part of the dakhla visual display was followed by hundreds of red flares and smoke, hijacking the rather dull ceremonial beginning, and deliberately choreographed to delay the match kick-off and humiliate the Police Union team. Such defiant acts against the police and effrontery to the state contributed to conspiracy theories of a vendetta behind the Port Said massacre two weeks later, in which many Ultras Ahlawy died. Large-scale dakhlas need to be carefully choreographed to shape a certain image or scene. This performance, made by fans holding banners in sequence, often becomes the most sophisticated act in a game, requiring enormous effort and strict discipline among the Ultras in order to be executed precisely.

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Some tifo messages have lampooned politicians and the legions of TV pundits, in both Arabic and English. Other times, they refer to particular football incidents from famous victories, or goals scored in key games. Al-Ahly has won the Confederation of African Football champions league four times in ten years, a success warranting the emergence of new Ultras groups behind the team, with an enormous fan base of millions in Egypt alone. The format of Ultras tifo displays has assumed three distinct forms: a mosaic of small A4 sized papers, a large-scale plastic or cloth banner, or a 3D figure hanging from the stadium rooftop, like a giant puppet on metal wires. The iconic content used in a tifo is often uncomplicated, with local references, for instance, a football club logo, or, in Ahlawy’s case, the glorification of martyrs with simple slogans such as, “74 Never Forget,” usually written in English. Others are designed to hold an aggressive charge, with specific messages relating to incidents or envisaged to intimidate football authorities, opposition club players and fans, political figures, or certain well-known media personalities. The 3D tifo figure needs to be suspended as a giant, heavy banner, stretched vertically from the terrace rooftop with a series of metal wires. These devices have to be smuggled into the stadium space by the Ultras, and such setbacks can often restrict their success. In contrast, German football associations and clubs have taken a more broad-minded attitude to accommodating Ultras fan behavior and tifo activities within stadiums. This has involved giving them autonomy within certain parts of the arena, and negotiating their demands in consultation with club officials and the police. In contrast to other European leagues, German football resists the full

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vigor of capitalist investment, and major clubs are modestly funded in comparison to other national leagues, especially the grossly inflated English Premier League, or the struggling Russian league. The Egyptian Football Association prohibits all displays or banners at games, in keeping with the authoritarian attitude of the political regime. When the Ultras have resisted such measures, it has commonly resulted in conflict with security forces. There is a high level of expertise involved in the installation of a 3D type of tifo that is dominant in European Ultras organizations, and works in a more liberal environment. They have more solid stadium architecture than their Egyptian counter-parts, and higher income to offset the expensive production costs of such banners. Furthermore, some Italian Ultras generate income from vast quantities of ticket sales and influence club activities, at times bordering on criminality. Due to these setbacks, 3D tifos have not been common display objects in Egyptian Premier Football, but are more prominent in European and South American leagues, among others. Egyptian Ultras have regularly opposed increases in ticket prices and the monopolization of football broadcasts. One of the most infamous UA07 displays was directed at their Cairo archrivals Zamalek in a derby match, the last game of the 2010 Cup Championship. In this tifo, the Ultras Ahlawy taunted Zamalek over their colonial history, with a fully choreographed routine in three stages. First, they held up the eagle insignia of al-Ahly club, a nationalist symbol, and then the sign of the Zamalek club, an archer. Finally, beside the Zamalek logo they displayed a rubbish bin, with the words “dustbin of history” written on it. The full banner

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read, “(Zamalek) the collective club, only for the English” (Ultras Ahlawy 2010). This tifo glorifies al-Ahly’s Egyptian and nationalist credentials and mocks the English logo of the Zamalek club. The large, banner-type tifo object has helped Ultras reclaim the football spectacle, and has sparked choreographed dancing and orchestrated pyrotechnic flare performances that shroud the stadium completely with hundreds of burning red lights and clouds of drifting smoke. Such finale events provide closure to football spectacles, and commonly come toward the end of matches. Pyroshows involve lighting flares, and usually occur spontaneously on the terraces, without an order from the Ultras capo (cheerleader). Such fire displays often lead to dancing, transcending time and space in a kind of transcendental ritual that takes hold of the crowd. Igniting the flares is an epitome of pleasure and enjoyment, a magical moment full of joy and profanity, as the Ultras sing and dance amid the colored fire and clouds of smoke. The aesthetic impact is intensified in Egypt, due to poor quality stadium lighting, and, at Cairo International Stadium—the traditional home to both of the big teams with the largest fan base, al-Ahly and Zamalek—the stadium capacity can double to 130,000, creating a cauldronlike atmosphere. The regular scheduling of football games in the evening, when temperatures are lower, helps induce heightened aesthetic transformations of space, and creates an atmosphere for the Ultras. The widespread availability of different flare types in Egypt, a product adopted into the toolkit of resistance in the 2011 street protests, makes such objects a pervasive part of the social fabric. The lack of health and safety regulations, alongside the rather venturesome, if sangfroid,

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attitude of Egyptian youth, has made these spectacular tifos rival some of the best displays by Ultras groups in Europe or South America. The international reputation of Cairo’s Ultras stands as one of the most celebrated across the football world. Tifos are also regularly used to commemorate Ultras members who died in clashes with police, and have often carried indirect political messages, such as, “We Are Egypt” (Dunmore 2007). On 6 December 2014, al-Ahly fans were permitted to fill a stadium for the first time in around a year, to watch their team play Séwé Sport, an Ivorian club, in the final of the Confederation of African Football cup. Since this was an international championship game, and a trophy might help release some tension, the authorities allowed the whole stadium (albeit a smaller stadium than Cairo International) to be filled with fans. UA07 were present in big numbers, but the message they displayed was less aggressive than in the past, and it simply read, “Football for Fans,” written in seven different languages. The creation of such spectacles and inspirational tifos reveal the ways in which the Ultras draw on their influences to develop their own aesthetic criteria, influencing a sense of what constitutes beauty in form and concept, and what is essentially useful to them. These unique, handmade banners are the emblematic totemic objects that serve to unify the community, where everyone is an actor/participant in the formation of object and spectacle of performance. These display actions and objects invite the individual to bond with the greater community beyond the self, in a synthesis of aesthetic qualities with everyday life. The gap is closed between aesthetic object and the individual, as the performer and audience interchange roles.

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In the Cairo meetings before matches, Ultras capos and actives (leaders) make decisions about which tifos will be performed in the coming matches. Tasks then become clearer and are divided between individual members. The choreographed entrance is designed first, based on the seating and the stadium where the game will take place. For this purpose, they use a kind of self-made seat map from a previous visit. Other tasks include buying colored cellophane wrapping paper, and cutting it into small rectangles to make the desired images or shapes for the banners. The capos repeatedly instruct everybody to raise the card on their space or seat when they see the signal of a colored card. Almost everyone in the stadium terrace participates in this ritual, even if they are not Ultras. If there is more than one tifo in a game, additional colored cards will be placed in the space or on the seat, one on the seat itself and the others on the backs of seats, or under them. On their own terms, the Ultras form aesthetic values through the tifo object and act. The performance shifts the cultural practices of the spectacle to become a spectacle of community. Collective forces unify people outside of personal concerns or competitive frameworks, even outside of the environment of the sporting competition. This reinvention of the football event as a collective creation of performativity, sets the body in full motion to refute the passivity of the neoliberal turn, that is, the fragmentation of the self, submissively present in consumerist society. The Ultras spectacle is a rupture with the representational, and it fuses aesthetically with the flow of life itself. Here, creativity is part of a whole system, where sense perception is something communal. For some, there exists in the Ultras tifos in Cairo

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or Glasgow a different way of being that destabilizes the status quo, to reveal the intelligence of the hooligan. Ultras tifos cannot be bought off the shelf in the supermarket, or at a sports chain, ordered online, or found in a shared economy app. Rather, they are formed through the exercise of communal aesthetic values and group creativity, fusing human instincts and basic desires that are so often incompatible with neoliberal values. This dissensual capacity makes the forces of hegemony so fearful of Ultras culture. In Egypt, the government forced the Ultras movement to rescind their organizational activities, and the regime continues to prevent all spectators from attending regular league fixtures, since Port Said in 2012. The capitalist vision of media networks and global football administrations, such as FIFA and UEFA, has taken total possession of the football event spectacle. This has accelerated the gentrification process of the stadium space, and attempted to replace the Ultras with docile, obedient, apolitical supporters, as a decorative backdrop to the live media event, where slow motion replays and commercial advertising can cater to millions of spectators. Of course, the millions of fans across the globe who support distant teams yield high returns for media conglomerates, football clubs, advertisers, and public relations companies. The role of fans during live games, according to football administrations, is to serve the live feed, captured through high-definition camera technology for the entertainment of the home viewer, detached and separate as mediated observers of the unfolding football drama. This vision is the dispossession of the Ultras hooligan mentality, and is part of a cynical strategy, devised by media moguls, corporate interests, as well as the global football establishment.

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Ultras have regularly opposed increases in ticket prices and the monopolization of football broadcasts. Collective body movement is key to understanding the role of aesthetics in forming communal symbols in the subjective sensible. The Ultras in Egypt tend to amass members from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, although their leaders are inclined to be better educated than ordinary members. The Ultras leadership advocates for horizontal structures that further limit the influence of any single ideology, to balance group attitudes and allow for diverse beliefs. In practice, however, Ultras groups are not perfectly horizontal, but combine elements of both centralized and decentralized leadership. The Ultras have a centralized leadership committee, and several other committees that coordinate with regional subgroups through meetings with local representatives. There can be around a dozen or more committees, each responsible for a separate aspect of the organization: a committee for travel arrangements, the choreographing of the shows, and so on. A responsibility of particular importance is that of finance, and each Ultras member must make a contribution, dependent on his income. Funds are generated through the capos or actives, who are selected to be an inner group that collects money by selling Ultras products. Annually, the group has a set of products for sale, including clothing (T-shirts, hoodies, hats, scarves, trousers, shorts), and in the case of UA07, music CDs—they produced two CDs of their chants, recorded in a music studio and released across the country. The Ultras announce meetings through Facebook pages, where the whole group goes and pays in advance for certain products. After a month or so, another

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meeting is arranged to hand people their purchases. As one Ultra stated in an interview about the working structure of the organization: There are no leaders among us, but there are organizational individuals who manage meetings and help guide the younger members. There is no hierarchy. Organizers within the group are simply people with wisdom; as long as you have expertise in something, or a realistic idea, and, most importantly, a strong sense of humanity (Ultra member known as Assad 2012).

As described, a crucial component in the preservation of Ultras culture is the tifo spectacle, which is led by the capo figure. The word capo can be translated as leader in Italian, and he is elected to take on the role of cheerleader for the football terrace hordes. Any association with American football culture in this regard, however, is misplaced, as the cheerleader model in sporting arenas differs, depending on the context. In the American version, young women on the sidelines of the pitch typically cheer to encourage the hyper-masculine football players, through hackneyed song and dance routines, performed in high-pitched bubblegum unison, as a type of depoliticized, conformist chorus. The capo, on the other hand, is raised up to stand with his back to the football game. He addresses the crowd, sometimes from specially designed metal stands, made in advance, and at other times, balancing precariously on protruding terrace fencing that raises him above the stadium crowd. The capo spends the entire game in this uncomfortable position, facing the community on the stadium terrace

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or curva, in order to coordinate chants, singing, dancing, and tifos, in addition to other expressive gestural movements in a choreographed performance, as a way to maximize the collective group transformation. Here, in this time and space, the synergy and ecstasy of the group is complete. In Egypt, Sufilike rituals change the atmosphere, as the curva terrace of each Ultras outfit tries to outperform the other. Egypt’s Ultras excel in these moments, as chants and songs heighten the atmosphere to create formidable soundscapes and explosive visual forces, fused into communal ecstatic experiences with Sufi traces that have surpassed the standard for sporting competitions. In such moments, the normal borders of passivity, maintained by the police order, can be broken, as a shared community of equals takes control. The legions of working class, marginalized youth of Cairo’s ghettos are transformed through their collective Ultras experiences, to become audible and visible in public space, often to be heard for the first time, reconfiguring their sense of what is possible in everyday life. In such rituals of creative expression, their emancipation is visible to hegemonic power, if only momentarily, as the curva becomes akin to an organic, pulsating heterogeneity. Such dramatic football events perhaps transcend the culture of sport itself, as the Ultras move from political subjects to political beings, from heteronomy to autonomy. Ultras chants and songs became a key sonic part of Egypt’s revolutionary street culture, with many demonstrators echoing and mirroring the Ultras song culture. One, well-known chant became popular among activists during 2011, to taunt the proverbial policeman, who “bribed his way through education” (Ultras al-Ahly 2010). Indeed, Ultras songs were heard across Egypt

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because of their cutting lyrics and catchy rhythms, popular with shabab al-thawra (revolutionary youth). Simple chants became a common part of the soundscape of Cairo during protests, “al-Dakhlya baltagiya” (The Interior Ministry are thugs), or, “Military police, you are dogs like the Interior Ministry. Write it on the prison walls. Down, down with military rule” (Zayed 2012). Football fan culture further fused with political opposition movements through the Ultras-inspired capo, when a youth was hoisted on top of the shoulders of others within a pulsating crowd on the streets. This figure was incorporated into the crowd culture of the protests and became a commonplace feature during this period. The narrative of the songs and chants was another important feature that appealed to the Ultras during this time, and reveals their political position beyond straightforward football fan culture. One chant in particular satires police culture: He [police officer] was always a loser, a jester, he barely got 50 percent on his high school exam, with a bribe the rich kid’s a fool no more, got a hundred diplomas hanging on his door. You crows nesting in our house, why are you ruining all our fun? We won’t do as you tell us, spare us your face, cook up your case. That’s what the Interior [Ministry] does; I’m arrested and charged as a terrorist, just for holding a flare and singing al-Ahly (UA07 Media 2011).

Ultras Ahlawy and UWK composed and sang other chants in stadiums that became popular revolutionary slogans: Hurriya (Freedom) by the UA07 and We Are Not Forgetting Tahrir, Sons

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of Bitches by the UWK. In these songs, they directly insulted the government and reminded them of their defeat on 28 January 2011, the Day of Rage protests. In the early matches in 2011, the security forces used to stand in the stadium listening to this wall of sound, insults from thousands of diehard football fans on the terraces. Another favorite was Allez Allez Hooligans Allez with the lyrics: Fear us, oh government, we are determined tonight, al-Ahly put things on fire. Fuck the officer (UA07 Media 2011).

Ultras Ahlawy have often chanted for their martyrs at football games, for the seventy-two who died in the Port Said massacre, and the two others who died earlier in 2011 during street protests. In these songs, they remember their names, pray for them, promise to pursue justice and bring peace to their souls, and place them among a history of patriotic Egyptian martyrs. Along with these chants, they stress their hatred of the police, the state, and authority, while valorizing freedom above all. Other well-known songs and chants make up their repertoire, modified slightly, with variations on a few set themes—most prominently, the greatness of al-Ahly as a club. They sing about al-Ahly’s victories, use emblems, like the color red, or the eagle (the club symbol). They also pass on myth and history by narrating the nationalism of al-Ahly, and glorifying football figures like Omar Lotfi, Mukhtar al-Titsh or Saleh Selim. Most of the songs tend to position al-Ahly club in relation to their Cairo rival competitor, Zamalek. Rivalry is a popular theme in the chants.

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It helps Ultras articulate their feelings, in addition to their hatred of the police. The melodies for the songs and chants are often adapted from international songs, such as, “Those Were the Days,” which the Ultras inverted to “We Witnessed Death Together.” Similarly, the well-known Spanish tune, “Commandante Ché Guevara,” became “Youssef the Hero,” a reference to the Ultra who broke open the gate at Port Said and released many of the trapped fans, but who was killed as a result of the ensuing stampede. Some of their chants are inspired by traditional or classic Egyptian songs, like those of Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, Muhammad Fawzi, Sheikh Imam, and others. They also adapt melodies and chants from different Ultras groups worldwide. In a similar way, Liverpool fans, after the Hillsborough tragedy that left ninety-six football fans dead, sang, “You Will Never Walk Alone” as an act of mourning and solidarity at the beginning of every match. The process of emancipation through cultural practices on football terraces was brutally halted by the Port Said murders in 2012, marking a sudden rupture with this newly gained sense of autonomy. The Ultras football space became an encounter with the real, a locus of traumatic horror, the eidetic memory of state violence that invaded the sanctuary of the curva’s ephemeral space. The purity of the Ultras spectacle was liquidated in Port Said, denying their sense of political agency, and interrupting the potential of the commons, at a time when the military outmaneuvered or blocked the revolutionary impulse of a generation. The consequence of this tragedy is that it forced the Ultras back onto the contested public areas of Cairo’s streets and squares, to face the inevitable costs of such political transgressions, and directly into

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the clutches of the military regime. The Ultras’ long-standing animosity with the patriarchy in Egypt was replicated with Mubarak’s immediate replacement, Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawi, leader of the ruling military organization, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. In the immediate aftermath of Port Said, the Ultras protested on the streets over the injustice of the massacre, demanding a transparent judicial process. Their claim was made without the protection of the curva and terrace space, and the Ultras vulnerability was exposed to the uncertainty of street protests against a powerful military apparatus. And yet, the capo figure became more visible in a new role, as street agitators and the Ultras shared common concerns with other street activist groups, among them the Muslim Brotherhood. Port Said became an eidetic collective memory, commemorating a loss of innocence, as the full cost of the UA07 involvement in the 2011 uprising was evident for all to see. The Ultras became not only campaigners for justice over the Port Said incident, but, at the same time, inherited the faded hopes of Egypt’s street activism through their resistance to military and police rule (Ennarah 2017). The brutal murder of the UA07 members was also the demise of the football ritual, the image spectacle, and event. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces immediately suspended the domestic football league, as al-Ahly fans went into grieving. When the football teams were reinstated months later in the next season, fans were not permitted to attend games. This tragic phase in the Ultras short existence compelled the organization to move out from behind the veil of ambiguity, in order to reinstate the wilting hopes of the 2011 grand narrative and

