ABSTRACT
If the global protests of 1968 represent a high-water mark for mass mobilization of youth around the world, in Egypt the year signaled one of the last gasps of a leftist movement determined to free itself from the grips of Nasserism and the early stages of a revived political Islamism that would come to dominate Egyptian opposition politics in the decade that followed. As some scholars have recently argued when writing of the United States after the long sixties, the 1970s represented more continuity than change from the prior era than previously thought. 1 The same case can certainly be made when examining Egypt, whose 1968 protest movement emerged not as a reflection of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s brand of radical nationalism, complete with its pan-Arab, pan-African, and global components, but rather as a scathing critique of its failures. In fact, Egypt’s subsequent shift under Anwar al-Sadat was a direct outcome of developments during the late Nasser era, including the return of a vibrant student movement and the gradual dismantlement of a national and regional project.
