The Social Nationalist Principles Alone Can Get Us Out of the Mess We Are In
Particularistic discontent, with its religious and political objectives and reactionary issues, is showering us with incitement and demagoguery of every description. It is calling for a reshuffle or change of government and the election of a new Parliament in Lebanon. The fundamental issue for this discontent, then, is changing the government and replacing the existing members of Parliament. It implies that, if the government is changed and the Parliament is replaced in accordance with its own preferences, the fundamental issue will clear up and all of the problems of the world will be solved!
I do not want to deal with the desires of some characters or diagnose their mentalities. These very difficult tasks are better left to specialists who treat mental and psychological disorders. Rather, I want to address the other fundamental issue: the issue of how to rescue the people from the deplorable condition into which political quackery and the incessant squabbles over power in the country have forced them.
After the profusion of the social nationalist principles across Syria and after closely studying them and analyzing events in their light, the adversities of the nation are no doubt now due to the corrupt non-issues that are carrying the people along at random, urged on by some charlatan and opportunistic parliamentarians who care nothing for the nation's life and its future. Also, the blame for this no doubt now falls evenly on the shoulders of the power-holders (who are the product of the dominant mentality among the people, or were dominant and still are over a large segment of the population), the out-of-power politicians who draw on the same mentality, and the political alliances and groupings that formed on the basis of such corrupt issues. Therefore, treating the situation that weighs down on the people by removing the incumbent power-holders and replacing them with another group of rulers who fall back on these corrupt issues is like treating fever with watermelon shells.
The discontented, inciters, and indignant are mostly people who were ousted from power because they were part of a political coalition, which held the reins of power in Lebanon until recently. The people groaned under their rule just as they are groaning under their opponents, who came to power on the back of a domestic and international power struggle. Is it logical, then, that these veteran politicians, who have nothing new to offer that is different from what they stood for when they were previously in power, would be able to "rescue the country"?
The new grumblers and inciters who have joined these ousted malcontents champion the very same non-issues, too. These non-issues led the people in Lebanon to isolation, poverty, and internal destruction (i.e. the issues of religious nationalism and sectarian and non-sectarian bigotry have torn the nation apart, shredded its social and economic veins to pieces, and subjugated it to foreign wills).
In my article “A Plan that Backfired,” I noted that the social nationalist renaissance has created an aggressive social national revival in the face of an aggressive foreign domination. The Social Nationalist movement was the only movement in the country to put forward a comprehensive cause that enables the nation to take on the foreign issues that are hostile to it. Concurrently, the movement inaugurated the Social National cause as a cause of pride and prosperity for the nation in opposition to the old and the new reactionary issues that are humiliating the people and propelling it toward catastrophe and utter destruction. Several spin-off movements, taking the principles of the National movement or some of its outward appearances as a model, emerged in the country. However, they emerged either at the prompt of the occupying foreigner or on the back of reactionary impulses in the country.
Spurious imitation does not lead a people anywhere except to reckless delusion. Likewise, spurious issues can never replace a nation's original cause. Chimpanzees can imitate humans for as long as they want, but that will never make them humans. Counterfeit money may deceive some people, but eventually its users will be discovered.
Those who licked the boots of the occupiers and moved up based on a mutual arrangement with them may succeed in creating a sectarian cause that benefits the foreigner. However, they will not be able to serve the nation they betrayed. Presently, the most repulsive spectacle in Lebanon is the spectacle of the political formations based on fraud and imitation that are advocating reform although they are in dire need of reform themselves. They have compartmentalized sectarianism into independent units and they have turned them into rigid “nationalisms” that lack any vigor of life and progress. Even though they can see that they are propelling a sect full of zeal and talents towards total and stifling isolation and separation from the main course of national life by their actions, they still draw pleasure from their error, maintaining that their path is the path to "salvation" even though it leads to ultimate destruction.
Those who are genuinely concerned about the welfare of the people and its rescue have no alternative but to acknowledge that the great foundational movement that established the cause of life and prosperity for this nation is the Social Nationalist Movement. It fought for the sake of the whole people and not for the sake of any particular sect. It succeeded through its social nationalist principles to lay down the foundations that firm up the structure of our society and fortify its entity.
The Social Nationalist Movement is not a movement of greed and retribution against anyone. Nor is it a movement concerned with resolving a particularistic discontentment. Instead, it is a movement of total social national revival aimed at providing a solution to the psychological, social, and political problems that prevent our nation from advancing to prosperity and wellbeing.
While the other groups that cannot assume the vital task of revival occupy themselves with side issues (the issues of sectarianism and political swapping), the Social Nationalist Movement calls on the people to rally around it in order to eradicate all forms of internal colonialism and subjugation, domestic charlatanry, and political fraud. It calls on them to face the enormous foreign threats that lurk all around us and are moving closer toward us day after day, both from the north and the south!
Nothing can rescue the nation from its state of confusion and present dangers except an all-encompassing movement that has a general national character and a social agenda, one that will lay down the foundations for a new life and catapult the forces of the nation in a major current toward a glorious future!