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key demands for social progress in Egypt. Despite the bravado, the price of this transformation for the Ultras was their collective agency, which was replaced with a vocal and visible cohort of psychologically disturbed young fans, as the body of the team fused with the body politic. The Port Said massacre repopularized the Ultras in new ways, as their street culture and visibility spurred the material production of objects, murals, the merchandising of T-shirts and CDs, videos, photographs, and animations distributed across vast social media networks; the Ultras Ahlawy group had an estimated 1.3 million Facebook followers alone. Part of the Ultras’ repertoire of autonomy against the state included the specific design of T-shirts (74 Never Forget), mugs, flags, medals, songs, and other products to raise money and eliminate the need for powerful patrons. Sometimes the production of these items was coordinated to heighten social media impact. For example, a satirical animation in 2012 ridiculed two popular TV football pundits, Medhat Shalaby and Ahmed Shobeir, who had regularly criticized the Ultras. Both were depicted as cartoon sheep under the control of military puppets, which spouted their vitriol against the Ultras. This caustic animation video was released on YouTube at the same time that hundreds of Ultras attacked Cairo’s Media Production City on the outskirts of the capital, as the TV hosts were broadcasting live on their channel. The police officers guarding the station perimeter abandoned their posts, as the Ultras threw flares and projectiles, and violence intensified. Attacks like this on Egypt’s media establishment have been relatively uncommon, apart from those carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups. This is due,

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in part, to the role the media plays in manipulating public opinion. As news spread of the attack across Cairo, the satirical animation mocking the old regime TV personalities was simultaneously launched online through social media platforms, immediately trending widely. The collective animation film shows the broadcasters’ heads morphed onto sheep bodies, as a chorus of recognizable figureheads from the military dictates their speeches. This orchestrated incident demonstrates many of the somewhat contradictory dimensions of Ultras subculture; nonetheless it is an aesthetic expression of youthful workingclass anger and antagonism against authority. The colorful visual content is accompanied by a rather droll choir, composed and sung by the leaders of the Ultras, to comically ridicule the TV personalities. In this subversive work, the distance between object and subject is diminished in a collective process that helps shape the group’s identity and sense of sovereignty. The formation of aesthetic judgment comes about through the vitality of the event, in the communal process of spontaneous composition. It is arguable that the Port Said massacre became an encounter with trauma for many Ultras, as the sanctity of the curva was breeched. Collective resistance was destroyed and their aesthetic performance culture at football games was overrun by politically-motivated agent provocateurs, who were allegedly paid to do so by elements of the establishment. In such extreme violence, the magical quality of collectivity is rendered impotent, when the violent force of the regime threatens the youthful vigor of the Ultras. Indeed, the Alexandrian al-Ahly group, the Ultras Devils, never recovered

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from the loss of their iconic leader, Ghandour, in Port Said, and the group disbanded its organizational activities in 2015. The object remains central to the cultural practices of the Ultras, but not in a fetishized form of subjective desire that can be corrosive to the unity of the group. The various commonplace aesthetic objects or events created by the Ultras are not necessarily meaningful to each member on a personal, individual level. There is no particular appeal in possessing or owning the object, unlike within commodity culture in capitalism, where possession signifies disposition and control of potency. Rather, for the Ultras, the meaningful value of the object comes about through its use and distribution across networks, encounters, and moments that imbue the artifact with transformative totemic status. The presenting of such objects through these encounters might therefore be considered a superior form of engagement, signifying a far deeper connection with the world. Ultras objects serve such a function, and are useful only to maintain the group’s collective social cohesion, without any real value in themselves. The Ultras’ aesthetic displays are sensible forms, easily understood by the senses, and employed to create a community of equals, shaping an aesthetic community based on play. This unifying approach employs the useful aesthetic argument found in the Corpothetic, to supplant the floating veils of disembodied aesthetics, to mobilize performances so that they can emerge from the libidinal creativity of nature, and transform both the object and the beholder. In one of the crucibles of football culture in the world, the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro was built for the 1950 World Cup, when Brazil exploded onto the global football

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stage. This giant stadium held almost two hundred thousand fans for the cup final against Uruguay, which Brazil lost in a shocking defeat. However, this popular, iconic emblem was to become a contested, divisive space, due to the aggressive neoliberal politics of the 2014 World Cup. The Brazilian government renovated the stadium area, and redesigned the terrace space to prohibit the traditional Torcidas fan groups from attending national games. The 2014 Brazilian World Cup was the largest global media event in history to date, but systematically set out to exclude the unique, homegrown fans that had contributed to the global reputation and cultural force of Brazilian football over decades. This transformation occurred through an uncompromising process of fast-paced gentrification of major football stadia in Brazil, and was backed by the paramilitary-styled police force and its harassment of fans. Popular protests erupted across Brazil in 2013 over the spiraling economic costs of the tournament competition, as the disaffected Favela residents joined forces with the Torcidas football fans and other activist movements. Regardless, the government pushed through its agenda to renovate and dismantle local football culture through the refurbishment of stadia in collusion with the FIFA organization. Allegations of corruption during and after the competition resulted in the eventual collapse of the Brazilian Workers Party and the resignation of President Dilma Rousseff, as well as the arrest of football officials and the eventual demise of FIFA President Sepp Blatter, in 2015.12 This struggle over the Maracanã stadium architecture focused on the key issue of free movement of the body. The Torcidas own traditional space in the Maracanã stadium was

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forcefully renovated to become a seating-only area, without standing space available, thus restricting the musical samba bands and dancing that was so central to local fan identity. In the wake of the championship, this highly-controlled situation targeted a new class of wealthy supporters who could afford the increased ticket prices for the architecturally redesigned facility. This was envisioned to accommodate the comfort and expectations of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, at the expense of ordinary football communities. Symptomatic of this pacification process was the installation of high-definition plasma screens on concrete pillars that prohibit a direct view of the pitch, and as a means to render audiences static in their seats, and restrict the live audience. The effect is to synergize the football fan with the broadcast media commodity object of the TV screen, negating the live game, and fragmenting the experience of attending the football event. The ideological revision of architectural space was extended outside the sporting arena to the existing open public features encircling the stadium, such as a running track, swimming pool, and other facilities, which had traditionally been accessible at a low cost for the average citizen. These long-standing features were demolished and the area outside the stadium became controlled by police units, in order to prohibit the unsanctioned use of this common space. In the aftermath of the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics, the four main Rio de Janeiro football clubs—Botafogo, Flamengo, Fluminense, and Vasco da Gama—which had traditionally shared the Maracanã stadium for decades, permanently abandoned the refurbished site. This heralded the dramatic and rapid decline of the world famous football emblem, as the

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playing pitch became unfit for use. The expensive fittings were removed or looted, and almost a million dollars was owed for electricity use that was unpaid by the private company in charge of the stadium management. This legendary Maracanã stadium has been rendered unfit for sporting use by clubs and the general public, becoming a symbol of the delusional neoliberal gentrification driven by a bankrupt political elite and corrupt FIFA executives. Similarly to the situation in Egypt, the end effect of state intervention was to turn football into a strictly televised event, hostile to the Ultras’ cultural values. The break with representational form reclaims the sporting spectacle from the logic of passivity and dispossession, to reinvigorate the discourse on what is community in the contemporary situation. Play takes on a key role in restoring the individual within the collective, searching for alternative meanings against a future landscape dominated by complex systems of aggressive capitalist expansion. The questions of human purpose, autonomy, heterogeneity, community, and time are important in shaping the contours of a future communal world. The diversionary function of much culture does not invalidate the immanent constitution of aesthetic activity, as it influences judgments of taste and reorders social assumptions. Today’s cultural climate denies emancipatory modes of being to the detriment of free play, which often becomes, in essence, a mere extension of work. Leisure and life, however, can be reimagined on their own terms, and can move beyond the brutal ideology of competitive self-interest. Aesthetic judgment can invite others to agree, not on the qualities of the object in the narrow sense, but on the subjective process that might serve the potential of liberating human beings to the fullest.

5 ULTRAS UTOPIA, BODIES OF POSSIBILITY

Like evolution, history can also be seen as a succession of bifurcations and selections, but in the kingdom of history at each bifurcation consciousness plays a decisive role in the selection among conflicting possibilities. In order to emerge from the chaotic vibrational dimension of possibility, a body needs potency. Potency is the energy that links a possibility inscribed in the present with its subject (Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi 2017, 8).

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utonomy of thought and freedom of expression have been subjugated in Egypt, and, despite the impact of the 2011 uprising on the political stage, and the vitality of this time, the age of revolution appears to be over— for now. The Ultras organization, like many other grassroots activists who helped shape the microutopia of Tahrir Square politics have been crushed by military state oppression. Many members of opposition groups languish in prison, or have been forced into exile, while the regime, feeling sufficiently empowered, released the despised figure of Hosni Mubarak from custody in 2017 to live out his life in a collection of luxury mansions. Such a reversal of fortune signifies an attempt to erase from memory the social justice demands that gave 135

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much of the population hope. Mubarak’s release is the epitaph to the revolutionary events of 2011, as Marx’s famous quip on history does not do justice to this volte-face of political narratives in Egypt. Regrettably, the dramatic social project played out on the streets, and what was viewed across the world in media-space has been literally airbrushed from the historical timeline, and reedited under President al-Sisi’s distorted repressive vision. The brief aperture of emancipatory people power only antagonized vertical power relations, by confronting the logic of authoritarian rule. The age of optimism has been replaced by one of material desperation, political stasis, and psychological fatigue. The fearful atmosphere of heightened suspicion is manipulated by the emboldened military regime, which is busy with consolidating economic and political control over the country, as well as by international support from global capitalism and right-wing nationalist leaders. Al-Sisi’s tenure has accelerated the neoliberal policies of Mubarak, at a high cost to wider society, as the economy flounders. Foolhardy, grandiose schemes, such as the extending of the Suez Canal waterway, at an expenditure of US$8 billion, has yielded a mere 0.0033% increase in state revenues, and negligible freightage growth of only 0.008% (El-Kholy 2016). In addition, a new city, located in the desert between Cairo and the Red Sea coast, is under construction. The megacity named, for now, the New Administrative Capital, ran into funding difficulties from the start, as the original backer—Emirati business tycoon Muhammad Alabaar—canceled his Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was to cover the bulk of the costs. A major Chinese contractor—China State Construction Engineering

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Corporation (CSCEC)—had agreed to develop parts of the project, namely the business zone, with twenty towers that would boast the highest skyscrapers in Africa at 385 meters tall and a park larger than Central Park in New York. However, over the course of the project, a binding contract was not signed with the Chinese partners, who withdrew amid disagreements over the construction process. The Administrative Capital for Urban Development (ACUD) company has been set up to oversee the project and is 51% owned by the Egyptian military with the remaining 49% in the hands of the government. ACUD was founded with a cash injection of $11 million and has attracted limited international funding for the city construction costs (Bloomberg 2018).13 Among other impressive boasts, the city is planned to consist of twentyone residential districts and twenty-five dedicated districts for business, education, and culture. Its downtown is to have skyscrapers and a tall monument, said to resemble the Eiffel Tower  and  the Washington Monument. The prime minister and housing minister Mostafa Madbouli said, “I expect to see a Chinese miracle achieved here” (al-Masry al-youm 2018). The city is due for completion in 2020, at an estimated cost of US$45 million, further squandering meager public resources on a bloated postmodern fantasy.14 This economic activity will benefit the military apparatus, because much of the construction industry is controlled directly by ex-regime military personnel and Mubarak-era business interests, who have transferred their loyalty to President al-Sisi. However, the global appeal of the New Administrative Capital looks to be undermined by a second megacity in Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea coast. Crown Prince Muhammad bin

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Salman’s government announced that it would build a US$500 billion megacity, NEOM, with the goal of diversifying its economy to focus less on crude oil. The megacity is planned to be 100 percent sustainable, utilizing renewable energy, and will be business and industry focused, spanning 10,230 square miles, more than thirty-three times the land area of New York City.15 Global hegemony has mostly isolated leftist activism, which resounds with hollowed-out critiques on austerity from remote and distant positions. Many of Egypt’s 2011 generation of prominent street activists are either in exile or in prison, as a result of dubious criminal charges. Omnipresent state control suppresses any dissenting voices, as the collective cries for ‘bread, freedom, and justice,’ have been erased from the popular imagination. Such a miasmatic atmosphere raises some key questions about the short-term future of what can be salvaged or learned from in places like Egypt. Have autonomy and equality become chimeras? Will we ever come to know a world that is home to genuine freedom? Is it even possible to remain hopeful? Will the Egyptian Ultras’ combination of ‘hooliganism’ and aesthetics survive? The human imagination is the key to the retention of hope, demanding the capacity and space to rethink the role of human agency in our age. The potential of hope is often evident during short-lived, fluid periods, such as in times of revolution, or during intense phases of life when collectivity overshadows other concerns. This heterogeneity can be summoned up and avowed in everyday activities that undermine the perceptual order of hegemonic power that strives to isolate us and shape new sustainable social relations, marking a step toward reclaiming the human imagination. A manifest

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fact is that, despite the potential within uprisings, revolutions, or insurrections, they never really take hold. At the same time, they release emancipatory temporalities, which often falter in the transfer to a more stable network, but that could be powerful enough to supplant the multifarious capitalist ruling order. Topographical perspectives on history informed all the free, unclaimed territory that had been mapped out on Earth by the late nineteenth century, and which was used for narrow economic purposes. Thomas More’s famous book, Concerning the Best State of Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia, or better known simply as Utopia, was published in Belgium in 1516. This book describes in detail the socioeconomic organization of a society on an imaginary island located in the Atlantic Ocean. Although by today’s standards, More’s world was excessively authoritarian and patriarchal in character, the title is a pun, like many names in the book, and ambiguously combines two Greek words to conjure up both no-place and good-place. Indeed, the book later influenced satirical writers like Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, while delineating a rich philosophical concept for the imagination. Part of the enduring appeal of the utopian notion is its interplay between literature, social theory, and practice. Utopian ideas, communities, and models have existed in many fields, only to be crushed by dominant systems when they become truly visible, or when they expand beyond the microprototypical stage. Like many fluid social upheavals in history, the 2011 uprising in Egypt, and the ‘Arab Spring’ across the MENA region, failed for many specific reasons. However, one commonality lies in the unsustainable temporality of communities that spontaneously emerge, yet

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then disintegrate when confronted by repressive forces. In the contemporary world, the utopian impulse of revolution is fused with vast communication networks to trigger social movements in public space. Sadly, this transference is not successful and can only be sustained in living imaginations and memories of resistance. In such cases, images are retained to become simulacra; revolutions become phantasmic in the mind, and the Cairo Ultras eventually lost their physicality to become absent from real embodiment. Regardless, such cultural practices and creative energies do not simply dissipate. Rather, they are carried over, mutating and vibrating in the human formations of everyday life. The North American frontier in the mid-eighteenth century included the descendants of Muslim Moors, the Ben Ishmaels, a traveling troupe of minstrels from Delaware. This distinct community has all but disappeared from the national narrative of the United States of America, except for two local town names, Mecca and Medina, in the East coast state. The Ben Ishmaels intermarried with indigenous native tribes and were so committed to the concept of nomadism that they built wheels on their houses.16 One of the most eccentric historical examples of the utopian impulse comes from Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, who, with a small militia, captured the town of Rijeka in Croatia. Curiously he then offered the territory to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, who rejected the offer to include it as part of a new national territory. In response, D’Annunzio founded an anarchist statelet, the Free State of Fiume, and declared that music was the central principle of this new nation. Soon it became flooded with marginal communities of artists, fugitives, revolutionaries,

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homosexuals, and even Buddhists from around the world. Every morning, D’Annunzio read poetry from his balcony in the Municipal Palace, and every evening there was a music concert and firework display—the only notable activities of the government. One and a half years later, the Italian navy surrounded the port and he surrendered, exhausted by this potlatch social experiment and by the weight of its own excesses. This historical curiosity underscores not only what is possible when authority is absent and self-governance takes hold, but also the human capacity for play as an aesthetic approach to everyday life. Revolutions, uprisings, and insurrections disappear or become camouflaged. These tactics have been long established as a utopian maneuver of resistance and survival; after a heightened surge, the instant wanes. Invisibility is a rejoinder to the troubled conditions of the world. It is an attempt to avoid the system until all other options have been used up. This negative move can be seen in the tactical operations of marginal groups and communities who reject the values of the centrist, consensus-based mainstream. Similar forms of resistance reside in the actions of everyday life, such as in the workplace—through inattention, absenteeism, or avoidance of work duties that hinder the regulatory force of neoliberal systems. This is a perfectly human response to the administrative absurdity of contemporary bureaucracy as it is lived, allowing resistance to power to assume the form of a subversive tactic. Counter-hegemonic Ultras groups in Egypt were callously forced out of the football stadium, and the social bonds of the movement were systematically disrupted, then obliterated. The UA07’s archrivals in Cairo, the UWK, upheld

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an exacting antimedia principle as one of their dominant behavioral codes. Although many other activists groups have espoused similar beliefs to avoid unnecessary media attention, rarely has this position been upheld in a porous oral culture like Egypt. As a result of this form of UWK omertà, less is known about the internal structures or attitudes of the organization beyond hearsay and anecdotal knowledge. The UWK football groups are said to have a large fan base of hundreds of thousands, but they remain enigmatic to most outsiders, and therefore, are resilient to many hostile external forces. Despite their prominent public role during the 2011 uprising alongside other Ultras groups, the UWK groups remained camouflaged on the margins of Egyptian society. Cairo city counter-parts, al-Ahly UA07, found their cohesion compromised by the pressure of the Port Said massacre, which inhibited the large organization, and tore it apart during the counter-revolutionary moment. Tipping points in history often do not match the expected curve of the revolutionary impetuous. When the momentum of revolutionary change stalls, it is usually relabeled as an event of secondary importance, to be renamed as an uprising or insurrection, rather than a full-blown, systematic revolution to authentically transform power relations across society. This deferral of true revolution at the heart of the tipping point invites the question of why the world appears to prefer to revert back to a conservative interpretation at key moments of radical change, despite the presence of new explosive forces that threaten to change the course of history. Systems react to revolutionary upheavals and the visionary ideals are often betrayed, recuperated, or

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simply repressed, soon to be eclipsed by unreliable memory. The utopian always seems doomed to fail after the initial vision of insurrection, while the moment of revolutionary attainment mutates from tocsin to toxin. Obviously, insurrection is a forbidden possible moment, just as any uprising is temporary; a peak experience, as opposed to ordinary consciousness, which cannot occur every day, all day, except to become exhausted, as in the case of the Gabriele D’Annunzio’s musical nation of Fiume. Regardless, such transient moments of heightened experience do shape the world, and can provide meaning for the duration of a life, beyond the phase of temporal excitement. During such periods, the set coordinates of social relations shift, new orientations are formed, and fresh paradigms and fusions are made to create difference in both our understanding of the world and our relationship to collective consciousness. Utopia has never been a purely empirical response to the real world as a physical place, state, or distant island. Human beings appear to be caught in a feedback loop, switching from the negative agency of self-preservation to intermittently embracing more altruistic behaviors. Struggle is often just a tactical position that takes up collective action, demonstration, and occupation, to threaten but not really remove the real layers of power. The status quo remains focused on the simulation of its power, rather than the substance of power itself. But utopian thought could also operate in unbound spaces, be they physical, mental, virtual, or other realities. By this they avoid the gaze of power, and find camouflage in hidden away and unnoticed corners. Invisible and visible agents reinforce the simulation of ideological power

