Politicization, Personality Cult and Army Adulation in Egyptian Children's Periodicals

What is it about?

In this article, I show that political content and indoctrination in children's magazines are not a new phenomenon in Egypt but a continuation of past traditions. My study has revealed that since the days of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Samir magazine regularly addressed subjects related to the Egyptian leadership and military and, moreover, that a preoccupation with these issues was not exclusive to Samir. Nevertheless, times have changed and so have some of the people of Egypt, especially the January 25 generation. These young people protested against the blatant intervention of the Egyptian media in the domain of childhood, intervention that they believed could no longer be deemed acceptable. The voices of the "revolutionary youth" grew louder and refuse to be silenced even today, despite various attempts at suppression. This strong and clear critical voice did not previously exist in Egypt.

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Photo by Jack Krier on Unsplash

Photo by Jack Krier on Unsplash

Why is it important?

I believe that this article makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the post-2011 regime in Egypt, the role of the press in it, and the phenomenon of politicized children’s magazines in Egypt . The article sheds light on instruments of propaganda used by the state and places these phenomena within a proper historical perspective. It also contributes to our understanding of Egypt's "revolutionary youth" and their place in al-Sisi's Egypt. The innovativeness of this article lies in its focus upon children’s magazines as a mouthpiece of the regime and as a way for the media to please the regime. To the best of my knowledge, this article is the first work in the Middle Eastern Studies discipline to use children’s periodicals as source material, and the first to examine the phenomenon of politicization and glorification of the Egyptian army in children’s periodicals in the era of the new regime in post-2011 Egypt.