egypt that religion is sacred, the military is holy. a lot of people, they put the military in a much, much higher place. and when i did it with the muslim brotherhood, their channels were attacking me, they were calling me an infidel, they were like calling for me to be killed. and then when the military came, which are popular, i tried to do myjob too, and i went actually to a whole season trying to do that under the military, but community, society, the balances of power didn t permit me to do, so i tried to do myjob in the three phases of the revolution, 2011, 2012, 2013, all the way to 2014. mm. and then, when it couldn t do it, i had to stop. so it s really. that s really what happened. it s interesting you say you had to stop. i mean, i know you faced legal action from the brotherhood when they were still in power and then when the army took over, well, then you called it a coup and the army were pretty cheesed off with that. but did you really have to stop or did you make more
that you saw to egypt coming from the islamist political factions, and particularly the muslim brotherhood, rather than the dangers that might come with a restoration of military authoritarian power. cos a lot of your very dark, biting humour was directed at the brotherhood and at mohamed morsi in particular. well, a lot of people don t really.they miss a little bit about the timeline because the first year of the show, the military council was still in power and a lot of my show kind of poked fun towards that. and then the islamists came for a year and then i poked fun at them at the authority. and then the military came, and they were extremely popular. they were loved. i always say, if you think in
do theirjob and they went to the ballot to make a change. and this is the problem of being complacent with like trying to kind of sit down and just like have someone else doing it for you. in countries where satire is not really established, you re really putting your life out there. and when.when push comes to shove, when my show was stopped, nobody went out in the streets to kind of like demand that the show is back, and i don t want to demand that from them because there s that much they can do, but they instead they kind of like blame people who couldn t continue any more, instead ofjust like doing something about it. interesting that you refer to putting your life on the line. i mean, particularly in a society like egypt was and egypt still is, if you poke fun at power, you are actually doing something potentially quite dangerous in a very literal sense. ijust wonder, again, when you reflect on what you did, whether you were perhaps preoccupied with the danger
for you at the top of the hour, as newsday continues straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i m stephen sackur. the world s autocrats do not like to he laughed at. now, that is a political reality my guest today, bassem youssef, understands all too well cos he made his name and won an audience of tens of millions with a satirical comedy show during egypt s popular uprising more than a decade ago. but that revolution quickly morphed into authoritarianism, and youssef fled to the us, taking his gift for comedy with him. did he and do we still expect too much from political satire? bassem youssef in los angeles, welcome to hardtalk.
would havejeopardised. none of those civil society people who have like. i would have actually helped them to get out. so i think it s very easy to sit down and judge other people for the decisions in the comfort of their chairs. i agree. let s switch focus to the united states. you seem to have made a very conscious decision, when you got into the us with your family, to continue comedy, but to say to yourself, ok, i m no longer in egypt, i m not going to spend all of my time sort of reassessing what happened to me and my country, i m going to actually find humour in this situation as an immigrant coming to a new country, trying to make a new life. was that a very deliberate decision? absolutely, because comedy is a reflection of your truth. when i was in egypt, i was an egyptian living in egypt, being affected by the political powers and the political decisions and discourse of egypt.