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assuming the guise of the media, academics, experts, teachers, and police, to affect the spectacle. Many technoutopian spaces are sustained online, visible or not, evident in figures like cyber activist John Perry Barlow, who retreated inside its atmosphere in the aftermath of the counter culture struggles in the 1970s. Barlow, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believed the Internet could supplant the failure of real world political change with a wishful subjective fantasy. Hippy idealists and technology pioneers were drawn to digital communication systems, often described as the ‘Internet of Things,’ that appeared to offer new autonomous paradigms where cybernetic culture can retreat from real organic life. Barlow published A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace in 1996 to state that cyberspace should be autonomous from all forms of control. He said, “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind” (Barlow 1996).17 Despite Barlow’s somewhat naïve beliefs, the case of Wikipedia provides a useful archetype to envision sustainable models of human cooperation. This online collective project consists of a repository that hosts some 26 million webpages, and exists through a global network of volunteers, supported by a minimal workforce of just 208 employees. This prototype does what no capitalist company can do within the confines of conventional business models. Facing no rivals, Wikipedia works according to a free ‘open source’ philosophy, and dominates simply because it is gratis to the user. Of course, vast technological resources sit behind Wikipedia to sustain its digital systems, just as dedicated human volunteers support its generous

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knowledge-based tool. Yet, this model also operates from an ideological space, using the human imagination to repurpose available technologies and glimpse what is possible beyond capitalist realism. Digital codes, data materials, and the human imagination can operate at minimal cost, once network systems are in place, and repurposing requires little real material investment beyond the key assets of motivation and free time. The community of the Ultras groups and factions embody play and dissensual visions of how community might function differently in the future. As automated technology shapes the nature of labor, the demands on human time change to situate leisure as a prominent issue, or even a societal problem, available to provide purpose and meaning in a postcapitalist environment. A new advancement of common sense would be required to navigate the sense of alienation that radical changes to the world would have on future social structures. The utopian impulse has the potential to invigorate the human imagination by positioning play at the core of social relations, allowing novel communities to form and be left alone, as new networks take hold, and animate human qualities in the technologically driven realm.18 At the height of the colonial exploitation of Africa and the ‘New World’ in the sixteenth century, new networks emerged to forge sea trade transportation of valuable goods to market. European nations established maritime empires with national navies on the seas to violently repress less technologically advanced peoples, copiously confident in the morality of profit-driven logic. Perceived as a God-given natural order at the time, these new empires appealed to

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logical reason and created a knowledge system to control and maximize proceeds, arguably close to the spirit of capitalism in the present day. In contrast, heterogeneous forces of the marginal and parasitic thwarted this exploitative venture. On the high seas, bands of pirate outcasts raided this lucrative fortune and interrupted the treasure bounty system. Various pirate groups operated from beyond the system, based on remote islands, and organized around antiauthoritarian social structures. In the Caribbean, Buccaneer utopias were formed, such as Tortuga in Haiti, where the pirates adopted local Carib Indian ways, and even accepted renegade African slaves as equals. In these multicultural communities, nationality was rejected, sexual orientation was open, pirate captains were elected by vote, and society centered on potlatch pleasure. The island hideaways were full of musicians, and the pirates regularly hired bands to perform on boats as they sailed, having declared themselves ‘at war with all the world.’ The riches they plundered from colonial shipping routes were divided by mutual contracts called articles, which were so egalitarian, at times, that each pirate member received a full share and the Captain only one and a half shares. Flogging, plank walks, and other punishments were forbidden, and disputes were settled by vote or by the code duello. In Madagascar, intermarriages were common between pirates and the indigenous populations, eventually evolving into a hybrid identity that formed the island state. The pirate capacity to resist functioned through the use of tactical camouflage, as these settlements saw women and freed African slaves become pirate captains. The rebellious outlaw republics produced a variety of unorthodox protagonists, such as lesbian lovers Mary Read

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and Anne Bonny, who became successful sea captains of pirate fleets. This reminds us of why we should be grateful to these legacies and radical temporalities, which exist at the expense of the police order to embody the nonconformist spirit inherent to human vitality. This radical culture was in stark contrast to the hierarchical, draconian laws and punishments of national navies in their colonial operations; the British Royal Navy’s cat o’ nine tails was a multitailed whip that inflicted severe physical punishment. It was the allure of pirate autonomy that enticed British naval sailors to take this alternative path and live a short but self-directed, adventurous life. This human desire to transgress borders and overcome constraints expresses the utopian impulse, found most vividly in periods of change and heightened events. These pirate theories have been used by anarchist writers. Academic Peter Lamborn Wilson coined the term “pirate utopias” to describe these historical phenomena in the West Indies. Beyond the Caribbean pirate network, other curious cultures developed on the margins of trade networks. The Muslim Corsairs from the Barbary Coast ravaged European shipping. In the seventeenth century, the independent Pirate Republic of Salé in Morocco was established, composed of a diverse range of peoples: Corsairs, Sufis, Moorish women, slaves, adventurers, Irish rebels, and heretical Jews. These Arab pirates formed insurrectionary communities in their strongholds, and were manifestations of earlier revolutionary movements similar to the Islamic Civil Wars during the Caliphate. Later Muslim scholars, such as Amer al-Basri and Abu Hanifa, led movements to boycott their rulers, paving

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the way to the wafd or endowments tradition in Islam, which served as an evasion from the centralized authoritarian rule of emirs. Arguably, hydrarchy can challenge hierarchy and, in the more contemporary setting, dockworkers were some of the most ennobled of all maritime labor across the world. Once a community with key leverage over the global transportation of goods, these syndicates maintained a proud tradition of resistance to the forces of capitalism by taking principled stands and striking in support of wide-ranging political causes.19 In Egypt, the Ultras gained a certain outlaw image of their own, in particular during the ferocious street battles in 2011 against Mubarak’s security state apparatus. They operated within this revolutionary framework and translated this to accommodate their own self-determined methods. Dissensus was used to challenge authority through classless, nonsectarian collective structures and egalitarian operations. This spirit of horizontality was much in vogue during this time of insurrectionary fervor, when solidarities of football communities effectively encountered authoritarian forces, undermining their perceptual order of power. Across the world, football has become a contested space and holds a popular capacity, diffracted through progressive movements for social change. Football communities share a legacy, and the origin of many clubs was often formed by demands for freedom of expression and self-determination, such as the subaltern heritage of Celtic F.C. in Scotland, founded by Irish immigrants to Scotland. Contemporary communities in struggle are often attracted to this recent Ultras football fan phenomenon of communal group identity.

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The new solidarities formed through football cultures and networks are echoes of earlier twentieth-century resistances and politics of protests. Even the veneer of indeterminacy or political ambiguity reflected in most Ultras groups is in fact a tactical position, or an octopus move, to resist but not openly contest politics with the official order. Ultras asserted group autonomy in public space, in Tahrir Square, and across the country in 2011, igniting a generation to believe change was possible and challenging the control of the state. In Egypt’s authoritarian context, the police discipline citizens in public space through extensive surveillance, physical intimidation, and degrading verbal abuse. In the contemporary situation, the two main Ultras movements, UA07 and UWK, have disbanded their organizations and discontinued all group activities. This is a tactical move designed to reinstate football fan access to stadia that had remained off access since 2012. The fan ban discriminates against the Ultras membership to ensure football fans are prevented from engaging in Ultrastype behavior—performing collective displays of tifos, chants, and pyroshows. At the same time, undemocratic protest laws and emergency legislation make public assembly illegal. From Mubarak’s façade of democracy to al-Sisi’s draconian rule, and in spite of recent history, the Ultras groups do retain a certain mythical appeal and latent clout. This camouflaged existence is a necessary survival method for the Ultras membership that serves as another salient reminder of the price of visibility in a political process in places like Egypt. The importance of being seen and heard are aesthetic concerns that also reverberated in a biting way in the 1960s counter-culture movements in the United States, and in the

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anarchist protest groups in Paris in 1968. Both American and French societies at the time lived off a consumerist surplus of capitalism. In both cases, revolutionary spirit was co-opted by the mainstream for its own ends. Egypt’s uprising seemed to echo these previous protest groups, and reactivated similar radical hopes to fuse the everyday with cultural practices in the formation of open commons. In this way, the aesthetic revolution attempted to dissolve art itself into the everyday flow of life, as the division of labor was eroded in favor of an egalitarian logic. Marx and Engels offered scathing criticisms of positivist utopias, shared by many others on the left, who prefer to dissociate art practices from the political. In the ‘art for art’s sake’ position, the art practice must remain sovereign, and this distance from everyday life threatens something vital and uncompromising, that is, art’s ability to establish space for negative critique. However, in such instances, art can easily become isolated or removed from social life itself. In addition, such rarified positions can leave art open to neoliberal opportunism when the market is permitted to exploit the ‘uniqueness’ of the art object, thereby losing sight of the utopian impulse that lies at the core of creativity. The cultural hollowness in capitalism has incorporated a utopian spirit into a vacuous managerial discourse or menu of lifestyle choices, emptied out from authentic experience, part of the aspirational identity for the idealized twenty-first century global citizen. Therefore, the aesthetic rehabilitation of utopia must come from outside of this system, beyond the hail of the media spectacle, to redefine the role of critical artwork and make new perceptions of the world that are committed to substantial transformation. This can occur in three

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interdependent phases: sensory strangeness of form; awareness of reasons for strangeness; and social mobilization due to the former processes. In this vision, creativity and art move beyond the representational realm toward the spectator, who asks what affects the artwork reproduces in the world, beyond the intentions of the artist or curator. Consequently, the utopian concept does not reside only in the artwork itself on the representational level alone, but in the social actors who encounter the art.20 By labeling art as being separate from society, it cannot have a significant impact on the neoliberal grip that governs communication network systems; a space where human consciousness is mediated, and to which it is increasingly partial. In contrast, an art dissolved and reintegrated into everyday cadences can constitute an aesthetic that disappears into the world, concealed, and transforming the future from within. To position art practices as separate processes, thereby inbuilt with exclusivity, is to allow the art object to be recuperated into the capitalist sense of specialness. Such attributes of uniqueness and rarity are inherent properties that aid the functionality of global elitism. In contrast, the contemporary Ultras football fan phenomenon is a heterogeneous everyday entity that can appeal to the utopian impulse and appears through heuristic development to form diverse communities that are bound in solidarity. Through dissensual play, a realm of leisure is repurposed to undermine the perceptual logic of capitalist commodification, and, in turn, offer hope against oppression. Ultras cultural practices fuse corporeality with social practices to

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resist the police order, and the preeminence of Eurocentric aesthetics. In this exposition of the aesthetic debate, the Ultras’ event actions and objects are designed according to their ability to determine what is (in)audible, (in)visible, (un) thinkable, and (im)possible. Through creativity and community, the representational frame is ruptured and replaced by an organic one that is beyond reason, to emerge from the vernacular fabric of the everyday. Agency is not only an internal mental process, but is linked to the distributed person, formed and shaped in relation to others and the world. Ultras football groups together take on the power of the spectacle, collectively reclaiming it. Individual agency is of secondary importance, as the group functions to disseminate themselves within a vibrant network. Only at this point does their true velocity and capacity come into existence, as the Ultras collectively becomes acknowledged through renewed acts, gifts, and situations toward sovereignty. Play, fun, and mischief occur in face-to-face encounters with creativity, infusing leisure time with human desires for food, cheer, and dance, in a communal, metamorphosing, and undetermined process. Jacques Rancière suggests the critical regime of art is a mode of articulation between three things: ways of doing and making; their corresponding forms of visibility, and ways of conceptualizing both the former and the latter. Rancière has provided detailed accounts of three subdivisions he proposed to conceptualize art: the ethical regime, the representative regime, and the aesthetic regime of the arts. The Ultras cultural practices have broken with the second term, the representative regime, by rejecting movements in the history of art. Their communal activities could be positioned within the

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third term, the aesthetic regime of art, where there is no need for labels, and aesthetic objects exist within the useful context of everyday life. This involves dissolving the artwork itself into the social sphere, where a sense of horizontal equality emerges through the creative process. This then becomes a community emboldened by its own presence through exaggerating itself, a carnivalesque approach, making itself visible and rancorous in leisure time. The enlivened audience overtakes the spectacle, or turns it into a site of excess, in certain ways harkening back to the rejection of reason in the spirit of the Serate that was part of Italian Futurism. In such live events, all classes made up the audiences who enthusiastically threw vegetables at the performers, bringing banners, car horns, and other noisy items into the theaters. This cultural form complements the Ultras cultural practices and events to produce a space of aggregated collective participation, one of entertainment destruction. Dynamic dissensus is a heightened experience of exuberant life, dissipating aesthetic play into vulgar excess. The Ultras’ stadium choreographies can be understood to occupy a collective space on the football terraces; to split with the representational frame in favor of communal ecstasy, and to substitute commodity aesthetics with the aesthetics of dissensus. In the stands, the Ultras’ boisterous chants, comic banner images, and collective bravado heighten the event, reclaiming the spectacle and rehabilitating leisure with the spark of a utopian impulse. The Ultras’ hooligan behavior is the intensification of the everyday into a potlatch attitude, an abundance of life based on play. A marginal narrative version of the history of the world can provide models to unify diverse groups: anarchists, artists,

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pirates, dockside workers, or even perhaps Ultras football fans become interchangeable players to present heretical positions and values in support of the utopian impulse, a force beyond the limits of reason. These skewed alliances might even provide new political imaginaries about being together. Moreover, debates on whether utopias may exist or not, as failures or not, distract from their immanent becoming to develop a new collective discourse on what might be in the future, and as a step toward discovering what is inscribed in the present. The Ultras should not be thought of as a blueprint for perfection, or as a roadmap to an idealized or intentional community of the future, unlike other utopian social experiments. Rather, they can be seen as a fusion of the human imagination, a capacity within the original notion of space, because the concrete specificity of space is vital to distinguishing the abstract utopian concept from reactionary political discourses. In some ways, the Ultras are all about failure, as the Egyptian context can remind us vividly, but such failures can also tell us more about the limits of the possible, rather than the inapplicability of a certain social model. The perception of failure comes about through the scale of ambition, and through the radical strangeness of this ambition. Failure is a process, not a diagnosis, but a prognosis of the contours of the world. There is little to be gained in elaborate dogmas on how utopia might come about, because, in a sense it has been created, will be created, and, as history attests, is being created on the margins of the world.21 The orthodox dialectical endgame between left and right factions is supplanted by different modes of thinking about

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the future immanent in the Global South. Indeed as history shows, utopian thought can be dangerous, in either progressive or totalitarian forms. The world oscillates in a time of unpredictable vibrations, shaped by the instability of complex financial systems, the rise of regressive nationalism, looming environmental disasters of anthropogenic climate change, and the threat of global military conflict. The erratic flow of techno-financial-military power emerging from within global networks has reconstituted politics through the force of the spectacle. Ideological experiments with perception management have unleashed uncontrollable entities and alienated sections of populations from meaningful, purposeful life and political participation. Similar to digital technologies and social media platforms used by antiglobalization movements, conservative political forces and leaders have learned to circumvent orthodox political safeguards to operate from within the edifice of the spectacle. As many have argued, most notably Bifo Beradi, the nihilism of neoliberal culture, the aftereffect of capitalism, is destined to decay over time, as the perception of its power wanes. What emerges from this void of governance may determine the shape of the interconnected future world into the twenty-first century. As Byung-Chul Han states, “Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed an intelligent, system for exploiting freedom” (Byung-Chul Han 2017, 3). In reaction to the coercion at the core of negative freedom, a counter-hegemonic force based on dissensus can be understood in the imagination of aesthetics as an opening position. This more vibrant form of life, lived through community and collective cooperation, shares core principles of

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being together. The question remains as to whether or not such a radical force of collective action can manufacture the subjectivity of ambition of a new kind of common sense, and to what extent the toll of damage will be before such a project can take shape organically in the world. Horizontal human networks of noncompetitive formations, like archipelagos of autonomous collectivity, could be visions of the future worth testing out. Arguably, the radical heterogeneity of dissensus comes through necessity, too, as the short-term natural environment erodes and basic human functions struggle under the pressures of limited resources and strained socioeconomic systems. Caution must be exercised when we consider what form of the utopian future is viable, as history provides examples of totalitarian control and faceless bureaucracy. Utopia is essentially most useful in the immanent imagination only, not in terms of the meaningful functionality of the world, and not as a programmatic, calculated blueprint for the future. At times, critical affects have come into being when the utopian impulse has met with real space, as utopia is not always contextualized in nonplace. The release of the Panama Papers secret files by the hacker collective WikiLeaks in 2015 triggered a political response across the world. In Iceland, the ruling Progressive Party was held accountable by the common citizenry, which was largely outraged by more evidence of blatant corruption in the financial system. In turn, this forced the resignation of the prime minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, and precipitated a general election in 2016. Voters turned away from the political classes and brought in various radical leftists and anarchists, including the Pirate Party, which has become the third largest

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party in the national parliament. Recent history in Iceland has shown other notable examples of resistance to international military alliances, nonsustainable energy forms, and the capitalist economic forces of the IMF and other global financial institutions that enforce the logic of austerity and impacts most harshly on ordinary citizens. Utopia may not possess political agency a priori, or even consider who comes first—the objects or subjects—but from it, new agents may emerge, social persons who are formed in a given situation. This may function critically in the contemporary world as an immanent first step, and through imaginary spaces reorder common sense to release productive modes of pleasure.22 Meanwhile, in Egypt the economy hemorrhages under the drastic impact of the 2016 IMF austerity reforms, as the culture of corruption within the military regime fails to provide for the majority of the hundred-million population. In the near future, beyond the gated communities in the capitals of power, the current austerity programs may present new spaces and opportunities as the system gradually decays. This could aid the emergence of creative commons to take on abandoned areas, and make new living cities and ecosystems as living labs or play prototypes. Future visions might contain a greater promise of leisure, a form of life that is not based solely around work, but also play; social relations rather than just material production and wealth may be equally valued, in an age disinterested in commodification beyond the hailing sirens of the cultural industries. The objective world of nature operates according to its own laws, unaware of the subjectivity of human desire in the social realm. Behind the logic of nature and our own subjective perception of it, we are

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interconnected with the environment, and objects as beings, dependent on a relationship to both. The nonviolent guerrilla, weaver of networks, spider lover, and antipsychiatrist Fernand Deligny worked throughout his life to establish radical communities of difference. He developed unique methods for living and working with autistic young people, who had been considered by authorities as unable to communicate, hors de parole (outside of speech). Therefore, these children were judged to be incompatible with and invisible to society at the time. Deligny rejected this position and set about developing an original vision and approach to transform this community. In his prose writings he explores natural phenomena and sustainable intelligent systems, mostly in the arachnidian world. His published prose consists of an open-ended, elliptical, and fragmented series of writings based on his philosophy, and is designed to attune the reader to the lower frequencies of life, that is, a life lived within the marginal. Key to the human community that he brought into existence was the tenet of play, as the autistic children roamed freely across the countryside of rural France, uninhibited, recording their perceptions. They made freestyle drawings, maps, and other schemas that functioned as visual translations to replace conventional communication. These paper drawings brought into form the unseen and unheard marginality of this community, their thoughts, impressions, and mental processes, and in this context they were able to thrive. Such radical investment in renewed communities of disabled, autistic children, was a thought of the whole, the reconciliation of nature and reason, a panoramic moment.

