Episode Transcript
43.1 Understanding Lebanon with Ayman Makarem, Part 2
Matthew Remski: Hello everyone, this is Matthew Remski with Antifascist Dad podcast, season 2, episode 43.1, Understanding Lebanon with Ayman Makarem, part 2.
I'm grateful for your support, especially if you're listening to this on the day it dropped on Patreon. I hope this project brings you some joy, some hope, some utility to your works and days. As always, you can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name, and I'm on YouTube and TikTok as antifascistdad. The Patreon handle is antifascistdadpodcast, and yes, subscribers get early access to every second part of anything I do on the main feed, including this episode, in which I pick up where I left off in my conversation with Ayman Makarem.
You'll probably want to listen to the first part first if you haven't, especially because it includes a summary of the historical timeline that Ayman is working with as he gets into the weeds here — beginning with the framing of Lebanon and Israel as co-developed entities, both colonial constructs born of diplomatic and economic opportunity, with France installing Maronite elites in Beirut while Britain settled Zionists in Palestine. Ayman traces the 1943 National Pact as a kind of re-engineering of elite class rule over Lebanon disguised as pluralism, which led to the 1975 civil war and the 2019 uprising.
And on Hezbollah, Ayman balances criticism of its entanglement in Syria and its 2023 anti-gay panic against its role as the only organized resistance during an active occupation. And Ayman also closes with some excellent advice for Western leftists — if you want to help anyone in the Global South, campaign for socialist change where you are.
Ayman Makarem is a Lebanese Druze writer and video essayist, currently based in Vienna. He produces analysis for the From the Periphery media collective, examining Lebanese, Palestinian, and regional history through an anti-authoritarian, anti-sectarian, and class-conscious framework.
Here's the second part of our conversation.
Okay, so let's get back into the territory of so-called great men, and this is where we can really look at Lebanon today. Why do you frame your analysis in terms of the co-development of what you call the Lebanese entity and the Zionist entity?
Ayman Makarem: Well, because both of them are colonial products, and I try to give a different framing in my video essay compared to most other Lebanese histories.
First of all, in terms of the co-development, because there are Lebanese history books where Israel isn't really mentioned. There's a famous book called The House of Many Mansions, by Salibi. I looked at it, I read through it — it's an ebook, so I did control-F for "Zionism" and "Israel." It's mentioned twice. But there is a co-development, and there's a co-development in its very foundation, in its very structure, and in its manifestation. Both Lebanon and the State of Israel essentially come out of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire with the advent of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided up Bilad al-Sham — which is how we refer to what Westerners call the Levant — Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, between the French and the British.
In Palestine, we know this story quite well — at this point there's been a lot of popular history that the British allied with Zionists, essentially imported, or allowed for the importation of a new class of people who would then rule that territory. So they used settler colonialism. In Lebanon, it was a local population that the French had allied with — the Maronite Christian population, who they'd already been in contact with since around 1860.
I wanted to do this in the video, but I felt like it's too much of a new framework of understanding — I get very tired when people talk about "Lebanon way back when," not understanding that Lebanon is a modern concept, a colonial concept. People 200, 300 years ago did not identify as Lebanese. They'd call themselves Mount Lebanese, from Mount Lebanon, or from the Chouf. We talked about specific geographies or cities.
Matthew Remski: And terms like Levant itself imply a direction, right? It's on this side or on that side, that sort of thing.
Ayman Makarem: I forget about Levant specifically — Levant is a French thing. The term we use is Bilad al-Sham, and Bilad al-Sham actually means "the countries to the left." That comes from the Islamic era, based in the Hijaz region of Saudi Arabia, where — pointing eastward toward the sun, if you're looking there, then who's to your left? Bilad al-Sham, it means to the left. And then to the right is Yemen, which comes from the Arabic word yamin, which is also where "Ayman," my name, comes from. I love that little anecdote, it's cute.
