Terrorism empowers ‘military dictatorship': Political opposition

Latest incidents put opposition in division crisis, says Revolutionary Socialists group

The Revolutionary Socialists issued a statement Sunday saying it rejects all forms of terrorism, because it empowers the "military dictatorship" in Egypt.
"Terrorist operations make our enemy, the military dictatorship, more powerful in leading the counter-revolution. It uses such attacks as justification for more crimes against the public, that is why we refuse attacks targeting the state," the statement read.
The Revolutionary Socialists believe that the oppression of the military regime is more dangerous than that perpetrated by "Islamic State" (IS), currently the most violent militant group worldwide.
Military reactions to the latest attacks they faced, according to the Revolutionary Socialists, revealed that the political opposition is in crisis and that the state responds by more repression, killing, detention and torture in the face of any voice that differs from the intelligence services' opinion.
The group said that one camp chose to "blindly" take the regime's side because of "the fear of the Muslim Brotherhood", while others who have opposed the state maintain that they equally oppose the banned Brotherhood organisation.
Thus, the group also condemned a counter-revolution led by Islamist extremists who, like the ruling power, do not differentiate between peace and violence.
However, it mostly condemned a third group, which it referred to as the "neutral" camp, to which the Revolutionary Socialists always claimed they belonged. The group said some switched from their position of rejecting both types of oppression towards supporting the state in practice, despite opposing it in theory.
"This has been practiced by more emergency laws and the categorisation of any political opponent as a traitor because of not supporting the regime, ‘in a state of war' on terrorism," they added.
"The way to eliminate ‘IS' and similar groups is not to stand by the regime of [President Abdel Fattah] Al-Sisi," the statement added. Public struggle, represented in strikes, demonstrations and protests, is the only revolutionary path against the tyrannical military which has only brought more poverty, ignorance, defeat and torture, according to the Revolutionary Socialists.
After the assassination of the former prosecutor general Hisham Barakat last June, followed by heavy militant operations in North Sinai, several political parties from the opposition announced support for the state in the face of terrorism.
The Revolutionary Socialists group was a fierce supporter of 30 June 2013 uprisings against the Brotherhood and former president Mohamed Morsi, and actively engaged in the anti-regime popular campaign Tamarod. However, following the forceful dispersals of the sit-ins in Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Nahda Squares, the group soon took up a firm anti-military stance.