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An appealing concept is the rhizome, developed in a series of two-volume writings by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, entitled Capitalism and Schizophrenia and A Thousand Plateaus. In these books the philosophers suggest a rethinking of Western hierarchical forms of knowledge. The word rhizome is derived from a botanical term, and it was adapted to consider knowledge production as one of mutual dependency of nonlinear, organic networks that are evident in the natural world. The authors use the metaphor of the tree to demonstrate how hierarchy has become the dominant model in Western thought. This can be observed in most disciplines and structures in the world, such as: linguistics, psychoanalysis, logic, and biology, among others. All these are hierarchical or binary-based knowledge systems, stemming from the tree root, to the trunk, branches and leaves. The revaluation of the tree model suggests that it presents an inadequate way to address multiplicity. The implication they suggest is that the tree model reinforces notions of the centrality of authority, state control, and dominance. In contrast, the rhizome concept has no single source, and is both heterogeneous and multiplicitous at the same time. Moreover, the rhizome can be entered from many different points, all of which connect to each other, without a beginning, an end, or even an original source or center. Such interpretative horizontal models allow for the points of knowledge to evolve in a decentered way, hybridic in form and multiplicity of direction, open to follow fissures in nomadic growth, often without intent. In contrast to the tree, the ginger plant can exemplify the rhizome idea, as would the ubiquitous Internet, that is something always in process. In the book A Thousand Plateaus, the authors describe the rhizome as:

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It is comprised not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 21).

Things must exist with the capacity to simply be what they are, to leave them in order that they may sediment and acquire their own distinct existence. Patterns of organic life are fixed in ways that should not be altered and disrupted because they have been established slowly, and are at times unreliable and spontaneous, or even wondrous. The utopian impulse comes to life in the excess of creative libidinal sources, most visible in times of revolution through vivid, enlivened aesthetic expression. Regression occurs when the sensory is blocked or opposed and imagination becomes uniform. Concrete or abstract utopias are perceived in the interwoven forms of play in the world and, in this framework, reality is anticipated as subjective experience, an unfinished work in progress. The utopian impulse is contained within encounters and relations, but is reconstituted in the objective status of the natural world order. Concrete utopia offers a stripping away of empty wishful thinking that is purely fantastical and essentially an escapist form of distraction. Furthermore, the utopian impulse emerges from the same mental base to distinguish human life from other life organisms and forces at play in the natural world; it fuses thought, action, and play in open-ended activities. Much of the beauty in the natural world is formed by pure acts, devoid of this type of imagination, from coral reefs to spider webs, in an instinctual teleological process. An extrinsic part of nature is the human capacity to

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imagine, as new possibilities can cause and reproduce social transformation, even without heightened revolutionary phases. Daydreaming, open play, creative activity, or timewasting are often labeled as frivolities, stupid follies, empty hobbies, or bad habits, because they are devalued and viewed as devoid of any clear function in a regulated world. This can also be true of the utopian detail, bereft of capitalist competition; becoming a vigorous force of energy to facilitate change that has become commoditized in the social fabric. Modest beginnings can become tipping points, subjective impulses to collective acts, to redeem the troubled course of the world in order to digress from the logic of materialist profit. Our process of judgment often compares with the past, and what is understood to be possible is based on this, or on the projected judgment to position ourselves in the place of others. Hence judgment is changeable as the distance between object and subject is mediated under essential aesthetic convictions that can position free play as our guiding reason to reshape notions of free will. At the core of these radical social relations is dissensus over consensus, enabling us to shape the vision of newborn future possibilities. Utopian thought is awareness of the sociological dimension to knowledge that is not held but is a position shared. Such manner of perceptions render the power of the current cultural form of the spectacle as obsolete, just as the dire challenges of the precarious global future supplant the troubled mishap of capitalism and the apparitions of the neoliberal artifice. To achieve this vision, humankind will need a powerful telescope, built from a new sense of common will to perceive the immanence in hope over the precondition of fear.

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The utopian is the reconciliation of nature and reason within the aesthetic experience, the unfolding capacity of the object: be it a work of art in a gallery, a football stadium tifo, or an object of curiosity in the everyday context. Such things refashion the appearance of the world to create community, and to belong to a community is to encounter a sense of beauty. This fundamental human experience occurs through sensible forms, enabling shared structures that are not reducible to predigested entertainment modes of experience that are available in a liquid mass society; the giddy proliferation of ‘like’ buttons that construct kitsch cultural visions. However, if aesthetic beauty can be shared, then we need to delineate the idea of community as a living plurality. Principles need to be in place to ensure that humanity itself, as a nonhegemonic entity, remains true to its core ideals. Moreover, the world is no longer perceived in terms of Cartesian optics; many worlds can coexist and are hypothetically possible. There is something broken about the uneven aesthetics of the Ultras cultural practices; broken in the way that the body acquires reconciliation with ascetic reason. Earlier utopian notions of an aesthetic rehabilitation through the unification of the beautiful and the everyday came to life during the late 1960s revolutionary politics in the Western world. The aftermath has been dominated by a fluid modernity that has tended to become dominated by capitalist policies, as the neoliberal crusade has unfolded, transforming the notion of society. Starting in New York City in the 1970s, and then globalized over the last decades in advanced economies, cultural actors and artists have either aided, or were not able to forestall, the bulldozers of gentrification.

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The recent political upheavals across much of the Arabic speaking world appeared to echo with some of the resonances of earlier ideals of human emancipation through street assembly, latterly resuscitated with the 2008 antiausterity movements. These movements rebounded as hopes faded, but, arguably within this margin of such experience lies the ontology of the anticipatory in the making, since even pessimism is better than sentimentality. In recent decades, neither the folk politics of leftist organizations poised against the capitalist juggernaut, or the jargon of social art practices have managed to reconfigure the course of the world in any significant way. The floating veil of contemporary art has been recuperated into the neoliberal agenda, as conservatism colonizes the human imagination and shapes the neurology of desire. Radical theatre artist Christoph Schlingensief used dissensual tactics to antagonize German society in the 1990s, when he founded a political party, Chance 2000, to represent nonvoters, the unemployed, and other minorities. In one party proposal, he invited the four million unemployed in Germany to go swimming at the same time in the Wolfgangsee, a lake in the Salzkammergut resort area in Austria. Had this idea literally taken shape, the swimmers would have flooded Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s holiday destination and many villas of the surrounding super rich inhabitants. Such conceptual tactics can reimagine the affects capitalist polices have to thwart its own social effects, and help situate everyday dissensual aesthetics as a disruptive agent between the visible and nonvisible. The aesthetic shock system is the realization that the abstract and concrete modes in the utopian impulse can forge

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hope-based environments of collective will, to set free what is within. Hope is an anticipatory emotion, a psychological process that can allow us to conceive of radical change, and perhaps even follow the path of youthful transgression. These processes, through a profusion of the imagination, have the capacity to direct that which is not yet known, to take us down mischievous dream roads to a life without postponement or distance. Contemporary utopian hope is now sought out in the margins, beyond the jaded discourse of consensual politics or the centrist valorization of the “blind eulogy of blind life” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997, 36). In the past, Marxism was thought to offer a nonillusory path to a superior form of life that would replace capitalist realism. The essence of lived life is being conscious of the world existing in forward motion beyond reactionary rhetoric; the retrotopia trends of hipster culture, or the fragile kinship of folk politics.

6 ERRANT FUTURES (#TRASH_AHLAWY)

Revolutions are made from the unpredictability of the practice of history, which is the mysticism of the encounter with the irrational forces of the masses of the poor. The political seizure of power does not imply the success of the revolution (Glauber Rocha 1967, 32).

T

he Ultras football communities in Egypt were formed in 2007, at a time of increasing dissatisfaction in the country, as Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year regime prepared to install his son Gamal as successor to the family throne. As societal frustrations mounted at this prospect of Mubarak junior prolonging the dynasty, some found respite on the terraces of football stadia, and this new Ultras culture was formed mostly from the legions of disenfranchised, marginalized Egyptian youth. A few years later, these young football fans emerged to become part of a monumental event that successfully toppled the tyrant. The Ultras cultural practices were expressed through tifo performance-based events, by which they reclaimed a degree of agency from the passivity of the football spectacle through the use of somatic energy and force. Through renewed 165

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modes of communal awareness, the stranglehold over the human imagination was uninhibited through this footballbased phenomenon, appealing to something more human, corporeal, and visceral, and disrupting the failure of true democratic process in Egypt. The Ultras’ distinctive use of excessive expression and rebellious comradery appeals to younger generations in Egypt and beyond. This spirit offered hope to many marginalized, working-class communities across the Arab word. The rebellious expressions of the Ultras became political expressions. The Ultras introduced a mode of protest to football culture, and a whole range of distinct cultural practices, for instance, the stencil of a silhouetted martyr’s face was a visage that was to become ubiquitous in Egypt’s revolutionary visual repertoire. Another example is a bold sonic chant that rebounded in public spaces in Egypt during the course of street activism. This Ultras rhyming chant was both simple and effective, “aldakhliya baltagiya” (The Interior Ministry are thugs) (Ultras Ahlawy Media 2011). The full potential of the Ultras’ process was impeded by the state hegemony, mostly through the Port Said incident, preventing them from becoming self-determined beings. This violent history halted the capacity of resistance to speak back to power, as hegemony must obstruct in the name of authoritarian order and consensual logic. Their autonomy vanished in the traumatic miasma of Port Said, residing only in the eidetic memory of the survivors. This premeditated ambush impeded the utopian impulse, and became another tragic marker in the rapid decline of the demands of 2011, a harsh axiom for the Ultras and shabab al-thawra (revolutionary youth), who had

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been emboldened by the universal appeal of revolution. The Ultras phenomenon remains redolent of this time, but, all that lingers of these momentous events is residual corporeality; memories of aesthetic experience tinged with mental images of lost comrades. Despite the epic dramas played out in Tahrir Square and across Egypt in 2011, hegemonic power soon gained control of the country, and appears to have subdued the imagination of the population, although signs of cracks in this edifice are still visible. As Egypt’s football team crashed out of the World Cup in 2018, a trending Twitter hashtag #irhal_yaSisi (#Sisi_leave) gained over three-hundred thousand comments in one of the rare expressions of open defiance against the government. This defiance was also sparked by recent sudden increases in the basic costs of living, as food and fuel price hikes added to the list of other state failures. The #Sisi_leave Twitter hashtag trended in Arabic, and was significant because of the use of the word irhal, which was also used against Mubarak, drawing dangerous comparisons and associations for al-Sisi’s image. At a government sponsored youth conference in Cairo University soon afterward, Sisi spoke of the personal distress caused by the hashtag campaign against him. He said, “I’m trying to get you out of this rut and you make a hashtag saying, ‘Leave Sisi.’ Am I saddened or am I not saddened?” (Reuters 2018). His comments immediately resurrected the hashtag again, as Twitter users responded to the president’s discomfort. The World Cup 2018 fallout compounded the sense of national despair and frustration, as the hapless team performances disappointed fans, and accusations of corruption emerged concerning the Egyptian Football Association

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(EFA).23 Even team captain, Mohamed Salah, clashed with the Egyptian delegation over mismanagement, and, in August 2018, he released three damning videos on Facebook that revealed a string of failures by EFA officials. In addition, Salah claimed the EFA did not reply to a letter from his lawyer, Rami Abbas, in which Salah expressed seven issues of concern during the competition. After the World Cup, the row escalated, as the EFA attempted to smear Salah’s reputation in media interviews over the controversy. However, Salah did provide some hope in terms of the imagination for an attentive Egyptian public. In contrast to many prominent establishment figures who appear to have answers for everything, Salah’s story is one of success with no answers. His stance remains somewhat apolitical, giving him a broad support base from across the diverse nation, who can project their hopes onto his smiling face. His image adorned Ramadan lanterns and T-shirts, and his colorful posters soon replaced the debris of fading 2018 election posters. Although Salah did not declare his bid for the presidential race, he still received some of the 7.27% of the 1.76 million spoiled votes, as some of the electorate wrote his name as a manifestation of public dissatisfaction with the democratic process in Egypt. In the qualifying rounds of the competition, Salah helped the team defeat Congo with a winning goal, and Egypt celebrated its first World Cup qualification success in almost a quarter century. As a consequence, he was  offered a luxury villa  by businessman and former captain of the Zamalek S.C. club Mamdouh Abbas. Salah politely declined the gift and suggested that a donation to his village would make him happier. Coming originally from the village of Nagrig in the

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improvised rural Nile Delta, Salah funds grassroots social projects, such as schools, food banks, and a medical clinic. His family is involved in running these operations, and they have tacit knowledge of the local community’s needs. It is estimated Salah pays over US$5,000 a month to support these charitable projects. This only enhances his already favorable reputation in Egypt. In a time of hyper-individualism, his rejection of the villa gift from the ruling elite pierced the bauble of consumerist wealth. Furthermore, Salah, like al-Ahly icon Abu Trika before him, resurrected long lost idealistic notions about Egypt as a cultured, vibrant and outward-looking Middle Eastern nation; a champion of pan-Arab solidarity, one that spearheads the arts and promotes a tolerant form of intellectual Sunni Islam. Salah signifies an alternative to the grim reality of contemporary Egypt that presents few economic possibilities and scant opportunities for citizens, as the political horizon worsens for the majority of the population. In this perhaps, Salah has carried a burden too heavy for his shoulders (he injured his shoulder in the Champions League final against Real Madrid)—that is the hopes and expectations of a hundred million Egyptians. The #trash_ahlawy hashtag marked the dramatic closure of the Ultras eleven-year narrative, with the strategic disbandment of all activities in May 2018. This shocking outcome comes from the intensification of harassment by security forces in recent years. It is part of an absolute clampdown on opposition configurations that demonstrates the potency of the Ultras ideas in Egyptian society. The Port Said murders and on-going military oppression of the membership is part of a directive to further traumatize this young

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revolutionary generation, and to stifle, for now, one of the progressive voices in Egypt. The residual significance of such radical groups is the dissensus that is found in collective cultural practices, marking a clear distinction between images and simulacra, ideas and phantasms. Since they disbanded, the Ultras  are mostly  image simulacrum, and their status largely virtual. They operate as a distant memory, and their potency is no longer physically present on the streets. Their loss of corporeality during police arrests exposes their fragility as bodies of collective action in the process of progressive political life. Al-Sisi’s second presidential election in March 2018 (he seized power in 2013), turned out to be even less democratic than the first one, held in 2014. There was no credible opposition, and every potential candidate that declared interest for the contest was intimidated and his or her campaign was sabotaged. Human Rights Watch and international observers dismissed the poll as “farcical” (HWR February 2018). Most of the six election candidates who declared their intent to run for the presidential office offered little alternative to the public. Among them were al-Sisi’s former army colleague Sami Anan, and former Mubarak minister Ahmed Shafik. However, even they were forced to rescind their intent to run, which meant the public had no substantive election choice. One creditable candidate, Khaled Ali, a well-respected human rights lawyer, former head of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, and a 2012 presidential candidate, had announced his intention to run for the presidency on 6 November 2017.24 But Ali withdrew on 24 January 2018, due to relentless intimidation and, in particular, after the arrest

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of another candidate, Sami Anan. Eventually, Ali himself was also convicted of making ‘an obscene gesture’ outside a courthouse by the judiciary, a charge he later appealed. In the end, only one figure, the unheard of Musa Mustafa Musa of the Ghad Party was able to declare his candidacy successfully, as the only alternative to al-Sisi on the ballot. Musa was in fact a well-known supporter of al-Sisi up until his declaration to contest the election, and he only submitted all the essential documents to the National Election Authority fifteen minutes before the deadline in January 2018. Regardless, Musa denied claims that he was a decoy candidate. However, public confidence was eroded in this election and few voters believed this was a genuine democratic process. Unsurprisingly, al-Sisi won with a landslide 97 percent of the votes cast, and he claimed another presidential success despite the background meddling in the election and the chronic nature of the economy in Egypt. The sense of public frustration was described frankly by one football fan, Hasan Allam, when he told an Arab News reporter: There was no real competition against [Sisi] and many of the people I know were harassed by security forces for their political affiliations. The only safe route for us to support the country is by cheering on our national football team; we have nothing else to do (Arab News 2018).