But regardless, there wasn't that identity of "we are Bilad al-Shamis" or whatever — it was much more geography-based. And so, before the advent of the state of Lebanon — of Greater Lebanon, in 1920 — "Lebanon" referred to the Mount Lebanon range. That is actually where I originally come from, my family's villages. And that's why older people call it "the Lebanon" — because it's a geographical thing. I like to give this example: if the communities around the Alps formed a country, even if it were called, like, "Alps" or whatever, we'd still say "the Alps," because we know it as a geography.
Anyway, what functionally happened with French control of this region is that Mount Lebanon, which was predominantly Maronite Christian, annexed the other regions around it — cities like Beirut, the region in the north, like Akkar, the Bekaa Valley in the east, and in the south, Jabal Amel and the coastal cities. So this is why we call it an entity, because it's a state imposed onto a large group of people who have varying different stakes in that state.
Again, the quote I bring is very explicit that the French allied with the Maronites — with Maronite Christian elites, I should say, I don't like to get too sectarian, but this is a sectarian process — to annex these other territories. And these are the same territories that have ever since been neglected. Again, the place I was talking about, that just a few months ago, and still to this day, buildings are collapsing because of neglect, in the north.
Matthew Remski: The colonial drive to expand and annex, and to create an entity — is this about efficiency and extraction? Is it that the French have a footprint in the central part, and it's going to somehow advantage them to unify a bunch of regions that are very diverse but share a kind of territorial integrity, and that will increase the efficiency of whatever resource extraction they're doing?
Ayman Makarem: I think with Lebanon it was less about resource extraction, but having a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, which, again, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, was a coveted thing for European powers for a very long time. Essentially, having a foothold in this region geopolitically was very important. And there was also a competition between the French and the British for that control.
But essentially, Mount Lebanon by itself is not a viable state — there's not enough agriculture, for instance, not enough labor, not enough surplus population. So the Lebanon we understand today was designed in such a way to be a viable state, and a state that can be controlled by the Maronite elite. There's almost a compromise of how many Sunnis do we bring into the state, how many Shia, how many Druze, and the like.
So, to my understanding, there was less about resource extraction, because Lebanon is not necessarily a very resource-rich area — Syria is a lot more, and they did also control Syria, but to a lesser extent. But if you read the descriptions of French interest in this region, specifically in creating Lebanon, and what they got out of it, it reads so much like what the British were getting out of Palestine — a foothold in the region, a loyal ruling elite. The only difference is the British settled their own new elite in the form of European Zionists, and in France's case, in Lebanon, it was the local Maronite elite.
For instance, in 1932, the only census ever done in Lebanon was done by the French, under very authoritarian conditions, and was crafted in such a way as to affirm what the French already wanted — to suggest a Maronite majority, and thus legitimize this sectarian division: the Maronites should have the most power, the presidency, the head of the army, etc.
So it was partly to have a foothold, and also to be able to combat Arab nationalism, which was burgeoning — don't forget, this is all on the backdrop of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, done in large part by European direct attacks, but also their collusion with Arab nationalists who wanted independence and sovereignty, and Sykes-Picot was a betrayal of that. So there were future conflicts in store there.
Matthew Remski: The term "foothold" — if we're not talking about the primacy of resource extraction, we're really talking about being able to establish an administrative and military presence in a very opportune part of the world, to make sure there's a certain amount of territorial integrity, that the region isn't broken up, that you can send officers out all with the same commands, and create a kind of national unity — which is really about making sure you feel your territory is possessed, as the colonial power. Is that fair to say?
Ayman Makarem: Yeah, I think that's actually a very good summation. And it's military as well, because there's still military stuff to it, as I was suggesting with Arab nationalism. But also there are more resources in the rest of the Bilad al-Sham region, especially Iraq — well, Iraq isn't necessarily Bilad al-Sham. I mean, oil wasn't discovered yet, I think, at that point, but there are other things I'm less familiar with. But for sure there was a military-minded control of this region, which is also a central axis of commerce. Lebanon really becomes an important gateway between East and West.
Matthew Remski: I guess I'm just fascinated by the notion that Lebanese identity is an invention of military opportunism.
