Are some Egyptians’ lives worth less than others?

Fifty five people were shot by the Egyptian military on Monday, and the idealistic young revolutionaries who rose up against the regime in 2011 don’t give a damn. Why not? Because the dead were members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The turnaround is stunning.

Back in the heady days of January 2011 secular people in Tahrir Square told me that it was no problem to work with the Muslim Brotherhood, that Egyptians were united in their desire to overthrow the corrupt government of President Mubarak. Ordinary conscripts were OK, they said, but the Generals were their enemy because they kept the hated Mubarak in power.

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After the generals told President Mubarak it was time to go, the revolutionaries turned their ire on the replacement government, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces. The SCAF was now the enemy. So they voted for Mohammed Morsi, the Brotherhood candidate, as President over Ahmed Shafiq who had been put up by the army.

I understand that they feel let down by Mr Morsi’s poor performance in office, and the Brotherhood’s refusal to take other views into account when legislating. But I don’t understand why that means the opinions – and the lives – of all Muslim Brotherhood supporters should be discounted.

I’ve been amazed that educated Egyptians I know are so dismissive about Monday’s killings. The Brotherhood were armed, they attacked the soldiers, they say. Well, the New York Times is piecing together what happened and there’s no evidence that the military were acting in self defence. And even if someone in the Brotherhood crowd shot first, how does that justify the killing of more than 50 people?

This is not a coup, they say. It’s another revolution. But the new President, Adly Mansour, acts only on the authority of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose words are recorded in the official gazette. TV stations the new regime doesn’t like have been taken off air and Brotherhood political leaders detained.

Sound like the old Egypt to me, just like the bad old Mubarak days.

Yesterday I interviewed a young woman from Tamarod, the movement that got Egyptians out onto the streets to overthrow Morsi, and which has its roots in the April 6 and Kefaya group that spearheaded the 2011 uprising. The Brotherhood collaborated with foreigners, they were traitors, she said, who should be excluded from Egyptian society.

Well, that’s about a quarter of Egyptian society excluded then. Hardly a recipe for national unity, compromise and a way forward. As for the generals, previously excoriated for oppressing the Egyptian people? Well, they’re just fine, it seems. Coup, what coup?

For decades, Egyptian politics has been about the often violent confrontation between two forces: the Muslim Brotherhood and the military.

In 2011, a new force – young, idealistic, secular – erupted. They presented themselves as something modern and radical but were they deluding themselves?

First they sided with the Brotherhood against the military, now they’ve switched. They’re using the same old language, accusing others of treachery, and blaming foreigners for Egypt’s ills.

Revolution, what revolution?

Follow @lindseyhilsum on Twitter.