The years between al-Sisi’s two election victories, 2014 and 2018, saw an unprecedented crackdown on opposition movements, organizations, and groups fighting for civil liberties, that far exceeds even the worst repression during Mubarak’s

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era. The toll of political prisoners has been estimated at 60,000 in scores of newly-built prisons; Mubarak held around 10,000 prisoners at the height of his regime (al-Monitor 2019). The government has been forced to open sixteen new prisons and detention centers to accommodate the overflow, a situation journalist Joshua Hammer labeled “generation jail” (New York Times 2018). The Sisi establishment policy to silence political dissent involves mobilizing the full power of the security apparatus against opposition groups, including the Ultras football fans. Part of this process consists of replacing the judiciary with staunch progovernment judges, such as the notorious Muhammad Nagy Shehata.25 In 2016, he sentenced three members of the April 6 Youth Movement (a key activist group in the 2011 uprising) to life in prison for attending a memorial service for a fallen comrade. Economic pressures have mounted for the ordinary populace during al-Sisi’s tenure as president; starting dramatically with the devaluation of the Egyptian pound by 48 percent, and the US$8 billion spent on a huge expansion of the Suez Canal, which has yielded negligible returns. The grandiose New Administrative Capital project seems likely to consume even more of the national revenue, estimated to cost around US$45 billion, a heavy burden for a struggling economy. Despite investment by Italian multinational oil and gas company Eni S.p.A. in new gas fields off the Egyptian coast, it remains unclear how these resources will improve the economy substantially, and whether or not the ordinary citizenry will benefit from them. The discovery of the enormous natural gas field, Noor, off the coast of North Sinai has been billed as the largest in the region. However, the Economist magazine

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described the enthusiasm for the project in the Egyptian media as “premature” (Economist 2018). One key problem is the lack of terminals to process the raw gas, and preexisting trade deals with Israel that hamper expansion of the gas industry, despite the potential demand in developing economies.26 As the economic situation degenerates, and civil rights diminish under emergency laws, al-Sisi’s regime tightens its grip on Egyptian society, bringing forth new tensions between the Ultras groups and the military regime that have escalated to a tipping point. Security forces arrested large numbers of Ultras throughout 2017 at sports fixtures or from their homes, with many of them released or acquitted of misleading charges shortly afterwards. Others, however, were not so lucky, and once in the judicial system, they remained incarcerated on remand charges. Such harassment was designed to intimidate and take apart the radical potential of the football phenomenon. A limited number of Ultras fans were permitted to attend the fixture between al-Ahly S.C. and Tunisian rivals Esperance S.C. in July 2017, as part of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) championship. The game resulted in the arrest of 150 Cairo Ultras during a confrontation with the police at al-Borg Stadium, Alexandria. The spurious police charges against them ranged from carrying flares and flags, to wearing T-shirts referring to the Port Said martyrs (74 Never Forget). Soon after, at another African Cup contest between Libya’s al-Ahly S.C. and Zamalek S.C., over five hundred UWK were detained on a range of mock charges, including belonging to an illegal organization, utilizing terrorism, and attacking police personnel. This time the Ultras were tried in a military court, because the stadium is the property of the

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Armed Forces; one example of the economic revenue generated by the military apparatus through property, construction companies, and other financial investments. In addition, well known Ultras were regularly arrested at home or from their workplaces on terrorist charges. There was an estimated 300 Ultras in prison at any one time in 2018, trapped inside a marred judicial system. Muhammad Saheel, a former Ultras leader from Cairo said in an interview to the media: We are tired of going around police stations and prisons looking for our comrade. We want things to quiet down with the government, see the detainees go free and the crackdown end (Associated Press April 2018).

Another African competitive game between Cairo’s al-Ahly S.C. and Gabon’s C.F. Mounana on 6 March 2018 at Cairo’s International Stadium, led to a further crackdown on the Ultras Ahlawy. Forty-eight fans were detained during the game, or later in house arrests over the following days. Several fans allegedly moved into the upper deck of the stadium during the game, above the press seats and into an area closed off to football fans. The CSF riot police moved in and attempted to arrest these Ultras. Like in old times, the Ultras responded by lighting flares, chanting slogans against the police, and resisting arrest. The altercation escalated after the game, with further violence outside the ground, resulting in two police vehicles being burned (alMasry al-youm 2018). Certainly, there was damage caused to the football stadium and the Cairo Ultras leadership later apologized for the incident on their Facebook page, stating

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that the leadership of the organization did not sanction the action. However, the stadium disturbances were significant for other reasons because, as video footage shows, the UA07 fans also behaved as the Ultras of old, using tifos with flares, and chanting their famous song “Liberta,” well known for its defiance of the military regime. This stadium resistance act resurrected some of the old spirit of 2011, with the reemergence of Ultras’ cultural practices in public space, defying the years of state repression of the group. This return to old acts of defiance seemed to surprise many. The capacity to endure and challenge hegemonic power through years of public indifference, media blackouts, systemic state incarceration, and at times torture, marks the Ultras as a virile social current in the Egyptian political landscape. This return of stadium politics was not lost on commentators, and PhD student Hesham Shafick wrote a timely article for Open Democracy, discussing the Confederation of African Football (CAF) match as a “return to the days prior to the 2011 revolt” (Shafick 2018). This refers to a time when these militant Ultras dominated the stadium with their highly artistic, choreographed  support for their club, embedded in the politics of visibility. However, this revival of football radicalism was a moribund act that gave al-Sisi’s regime a decisive pretext to permanently erase the Ultras phenomenon from the public frame in Egypt. Harassment and arrests mounted pressure on the Ultras Ahlawy leadership, who decided on the drastic move toward full disbandment of the organization. An Associated Press article after the CAF game in April appeared prescient of the situation, and described the state of affairs as:

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Ultras leaders and lawyers representing them say that another idea under consideration is to disband the association as a goodwill gesture they hope the government would reciprocate with a pardon for convicted members or those in detention awaiting trial (Associated Press 2018).

The Alexandria-based group, Ultras Devils, who were affiliated with the UA07, had already disbanded in May 2015, shortly after the government classified the Ultras organizations as terrorist groups. The Ultras Devils released a short statement outlining their dissipation, and released an unedited video on social media networks in which a lone member burned the Ultras Devils flag on a backstreet wall in Alexandria at night. The Devils’ collective force and group cohesion had weakened since the Port Said massacre, impacted in particular by the death of one of their key charismatic founders, Ghandour, who died in the tunnel stampede. In the statement they acknowledged their vulnerability, and stated that, since the 2012 Port Said incident, “the body was separated from the soul” (Ultras Devils 2015).27 In an unthinkable move, akin to a guerrilla group at the end of a national liberation struggle, the Ultras Ahlawy announced on 23 April 2018 that they were suspending their activities following the clashes with police at the CAF league match against C.F. Mounana of Gabon. This shocking statement paved the way for the subsequent complete disbanding of the UA07 a few weeks later, in a choreographed play brokered with the government. The second phase involved a capitulation statement and documentary video footage released on

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the Ultras Ahlawy official Facebook page. Military personnel were present to witness the small group of Ultras burn the Ultras Ahlawy flag outside the home club ground in Cairo. On May 16, the day before the start of Ramadan, this remarkable short video, shot on a phone camera, was distributed on social media networks. A shockingly unequivocal short statement accompanied the documentation footage, titled “Last Word.”28 It read, “We have decided, in order to preserve everyone’s future, to dissolve the Ultras Ahlawy group completely” (UA07 2018). Significantly, the message went on to address the Port Said incident in 2012, and appears to exonerate Egyptian security forces from any hand in the violent incident. The UA07 statement continued: The real reason behind the death of a large number of martyrs [in Port Said] was the stampede and the collapse of the gates. We take responsibility for what happened (Ultras Ahlawy 2018).

Screen shots of the statement, as well as the video itself, were widely shared on social media networks under the acerbic hashtag #trash_ahlawy. The use of the word trash was in English and not translated into Arabic, although the meaning would not be lost on the public. A few hours later, the Ultras Ahlawy UA07 official Facebook account and group website, www.ultrasahlawy.com, were both permanently deleted. The UA07 announcement did not elaborate further on any of the new points raised in the admission of responsibility for the violence in Port Said, and none of the Ultras Ahlawy membership has commented in public about this final statement

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by the leadership. The dramatic announcement seems strategic in language, if not dictated, with the Ultras themselves making an unequivocal acceptance of responsibility and guilt for the fatalities in Port Said. This complete reversal of narrative by the organization is rather suspicious, and was, most likely, included in the negotiations with government officials over the disbandment terms of the organization. It appears the Ultras’ objective for now is twofold, and involves the release of UA07 members from detention, and, in time, the reinstatement of fan access to football stadia in the Egyptian domestic league. Whether these objectives are included as part of the agreement laid out in secret negotiations between the lawyer who represents the Ultras prisoners, Muhammad Hafez, and government officials, remains unknown. Arguably, the Ultras themselves may have included this admission of guilt in reference to Port Said in order to mollify the authorities and end the harassment of the organization. Initial signs of reciprocation from the state came six weeks later in June, when the Supreme State Security Prosecution decided to release three members of the Ultras Ahlawy that were arrested during the Cairo Stadium clashes in March at the CAF match. In Case 487/2018, the prosecution had charged these al-Ahly Ultras with “leadership of a terrorist group,” “joining a terrorist group,” and “vandalizing public and private buildings and property.” Mokhtar Mounir, a lawyer at the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression, monitored the case and reported that a further four Ultras were released in August, while the local media reported another thirty-one remain in Abu Zaabal Prison as part of this case alone.

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Adding to the intrigue, tens days after the UA07 announcement, the UWK—the diehard fans of Zamalek S.C., and al-Ahly’s Cairo rivals—took the same step and dissolved their movement. A similar short video documented the burning of the UWK flag to symbolically signify the dissolution of the group, and a short statement was released on social media networks. Almost identical to that of the Ultras Ahlawy, the statement said the UWK is a “sports association without political leanings or affiliations” (Arab News 2018). The remaining Ultras groupings outside the capital, such as the Ultras Green Eagles of Port Said, remain in place. No similar moves were reported to have taken place, despite over forty of them being killed in clashes in the aftermath of Port Said, and many members remaining in custody, charged with murder in relation to the massacre. The disbanding of both Ultras movements in Cairo and the reversal of the collective narrative over Port Said has arguably been designed to appease al-Sisi’s government. The UA07 refusal to cooperate with the government-led investigation into the incident that Sisi announced in 2016, and the clashes and fracas in CAF games in 2017 and 2018, had further antagonized Egyptian authorities. The Ultras groups have been resisting the oppressive momentum of a regime that strives to reinscribe the revolutionary narrative of the country’s recent past. The frequent arrests and harassment of Ultras members has fatigued the leadership of the organizations, to the point where they eventually acquiesced to the regime in the hope of being shown leniency. Apart from the slow release of Ultras members held in prison confinement, a second issue concerns fan access to football games and

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matches in stadia. This was addressed by the authorities at a special meeting in the late summer of 2018, a few weeks into a new season, when they announced the resumption of football fans’ admittance to fixtures in the domestic league. The meeting was attended by the minister of youth and sports Ashraf Sobhy, head of the Egyptian Football Association Hany Abou Reda, and the heads of Egyptian clubs, as well as representatives of the security forces. The agreement goes some way to resolving the football fan crisis, and outlines that around five thousand fans would be able to attend league matches, to be divided into 3,500 for the home team and 1,500 for the away team. In addition, only 20,000 tickets will be available for prestigious international fixtures. This move restores football as a spectator event in Egypt and has the potential, in the long term, to help support whatever residue of the Ultras movement remains, after the dissolving of both organizations in Cairo. The return to the football terraces would reconnect the latent group formations with their traditional, authentic stadium space, and facilitate their re-engagement with the live football event. This could reignite the distinctive culture of the Ultras in Egypt, who are unlikely to be submissive, and thereby will eventually resist the hegemonic order again. This phased fan participation in live football is highly controlled by the state security system, and only a small number of fans have been admitted to games in the 2018–2019 season thus far. In order to obtain a ticket, each fan is forced to apply in advance and go through a security vetting process for each fixture; with only a small portion of tickets available for sale. A new team, Pyramids F.C., was launched for the season in a US$33 million takeover of a

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struggling club, al-Asyuti Sport. The new billionaire owner, Turki al-Sheikh, rallied around the club slogan, “Change your principles and support Pyramids” (Guardian 2018), and fans have been heard to chant pro-Sisi slogans at games. The new team played well, and topped the Egyptian league. However, after five months, the new football project imploded, when al-Sheikh abandoned the club. He had become annoyed by criticism from other teams, in particular Muqawlun F.C. coach Alaa Nabil, regarding his influence over the Egyptian Football Association. The abrupt end resulted from a Confederation of African Football match between Cairo’s al-Ahly and Guinea’s Horoya A.C. in the Military Production Stadium in Dar al-Salam, Cairo. As the game played out, some Ultras fans started to chant, calling for the release of detainees and insulting al-Sheikh, who had invested in al-Ahly in the 2017 season. The political turn in the game went out live on TV, and following the match, al-Sheikh said on social media that he was considering withdrawing his investments from Egypt. The Pyramids Club later confirmed this decision, and twenty-one Ultras were arrested by security forces. The Ultras cultural productions and acts may have the potential to reopen old behaviors, but will be under scrutiny in their initial phases. Regardless, as the past has shown, the same tensions that are antithetical to the state-led narrative remain in society, and are set to challenge the perception of power, important in the upkeep of authoritarian control. The tensions between Mohamed Salah and the Egyptian Football Association positions football at an intersection between state power and people power. In an interview, a capo described the Ultras mentality and deep-seated relationship

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to football that exists in Egypt, “People suffer, but when alAhly wins they smile” (Dorsey 2012). Despite the current political hiatus in Egypt, there are useful lessons to be drawn from entities such as the Ultras football fan collectives. The capacity to resist authority through the use of dissensus can suggest alternatives for the political future of Egypt and the region. Counter-hegemonic movements may stumble, or even dissolve, but, they can still influence latent or inscribed futures to overturn stagnation and reinstate the lure of autonomy in counter-cultural activism. The Ultras fuse the visceral force of the somatic experience as they embrace the full range of human senses, thereby discarding aspects of the submissive character of sports culture. Football has tremendous popular appeal outside of orthodox politics, as it engages the public spirit and initiates self-determined cultures to build holistic communities. Digital technologies amplify and accelerate human communication in new ways that shape thought and being. Technology influences our age, even though misinformation, as twentieth-century conventional electoral politics struggles to find a leading role in this globalized world. The consensus-based democratic process is open to manipulation, and rarely allows for the alternative logic of marginal thought to take hold and shape common futures. The under-achieving in society are held responsible for their lowly position, and feel shamed by the system instead of critical of it. Collective cultural practices of aesthetic play are models of prefiguration, part of the solutions imperative to dissolve the dominance of capitalist hegemony in contemporary times. In Egypt, the status of the Ultras project remains a

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camouflaged one. Yet, this concealed position retains potency because of its appeal within the low-frequency community networks of sports games, prison cells, family homes, or coffeehouses. The final liquidation of the Ultras physicality by state security forces forestalled the advancement of other progressive groups, in conjunction with the fading hopes of the 25 January revolutionary narrative. And yet, the six-year ban of fans from football stadia reveals the mere contingency of hegemonic power, eroded by the military regime’s fear of any form of political activism. In general, such football-based social formations can remind us of the demand to replace the old spirit of capitalism and its neoliberal misadventure with radical communities of collectivity, to reshape the subjectivity of the future. This can come about by disrupting the relationships between the visible, the seeable, and the say-able, as dissensus supplants consensus; while instrumental thinking destroys thinking itself and deadens the soul. Rather than advocating togetherness, humans move toward new horizons by embracing difference. In this way, difference has many useful aspects, and can expose signs beyond established patterns of a new system in formation. Instead of hoping for consensus, hope may arguably lie in including dissensus, antagonism, and crookedness, toward imaginative vibrations. Ultras football communities, along with other irregular, heterogeneous entities, exist in a space of opposition between universalism and identity, and between optimism and pessimism. The process of equality is a process of difference. The place for working out of difference is not from the self or the culture of a group, but can be found in the commonplace topos of an argument. It is here that we are allowed to

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reimagine the possible, the aesthetic experience as part of a manifest world; to presuppose that people share an equality of intelligence, and a capacity to determine the conditions of life. In Egypt, the Cairo Ultras operated in an extraordinary local context, with a distinct identity, but at the same time, embodied common ideals of freedom, meaning and purpose, community and being, that appeals to the sensorial in life. In the current version of negative freedom in the global political impasse, dissensus, at least, acknowledges difference in order to encourage the disenfranchised to contest the normalized order through staging their equality. The Ultras Ahlawy and UWK organizations appear to have reached an impasse, yet the idea remains highly appealing to a generation caught between abstract and concrete corporeality, obscure and latent, virtual and remote. Their needs are ignored by the governing authority, which seems obsessed with controlling every aspect of social life, to the detriment of Egypt. The impact of the Ultras on the spectacle has showed us not only the art of the beautiful event, but, also a context for the art of everyday life. Aesthetic experience without judgment can bring about new notions of holistic community, and function as a step toward the impossible becoming attainable. Appearances matter, and emancipation politics draws on the human imagination and the construction of things by human practices, inscribed in the vernacular. In Egypt, despite the firm grip of the military regime over the country, it has been widely speculated by commentators that this form of domination is incompatible with the governance of a complex state like Egypt. Political analyst Ezzedine C. Fishere, writing for Mada Masr online newspaper stated:

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State failure will not be reversed by the current economic, political and ideological measures the ruling elite is taking, regardless of how ambitious they are (Mada Masr 2018).