Ayman Makarem: There's so much about Lebanese identity — there was also a compromise with the realities that were constantly unfolding. I have a friend who describes the closest thing we can believe to a Lebanese identity as shared grief and trauma. Because — this is something most people don't know — 1917 saw the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon, in which half the population died.
Matthew Remski: Oh, I have no idea about this.
Ayman Makarem: Oh, it was massive. It was massive. And it's actually erased from Lebanese history as well — we can talk about why Lebanese history is so poorly discussed, and part of it is because education about it inside Lebanon is intentionally suppressed, because they can't agree on a shared history. But yes, there was a major famine — partly because of a European blockade, partly because the Ottomans moved resources to the front lines, and partly because of a very, very serendipitous locust swarm.
So it was a battered society already. And it's interesting — if you look at depictions of Lebanese identity, it's still rooted in Mount Lebanon, like some of these Fairuz films, or the Rahbani brothers' films — very Mount Lebanon, very Christian.
But yes, the origin of it is as a colonial state that the French helped create with the local elites, and it was these local elites who then colluded and seized power. There was some back and forth with the French — a kind of revolt, but not really. So, yeah, that is the origin of it. I'm not saying that's what it is to this day, necessarily.
Matthew Remski: Bridging on from there, in setting up the Lebanese constitution, and in preparation for their departure, how did the French leave this former colony with a structure that really ensured civil conflict — or at least tension — and the continued rule of the wealthy and powerful?
Ayman Makarem: So this is like the founding curse of Lebanon that I think we've never been able to shake off. I think this is part of the backdrop of why the civil war even happened, and there were very similar demands in October 17th.
Basically, Lebanon was designed as a sectarian state — a state that privileged one religious sect, specifically the Maronite Christians. And again, Lebanon is a place where simple narratives go to die. We have, I think, like 26 religions — people don't even know about Melkites, Greek Catholics, Armenian Catholics, the Druze, most people don't know about the Alawites. There's so many, aside from the big ones, the Sunni, the Shia.
But essentially, the state that was formed by local elites and the French was one which, by 1943, when we got our independence — this was in the midst of the Second World War. France had been battered by the Germans; Lebanon was controlled for a bit by the Vichy French, and they were kicked out by a mix of forces. This was a period where — reading these accounts is very weird, because there's a bit of a daddy complex with France, where it's like, "we want to be more independent, but we're not going to leave home." There's very much an acquiescence, a kind of, hey, I've gotten to the age of 18, I'm owed an allowance, you know what I mean? There was a kind of revolt, they tried to put it down, but again, a revolt of the elite.
The main structure, as I understand it — and this is very important, the person who talks about this most clearly is Mehdi Amel, the Lebanese Marxist historian — is that the sectarian system is not just a system of dividing power between different sects. It was a way for the colonial elite to continue ruling over the rest of the people. And it's important to note class is important here, because all the people in the south, the east, and the north — mostly farmers, still very feudal societies — had no stake in whatever decisions were being made in Beirut with the French. So it was a way for elites to continue their class domination over the entire geography of the state.
There were basic inequities: the Christian Maronite elite, even though it's dubious they were the actual majority, got the presidency, the majority of seats in parliament, in government. It was just an unequal system that clearly benefited one sect over the others. What occurred was a compromise between the Maronite elite and the Sunni and Shia elites — to a certain extent, though that didn't really exist either, because there was this huge group of people, mostly farmers, completely neglected in the sectarian system. But they were still elites in their own regard — even though they were below the Christian Maronites, they still benefited from the system.
And so this ensured conflict, because — as I say in the video — the real divisions in Lebanon, as in the rest of the world, are not sectarian, not religious, but class-based. By the early '70s there's this famous saying, I haven't been able to locate the source, but it's one of these things that's in the air: if there wasn't a civil war in 1975, there would have been a revolution. Because in the early '70s in Lebanon there was this huge wave of mobilization, strikes, labor actions — because people were making the connection between the sectarian oligarchy, the banking oligarchy, the huge inequities between urban and rural areas, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
A really good example: a large portion, if not the majority, of the Communist Party of Lebanon in the early '70s — whose main thing was overthrowing the sectarian oligarchical system — were members of the Shia sect, the sect with the least representation in the sectarian system, a legacy codified by the French. There was this revolutionary idea that this unequal, unjust, functionally classist and neocolonial system needed to be overthrown, to create a society that's one vote, one person — more democratic, based on citizenship rather than sect.
