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http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1786/the-lebanese-left-fails-in-syria
The Lebanese Left Fails in Syria
Jun 07 2011 by Khalil Issa
This article is written in Arabic by Khalil Issa and translated into
English by Hanna Petro]
When the left loses all the resources [needed] for its steadfastness, as
a result of its mistakes on the one hand and because of surrounding
local pressures on the other, it is usually left with nothing but the
political-ethical discourse as a principled stance on the basis of which
to fight. In the end, being a leftist is to side with justice against
oppression, with the victim against the perpetrator, with the exploited
against the exploiter. This is the moral position that keeps us leftists
after the (near) death of the Lebanese left, as an organized political
movement.
Today, in the abyss of the broad revolutionary protest movement—which is
demanding freedom in all corners of Syria and which has faced terrifying
repression that resulted in more than 1100 deaths and tens of thousands
of people detained, most of whom are members of the Syrian toiling
class, peasants and workers—came the latest memorandum from the
political bureau of the Lebanese Communist Party (issued on April 20,
2011), reminding the Syrian people that it has the right to “mobilize
through all peaceful and democratic means for the sake of social,
political, and economic reforms and the combating of corruption.”
Conversely, it fails to name any martyrs and murder victims in Syria,
and “wishes that [the Syrian government] be quick in implementing all
the reforms put forth by President Bashar al-Asad.”
The ambiguous position of the party becomes more distinguishable when we
see a nonsensical speech about “Syria confronting internal strife, which
imperialist America and Israel strive towards in cooperation with some
of the collaborating forces inside and outside of Syria, which are
[themselves] steeped in reactionary politics.” But there is something we
do not understand: Which fitna [strife] is the Lebanese Communist Party
referring to? And why is it not appropriate to mention fitna except when
the speech [being labeled as fitna] is assumed to be against oppression,
murder, and terrorism? Have the national opposition members in Syria
like Michel Kilo, Aref Dalila and Yasin al-Hajj Salih—who are all
“comrades” by the way—suddenly become agents of the imperialist
“circles?” Or has the absurd fitna theory, which constitutes an offshoot
of the “conspiracy” theory, become an alternative to all the positions
that must be undertaken by a party which is supposed to be a “party of
the people” par excellence?
The position of the Communist Party on what is happening in Syria is a
failure on both the ethical and political levels. Here, [failure with
respect to] the sense that policy [is supposed to] truly serve the
interests of the oppressed classes, [and this] makes the party one with
a rightwing leadership. It practically rejects the change demanded by
the toiling class and the workers in Syria, as well as adopts the
regime’s “external conspiracy” narrative. All that remains for the
comrades of the political bureau is to participate in the propaganda
against the protesters, calling them “conspirators” or “armed gangs.”
This is especially [the case] since [the Communist Party’s] Secretary
General Khalid Hadada confirmed once again the centrality of “the
conspiracy against Syria” in an article of his in al-Safir newspaper
(May 28th, 2011). If he rejects the security solution in Syria, he also
repudiates “attempted bullying by the outside.”
Here, we ask Comrade Khalid Hadada which of the protestors in Syria
today is asking for bullying by the outside? Or have these verbal
pretexts always been present –because the history of imperialist
intervention in the region is well known and destructive—[so as] to
make us produce an unethical political position, which completely
ignores what is happening on the ground in Syria? Why is imperialism so
inserted where it is not, that we start to see imperialism where in
directions it does not exist. What dialogue is the Communist Party
calling for while, for example, Azmi Bishara says in one of his latest
media appearances that “it is clear that there is dialogue.
Unfortunately, only dialogue pertaining to reform, but there is an
instigation to murder and shoot at those who demand reform.”
Given that the communist leadership is rightwing to this degree, this
does not summarize the entire problem. Many–not all, of course—of the
Lebanese leftists, both from within the [Communist] Party and outside of
it, are convinced that what is happening in Syria is the doing of the
“Salafis” or the “Anglo-Americozionist-Saudi-Qatari” conspiracy. Here,
the ever-present phobia of conspiracy mixes with secular sectarianism,
to use the expression of Syrian author Yasin al-Hajj Salih. Many
leftists repeat the repudiation by poets like Adonis and Safidi Yusuf of
“the coming out of revolution from the mosque,” or that what is
happening is nothing but a verse of “the West’s making.” Here, secular
sectarianism consciously or unconsciously inflates a minority
sensibility which is horrified by cries of allahu akbar [Allah is
great], and salutes a sick elite that does not see a sufficient
“revolutionary consciousness” among the Syrian masses. The communist
comrades boast that they do possess it [i.e., the revolutionary
consciousness] just as those who claim to possess the keys to paradise.
This might also reflect a class disdain expressed by a small bourgeois
leadership towards workers and peasants who are being killed.
What is constantly demanded is for the revolution to be in accordance
with the standard of a distressed left, which only defines itself by the
discourse of “secularism.” (By the way, here we ask whatever happened to
the call of “overthrowing the sectarian regime?”) If it is understood
that the regional standing of Hizballah, namely its rockets and the
military resistance against Israel, is a fundamental issue to be lost or
to gained when it takes a stance on what is happening in Syria, we do
not understand what political loss is being avoided by the Communist
Party, which in recent years has become akin to a “desert mirage” in the
Lebanese political scene. Or maybe there is another interest that pushes
the “communist” leadership to act in this manner; and we do not know it.
Today, we have reached the of the point of a “secular sectarian”
Lebanese left, which has retired from its duties, vacillating between a
Lebanese nationalist vision and an Arab nationalist position in the
archaic sense of the word. It is intellectually lazy, politically
cowardly, folkloric, of trite Marxist discourse and an opportunist
tendency, and not self-sufficient, such that it adopts a narrative of
injustice starting with the “imperial West” and ending with lamentation
over the “injustice” committed by the other Lebanese sectarian parties
towards it. When the left does not question the ready-made answers, it
becomes (in a sense) a “religious” left. The Lebanese left is united
with all the oppressed peoples of the world, with the exception of the
Arab peoples. Maybe it is because those [Arab peoples] are in their
depths [really] “Muslim,” meaning they are not “secular” enough!
There is a deeper problem facing leftists and communists on the
theoretical level. It is the “freedom” called for by the crushed Arab
masses from [the Atlantic] Ocean to [the Persian] Gulf. In and of
itself, this was an expression of a dignity lost in the regimes that
govern a local colonialism. Thinking about this issue is more important
today than our endless pleas for analyses by the martyr Mahdi Amel or
economic reports from a Marxist world that time has passed over. Many
traditional communists consider the subject of “democracy” as a
“bourgeois” issue. They ignore the fact that the right to vote, the
right to express one’s opinion, and [the right] to form political
parties was never a “liberal” impulse but came as a result of struggles
fought by the working class and the peasantry. For this [reason], the
loathing of political freedom by describing it as “bourgeois freedom” is
at the root of stances [that are] neglectful of the demands of the
masses, which want dignity before anything else.
Today, there are three matters which compose the rightwing leaning
Lebanese “left”: the secular sectarianism which was transformed into a
politics of identity; the disease of elitism, which despises the
struggling classes; and the absence of intellectual renewal because of
the repeating of deaf leftist prayers, which claim to answer every worry
and complaint. We are in need of a new left. From this [premise], [this
is] a call to the comrades in the Communist Party to become aware of the
historic role that they must view [things] from, as well as to cease
having the infantile and “emotional” relationship with their established
party, simply because it is the “Communist Party.” We say this hoping
that the left will return to the left and the Communist Party to its
communism. Circumstances indicate that hard times will befall the
county, and we will then truly need this new left.
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