Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“The revolutionary-seeming uprisings of 2009-2013 had some overlapping and some diverging causes in different geographies. But a general anarchist spirit was their common denominator. At its peak around 2011, this wave received broad support from both the radical left and the liberal center. These uprisings showed that we no longer needed leaders, organizations, and ideologies. Even in their absence, humanity stood against dictatorships and unfair economic practices. But it was too soon to celebrate. The uprisings, which did not give a concrete direction and method to humanity in general or to particular nations and classes, were not only defeated almost everywhere, but led to the further authoritarianization of the rulers.” A summative, but a very engaging read

  I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them. — Baruch Spinoza,  Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

[T]he rejection of state-centric nationalism, while desirable, could leave a discursive space that sectarian or despotic groups could occupy. This explains why supra-nationalist and infra-nationalist groups with Islamic, tribal, and ethnic identities dominate the scene. Due to these competing identities, which are functioning at the local and trans-local levels, popular nationalism is facing a major challenge as it attempts to counter state nationalism. Popular nationalism could be overtaken by other competing ideologies. Most opposition leaders are detached from people’s everyday realities. They are mostly busy producing centralized and exclusive narratives that are in many ways a replica of the regime’s ideology.] Noticeable from the start though, in the early period of popular nationalism women were mostly invisible in street activities although a few took part in the beginning of the revolution. During the toppling of the Assad regime by the leading force of HTS, women were hardly ...

 ” هل تغيّر النظام في سوريا حقّا؟ أقدّر أنّ السوريّين لا يزالون ينتظرون، إذ يفترض في تغيير النظام أن يفضي إلى تفكيك كافّة أشكال القمع والفساد، وإلى إقامة العدل والمساواة بين الجنسين… بالرغم من أنّ السلطة في المجتمعات الحديثة اخترقت الاجتماعي أو هي صاغته على صورتها ومثالها، كما يقول أهل الفلسفة؛ فقد وسمتنا علاقات السوق والطبقات الاجتماعيّة بميسمها، حتى صرنا نعيد بوعي أو دونه إنتاج علاقات «القوّة الرأسمالية». وهذا يعني أنّ السلطة لا تتحكّم فينا من خارج فحسب، وإنّما هي تتسلّل إلى داخل حياتنا الاجتماعيّة أيضا، وتسيطر عليها. وصحيح ما يلاحظه علماء الاجتماع من ظواهر تكاد تكون عالميّة، وهي أنّ البشر هم اليوم أكثر تشتتًا حيث الشعور بـ«الفردانيّة» هو الذي يهيمن عليهم …“

“[S]ectors of the populist or neo-Stalinist Left lament the fall of the Assad dictatorship . They present it — along with the rest of the “Axis of Resistance” led by the reactionary Iranian regime — as a progressive and anti-imperialist alternative. Some argue that the enemies of our enemy should be our allies, because they challenge ‘Western hegemony’. This completely ignores the class character of these powers. Rather than supporting the Palestinian cause or that of other oppressed people, these forces seek to oppose the reordering of the region for the further benefit of Israel and the United States because that would push them to the margins; at the same time they reconcile themselves with the pro-imperialist monarchies of the Gulf.”

“Human intelligence is among the most fragile things in nature. It doesn’t take much to distract it, suppress it, or even annihilate it.” Television “conditions our minds to apprehend the world through fragmented pictures and forces other media to orient themselves in that direction. A culture does not have to force scholars to flee to render them impotent. A culture does not have to burn books to assure that they will not be read . . . There are other ways to achieve stupidity.” —Neil Postman,  Conscientious Objections , 1988 A confirmation of what some of us have already observed.  Notice the FT’s columnist invoke of a ‘positive’ aspect of implementing AI: productivity and ‘helping restore middle class heart’. The impact on capitalism’s performance is what should be our concern, according to such a view.

[The following is a crucial historical analysis focusing on nationalism. With the demise of the Ba’ath nationalism in Syria, are we witnessing a triumph of a version of Islamist nationalism? Is it an emancipatory nationalism, a nationalism subordinated to class, social justice, women liberation, or just another instrumentalist nationalism – a bourgeois nationalism of the state veiled in religion and led by pious ‘middle men’ at the service of neocolonial powers and capital?]   Nation Against State: Popular Nationalism and the Syrian Uprising (1) [The Bourgeoisie has] come to power in the name of a narrow nationalism […]; they will prove themselves incapable of triumphantly putting into practice a programme with even a minimum humanist content […]. —Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963) The current Syrian revolts “One, one, one, the Syrian people are one!” In 2011, this was one of the most popular chants during protests. Syrians used it to counter the sectarian discourse o...