I can go on about this, but the idea is that in the early '70s — and this scared the shit out of me — there was a thing called the Lebanese National Movement. I first learned about this reading after the October 17th revolution, when I realized I needed to learn my own history. They had a program written in the early '70s, and it scared the shit out of me, because word for word, it was the same demands we had on the streets in 2019. Because what they were identifying were the core contradictions of the Lebanese state that will ensure conflict.
The Lebanese civil war started as an attempt to overthrow the sectarian system, and for the Maronite elite, an attempt to preserve it. These things manifested and created this stagnation of Lebanese politics, where basically, whoever has the most power in Lebanon — it's less that they can do a lot of stuff, they just have the ability to stop a lot of stuff from happening. Things have changed a little in the last two years, but that's been the mainstay for the last 30 years since the civil war.
I get very energized when I talk about this, but I hope that was clear, because I do understand that Lebanon is a quagmire of sectarianism, imperialism, colonialism, and class conflict.
Matthew Remski: And, as you say, the place where simple stories go to die. And I mean, the other part of this story is that from very early on, the Zionist movement, facilitated by the British, is looking at Lebanon in general — the Lebanese entity — as a future frontier. You tell this story in one of your pieces through a portrait of Moshe Dayan, and I'm wondering if you could give a thumbnail of him, and what he represents in relation to Israeli desires and designs toward Lebanon.
Ayman Makarem: I will say, first, not to be pedantic, but I make the distinction between the Lebanese entity and Lebanon as those geographies, only because the Zionists never had their eyes on the Lebanese entity — in fact, it was a potential ally. Moshe Dayan said this very accurately — they wanted parts of the geography, the land and the water and whatever.
Matthew Remski: Oh, they didn't want the French foothold, the former French foothold.
Ayman Makarem: They didn't want the state, because they viewed the state as dysfunctional —
Matthew Remski: — and a potential ally.
Ayman Makarem: As dysfunctional, and a potential ally. And we've seen that manifest throughout history. But they have always had their sights on, specifically, Jabal Amel — and this is important, because Jabal Amel has a longer history as a name of a place and a people than does "southern Lebanon" as a colonial construct. This is why I draw the distinction between the Lebanese entity and Lebanon as colonial things, as very modern conceptions of this geography.
Jabal Amel is this area in the south of what's called southern Lebanon. And I found a map from 1922, when the Sykes-Picot borders were still being negotiated, showing that the Zionists were okay with the borders in the north, but had more demands — part of those demands was to include the Litani River in the future Jewish state. This is obviously a key water resource — we've seen water be a key theme in the development of this state over the last 70, 80 years.
But yes, Moshe Dayan is this figure who has these quotes — like these early Zionist leaders, whose quotes dispel so much propaganda and so many myths, like Theodore Herzl saying it's a colonial thing, that Israel is "a rampart of Europe in the East."
Anyway, Moshe Dayan makes very clear, in the '50s — and this is a guy who becomes chief of staff of the Israeli army, who punctuates every major landmark of the Zionist colonization of Palestine, joins the Haganah in the '30s, is involved in crushing the '36 Palestinian rebellion, is part of the '48 war and the creation of the state of Israel and the Nakba, personally involved — in the early '50s, he says, very clearly: we should find a Lebanese army officer, a Christian officer or commander, and make him the viceroy of South Lebanon — or, he'll take care of Lebanon, and we'll annex everything to the Litani River.
And that's functionally what they did. In 1976, they found that Lebanese army officer — Saad Haddad. He defected from the Lebanese army to be the Israeli viceroy in the south of Lebanon, creating the occupation that lasted until 2000. And Dayan also, in 1974, has another quote — as Defense Minister, or I think he'd already become Foreign Minister at that point — "We will make all life in South Lebanon impossible."
Matthew Remski: Impossible.