As the living conditions for the vast majority of the population worsen, the folly of the grandiose nature of al-Sisi’s government projects shows how disconnected the regime has become, as it believes it civilizes through fear. The loss of popular support, and repression of all dissenting, critical voices is evident in the desperate measures used to retain power by a combination of authoritarian rule and disregard for freedom of expression. The country is ruled by a governmental system that has ruthless allegiance to neoliberal economics, concealed within mythic nationalism, as Egypt dissolves traditional culture in the liquidity of globalization. In March 2018, Egypt’s public prosecutor set up a telephone  hotline  for citizens to report ‘fake news and rumors,’ and over five-hundred websites were blocked in an attempt to censor public information. Addressing a military academy graduation ceremony in Cairo, al-Sisi said that his government team had detected 21,000 false rumors over a period of three months; over two hundred a day (Reuters 2018). Truth is performative, and it is appearances that really count. The state systems of government in Egypt need drastic restructuring. However, the ideology of the military regime cannot offer lasting solutions to economic decline, as oppression and authoritarianism block reform. Regardless, the military leadership seems determined to keep playing a role in the country’s strategic decisions, and is unlikely to withdraw its influence in any transition to a genuine democratic

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future in the short term. The popularity of the Twitter hashtag #irhal_yaSisi (Sisi_leave) demonstrates this disconnect and antagonism between the position of the young, computer literate generation, and the military government that is destined to become more confrontational over time. The annual report of the NGO Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms documented the forced disappearance of almost four hundred individuals from August 2016 to August 2017.29 Of this number, the whereabouts of eightyseven still remains unknown, and other NGOs put the number of those disappeared even higher. The Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence claims Egyptian security authorities were responsible for more than one thousand forced disappearances in 2017, an average of three people per day. Egyptian poet Galal El Behairy was sentenced to three years in prison in the summer of 2018 for publishing ‘false news’ in his lyrics to the satirical song “Balaha,” Arabic for the date fruit, which had more than four million views on YouTube. The title refers to a delusional character called Balaha in a popular film comedy al-Dunya ‘ala jinah yamama (The World Is on a Dove’s Wing), which became a nickname for President al-Sisi that was used by some dissenting voices. Another notorious court case, 621/2018, involves Shadi Abu Zeid, a young satirist, who was arrested under the 2015 counter-terrorism laws and charged with publishing ‘false news’ (AFTE 2018). His arrest in May 2018 was part of a sweep of opposition figures, such as: leftist lawyer Haitham Mohamedeen, women rights defender Amal Fathy, and blogger Wael Abbas. All of them were arrested under emergency legalization, on grounds of spreading false news and joining

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a banned or terrorist organization, which typically is used as a reference to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Abu Zeid drew the wrath of the regime for a number of comic stunts that were popular on social media. In one viral video  he inflated ‘balloons’ and handed them to the police in Tahrir Square on the sixth anniversary of the 2011 uprising. The innocent looking gesture in support of the state forces occurred on National Police Day (25 January), when the public is supposed to thank police officers for their loyal service to the country. However, it turned out the balloons were in fact condoms, and the hapless young guards of the square were lampooned in the prank. In recent years, the repressive security apparatus has used advanced surveillance technology to carefully monitor social media traffic. Egypt is ranked 161 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index.30 Social media can be a prelude, a communication technotool toward ways of achieving the efficacy of community and autonomy of knowledge. Desperate market seller Muhammad Bouazizi died in hospital after setting himself ablaze in December 2010 in Tunisia, igniting millions across the MENA region to rise up against Arab authoritarian regimes. Regrettably, self-immolation has become the second most common type of suicide in Tunisia, with a series of copycat deaths in front of public administration buildings following in recent years.31 Four other Egyptians followed Bouazizi’s act in 2010, and set themselves on fire in despondent suicides. Regardless, little happened until activist Asmaa Mahfouz’s video was published on YouTube on 18 January 2011, calling for protests in Tahrir Square a week later. This short, fiveminute address by the young activist was a key inspiration

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for large groups of protesters and, soon afterward, spurred millions to write the historical narrative of Egypt. Why did Mahfouz’s YouTube video and not others have such an affect? Why did Khaled Saeed’s murder in Alexandria months earlier then become a visual symbol for many, when the Egyptian police have a long history of brutality? Hegemonic power holds back progressive politics as best it can, but cannot completely regulate the capacity of the imagination. This human quality to believe in the possible is essential to perception management, and visible appearance is one of the key factors in affecting social change. The break with representation never simply interrupts the simulacra of the spectacle alone, it can also expose the common space for political potential and concrete equality. The Ultras movement in Cairo exists beyond regressive Middle Eastern stereotypes and cultural labeling, to defy many of the tropes about Arab youths. The Ultras are often wrongly perceived as being nihilistic and destructive in local and international media. In a 2012 article for the Los Angeles Times, Ned Parker stated that the Ultras combine “the aggression of the hoodlums in a Clockwork Orange and the anarchy of the Sex Pistons (Pistols). The Ultras have since cast a chill over Egyptian Society” (Parker 2012). On the contrary, the Cairo Ultras played significant roles in networks of popular opposition movements in 2011 and antiauthoritarian struggles since, illustrating how they cannot be classified as mere mindless hooligans in a reductive sense. In addition, the Ultras flout this portrayal that observers construct about the Middle East as a struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists, because they were

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comprised of young Egyptians without a religious ideology or a strictly secular outlook. In an overall sense, Ultras formations are a by-product of Egypt’s unique historical position and particular cultural character. This preformative identity of the Ultras became something in collectivity, an entity of energy. As a result, they offered an opportunity for the confrontation of dominant narratives, and the interrogation of biases that underlie political framing. In summary, the political role of the Ultras in the 2011 uprising gives us a glimpse into the diverse possibilities and unexpected political subjectivities that can emerge within periods of historic social change. Walter Benjamin observed that the rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution, a reflection that could be used to describe much of the contemporary condition in Egypt more poignantly than ever. The Ultras are hardly faultless or perfect, but their impropriety comes from the marginal, a vernacular culture in conflict with a patriarchal autocracy. While the utopian impulse for autonomy and self-determination is a slippery slope, the words of Isaiah Berlin seem prophetic, as he stated in his seminal essay Two Concepts of Liberty, “Freedom for an Oxford don, others have been known to add, is a very different thing from freedom for an Egyptian peasant” (Berlin 1969, 196). Here, Berlin outlined a core dilemma within the concept of freedom that remains unique to each individual. In addition, two versions of freedom in his essay construct a dialectical model: the positive freedom that involves individual mastery of the self and discipline, versus a negative form of freedom. In this regard, negative freedom is to exist without obstacles, without blockages toward the immediate gratification of the desires of the self. Rather than living in

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this binary of negative and positive freedoms, human beings require a transformation beyond individuality of the de facto and de jure within modern life. Regardless of how unattainable autonomy may appear, new configurations are needed to transcend the unbearable antagonisms, and reconcile power relations in the world. Emboldened militant stances and sustainable logic must appeal, but not be undermined by presupposing the importance of Western desires over others. The Global South and marginal spaces can be inscribed with emancipatory visions that have not yet been fully harnessed, to allow the living to subjugate the cruel. Pikes and minnows, dons and peasants, Ultras and army generals, spiders and Futurists, street vendors and pirates, all inform this malfunctioning world. Hope is still worth fighting for, because the future is not yet prescribed, despite the despair at the heart of our times. The power of technoscientific tools is a framework of contemporary subjectivity that may well be repurposed to reprogram automation as part of a commonplace process required to forestall the frightening regressions that are already emerging in parts of the world—what Marxist philosopher Bifo Beradi describes as “Capitalism is a dead dog, but society is unable to come out from its rotting corpse” (Beradi 2017, 26). Questions of ‘being in the world’ and ‘being with others’ can help reframe lived experience as a key to dynamic altruism, as well as the play instinct that Schiller brought to light in The Aesthetic Education of Man: Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays (Schiller 1794, 107).

NOTES

Chapter 1 1 Criticism of state neglect and lack of freedom has been widely documented, and a Human Rights Watch report published in 2010 outlines the chronic oppression and economic crisis in the nation under the Mubarak regime. It states, “Egypt continued to suppress political dissent in 2009. The Emergency Law (Law No. 162 of 1958) remained in force, providing a basis for arbitrary detention and unfair trials.” The government has never confirmed the number of those detained; Egyptian human rights organizations estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 people were being held without charge by 2018, www.hrw.org/ middle-east/n-africa/egypt. 2 The Wafd Party drafted a new constitution in 1923, based on a parliamentary representative system, but Egyptian independence at this stage was nominal, as British forces continued to be physically present. Sa‘d Zaghlul became the first popularly elected prime minister of Egypt in 1924. Relations, however, with the unelected monarch and Zaghlul were poor and further deteriorated after his son, King Faruq, succeeded his father to the throne, http:// internationalrelations.org/wafd-party. 3 The documentary film, More Out of Curiosity (2014), was developed by Ronnie Close with CutStone Productions, Ireland, and funded by the Irish Film Board and QUAD Arts, Derby, UK. The film looks at the social history of

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one of the key players in street politics in 2011 in Egypt, a member of the Ultras fanatical football supporters. More Out of Curiosity draws on documentary narratives to frame the capacity of resistance in social movements. This film is constructed from video footage drawn from a number of sources, including al-Ahly Ultras, who shared their video archive material. Images of street protests, football games, riots, and banner-making reveal this unique subculture in an overlapping, metadocumentary format. The film work is bookended by the Port Said incident and the court verdict a year later. This structure is divided into seven scenes that define and categorize the video imagery. The absence of voiceover resists the direct deciphering of the video material, and the film operates on an instinctive, visceral level, driven by a charged soundtrack. In June 2010, Wael Ghoneim, a thirty-year-old Google executive and online activist created an Arabic Facebook page titled, ‘We Are All Khaled Saeed,’ dedicated to the murder of a 28-year-old Egyptian citizen in police custody. In his memoir, Revolution 2.0, Ghoneim describes viewing a photograph of Saeed’s corpse posted online. Ghoneim was imprisoned by state security forces on 27 January 2011, however the page was updated by other human rights activists. Egyptian media scholars Rasha Abdulla and Kara Alaimo, plus others, have published widely on the relationship between We Are All Khaled Saeed online activism and the popular uprising against the Mubarak regime, www.npr.org/2012/02/09/146636605/ wael-Ghoneim-creating-a-revolution-2-0-in-egypt. The overthrow of Hosni Mubarak was one of the most momentous events in the Arab Spring period of 2011. As dramatic and sudden as this seemed, it was only one further episode in an ongoing power struggle between the three components of Egypt’s authoritarian regime: the military, the security services, and the government. There are a wide range of academic publications and journalistic articles on

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this subject, notable among them is Hamaz Kandil’s book Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen, the first systematic analysis of recent Egyptian history. In addition, academic author Sean McMahon undertakes a class-based critical analysis of 2011 and its aftermath in his book Crisis and Class War in Egypt. Chapter 2 6 Opposition leaders called for a ‘March of the Millions,’ from Cairo’s Tahrir Square to the Presidential Palace on 1 February 2011. Egyptian security forces fortified Mubarak’s presidential palace to ensure that no demonstrators could break in. President Mubarak proclaimed that he did not intend to run again for office, but said he would stay to ensure a peaceful transition until the election, set for September 2011, promising to make political reforms. In the morning, Internet access had been partially restored, and the nighttime curfew was eased, running from 5:00 pm to 7:00 am instead of 3:00 pm to 8:00 am. By midday, the army was asking protesters to go home in order to stabilize the situation. State television announced protesters had to evacuate Tahrir Square immediately. The National Democratic Party sent many people onto the streets to show their support for Mubarak. Provocateurs on horses and camels armed with swords, whips, clubs, stones, rocks, and pocket knives attacked antigovernment protesters in central Cairo, including Tahrir Square, in what was later known as the ‘Battle of the Camels.’ Security officials were seen bribing citizens to attack protesters, and gunfire was reported. Molotov cocktails were also used on protesters, some landing in the grounds of the Egyptian Museum. Pro-Mubarak supporters were filmed dropping stones and firebombs from buildings onto demonstrators. Five people were reported killed, and 836 were taken to various hospitals, according to the health minister. There were also clashes in Alexandria and unrest in Port Said. ElBaradei said Mubarak should be given a safe exit, and on 6 February a coalition of opposition parties

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agreed to hold talks with the government, including Vice President Omar Suleiman (Smith 2011,10). Twenty-year-old Omar Mohsen was a young economics student at the American University in Cairo (AUC). He was one of the seventy-two causalities in the Port Said massacre, and was a politically active member of the Ultras Ahlawy. AUC students held a commemoration for him soon after his passing, during which they screened footage showing violations committed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), as part of the Kazeboon campaign, and chanted ‘Down, down with military rule.’ The administration of the university had previously established a memorial scholarship in honor of Omar Mohsen, and inaugurated an entry gate on campus in tribute to him. On 31 March 2012, the Freedom and Justice Party, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood movement, named Khairat al-Shater as their candidate for the presidential elections in May. Al-Shater formally resigned from the Brotherhood in order to run for president, and to avoid violating the Brotherhood’s pledge not to field a candidate (Ikhwan 2012). Earlier in 2012, he had denied any intention of entering the presidential race in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Mansour, host of the show Bila hudud (Without Limits). The Egyptian Supreme Presidential Electoral Committee disqualified al-Shater, among ten other potential candidates, from the presidential race on 14 April 2012 (Fadel 2012). Al-Shater was rearrested on 5 July 2013, following the military takeover. On 14 July 2013, Egypt’s military-installed prosecutor general, Hisham Barakat, ordered for his assets to be frozen. On 29 October 2013, a three-judge panel at Cairo Criminal Court stepped down from the proceedings, citing uneasiness over the trial. On 11 December 2013, a second panel of judges withdrew from the trial. On 28 February 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison. On 16 May 2015, another court issued a preliminary death sentence against him in a separate case.

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Chapter 3 9 The depressive failure of capitalism in terms of the human condition has been widely written about during the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first century, by various critical theorists. Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi explores the psychological impact of global capitalism in his book, The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility. Byung-Chul Han discusses this ideological condition in his 2017 book, PsychoPolitics Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power. Hebert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilisation and One-Dimensional Man had a major effect on twentieth-century philosophy, sociology, culture, and politics, inspiring the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s in particular. Both books argue that to overcome alienation and discontent, based on Freud’s trauma of civilization, humans must reunite with a libidinal force. 10 Thomas Hirschhorn, best known for his large museum sculpture and installations, has intentionally positioned his artwork within the social realm and often used the legacy of famous philosophers. In a less monumental work, he made football scarves with philosophers’ names on them, and displayed them in pubs in Limerick, Ireland, as part of the EVA event. Art critic Claire Bishop has written an influential essay, titled Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, on artists such as Hirschhorn, in which she outlines the role of social practice-based art and the politics of space. Chapter 4 11 The critical theory that emerged from Frankfurt School on the Age of the Enlightenment focused on the critique of the cerebral form of aesthetics. Philosophers Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse, among others, undermined this emphasis on human reason over the soma. Adorno stated in his 1951 book, Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life, “An emancipated society would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences” (Adorno 1951,

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103). In addition, visual anthropology is on the margins of the discipline, and has developed a crucial insight on the object in the aesthetic field of study. 12 The investigation into the former Brazilian state oil company Petrobras in 2014 soon became a criminal process about the organization of two mega-events: The World Cup and Olympic Games. Both were paid for largely with public funds, and presented to citizens as a reason to be proud of the nation. The release of official documents by the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court shows that the venues were not only cathedrals of new world sporting records, but are alleged to have channeled millions of dollars worth of bribes. Brazil’s supreme court opened investigations into around a hundred politicians, based on hundreds of hours of testimonies by past and present executives at the construction and chemicals conglomerate Odebrecht. The documents released show that six out of the twelve stadiums built for the World Cup are now under investigation for irregularities and bribery. Eduardo Paes, the former mayor of Rio, was accused by a former executive at Odebrecht of having taken R$15m ($8.3m). The president of the accountability tribunal of the state of Rio, Jonas Lopes, is being investigated for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for the approval of the contracts for the Maracanã. Journalist Jamil Chade’s book, Política, Propina e Futebol (Politics, Bribes, and Football), documents the level of corruption behind the football global event, http:// keirradnedge.com. Chapter 5 13 www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-16/china-s20-billion-new-egypt-capital-project-talks-fall-through. 14 The city is planned to consist of twenty-one residential districts and twenty-five dedicated districts. It will have a park double the size of New York City’s Central Park, artificial lakes, around two thousand educational institutions, a

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technology and innovation park, over six hundred hospitals and clinics, a thousand mosques, 40,000 hotel rooms, a major theme park four times the size of Disneyland, ninety square kilometers of solar energy farms, an electric railway link to Cairo, and a new international airport at the site of the Wadi al-Jandali Airport, currently used by the Egyptian Air Force. It will be built as a smart city, and is planned to be the site of parliament, presidential palaces, government ministries, and foreign embassies between 2020 and 2022, at an estimated cost of $45 billion. However, a full cost and timescale for the overall project has not been disclosed, https://cubeconsultants.org/home/cairocapital. 15 In October 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman announced the project, called NEOM, at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. It is to be financed by the Saudi government and private investors, according to Reuters. The country appointed Klaus Kleinfeld, a former chief executive of Siemens and Alcoa, to run the NEOM project. Officials hope that a funding program, which includes selling 5 percent of oil giant Saudi Aramco, will raise $300 billion for NEOM’s construction. The project could make NEOM one of the largest cities to run without fossil fuels. In the US, one of the largest cities to run on 100 percent renewable energy is Burlington, Vermont, which does not come close to the planned size of NEOM. Cities in Iceland and Norway also claim to be close to achieving entirely renewable electrical grids, with help from natural resources like hydropower and geothermal heat. Saudi Arabia expects to complete NEOM’s first section by 2025, www.neom.com. 16 Deleuze and Guattari have written on the condition of Nodamism, which they define as a way of being. In this sense, Nodamism exists outside of the organizational state, and includes the refusal to be controlled by categorization, but to be instead driven by a desire to experiment and explore. In some ways, the counterculture or hippie

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movement of the 1960s collapsed under the weight of its contradictions. However, Nomadism in the current context has become a cultural norm. The nomad, is thus, a way of being in the middle, liminal, or between points. It is characterized by movement and change, and is unfettered by systems of organization. 17 A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace is a widely distributed early paper on the applicability, or lack thereof, of government on the Internet. Written by John Perry Barlow, a former Wyoming rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist, and a founder of the ‘Electronic Frontier Foundation,’ the paper was published online on 8 February 1996, in Davos, Switzerland, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ abs/10.1177/1461444808100161. 18 A considerable critical discourse has developed to question how labor and human life can survive in the future in light of the instability caused by automation and financial technologies. Artificial Intelligent devices are shaping everyday life and paving the way for, what Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi terms, the “Neuro-Totalitarian” system (Beradi 2017, 231). Economist duo Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams wrote an influential publication, Inventing the Future, in which both argue for life after capitalism, proposing that technology is the only viable way to achieve emancipation and repurpose the neoliberal system. Beradi goes further to present a critical position for a common technical platform as a way of forming a common consciousness. 19 These pirate theories have been used by anarchist writers, and Peter Lamborn Wilson coined the term, Pirate Utopias, in his 1995 book Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegados. In this radical historical narrative he alleged the existence of secret islands, such as Libertalia, once used for supply purposes by pirates. Wilson’s concept is largely based on speculation, although he admits to adding a bit of fantasy to the idea. In his view, these pirate enclaves were early forms of autonomous, proto-anarchist societies, in that they

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operated beyond the reach of governments and embraced unrestricted freedom. Hakim Bey used this historical materialism for his influential essay, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. 20 Rancière’s 2010 publication Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, addresses this process in some depth, and this section of the book is indebted to his critical theory. He expands on the idea, stating: “Critical art is an art that aims to produce a new perception of the world, and therefore to create a commitment to its transformation. This schema, very simple in appearance, is actually the conjunction of three processes: first, the production of a sensory form of ‘strangeness’; second, the development of an awareness of the reason for that strangeness and third, a mobilization of individuals as a result of that awareness” (Rancière 2010, 150). 21 Utopian theory expands to address the situation that we are socialized in a particular society and accept its views; we are likely to be incapable of a critical awareness of our situation. So we falsely define lack of freedom as freedom, inequality as equality, and injustice as justice. Utopia shatters this perception to suggest our current reality is simply wrong. Philosopher Ernst Bloch, in his influential books Spirit of Utopia and Principle of Hope, defines two forms of utopia: firstly abstract utopia, and secondly concrete utopia. The latter is more relevant to this topic, as it is embedded in an understanding of current reality, and connected to the possibility of actual social improvement. Fredrick Jameson defines utopia as being about failure, but importantly informing us about our own limits and weakness, rather than being about perfect societies. 22 Iceland has taken a unique position, and serves as an alternative model of nation state in Western Europe. Being outside the European Union, economically stable and without any armed military forces, the country appears to function in a more democratic way than the rest of Europe. Iceland is taking a more proactive, hopeful approach, and

