It’s broiling hot in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. For the second time in a year, furious Egyptians have packed the epicenter of this year’s revolution against Hosni Mubarak, trying to regain their stalled momentum from reactionary forces in the military. Once again, Ahmed Maher, a top social media activist, is in the thick of it — and not without controversy.

“We’ve got 70 percent of our demands,” Maher tells Danger Room in a wee-hours phone call from Tahrir. Hours before we spoke, the interim government sacked its cabinet due to the renewed popular unrest. “One or two more weeks” on the streets is all Maher thinks it’ll take to get “a total change of the regime, not just a small change.”

But the organization he helped start is showing signs of internal strain — especially as an American PR firm promotes Maher’s efforts, prompting questions online about his authenticity. Maher says it’s all a misunderstanding.

Maher is a co-founder of April 6 Youth, one of the driving forces behind Mubarak’s ouster and a leading organization pushing democracy, secularism and economic opportunity in Egypt. Years before outrage congealed into revolutionary zeal, Maher and April 6 used Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and other social media tools to highlight the abuses of Mubarak’s regime and help striking textile workers organize. It was unlike any social movement Egypt had yet seen. Once hundreds of thousands of Egyptians began what became known as the #Jan25 Revolt, an effort that showed the possibilities of social media for political organizing and communication, the regime’s goon squads targeted April 6’s members for arrest.

The attention of the U.S. has moved on from Egypt — over to neighboring Libya for NATO’s five-month war, and back home on the junked economy. While that’s happened, the Egyptian military, in charge of the country until civilians elections occur later this year, has turned from revolutionary ally to distrusted opponent, arresting activists and flirting with postponing the election.

On its Facebook page, April 6 accused the military of “brandishing threats in our faces” and called for a return to Tahrir Square to demand an end to military trials, guaranteed wages and a purging of residual Mubarak officials. “The bar will get higher everyday if the rest of the demands of the revolution are not met with the suitable response,” it warned on July 8.

Egyptians have joined them in the thousands — about 10,000, Maher estimates. It’s a smaller gathering than in January, and one that, significantly, lacks the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest organized political entity, which is focused on the coming elections. But there’s no fear here, unlike when Mubarak sent his thugs into the square in January on camelback.

“I don’t think they can use violence against us, since they know responding that way just makes us strong,” Maher says.

There’s another difference: Tahrir 2.0 is more of an analog affair.

“For January 25, we used Facebook and Twitter to mobilize people, but now, Twitter and Facebook are like discussion boards,” Maher says. “We need more people on the street… the Internet is limited to a limited number of people.” Mobilization for the current rally involved the old methods of passing out fliers and getting the word out to the local press.

If that sounds like a departure from April 6’s old methods, that may be because the group seems to be undergoing big changes.

The Atlantic reported last week that there’s a split wracking the organization, with some of Maher’s old comrades seeing him as a bit of a dictator himself. “There was no internal democracy,” Tarek El-Khouly, the leader of another faction — reportedly larger than Maher’s — told the magazine. “There was no transparency. [Ahmed Maher] wouldn’t tell us if he was getting foreign funds.”

That’s something Maher denies — strenuously. “No, no, no,” he says. He doesn’t take any foreign cash. He seemed to deny knowing El-Khouly in our call, even though El-Khouly has been widely quoted for months as an April 6 leader.

“There are persons who represent the government and these groups [Mubarak's old party, the National Democratic Party] trying to make problems for April 6,” he says. “I think this guy in this magazine, he helped them by spreading these rumors.”

But Maher raised eyebrows when U.S. reporters — including me — got emails from an Los Angeles PR firm called the Levine Communication Office talking up Maher. Steve Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations contended, “Perhaps they don’t understand how their engagement of an American public relations firm might look to their fellow Egyptians.” That is: inauthentically Egyptian.

Issandr El Amrani, one of the top journalists covering the Egyptian revolution, tells Danger Room he doesn’t have a problem with the PR firm. But, he emails, “in the current Egyptian media environment this is a dangerous thing, there is a lot of sensitivity about the U.S. and accusations thrown at April 6 that it is accepting foreign funding, etc. So they should have an explanation ready about why they’re doing this.”

Maher says it’s all a misunderstanding. In his telling, Levine offered to connect April 6 to Egyptian journalists it knew. A Los Angeles-based ally of Maher’s, Michelle McElroy, told Levine reps that April 6 already knows those guys; it’s international reporters that didn’t know the group. Without Maher’s knowledge or permission, McElroy says, Levine blasted out an offer to journos to connect with Maher on April 12. “For answers to the hard-hitting questions about what’s really going on in Egypt, go straight to the source,” it read. “Care to speak to the architect behind the revolution?” Maher, Levine and McElroy all insist no money changed hands.

Still, the PR incident is a distraction at a time when diminished numbers of protesters are trying to regain control over post-Mubarak Egypt. Maher doesn’t know if the crowds in Tahrir can last more than two more weeks in the brutal summer heat. But the ouster of the cabinet gives him hope that they don’t need much more time than that to negotiate terms with the Army-controlled interim government.

“We can talk with them at any time, to arrange a meeting,” Maher says. One thing he’s always been is connected.

Photo: Courtesy of Ahmer Maher; Joerg Klauss for WIRED magazine