Ayman Makarem: These are just very clear genocidal statements — statements of complete, I don't know how to describe it, madness, evil. I consider him one of the most evil men of history — not just one of the most evil-looking men, because of the eye patch, but the contempt, the hatred you can see in so many of his speeches and the words he's left. It's just so clear about how the Israelis view Lebanese sovereignty, and enacted — not just as speech, but what they eventually did do, and what they are still doing, to an extreme extent, now.
Matthew Remski: And I'm also connecting this with your previous account of how the Lebanese entity forms from this diversity of populations, patched together out of a kind of opportunism — that patchwork becomes a kind of intellectual target of Zionism, whereby they're able to say, oh, these people are kind of scattered and disorganized anyway — yes, they might be connected to land, but there's no real — I'm hearing echoes of "there's no real Palestinian people." I imagine they're able to say something similar about the Lebanese. Is that fair, and does that come out of the fact that Lebanon itself is this construction?
Ayman Makarem: And it's reflected in internal discourse in Lebanon as well — not just because Lebanese identity is so, I don't want to say fluid, but so scattered, that there's so much of a conception within Beirut that the south isn't actually part of it, isn't the core, isn't the "real" Lebanon.
And there have been calls, especially by right-wing Christian Maronite sectarian thinkers, to dissect the country. This goes back even to the '60s and '70s — the Phalange, one of the main and oldest political parties in Lebanon, very right-wing, fascist, Maronite Christian right-wing — who have a great deal of affinity with Zionism and the State of Israel, because they see Lebanon as inherently a Maronite supremacist state, as Israel is a Jewish supremacist state. There are the same issues of demographics, and it's still reflected somewhat in discourse today — there's this notorious video of a girl talking about negotiations and peace deals with the Israelis, saying, "yeah, they party like us."
It's a bit difficult. I'm currently reading a lot about identity politics and how it's been subject to elite capture. But there's this interesting thing where ultimately all race is an invention and a tool of domination — but there is strength that, let's say, Black people in the United States have in identifying with their Blackness and unifying — not this easy thing of "just stop thinking about race," but it is something that can be exploited. It's the same thing with Marxism — the proletariat is an invention of the bourgeoisie, and ultimately, in a future classless society, there won't be a proletariat, because we're not actually unified by this. But it's a point of unification, of strength.
With Palestinians specifically — and I regret I didn't mention enough how intimately tied the history of Lebanon is with Zionism, because of how tied it is to the whole region, including Palestinians — there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon now, and our fates are intimately tied. There's always been this contradiction, with a lot of us who are opposed to nationalism, but in the face of Palestinian nationalism — as in the case of a lot of anti-colonial struggles that use nationalism as a form of power — because we are intentionally, by colonial forces, dissected and fragmented. If we have this clear sense of self, of identity, of belonging to the land, and to each other, and to a shared history, it's a site of struggle in and of itself.
So it's always been this contradiction, where nationalism, in a colonial context, is quite useful and powerful — obviously very dangerous, especially in the Global North among colonial powers — but then also, in postcolonial situations, that nationalism often comes back to bite you, as in the case of Algeria, I think.
Matthew Remski: I mean, relatedly, the name of Hezbollah gets thrown around these days like the name of Hamas, and both groups are complicated and contradictory. As we watch Israel continue its occupation and destruction of southern Lebanon, what should antifascists around the world understand about Hezbollah — about its policies and tactics, its relationship with working people, and its own vision of the future?
Ayman Makarem: Right, there's obviously a lot there I won't be able to get through fully. I'll say, because I've already set it up, that in the early '70s a lot of members of the Shia community, especially in the south, were joining left-leaning groups like the Communist Party, to overthrow the sectarian and oligarchical system that was oppressing them. With the advent of the Israeli occupation — starting in '78, really kicking off in '82, with the destruction of the Lebanese left by both Israel and Syria — I always note this is very important: in 1976, Hafez al-Assad invades Lebanon to back the Christian far right, to attack the PLO and the Lebanese left, and ultimately crush it. And what they couldn't crush, Israel crushed.
