How “Fake News” Became an Authoritarian Weapon
Abdo Fayed was getting ready for sleep when he must have heard the slamming at the door. Not long before, the 31-year-old Giza native had taken to Facebook to write about an artist he’d known who, like thousands of other Egyptians, had lost their lives to Covid-19. Abdo was dismayed, distraught; he was disgusted by his government’s response. In his eyes, the artist’s death and so many others were avoidable, had only President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi taken stronger, faster action. It’s this criticism, levied at the president, that ultimately led a team of security agents to wade through Egypt’s warm summer air and camp outside Abdo’s house at 1:30 in the morning. Soon they would be inside and soon, Abdo would disappear.
As I write this, the world is two weeks removed from a US presidency marred by cacophonous chaos. Each day, newly inaugurated President Joe Biden uses strokes of his executive pen to overturn short-lived legislation rammed through by the previous president. In the years to come, like his ephemeral executive decrees, much of Donald Trump’s legacy may fizzle to nothing more than a distant…
