Bassem Youssef

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Bassem Youssef 2016 in London

Bassem Youssef or Bassem Jussif ( Arabic باسم يوسف, Born March 22, 1974 in Cairo ) is an Egyptian cardiac surgeon and political satirist who reached millions of viewers with his satirical news overview Al Bernameg on Egyptian television.

After the overthrow of the Islamist President Morsi, he was forced to take a break; his jokes were too sensitive for the military and the media. After the victory of ex-military chief Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi in the 2014 presidential election , Youssef resigned from show business in Egypt for fear for his personal safety.

In January 2015, Youssef spent a semester at the Harvard Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School .

In March 2017 his documentary Tickling Giants , which deals with his satirical broadcast in Egypt, was released.

Life

In the course of the Egyptian Revolution , Bassem Youssef uploaded his first clip to YouTube on March 8, 2011. Youssef could no longer bear the coverage of the state media, the most violent protests since the beginning of Mubarak's presidency had taken place on January 25th, the dictator was overthrown on February 11th, but a bizarre television broadcast claimed that the demonstrators on the Tahrir There is only room for dancing, fornication and taking drugs, all of them are Islamists anyway . He produced initially from home satirical short films that this coverage of state propaganda satirized :

“I still remember exactly how I saw the demonstrators on January 28, 2011 clashing with the police. For the first time in my life I saw a huge crowd push back uniformed and armed police officers. However, the 18 days of the revolution left me with a strange feeling: I thought Egypt had schizophrenia! There were the Egyptian revolutionaries in the square ... and there was television. When I went home from Tahrir Square, the television wanted to say: There is no revolution, it's all a conspiracy . Behind it are the CIA , Mossad , Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah ... and Kermit the frog . If they had known him, they would have made him bad too. "

- Bassem Youssef: Beyond the Revolution .

In his satirical debunking of the absurdities in state television, Youssef orientated himself on television formats such as Jon Stewart's The Daily Show or Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report from the USA (from which the show today is also inspired) and quickly achieved high popularity, with an average more than 300,000 viewers per clip, some of which were clicked up to 17 million times. Only six months later he was signed to Naguib Sawiris’s private television station “ONtv” , a first television station with a cultural program, and he received his own TV show, The B + Show . In November Youssef switched to the independent private television broadcaster CBC and his satirical program has since been called Al-Barnameg , which means program in Arabic .

Within the next two years, Youssef rose to become the greatest star of Egyptian television, with an average of 40 million viewers tune in three times a week when he presented his news overview with the state-supporting gesture of a newscaster . The show began with "Welcome to the Program: The Program," not only talking about the military, politicians, state television or religious preachers, but also about leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood , who came from President Mohammed Morsi , and about the former president himself funny. Youssef is not just about making fun of those in power, however. “I want to hold up the mirror to society and show what culture is behind it,” he said in an interview in 2012.

The new Sharia-compliant constitution of 2012 , which was pushed through in an urgent procedure, guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of the press , but at the same time limits this again with the ban on denigrating the president . And apparently Morsi interprets the law so broadly that it also includes criticism of individual Muslim Brotherhoods. Arrests began as a campaign by the Muslim Brotherhood against their critics, and even the much-noticed opposition newspaper Almasry Alyoum and the office of the German press agency in Cairo received intimidation calls from the presidential office. On March 30, 2013, the Egyptian attorney general ordered Youssef's arrest. He has been accused of insulting the president , slandering Islam and spreading false claims that have disrupted public order .

Youssef learned of his arrest warrant from the media. He turned his March 31, 2013 appointment with the prosecutor into a big happening , wearing a silly, oversized hat like the one President Morsi wore on a visit to Pakistan, and tweeting a number of sayings from the prosecutor's office. After a five-hour interrogation by the public prosecutor's office, he was released (temporarily) on bail of 15,000 Egyptian pounds (the equivalent of 1,700 euros).