In '78, there starts to be this rise of guerrilla fighters, resistance groups like Hezbollah, like Harakat Amal — though that actually started a bit earlier. What these groups manifest politically, especially after the occupation ends and they kick the Israelis out, is that they get a seat at the table — the Speaker of the House position gets much more power than before, they get more representation in the army and elsewhere.
Hezbollah is very difficult to talk about — I talk about it very differently to different audiences, because I'm aware the nuances are lost on a lot of people, and I do hold very critical opinions about them. I know their history — especially their involvement in the Syrian war, which was a major departure from their stated goal of resisting Israel, becoming instead about "protecting the axis of resistance."
But chronologically, it's important to note: Hezbollah was instrumental in liberating the south in the '80s and '90s, with May 2000 being Liberation Day — I think May 21st, I'm not sure of the exact date, my mind is jumbled. They then continued to exist — a group obviously sponsored by Iran, whose main thing is resisting Israel. Then the occupation ends, the Israelis withdraw, but Hezbollah claims there's this one territory — Shebaa Farms, which some claim is actually Syrian territory, but is said to be Lebanese — and to a lot of people, this is a way Hezbollah prolongs its raison d'être: they're here to liberate the south, and the south is not fully liberated.
They then enter Lebanese politics directly — there are Hezbollah parliamentarians. They also become very important in society and communities. It's important to note — not a lot of people know this — that an important way the sectarian system in Lebanon upholds itself is through a clientelist model: people affiliated with a certain party get positions in public office, jobs, food, security. I remember when COVID vaccines were rolling out, they were first distributed on a sectarian basis — my friend got vaccinated before most people because the political party his family was associated with was distributing it in that area. There's a very material thing kept within a certain sect, and this is a big part of what Hezbollah does too, for the Shia community and those affiliated with it. They've integrated quite a lot into civil society — healthcare workers, and so on.
So it's hard for me to explain what someone's position on Hezbollah should be, especially because right now I'm in a bit of a messed-up situation, because one of my biggest critiques of Hezbollah for the last 20-some years is that they claim resistance and do completely other things.
My main example — case in point — 2023, the summer leading up to October 7th, the main priority of Hezbollah — Nasrallah gave two speeches about this — was the gays. There was a moral panic sweeping Lebanon about homosexuality, to the point it became ludicrous — people were demanding rainbow cakes be removed from certain bakeries. This was a cross-sectarian thing — I talked about Jnoud al-Rab at the beginning, these Christian groups, but there were also Sunni petty militias, Shia groups including Hezbollah. Nasrallah gave two speeches where he talked about "the gays" as part of a Western conspiracy to weaken our men and infiltrate our society, etc.
This was a long period of just absolute madness — claiming you're doing this in the name of resistance against Israel, and then beating up gays, or entering Syria — which I know is a much bigger, complicated geopolitical thing, but I think it was a major mistake. It was criminal, but it was also a strategic mistake, I think.
Matthew Remski: But regardless — was the function of the moral panic around queer people at the time about supposed community cohesion in service of resisting Israel? Was that the rationalization?
Ayman Makarem: Sort of, but the moral panic also expanded — it was about controlling women too, there was a whole thing about women wearing bikinis on the beach. The way it's argued goes back to Joseph Massad's concept of the "gay international," which has some merit, given a lot of the foreign funding and what that's done to the queer community and how we talk about it. But how they argue it — it's the same as with Black men in the United States — this idea that it's a bourgeois, white, colonial thing, foreign to us, brought in to weaken us and create new associations with the West.
But regardless, I do want to note — the reason I'm a bit messed up now, and don't talk that much against Hezbollah, even though I think we still need to be very critical, is that there is now an actual Israeli occupation of the south.
Matthew Remski: Right.
Ayman Makarem: And with it, in the last two years, there's a need for resistance, and the main political tendency —
Matthew Remski: — and who's organized —
Ayman Makarem: — who's already organized.
Matthew Remski: Yeah. Who's actually organized, who's armed, who actually can make a material stand, when we're talking about territories that, once lost, are probably very, very difficult to regain? Who's going to stand in front of bulldozers?
