Whom do the Egyptian demonstrators represent?

Ron P. writes:

Perhaps you can answer this. Do 250,000 protesters represent 82 million people? That is less than one third of one percent of the population.

Yet everyone, from the Western media to President Obama, assumes that the protestors represent the entire Egyptian nation in this “inevitable march towards freedom.”

Something is not quite right here. Store owners have not closed their stores in this protest. Factories and petroleum plants have not shut down. So whom do these protestors represent?

I’ve been hearing that American radicals and radical groups such as Ayers and and Code Pink (Obama’s friends) have been visiting and conferring with groups in Egypt. And suddenly we have this spontaneous explosion of people sparked by events in Tunisia. Really?

LA replies:

Well, any demonstration is only going to be a tiny percentage of the whole population of a country. Political events by their very nature are always driven by a very small number of people.

But in last couple of days, we’ve also heard of pro-Mubarak demonstrators, and of their being physically attacked by anti-Mubarak demonstrators. So it appears that both sides are being represented in these street protests.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 03, 2011 12:36 AM | Send