THE Muslim Brotherhood has seen worse in Egypt. Half a century ago the courts sent thousands of its members to brutal prison camps and hanged a dozen. For most of its 85-year existence the group has been formally banned. Yet never have the secretive and disciplined Brothers seen their fortunes fall so swiftly as now. Less than three months ago a Brotherhood stalwart, Muhammad Morsi, was Egypt's (legally elected) president, and his party Egypt's strongest. Now Mr Morsi languishes in jail awaiting trial, along with most of the Brotherhood's first- and second-tier leadership and perhaps 2,000 more Islamists - close to the number of Egyptians, many of them Brothers, killed in the violent unrest that followed Mr Morsi's ousting in July. On September 23rd an Egyptian court again outlawed all the group's activities and ordered the state to seize its property and financial assets. An outright ban is likely to follow in another court ruling, expected soon. The purge of the Brothers by the new army-installed government has extended from the eviction of ministers down to teaching posts at state universities - such as the professorship in veterinary medicine held by the group's supreme guide, Muhammad Badia. Although state repression is nothing new, the Brothers are being challenged as never before by the strength of feeling against them expressed by a broad swathe of Egyptians. This has been fanned by near-hysterical denigration in the press, where few voices now dare to suggest even mild sympathy for the deposed Islamists. The Brotherhood is gleefully blamed for every ill and is linked with more extreme Islamist groups, such as those fighting an armed insurgency in the borderlands of Sinai, or those responsible for a car-bomb assassination attempt against Egypt's interior minister on September 5th. Public hostility, accompanied by cheerleading for the army and police, has left the Brothers hard-pressed to respond. Since the violent crushing of a pro-Morsi sit-in last month, his supporters have tried to adjust their message. They no longer use the unpopular former president as a symbol and have stopped calling for his return to office. Their small but persistent demonstrations also now refrain from demanding the "Islamising" of Egypt. The Brothers are not alone in feeling betrayed. Many non-Islamist supporters of change fear that the revolutionary pendulum has swung back too far. The reimposition of emergency laws made notorious during the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak; the release of the fallen dictator and his cronies from prison; and the demonisation of political opponents as enemies of the state: all smack to them of a counter-revolution by Egypt's "deep state," the powerful security, intelligence and judicial apparatus that grew up under Mr Mubarak. With most of Egypt's non-Islamist parties expressing unquestioning support for the new, military-backed order, former revolutionaries feel increasingly alienated. On September 24th scores of youthful activists, many of whom were prominent in the Tahrir Square demonstrations that toppled Mr Mubarak, announced the formation of a new organisation. Rather than being a political party, the Revolutionary Path Front is intended to act as a broad-based pressure group to lobby for the original goals of the 2011 uprising, such as civic freedoms and social justice. Despite the Brotherhood's softened tone, widespread fears of counter-revolution have not redounded to its benefit. Mr Morsi's year in office exposed a penchant for monopolising power that disturbed fellow Islamists as well as secular Egyptians. Two of the country's main Salafist parties, which represent puritan religious tendencies but lack the Brothers" cult-like structure, now openly advise the Brothers to apologise for their past mistakes and to call off a campaign of civil disobedience that does more to annoy the public than to attract sympathy. Egypt's most prominent pro-Islamist columnist, Fahmy Huwaydi, has counselled the Brotherhood to follow the example of Iran's Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic who, after years of obstinacy, ended the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war with the declaration that to drink a cup of poison was better than to prolong the suffering. The fact is that, in another relapse to pre-2011 ways, most Egyptians appear to have disengaged again from politics. This is largely due to exhaustion, but also to hopes that perhaps the new government, with its control of the state far more secure than Mr Morsi's was, may be able to deal with pressing economic problems.