Thanassis Cambanis

That’s right, not social media, which is all the rage among the global cognoscenti, but socialist media.

Egypt’s small but dedicated Center for Socialist Studies (a think-tank-like organization that’s hoping to create a Workers Democratic Party) has been reconsidering its approach since the January 25 revolution here. At a meeting on Tuesday night, a core group of about a dozen movement activists debated the party’s media strategy. It was but one of many manifestations of the flowering of political activism across Egypt; on this night alone, dozens of youth movements of different stripes were holding similar meetings.

The latest issue features a distorted and colorized crowd shot from Tahrir Square, with the tagline “Popular Revolution … Revolution Until Victory.” The table of contents leads with a section called “Workers of the world unite,” which can can be round on pages 5 through 7.

“We have to reach the people using the same tools as the government and the upper-class media: television and Facebook,” said Ibrahim AlSahary, a journalist whose passion is socialism. He believes that class warfare between officers and enlisted men will ultimately hobble Egypt’s military rulers and open the way for civil rule – and he thinks socialists can foment that division.

Another journalist, Bisan Kassab, fought to get a word in edgewise during Ibrahim’s discursive flights of oratory, tailored more for a parliamentary chamber than the austere meeting room near Giza Square.

“Most people don’t believe in class warfare,” she said. “We need to talk about things people care about, in language people can understand.” Bisan also wanted the meeting to deal with its actual agenda. The Socialist, she pointed out, was unreadable, its bleak layout showcasing tendentious articles about abstract socialist theory. Couldn’t the paper publish engaging feature articles, and cover news that’s actually happening?

“People want to be informed,” she said. “Let’s inform them.”

An American socialist who writes for the International Socialist Worker, nodded approvingly. “This is the beginning of the revolution,” he observed.

Ahmed Shalabi, 27, an unemployed newcomer to the Socialist Party ranks, quivered with excitement. He wore a polo shirt with horizontal purple stripes and colored eyeglass frames; several people in the room mistook him for a precocious teenager. He had been distributing his own tracts in Tahrir Square a few weeks ago when he meet Ibrahim, and he found the socialist platform simpatico. He already had submitted several pieces to the newspaper’s editor and was dismayed to have received no response.

“People have been sleeping, almost dead for thirty years,” Ahmed said, in his high, almost sing-song, voice. He wants the paper to write about abuses of authority by the military, and its continuing rule under an exceptional state of emergency.

“People my age want our voices heard. We don’t understand what you mean when you talk about counter-revolution, because your language is too complicated,” he said. “We can’t just talk to our friends.”