[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...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51