It was not my generation's revolution, or at least we were not in its vanguard or among its organisers. Mine, the “emerging generation”, as president Gamal Abdel-Nasser once called it, lost its way during the mirage years of former president Anwar Al-Sadat with their empty promises of prosperity, and these were followed by 30 years under Mubarak with their arid cultural and political life. The same thing might be said about the other older generations that have now joined the country's young people who formed the forefront as well as the critical mass of the 25 January Revolution. Sociologist Mona Abaza has described the limited presence of the major political parties during the revolution and the minor role played by the Muslim Brotherhood at the beginning of it. All were invitees, and some declined the invitation. In sum, it was essentially the revolution of the youth, even as many older people became free-riders on it without being able to predict its course, let alone plan or lead it. A few people monitored the roles being played by the country's young people during the final years of Mubarak's rule. According to youth commentator Alia Mossallam, there was a growing youth movement that finally exploded on 25 January 2011, and in her analysis Mossallam said that “aspects of the spirit of the revolution (the leadership from below, the spontaneity, the invisible solidarity, and the creativity and daring imagination) had been building up for some time and the sense of agency, power and solidarity had slowly seeped into a youth full of initiative”. The term youth means the new generations that were mainly born during the rule of Mubarak. These young people now make up the majority of all Egyptians, as 65 per cent of Egypt's total population is now under the age of 35. In other words, the January Revolution was unique in that its vanguard and masses belonged to nearly the same age cohorts forming the majority of Egyptians. It was not a minority revolution, whether ethnic, religious, class or in terms of a narrow age cohort, against the tyranny of an outdated authoritarian state. Such young people have long wanted their own version of Egypt that was not identical to that of the older generations. This younger version of Egypt was ill-defined during the Mubarak period, with its characteristically limited idea of Egypt and its role in both historical and geographical terms. Instead, young people vaguely dreamed of a new Egypt that could accommodate their aspirations, expectations and energies in a way that Mubarak's Egypt with its limited opportunities even for fulfilling basic needs, let alone self-realisation, could not fulfil. It was the revolution's slogans that galvanised and unified the whole of Egypt behind the common cause of ousting Mubarak and establishing a new state reflecting the slogans of change, bread, freedom, dignity and social justice. These slogans were attractive to age groups, social classes and political forces across the political spectrum. Sensing their limited political experience, while overestimating the capabilities of the older generations, the young revolutionaries left both the de facto and de jure establishment of the new state to the former ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), as well as to the different political forces that joined the masses during the days of the revolution. However, since then it has become inevitable that the establishment of the new state and the achievement of the revolution's objectives have diverged. And the failure of the revolutionaries to form a unified political organisation to undertake the responsibilities of leading the masses has further added to such a diversion of the revolution from accomplishing its objectives. As a result, no single political organisation or institution has emerged from within the ranks of the masses or the revolutionaries to advocate the attainment of the revolution's demands. Two unrelated trajectories or pathways have resulted from this early crossroads: that of state-building and that of realising the revolution's objectives. State-building has been the job of the older generations, who have longed to establish a new republic with different priorities yet still having the same institutions. More importantly, these generations' built-in exclusionist values are also those of the ousted former regime. Accordingly, the long-awaited new state has been made to the design of the older generations, and thus far it has not been able to accommodate the youth, their revolution, or their objectives. The new state is simply the state of the older generations, and it has been loaded with the seeds of conflict among old-generation politicians over procedures and institutions while having only a minimal relationship, if any, to the revolution and its objectives. During the transitional period, lip-service was paid to the revolution and its objectives, and this was the common discourse used by the old-generation political forces. State-building was the major focus of the SCAF, the political forces, and the young revolutionaries. But the revolution and its objectives eventually lost out as the focus of the political forces, save for campaigning purposes during the legislative and presidential elections. Ironically, the presidential elections also saw few candidates with real revolutionary credentials, something that illustrated the declining status of the revolution, its objectives and its leaders. In fact, both of the candidates in the final round of the elections were representatives, though at different levels, of our generation's state with its institutions, procedures and policies that are not reflective of the aspirations of post-revolution Egypt. Misreading the historical realities of similar political Islam experiences elsewhere, many of the young revolutionaries, as well as their allies in the different political forces and even some intellectuals, rejected former prime minister Ahmed Shafik as the republic's new president and voted instead for the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohamed Morsi, as the lesser evil. However, Morsi, his party, and the Muslim Brotherhood have between them added more complexities to the mismatch between the revolution's slogans and the older generations' state through their exclusionist attitude towards all other political trends. This attitude has reduced the statehood project of our generations to a narrower version of their state in an Egypt that is now dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet, pushing aside the revolution's objectives has not negated their salience, and it has not alleviated the drastic conditions that were behind their adoption by the vast majority of the impoverished masses either. On the contrary, such indifference to the achievement of the revolution's objectives, particularly the attainment of social justice, has further radicalised growing sectors of the youth. Violence has become inevitable, with millions of unemployed young people forming a case-study of rational choice theory explanations of rising political violence in a given society. According to such theories, the eruption of political violence is due either to the declining opportunity costs of violence or to the decline in state capacity, and both conditions have been met since the revolution. No less striking has been the demographic fact that 32 per cent of Egyptians are under the age of 15, representing a huge repository of easily mobilised teenagers. Many of the Brotherhood's supporters and sympathisers have recklessly criticised the participation of such teenagers in demonstrations, even as they represent one third of Egypt's total population. Describing part of one third of all Egyptians as “street children” should be considered an indictment of the ruling regime, which has nevertheless sheltered under the banner of social justice. Moreover, the identification of street children with counter-revolution is reminiscent of the famous saying of Marie Antoinette, consort of king Louis XVI before the French Revolution, qu'ils mangent de la brioche (let them eat cake). What has been happening in Egypt today illustrates the fact that there are many members of the young generations that have become politically active, while the older generations have been gradually losing their influence over the members of such young generations. For many of those belonging to the younger generations, a de facto process of the deleveraging of the older generations has been underway. A clash of generations, a term aptly coined by political scientist Henrik Urdal, has seemingly found its way to Egypt. The ongoing events and confrontations that we have been seeing today have been part of the younger generations' rebellion against an increasingly weak state run and/or pursued by predominantly inept power-seekers belonging to the outdated or nearly expired older generations.
