Facebook Liberates Egypt

Are you on Facebook? If you aren’t you are truly the exception to the rule. Facebook is a worldwide phenomenon, and it now can take credit for liberating an entire country. Egypt, a country that has been existing under a cloud of a cruel dictatorship for 3 decades is now free of its dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

In three short weeks, and coming in reaction to Tunisia’s successful removal of its dictator, Egyptian protests, at times turning violent as Mubarak sent armed thugs in to make trouble, have finally stirred the Egyptian Army to withdraw its support of Mubarak. And with no backing from the Army, Mubarak had to leave.

The Egyptian Army is in charge now.

But getting back to the central thesis, all of this came about because of Facebook.

From the Associated Press through the Chron:

“Perhaps most surprising was the genesis of the force that overthrew Mubarak. The protests were started by a small core of secular, liberal youth activists organizing on the Internet who only a few months earlier struggled to gather more than 100 demonstrators at a time. But their work through Facebook and other social network sites over the past few years built greater awareness and bitterness among Egyptians over issues like police abuse and corruption. ‘Facebook brought down the regime,’ said Sally Toma, one of the main protest organizers.”

This is remarkable. I don’t think anyone ever suspected that social networking would ever do anything more than hooking people up and passing around recipes and photographs of your kids and vacations.

If Facebook can liberate an entire country, what could possibly be next? A cure for cancer? The perfect cup of coffee?

An end to conservatism as we know it?

The possibilities are limitless, it seems.