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an example of this is a crowd-sourced constitution, developed in 2012, that could finally be about to make its way through parliament. The document, after four months of consultation, was approved by a two-thirds majority in a national referendum, but was ultimately rejected by the government at the time. It includes clauses on environmental protection, puts international human rights law and the rights of refugees and migrants front and center, and proposes redistributing the fruits of Iceland’s natural resources, most notably fishing. This radical model for a modern state has been largely ignored by the political hegemony, and many of its ideas ridiculed as being impractical, or worse still—utopian, http://theconversation.com/ icelands-crowd-sourced-constitution-hope-for-disillusioned-voters-everywhere-67803. Chapter 6 23 Al-Masry al-youm reported that the head of the Youth and Sports Committee of the House of Representatives, Muhammad Faraj Amer, along with some MPs, have called for setting up a fact-finding committee regarding violations by the Egyptian Football Association (EFA), and suspicions of corruption during the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. The Committee of Youth and Sports in the House of Representatives issued a statement on EFA, placing blame on coach Hector Cuper and the team for their humiliating failure and poor performance in the World Cup. The committee also blamed the EFA for serious violations that negatively affected the team, http://english.ahram.org. eg/NewsContent/6/52/306055/Sports/National-Teams/ Egypt-authorities-start-investigation-into-Footbal.aspx. 24 List of withdrawn electoral candidates: Khaled Ali, a human rights lawyer, former head of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), and a 2012 presidential candidate, who announced his intention to run for the presidency on 6 November 2017. Ali withdrew on

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24 January 2018, after the arrest of another candidate, Sami Anan. He had also been convicted of making ‘an obscene gesture’ outside a courthouse, and was handed a three-year suspended sentence on appeal (Freedom House report 2018 and MadaMasr, Al-Ahram). Ahmed Shafik, former Egyptian prime minister, leader of the Egyptian Patriotic Movement, and 2012 presidential candidate, withdrew soon after he was deported from the UAE and was arrested on his arrival in Cairo. Sami Hafez Anan, a former chief of the general staff of the Armed Forces, officially announced his candidacy in a Facebook video on 19 January 2018. He was arrested on 23 January, after being accused by the Egyptian Armed Forces of forging his release from military service. It is illegal in Egypt for active military personnel to participate in politics. Anan retired from military service in 2012, after being removed from office by then president Muhammad Morsi, who appointed General al-Sisi as his replacement. The Defense Ministry claims that it has documentation that he is still a reserve member of the military. Other candidates included: Mortada Mansour, chairman of Zamalek Sporting Club, and Anwar Essmat Sadat, former chairman of the Egyptian House of Representatives’ Human Rights Committee, as well as the nephew of former president Anwar Sadat. 25 In early 2016, one of the most notorious magistrates, Muhammad Nagy Shehata, issued a sentence against three young members of the April 6 Youth Movement, who were attending a memorial service for a murdered comrade when they were arrested. They were given life terms for protesting without a license, possessing fireworks, and spreading false information. The custodial sentences were later reduced to ten years, www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/ egypts-execution-judge-under-pressure-206185842. 26 More than three-quarters of Egypt’s electricity comes from gas-fired plants, and power consumption grew by 14

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percent. However, in June 2018, the media promoted the discovery of an enormous natural gas field called Noor, off the coast of North Sinai. Much of the enthusiasm for the find is premature, as the Italian firm working on the field has done seismic surveys of the area. Both BP and UAE company Mubadala have further invested and bought 25 percent and 20 percent holdings respectively, taking away from Eni’s original 85 percent ownership. Tharwa Petroleum owns the remaining 15 percent share of the new concession. New gas discoveries seem inevitable, and Eni plans to invest more than US$10 billion in Egypt by 2022 (Economist 2018). Mediterranean gas will have no shortage of buyers, as demand is soaring in developing countries. Indeed, new liquefaction terminals would create jobs and revenue for Egypt. They would also cement economic ties with Israel, where Eni is also exploring. Israeli officials have talked for years about a trilateral pipeline to Europe. It would be the world’s longest undersea pipeline, at 2,200 kilometers. The US$7 billion price tag kept it a pipe dream, but it is looking increasingly viable (The Times of Israel 2018). Egypt’s budget deficit is projected to be US$24 billion in 2018 (8.4 percent of GDP), and al-Sisi is running out of ways to squeeze extra revenue out of a mostly-poor population. 27 Ultras Devils, considered a sister group of Ultras Ahlawy, are mainly located outside the capital, especially in the Delta and Alexandria. They built a mosque in memory of those who lost their lives in Port Said, named The Martyrs, and a dedication to the martyrs of both al-Ahly and Zamalek fans was inscribed at the entrance to the mosque. The statement referred to the Port Said disaster that happened in 2012, which led to the death of Ultras Devils founder and leader Ghandour, who organized the journey for the group to attend that match. The statement labeled him as “the soul of the group,” and stated that, after his death, “the body was separated from the soul” (Ultras Devils 2015).

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28 Extract from the Ultras Ahlawy’s ‘Last Word Statement,’ 16 May 2018, published on the official UA07 Facebook account. A short video documenting the symbolic burning of the group flag accompanied the written statement. “We learned to stand against injustice and lying. We followed all that happened on the screen with crying eyes and followed the clashes on the streets [2011 uprising] and the deaths of hundreds and wounded. We, founders of Ultras Ahlawy group, recognize that the Egyptian security did not have a key role in the events of the Port Said massacre. We demand the freedom of [Ultras] fans [in prison]. The [locked] door exit [at the Port Said stadium] is not a major plot but was a natural situation to secure the traveling fans until the end of the game. Egyptian [football] stadiums used this security procedure to provide security from the train station to the stadium. The real reason behind the death of a large number of [Ultras] martyrs was the stampede and the fall of [locked] gates and iron columns. If you want to charge anyone, as leaders of the group Ultras Ahlawy, we take responsibility for what happened in the violent incident. We increased hostility before and during the [Port Said] game, at a difficult time in [the history of] our beloved Egypt. We [the founders of UA07] have decided, in order to preserve everyone’s future, to take responsibility and have the courage to disband the Ultras Ahlawy completely. We do not want to be responsible for any more deaths. Therefore, it has been decided to dissolve the group, Ultras Ahlawy by its founding members.” Extract from the Ultras White Knights’ (UWK) disbanding statement, published on 28 May 2018, on the official UWK Facebook and Twitter accounts, alongside video documentation of burning the group flag. “Ultras White Knights is a sports group without any political orientation or affiliation whatsoever. The Ultras White Knights and its members are a part of Egypt, with

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respect for all state apparatuses. In light of this, we have decided to indefinitely dissolve the group in respect for the rule of law.” 29 The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms announced that it documented the enforced disappearance of 378 individuals within a year, the whereabouts of 87 of whom are still unknown. The report states that 378 individuals, including four women, were forcibly disappeared in Egypt between 1 August 2016 and midAugust 2017. According to the report, 87 people are still missing, while the rest have been located and some have since been charged, www.madamasr.com/en/topic/ egyptian-commission-for-rights-and-freedoms. 30 Jonathan Guyer has written about the harassment by security forces of artists and online activists. In one famous incident in 2018, twenty plainclothes Egyptian policemen broke into the home of blogger Shadi Abu Zeid, a young satirist, on Sunday morning in the suburbs of Cairo. They confiscated his computers, cash, and arrested him under the 2015 counterterrorist law. Abu Zeid, known for his YouTube channel, became notorious for his ‘balloon’ stunt, which went viral online. He was part of Abla Fahita, a satirical puppet character and star of a television show that started in 2010. The puppet agitated many in the Egyptian establishment, and it was accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2014. Egyptian authorities have obtained advanced surveillance technology to monitor users on social media and telecommunication apps, https:// www.pri.org/stories/2018-05-09/arrest-egyptian-satiristshines-light-governments-system-intimidation. 31 The New York Times article, “Self-Immolation Has Become a Common Form Of Suicide,” by Lilia Blaise, outlines the extent of the problem in Tunisia. The hospital had seen an average of more than eighty cases a year since 2011, according to the surgeon in charge of the burns ward, Dr. Amen Allah Messadine. This form of public protest is now

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the second most common suicide method in a country of 11 million people. After the revolution, the number of suicides rose 1.7 times, with a prevalence rising from 1.8 to 3.12 suicides per 100,000 people, per year. Homicides rose 1.3 times after the revolution. For suicides and homicides, the victims were mostly male, aged between twenty and thirty-nine years, living in urban areas. Hanging and selfimmolation rose respectively by 1.8 and 3 times, after 2011. The suicide cases most frequently occurred in public places and in front of public administration buildings. Homicide victims’ profile and circumstances showed a single variation, which is an increase in the number of cases taking place in rural areas, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/world/ africa/self-immolation-catalyst-of-the-arab-spring-is-nowa-grim-trend.html.

GLOSSARY

Active: An Ultras member responsible for the neighborhood sections. Capo: Italian word meaning ‘leader,’ ‘chief,’ or ‘head,’ used by Ultras groups all over the world to describe a type of cheerleader in the stadium. Curva: Italian word meaning ‘curve’ that describes the terrace space in the stadium behind the goal. Dakhla: Local Egyptian Arabic name for a tifo at the start of a football match. Flare: A type of pyrotechnic that produces massive colored lights. Gestuelle: French for ‘gestures,’ used by the Ultras to describe hand rituals and performances. Pyroshow: An Ultras collective stadium performance using flares. Section: Each Ultras group is divided into a number of sections based on neighborhoods in the city. Terso: A third-class ticket holder at a football match. Defined as the working class supporter, who occupies the cheapest spaces in the stadium. Tifo: From the Italian word Typhus, used to describe a choreographed display in the stadium. Often incites excitement and feverish enthusiasm among Ultras for their team. UA07: The Ultras Ahlawy, supporters of al-Ahly F.C. 07 indicates the founding of the organization in 2007. UWK: Ultras White Knights are supporters of Zamalek F.C., whose name is a reference to the team’s white football stripe.

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Glossary

UGE: Ultras Green Eagles are the fans of al-Masry, the Port Said team. Involved in the infamous attack on the Ultras Ahlawy.

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INDEX

Abd al-Fattah, Alaa 26 Abd al-Zaher, Ahmed 42 Abu Trika, Muhammad 41–42, 106 Abu Zeid, Shadi 186–87 Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP) 69 activism, online: failure of social media in 33–34, 87–89, 139–40; post-Mubarak social media use 67–68, 128–29, 167; and technoutopian spaces 144–45, 198n18. See also activism, street; dissensus and sports activism, street: after Port Said stadium massacre 7–8, 35–38, 47–48, 51–52, 126– 30; among Beitar Jerusalem fans 77; among Turkish Ultras 79; clandestine operations of Ultras 106–107; political ambivalence of Cairo Ultras 24–25. See also activism, online; dissensus and sports; Green

219

Brigade Ultras (Celtic F.C.; Glasgow); movements, street Adorno, Theodor W. 101, 195n11 aesthetic economy of revolution 105–133; aesthetics defined 107–108; capo figure in tifos 122–23; chants and songs 123–26; Corpothetic 109–10; loss of collective agency after Port Said massacre 126–28, 129–30; Maracanã stadium and use of space 130–33; objects and function 130; objects and social media 128–29; objects in Ultras culture 111–12; pyrotechnic flare performances 117; role of play 133; social role of Egypt’s Ultras culture 105–107; standards of aesthetics 108–109; tensions with football clubs 112–13; tifo as spectacle

220

Index

of community 119–21, 165–66; tifo descriptions 113–17; tifo planning and aesethetic criteria 118–19; Ultras organization structure 121–22; Ultras’ practices and usefulness of objects 110–11 aesthetic experience: and dissensus 183–85; and utopia 162–63. See also dissensus and sports; utopia(s) aesthetic rehabilitation 149–53, 199n20 aesthetics: and anti-authoritarianism 85–86; defined 107–108; and nature of spectatorship 93–97; paradox of Western theories 109; standards of 108–109. See also aesthetic economy of revolution Africa Cup of Nations (2006) 8–9 African Champions League game (2011) 27 al-Ahly S.C.: and ceremony for Port Said victims 59–60; fan base of 115; move to Cairo International Stadium 14–15; nationalism of 10–14, 125; players punished by 42; and tensions with Ismailiya 15–16; and tensions with Ultras 112–13; Terso fan group of 17–18. See also Ultras Ahlawy

al-Ahly v. al-Maqassa (23 Dec. 2011) 31–32 al-Ahly v. al-Maqassa (23 Jan. 2011) 23–24 al-Ahly v. C.F. Mounana (6 Mar. 2018) 174–75, 178 al-Ahly v. Ittihad al-Shorta (Jan. 2012) 114 Air Defense Stadium massacre (8 Feb. 2015) 61–65 Alexandria 14, 16–17, 29. See also Ultras Devils (al-Ahly; Alexandria) Ali, Khaled 170–71, 200n24 American University in Cairo (AUC) 43, 194n7 Amnesty International 8 Anan, Sami 170–71, 200n24 April 6 Youth 172, 201n25 Arab Spring. See Egyptian state; 25 January 2011 uprising art, collaborative social 90–91, 96–97 artistic objectives 110–11 art objects 108–109, 195n11. See also aesthetic economy of revolution Assad (founder of Ultras Ahlawy) 17–18, 122 autistic children, communities of 158 Bakunin, Mikhail 99–100 baltagiya (thugs): and death of Karika 31–32; historical use of 39; and perceptions

Index

of protest movement 31; in Port Said stadium massacre 45; in Tahrir protests 38, 39–40 al-Banna, Hassan 12 Barakat, Hesham 64 Barlow, John Perry 144 Bashir, Muhammad Gamal 19–20, 22 Bataille Monument (art installation) 95–96 Battle of the Camels (1 Feb. 2011) 8, 26, 38, 193n6 Bauman, Zygmunt 35, 84 Baumgartner, Alexander 107 Beitar Jerusalem F.C. 77 Ben Ishmaels 140, 197n16 Beradi, Franco ‘Bifo’ 135, 155, 190 Berlin, Isaiah 189–90 Beuys, Joseph 94, 108–109 Bloch, Ernst 99, 199n21 Bourdieu, Pierre 110 Brazil, football in 130–33 CAF (Confederation of African Football). See Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cairo International Stadium: and Africa Cup of Nations (2006) 8–9; after Port Said stadium massacre 92; attack on Tunisian team (April 2011) 27; clashes with Ultras at 174–75, 178;

221

tifos at 31–32, 117–18; use of for spectacle 14–15 camouflage tactic of Ultras 141–42, 149–50 capitalism: and art 94–96; and challenge to control of spectacle 80–82, 93, 102–103, 117; and commodification of football 130–33; and funding of Ultras in other countries 115–16; and human condition 195n9; resistance to in Iceland 156–57, 199n22; and spectacle as global commodity 79–80, 120–21; and support for Sisi’s construction schemes 136–37; and utopian imagination 88–90 capos and capo figures 118, 121, 122–23, 124, 127 Celtic F.C. (Glasgow) 75–77. See also Green Brigade Ultras (Celtic F.C.; Glasgow) chants and songs 123–26 Chomsky, Noam 79–80 Club Africain (Tunisia) 27 collectives and artistic objectives 110–11 collective solidarity. See solidarities Confederation of African Football (CAF) 80–81, 92, 115, 118, 173–76

222

Index

Coomaraswamy, A.K. 97 Corpothetic 109–10, 130 Courbet, Gustave 93–94 Dabashi, Hamid 96–97 dakhla. See tifos (banner/sign displays) D’Annunzio, Gabriele 140–41 Deleuze, Gilles 159–60, 197n16 Deligny, Fernand 158 dissensus and sports 71–103; definition of 56, 85; aesthetic practices in football culture 97–99; aesthetics and challenge to social order 85–86; aesthetics and nature of spectatorship 93–97; anti-authoritarianism 3, 84–85, 195n9; and communal creative expression 90–91, 111–12; economic tactics of global football organizations 76–79; Egypt’s Ultras and gender inequality 82–84; Egypt’s Ultras as oppositional forces 55–56, 91–93; and future of Egypt 182–83; indeterminacy in Ultras culture 82; political spectrum in Ultras’ groups 73–76; and solidarities of football communities 111–12, 148–49; spectacle as global commodity 79–80, 130–33; spectacle

in dispute of state power 80–82, 93, 102–103, 117; spectacle of street politics 98–99; street movements’ challenges 100–103; street movements’ shortcomings 86–88; utopian imagination and capitalism 88–90. See also aesthetic economy of revolution; hooligan mentality/figure; tifos (banner/sign displays) Documenta Art event 94–95 Dorsey, James 29 Drucker, Peter 84 Egypt: domestic tensions in 1960s 15–16; economic conditions before 2011 uprising 8, 191n1; economic conditions post-Mubarak 57, 68, 167, 169, 172–73, 185; energy sources 172–73, 201n26; presidential elections (2018) 170–71, 200n24. See also Egyptian state Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms 186 Egyptian Football Association (EFA): and al-Ahly’s Palestinian tour 13; on Air Defense Stadium massacre 64–65; and corruption allegations 167–68, 181, 200n23; demonstrations

Index

at 47; and fan access to matches 180; prohibition of banners by 116 Egyptian League: and domestic tensions 15–16; inaugural championship 14; suspension of 37–38, 57, 61, 80–81, 127 Egyptian state 35–69; Air Defense Stadium massacre (8 Feb. 2015) 61–65; armed resistance to 66–69; attacks at Kima Aswan match 28–29; consolidation of power 136–37; disempowerment of the people 55–59; Morsi’s election and overthrow 53–55; Port Said investigation and trials 48–53, 59–60; Port Said stadium massacre (1 Feb. 2012) 35–38, 40–46; repression of assembly 105–106; rule of fear 185–87; SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) 83, 194n7; during 25 January 2011 uprising 8, 26, 38–39, 193n6; Ultras culture seen as threat to 18–19, 106–107. See also human rights violations; police, Egyptian; security forces ElBaradei, Mohamed 21, 23, 193n6