Youssef reacted calmly to the allegations: “We are not the ones who offend Islam. We only expose those who abuse the faith and have done it more damage than anyone else, ”he said the evening before in a television interview.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner and opposition leader Mohammed el-Baradei sharply criticized Youssef's arrest. He explained on Twitter that such an approach is only known from “fascist regimes”. It is a sign of the insecurity and the "wagon mentality" of the Islamist government. Since the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt, complaints against critics of the government have increased. The Egyptian advisor for the human rights organization Amnesty International , Diana Eltahawy, also expressed concern. 33 activists, bloggers and politicians were charged within two weeks. "They are exposed to legal harassment by the Egyptian authorities just because they are critical of the human rights situation under the government," said Eltahawy.

As early as 2012, a Cairo court sentenced one of the most famous actors in the Arab world, the Egyptian Adel Imam , to a fine and a three-month prison term for allegedly insulting Islam in a film and one of his old plays .

In November 2013, his then-broadcaster Capital Broadcast Center (CBC) stopped Youssef's show a few minutes before the scheduled broadcast. In February 2014 he started a comeback with the Saudi Arabian broadcaster MBC Masr. The German wave (DW) secured the second window rights. On June 2, 2014, Bassem Youssef announced at a press conference in Cairo's historic "Cinema Radio", where his program was recorded, that "the show in its current form will not be allowed to return in an Egyptian or Arab channel". A week earlier, Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi had won the presidential election. Since the military coup in July 2013, criticism of the army and its former boss al-Sisi has hardly been tolerated. With a swipe at the situation in Egypt: "We are living in the most wonderful years of democracy in Egypt - and if you don't see it that way, your tongue should be cut out," said Bassem Youssef, ending his television program in Egypt.

Together with producer Sara Taksler of the American The Daily Show , Youssef created the documentary Tickling Giants between 2015 and 2017, which records the events surrounding him and his show in Egypt.

Works

  • Revolution for dummies: laughing through the Arab Spring , New York: Dey St., [2017], ISBN 978-0-06-244689-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Egyptian satire show: TV star Youssef gives up on Der Spiegel June 2, 2014 for fear for his safety
  2. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/02/bassem-youssef-closes-egyptian-satire-tv-show-over-safety-fears
  3. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27671642
  4. ^ A b page by Bassem Youssef of the Harvard Institute of Politics.
  5. ↑ Spring 2015 Resident and Visiting Fellows of the Harvard Institute of Politics.
  6. ^ Tickling Giants at Rotten Tomatoes
  7. ^ The Jon Stewart of Egypt ( Memento October 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ^ Lecture in May 2012 about its beginnings on YouTube
  9. ^ The Harald Schmidt of Egypt , Süddeutsche Zeitung February 10, 2012
  10. ↑ Spiegel-Online March 31, 2013: Egypt's TV star Bassem Youssef: A comedian as an enemy of the state
  11. ↑ Mursi is even afraid of a comedian , Die Welt January 3, 2013
  12. ↑ Al Ahram March 31, 2013: Egypt's NAC condemns order to arrest TV satirist Bassem Youssef
  13. ↑ Spiegel-Online March 31, 2013: TV star Bassem Youssef: Campaign against comedians (photo gallery)
  14. ↑ Al Ahram March 31, 2013: Bassem Youssef arrives at court in satirical style
  15. ↑ Aljazeera March 31, 2013: Egypt satirist questioned for insulting Morsi
  16. ↑ Al Ahram March 31, 2013: Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef released on LE15,000 bail
  17. ↑ taz March 30, 2013: Egyptian comedian threatens arrest. Mursi doesn't understand jokes
  18. ↑ Satirist accused of insulting the president ( memento of April 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Tagesschau March 31, 2013
  19. ↑ Three months in prison for Adel Imam
  20. ↑ Egypt's most famous satirist, Bassem Youssef, gives up. Deutsche Welle online, June 3, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Youssef, Bassem
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jussif, Bassem; Barnameg, al; باسم يوسف (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Egyptian heart surgeon and political satirist
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1974
PLACE OF BIRTH Cairo