The ferocity of the attacks by security forces on Islamist protesters in Cairo this week appears to have been a deliberate calculation of the military-appointed government to provoke violence from the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, a number of Arab and Western historians of Middle East politics said Friday.

The objective, they said in interviews, was to demonize the Islamists in the eyes of Egypt’s broader populace, validate the July 3 ouster of the Islamist president and subvert any possibility that dialogue would reintegrate the Muslim Brotherhood into Egypt’s mainstream politics.

While many said it seemed premature to call the violence in Egypt a precursor to civil war, they said the hatreds unleashed on all sides presaged a possible future of low-level insurgency by embittered, alienated Islamists. Some drew parallels to Algeria, where the military also intervened to subvert Islamist ascendance in democratic electoral politics more than two decades ago, leading to a horrific period of mayhem and repression.

“Given the propaganda of the state-supported media in Cairo, tarring the Muslim Brotherhood with the terrorist brush, making them enemies, not just a nuisance, is setting them up for being completely crushed and eliminated,” said Hugh Roberts, director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Tufts University. “To use an Algerian term, eradication.”