If it’s true that “Millions of Egyptians flooded into the streets on the first anniversary of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi’s inauguration on Sunday” as Reuters reported, than the #June30 protests are likely the biggest mass demonstration in human history.
It is always difficult to do a headcount of protesters. Organizers are keen to embellish the numbers, and security forces tend to provide an undercount. Here’s what we know: The population of Egypt is about 80 million and these protests were larger than the ones that took down Hosni Mubarak. The opposition says 22 million people signed a petition calling for Morsi to step down.
If just a fraction of those 22 million people took to the streets this weekend, then the #June30 demonstrations could have been the single largest mass protest in human history. The key question therefore is whether or not President Morsi can survice a literally unprecedented outpouring of public admonition.