223

emergency legislation: before 25 January 2011 uprising 7, 191n1; against opposition 186–87; against Ultras 4, 65, 68 England, football fans in 73–74 English Football Association 72 Ennarah, Karim Medhat 37 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip 54 Euro Football Championship (2016) 73 Facebook: accusations against EFA on 168; Kulluna Khaled Saeed (We Are All Khaled Saeed) 20–22; Ultras Ahlawy pages 128, 174–75, 176–77, 203n28; Ultras’ pages 23. See also social media Faheem, Sayed (‘Moshagheb’). See Moshagheb (Sayed Faheem) failure: perception of 153–54, 199n21; and rise of fascism 189; of social media in activism 33–34, 87–89, 139–40; of utopias to revolutionize 142–44 Faruq, King of Egypt 12, 13, 191n2 Fédération Internationale de Football Association. See FIFA FIFA: and Brazilian football culture 131–33, 196n12;

224

Index

and control of spectacle 120–21; security measures ignored at Port Said stadium 49–50; and structural funding to IFA 76–78. See also football organizations FIFA World Cup (2009) 9 FIFA World Cup (2018) 167– 68, 200n23 Fishere, Ezzedine C. 184–85 flare performances 117–18 football culture. See aesthetic economy of revolution; capos and capo figures; dissensus and sports; football in Egypt, political history of; football match violence; hooligan mentality/figure; spectacle; tifos (banner/sign displays) football fan access to matches 179–80 football in Egypt, political history of 7–34; Cairo International Stadium 14–15; Khaled Saeed’s murder as catalyst 20–22; and nationalist movement 10–14, 191n2; post-Mubarak football violence 26–30, 31–32; post-Mubarak street clashes 29–31; revolutionary militancy before 25 January 23–24; and tensions in 1960s 15–16; Ultras’ ambivalence in 25 January uprising

22–23, 24–27; Ultras’ culture as threat to state 18–19, 106–107; and Ultras’ origins 16–18; Ultras’ rising political awareness 19–20; and western Occupy movement 32–34, 89. See also Air Defense Stadium massacre (8 Feb. 2015); Cairo International Stadium; Port Said stadium massacre football match violence: by Egyptian fans 26–30, 31–32, 40; by Egyptian state 61–65; in other countries 72–74. See also Port Said stadium massacre football organizations: and commodification of sport 72, 79–80, 130–33; economic tactics of 76–79; and gentrification of sport 120–21. See also FIFA freedom, types of 189–90 Friday of Rage (28 January 2011) 26 Fuad, King of Egypt 12 Gaber, Omar 63 Gaydamak, Arcadi 77 gender inequality in Ultras culture 82–84 Germany, Ultras in 79, 115–16 Ghazl al-Mahalla v. al-Ahly (31 Dec. 2011) 29 Ghoneim, Wael 20–22, 192n4

Index

Gillick, Liam 109 Green Brigade Ultras (Celtic F.C.; Glasgow) 4, 74–77, 78, 82 Green Magic Ultras (al-Ittihad; Alexandria) 17 Guattari, Félix 159–60, 197n16 Haidar Pasha, Muhammad 13–14 Hamid, Shadi 38–39 Han, Byung-Chul 155 Hapoel Beer Sheva 75, 76 Harvey, David 33 Herman, Edward S. 79–80 Hirschhorn, Thomas 95–96, 195n10 Holert, Tom 71 hooks, bell 82 hooligan mentality/figure: and dissensus 85–86, 103; and opposition to staus quo 10, 119–20; origins of 71–73; and utopian impulse 98. See also dissensus and sports hope: demise of 136–38; and despair 190; in dissensus 183; environments based on 163–64; and imagination 138–39, 188 Horkheimer, Max 101, 195n11 human rights violations: and 2018 Egyptian election 170–71, 200n24; Air Defense Stadium

225

massacre (8 Feb. 2015) 61–65; arrests of Ultras 19–20, 60, 113, 173–74; disappearances and arrests 186–87; and normalization of violence by state 7–8; repression of activists 68–69; repression of opposition 58, 91–92, 169–70, 171–72 human rights violations in West Bank 76–78 Human Rights Watch: on 2018 elections 170; Annual Report (2010) 7; Annual Report (2016) 68; criticism of Egypt by 8; on detainees without charge 191n1; on Israeli Football Association (IFA) 76–78; on Sisi 69 Huna al-‘asima (TV news program) 64 Iceland and real-space utopia 156–57, 199n22 IFA (Israeli Football Association) 76–78 imagination: and capitalism 88–90; and collective cooperation 155–56; and hope 138–39, 188; and utopian impulse 160–61. See also utopia(s) Ince, Mitchell 11 Internet 69, 144–45, 185. See also social media

226

Index

Iskaneriya, Rami 60 Islamic State 60, 66–67 Ismailiya S.C. 15–16 Israel, football in 75–78 Israeli Football Association (IFA) 76–78 Italy, Ultras in 72, 74, 116 al-Ittihad (Alexandria) 17, 29 Jameson, Fredrick 199n21 Jorn, Asper 97–98 José, Manuel 32, 41, 42 Kamel, Mustafa 13 Kant, Immanuel 90, 107–108 ‘Karika’ (Muhammad Mustafa) 30–32 Kima Aswan v. al-Ahly (6 Sept. 2011) 28–29 King Faruq Club 11–12, 13, 14. See also Zamalek Club Kulluna Khaled Saeed (We Are All Khaled Saeed) 20–22 La Familia fan group (Beitar; Jerusalem) 77 Landscrona Ultras (Zenit St. Petersburg) 74 Mahalla 29 al-Mahdy, Anas 92 Majlis al-Sha‘b (People’s Assembly). See People’s Assembly (Majlis al-Sha‘b) Makwa, Muhammad (‘Hussein’) 26

Mansour, Ahmed 62 Mansour, Mortada 62, 67, 112–13 Maracanã stadium (Rio de Janeiro) 130–33 March, Werner 14 Marcuse, Herbert 100, 101, 105, 195n11 marginal societies 145–48, 153– 54, 157–58, 198n19 Marx, Karl 99–100 Maspero protest (Oct. 2011) 30 al-Masry (Port Said) 14, 15–16. See also Port Said stadium massacre; Ultras Green Eagles (al-Masry; Port Said) al-Masry al-youm (newspaper) 29, 39, 200n23 al-Masry v. al-Ahly (summer 2011) 28 al-Masry v. al-Ittihad (Jan. 2012) 29 media industry: and control of spontaneity 88–89, 102; and gentrification of football 120–21, 131–33, 196n12; and perceptions of hooliganism 73; and perceptions of Ultras 188–89; rebranding of football culture by 80. See also media industry, Egyptian ———, Egyptian: attacks on Media Production City 128–29; manipulation of

Index

public opinion by 31, 57–60, 63–64, 68; and perception of ‘good fan’ 9; and Port Said stadium massacre 36, 41, 45; as targets of Ultras’ tifos 114; UWK’s avoidance of attention by 141–42. See also media industry megacities 136–38, 172, 196n14, 197n15 MENA. See Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region microutopian spaces 33, 88–90. See also utopia(s) Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region: critical thinking in 102; origins of Ultras in 16–17; state repression and political activism in 84; stereotypes of 188–89 military state complex. See Egyptian state Mohsen, Omar 43, 194n7 Momani, Bessam 54 More, Thomas 139 More Out of Curiosity (documentary) 17, 191n3 Morsi, Muhammad 15, 53–55 Mortada, Mansour 63–64 Moshagheb (Sayed Faheem): charges against 112–13; militancy of 60–61, 66–68; sentencing of 65; takeover of UWK by 27

227

movements, street: apparent West–Arab solidarities in 86–88; challenges of 100–103; shortcomings of 86–88. See also activism, street Mubarak, Alaa 9 Mubarak, Gamal 8, 9 Mubarak, Hosni: appropriation of football culture by 8–9; oppression under 191n1; overthrow of 2, 26; release of from custody 135–36 Muhammad Mahmud Street riots (Nov. 2011) 30 Muslim Brotherhood: in 2010 elections 9; in 2012 elections 53–54, 194n8; founding of 12; Ultras seen as comparable to 37; undermining of 58 Mustafa, Muhammad ‘Karika’ 30–32 Nasser, Gamal Abd al- 14–15 National Club. See al-Ahly S.C. National Democratic Party 8–10, 193n6 nationalist movement and football 10–14, 191n2 natural world order 160–61 nature and reason, reconciliation of 162 networks: communication 140; digital 143–45, 198n18; organic 159–60; of trade

228

Index

and marginalized communities 145–48, 198n19 Nimnim, Khaled 49, 50 nomadism (Deleuze & Guattari) 140, 197n16 objects: and creation of community 162; and function 110–11, 130; and social media 128–29; in Ultras culture 111–12, 113–17. See also aesthetic economy of revolution Occupy Wall Street 32–34, 89 Osman, Abd al-Fattah 64 Our House Is on Fire (art project) 96–97 Palestine, al-Ahly’s football tour in (1943) 12–13 Palestinians, Ultras’ support for 19–20, 74–78, 106 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 97–98 People’s Assembly (Majlis alSha‘b): in 2010 elections 9–10; occupation camp at 47–48, 83–84 Pinney, Christopher 109–10 pirate utopias 145–48, 198n19 play: as aesthetic approach to everyday life 140–41; as alternative to regime 102–103; and being fully human 190; and creative commons 157–58; as models of prefiguration 182–83;

repurposing of leisure through 151–53; role of 133; and Ultras culture 110, 130; and utopian impulse 97–98, 145, 160–61; and utopian promise 89–90 police, Egyptian: killing of Karika (2011) 30–32; at Port Said stadium massacre 44, 45–46, 48–49; pre-2011 harassment of Ultras by 10, 18–20; as target of lampoons 114, 123–25, 187; withdrawal from streets 28. See also Egyptian state; human rights violations Port Said. See al-Masry (Port Said); Port Said stadium massacre; Ultras Green Eagles (al-Masry; Port Said) Port Said stadium massacre (1 Feb. 2012): attacks 35–38, 40–46; demonstrations following 1; investigation and trials 48–53, 59–60; lead-up to 38–39, 40; seen as vendetta 114. See also Port Said stadium massacre consequences ——— consequences: Ahlawy’s final statement on 177–78, 203n28; diminishment of revolutionary impulse 7–8; disbandment of Ultras Devils 176, 202n27; loss of collective agency 126–28,

Index

129–30, 166–67; political identity of Ultras 4, 35–37; repopularization of Ultras 128–29; resistance and survival maneuver 141–42. See also Port Said stadium massacre Press Freedom Index 68, 187 Pyramids F.C. 180–81 pyrotechnic flare performances 117–18 radical communities 157–58, 183 radicalization of youth 19–22, 60, 66–68 Rancière, Jacques 55–56, 89–90, 199n20 Rangers F.C. (Ulster) fans 76 Real Oviedo (Spain) 25–26 reason and nature 101–102 Refaat, al-Sayed Muhammad 45 renunciation (Horkheimer & Adorno) 101 resistance and survival 141–42, 149–50 revolutionary impulse, paradox of 98–99 rhizome concept of knowledge production 159–60 Rocha, Glauber 165 Rommel, Carl 31 Russia, Ultras in 74 Saad, Muhammad 48, 50 Saeed, Khaled 20–21 Salah, Mohamed 168–69, 181

229

Samy, Amin 10–11 SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) 83, 194n7. See also Egyptian state Schiller, Friedrich 90, 190 Schlingensief, Christoph 163 Scotland, Ultras in 74–77 security forces: and Air Defense Stadium massacre 61–66; clashes with Ultras 4, 28–29; communications cut by 21; cosmetic changes in 68–69; use of baltagiya (thugs) by 38–40. See also Egyptian state; human rights violations; police, Egyptian; Port Said stadium massacre self-preservation (Horkheimer & Adorno) 101 sensus communis (Kant) 90, 107–108 sexual harassment of protesters 83 Shafick, Hesham 175 Shafik, Ahmed 170–71, 200n24 Shalaby, Medhat 128 al-Shater, Khairat 53, 194n8 Sheha, Hisham 46 Shehata, Muhammad Nagy 172, 201n25 al-Sheikh, Turki 180–81 Shibin al-Kom 18 Shishtawy, Salah 15 Shobeir, Ahmed 128 Sika, Rida 15

230

Index

Sinai, terrorism in 66–67 Sirag al-Din, Fuad 13 al-Sisi, Abd al-Fattah: construction schemes of 136–37, 172, 196n14; coup by 15, 54–55; and Port Said investigations 59, 60; second election of 170–71, 200n24; social media protests against 167. See also Egyptian state; human rights violations Situationist group 98–99 social media: accusations against EFA on 168; failure of in activism 33–34, 87–89, 139– 40; football matches on 24, 29; post-Mubarak activism on 67–68, 128–29, 167; in recruitment of Ultras members 17–18; repression of 186–87; as substitute for stadium terraces 80–81; and 25 January 2011 uprising 20–22, 33–34; Ultras disbandment on 176–77, 203n28. See also activism, online solidarities: in football culture 111–12, 148–49; between rival Ultras groups 47; in street movements 86–88 songs and chants 123–26 Sontag, Susan 80 Spain: street movements in 86–87; Utltras in 74

spectacle: audience’s reclaiming of 153; and capitalism 79–80, 120–21; challenge to capitalist control of 80–82, 93, 102–103, 117; as collective creation 119–20, 152; as global commodity 79–80, 130–33; government appropriation of 8–9, 15; and police power 56; and reconstitution of politics 155; of street politics 98–99 St. Pauli F.C. (Hamburg) 79 street movements. See activism, street; movements, street Students Against the Coup 91–92 Suez (city) 26 Suez Canal region 15–16 suicides 187, 204n31 Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) 83, 194n7. See also Egyptian state Symmacharii Ultras (Real Oviedo; Spain) 25–26 Tahrir Square, Cairo 96–97. See also 25 January 2011 uprising technoutopian spaces 143–45 terrorist actions 60–61, 66–67 terrorist organizations: radical Islamist groups 57; Ultras members in 60–61; Ultras charged as members of

Index

178; Ultras classified as 57, 106 terso fans 16–18 thugs. See baltagiya (thugs) tifos (banner/sign displays): at al-Ahly v. C.F. Mounana 175; capo’s role in 122–23; descriptions of 113–17; as evocation of other traditions 93; in memory of Karika 31–32; planning of 118–19; as political gestures 75; and power relations 81; as spectacle of community 119–21, 165–66; 3D type 115–16 al-Titsh, Mahmud Mukhtar 12–14 Torcidas (Brazil) 72, 131–32 trade networks and marginal societies 145–48, 198n19 trauma (Marcuse) 100 Triolectics 97 Tunisia: attack on team (April 2011) 27; suicides in 187, 204n31; uprising in 23 Turkey: and coup 54; Ultras in 79 25 January 2011 uprising: Battle of the Camels (1 Feb. 2011) 8, 26, 38, 193n6; compared to Occupy movement 32–34, 89; conditions leading to 7, 8, 191n1; murder of Khaled Saeed as catalyst 20–22; revolutionary militancy

231

before 25 January 23–24; sexual harassment during 83; and social media 20–22; Ultras’ culture in 122–25, 165–66; Ultras’ involvement in 22–27 UA07. See Ultras Ahlawy UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) 76–78, 120–21. See also football organizations Ultras Ahlawy: disbandment of 170, 175–78, 179, 203n28; establishment of 10, 16–18. See also Port Said stadium massacre; Port Said stadium massacre consequences; Ultras of Egypt Ultras Blue Dragons (Ismailiya) 17 Ultras Devils (al-Ahly; Alexandria) 16–17, 18, 129–30, 176, 202n27 Ultras Green Eagles (al-Masry; Port Said): assaults by 28, 29, 38; continued existence of 179; establishment of 17. See also al-Masry (Port Said); Port Said stadium massacre Ultras Nahdawy 67, 91–92 Ultras of Egypt: breakdown in discipline of 29–30; funding and organization of 121–22; funding of 128; opposition

232

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groups as outgrowth of 91–92; tensions with clubs 112–13. See also aesthetic economy of revolution; capos and capo figures; dissensus and sports; football in Egypt, political history of; football match violence; hooligan mentality/figure; Port Said stadium massacre; Port Said stadium massacre consequences; tifos (banner/ sign displays); 25 January 2011 uprising; Ultras Ahlawy; Ultras White Knights (UWK; Zamalek); utopia(s) Ultras Sur (Real Madrid F.C.) 74 Ultras White Knights (UWK; Zamalek): Air Defense Stadium massacre (8 Feb. 2015) 61–66; avoidance of media attention by 141–42; disbandment of 179, 203n28; establishment of 1–2, 17; militancy in 61, 66–68. See also Ultras of Egypt; Zamalek Club Ultras worldwide 4, 72, 74–79, 115–16, 126 university campuses and opposition 91–92 utopia(s) 135–64; aesthetic rehabilitation 149–53; danger in utopian thought

154–55; hope and imagination 138–40; hope-based environments 163–64; imagination of aesthetics 155–56; impediment of utopian impulse 166–67; microutopian spaces 33, 88–90; and natural world order 160–61; and normative views 99; and open spaces 90–91; and perception of failure 153–54; pirate utopias on margins of trade networks 145–48, 198n19; and political agency 5; radical communities 157–58; in real space 156–57, 199n22; reconciliation of aesthetic experience 162–63; resistance and survival maneuver 141–42, 149; rhizome concept of knowledge production 159–60; subjugation of autonomy and freedom 135–38; uprising as temporary 142–43; utopian impulse in history 140–41; utopian thought in unbound spaces 143–45 UWK (Ultras White Knights). See Ultras White Knights (UWK; Zamalek) violence, football. See football match violence

Index

Wafd Party 11, 12, 191n2 Watson, Mike 90 We Are All Khaled Saeed (Kulluna Khaled Saeed) 20–22 Wikipedia as model of cooperation 144–45 Wilson, Peter Lamborn 147, 198n19 Youssef (killed in Port Said) 43, 126 YouTube 22, 128–29, 186, 187– 88. See also social media

233

Zaghlul, Sa‘d 11–12, 191n2 Zamalek Club 14–15, 61–65, 112–13. See also King Faruq Club; Ultras White Knights (UWK; Zamalek) Zamalek S.C. v. ENPPI (8 Feb. 2015) 61–62, 63 Zekri, Muhammad 41 Ziedan, Youssef 39 Zuccotti Park Occupy movement 32–34, 89