On 6 February 2011, Egypt’s hastily appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman invited in the old guard or what we could call the Businessmen’s Wing of the Muslim Brothers into a stately meeting in the polished rosewood Cabinet Chamber of Mubarak’s Presidential Palace. The aim of their tea party was to discuss some kind of accord that would end the national uprising and restore “normalcy.” When news of the meeting broke, expressions of delight and terror tore through the blogosphere. Was the nightmare scenario of both the political left and right about to be realized? Would the US/Israel surrogate Suleiman merge his military-police apparatus with the power of the more conservative branch of the old Islamist social movement? Hearing the news, Iran’s Supreme Leader sent his congratulations. And America’s Glen Beck and John McCain ranted with glee about world wars and the inevitable rise of the Cosmic Caliphate....
In reality, the Suleiman-Brothers tea party turned out to be nothing more than another stunt staged by Nile TV News. This once interesting cable service was transformed in the last week into a rather Murdochian propaganda unit whose productions are run by the artistic genius of Mubarak’s Presidential Guards. Images of the Suleiman-Brothers tête-à-têtes were broadcast at a time when Suleiman’s legitimacy and sanity were appearing increasingly shaky within Egypt, and when this particular sub-group of the Brothers who represent only one fraction of one faction of the opposition was trying to leverage an unlikely comeback. As reporters obsessed over which Brother was sitting with Suleiman, they continued to ignore or misapprehend the continuing growing power of the movements that had started this uprising. Many progressives continued to think that the US was conspiring with Suleiman to crush all hope – as if America’s puny $1.5 billion in aid (which all must be recycled back as purchases from US military suppliers anyway) really dictates policy for a regime that makes multi-billion dollar deals with Russia, China and Brazil every month, and that has channeled an estimated $40-70 billion into Mubarak’s personal accounts.
Proving Nile TV and the pessimists wrong, 1.5 million people turned out on 7 February -- the biggest mobilization so far in this uprising. Commentators focusing on the Brothers had completely missed the real news of the past two days. The ruling NDP party leadership had been savaged from within. In a desperate attempt to salvage his phantom authority, Mubarak had tossed his son Gamal and a whole class of US-linked businessmen to the lions, forcing them to resign and freezing their assets. And at the same time, Egyptian newspaper *El-Masry El-Youm* reported that the Muslim Brothers’ Youth and Women’s Wings split off from the main Brothers’ organization to join the leftist 6 April Movement. The men sitting around Suleiman’s table were left without much of a movement behind them. Below I trace the declining power of the economic and moral politics of this “Businessmen’s Wing” of the Brothers. I map the ascendant socio-political power of a new national-development-oriented coalition of businessmen and military entrepreneurs, as well as the decisive force of micro-enterprise and workers’ organizations consisting of women and youth -- a force that portends well for the future of democracy and socio-economic inclusion in Egypt....