Ayman Makarem: Who's, yeah, yeah.
Matthew Remski: What a complex situation, when you realize the organized resistance force you have a lot of misgivings about, and that makes very odd and digressionary and perhaps self-serving decisions, is also the people who can stand on a front line.
Ayman Makarem: In a way I'd say self-harming. My main point about saying all that stuff about the summer leading up to October 7th is that they were not prepared for this war, in the way the Israelis had been doing nothing but preparing for it. The pager massacre — the Israelis introduced to the world this new technology of death, they'd been planning it for six years. And part of the way they were able to infiltrate Hezbollah's notoriously well-guarded security apparatus, to the point they got to Hassan Nasrallah himself, is because of Hezbollah's involvement in Syria — they had to share intelligence with militias, with the Syrian army, which is notoriously corrupt and inept, with the Russians, with the Iranians.
I really think they just weren't prepared. That's very obvious. And they didn't want this war — after opening their support front on October 8, 2023, they kept saying, we just want a ceasefire, we don't want to escalate. All the things the Israelis were pushing, they kept calibrating their answer, because they didn't want the actual war.
So there's a lot of serious criticism it gets from its own community about strategy — what is the strategy? And it's not clear, and they contradict themselves. Their main opponents, the Lebanese Forces — a political party, not to be confused with the Lebanese Armed Forces, the army — this is the anti-Hezbollah Christian right-wing party, whatever — they ran on the same list in the last municipality elections. Naim Qassem goes on television and says the Lebanese government should resign because of the obvious humiliation and failures of this open negotiation track with the Israelis — but there are still Hezbollah ministers in the government.
It's this kind of thing where — I really don't like the way people in the West do this campism, right? That Israel is obviously this horrendous, evil, colonial, fascist force, and thus anyone who stands in its way is uncritically good.
Matthew Remski: Right.
Ayman Makarem: And it neglects the fact that these are complex institutions that make a lot of decisions — it's not just guerrilla fighters, it's a political apparatus that makes often odd, contradictory, hypocritical decisions. I've seen people talk about wanting to read Hassan Nasrallah's speeches, as if he's a revolutionary — he wasn't. He didn't even claim to be. I find this very frustrating, almost infantilizing — this hero worship of some of these figures, without understanding how they actually fit. Hezbollah functions a lot like all the other sectarian parties in Lebanon. The only difference is that they engage in armed struggle, and that they're opposed to normalization with Israel. These are very important things, I'm not saying they're just —
Matthew Remski: — affects, or, especially in a world of reformist and liberal options, these are bottom-line positions — that if a certain sector of society holds them, it's very important they hold them. Being able to mount armed resistance — that's a thing.
Ayman Makarem: But honestly, I will say it's not contradictory to liberalism. I think in the West there's this idea that there's an opposition between liberalism and armed struggle — you can have both. And I think Hezbollah's economic agenda, the policies they push, is very much in line with the neoliberalism of Lebanon.
Matthew Remski: You've given a lot of time, and I think one last question would help round things up: you've said that in general, Lebanon needs the West to get their boots off our necks, and that solidarity has to become material, not just expressive, not just in podcast land. Do you have any advice for antifascist listeners specifically — what does understanding and solidarity actually look like right now, beyond posting and perhaps donating here and there?
Ayman Makarem: Right. I made a video a few weeks ago that I still stand by, and I don't think much has changed. Part of the emphasis of us doing this is that there are very few Lebanese voices being platformed on leftist podcasts, on alternative spaces, which I find deeply frustrating, because there's a lot to learn and to learn from.
I think curiosity is essential. I did this a lot for the Sudanese revolution, where I spent a lot of time not understanding, still engaging, but not coming in with preconceived notions — not "where's the proletariat," not "let's find the queer voices and just listen to them." I just listened — a lot of podcasts of, like, two Sudanese women talking to each other, a lot of references I didn't understand, a lot about the Sudanese dialect I don't understand. But it took a lot of almost immersive listening to just understand. I don't subscribe to a kind of identity politics where you have to be a certain identity to engage, but you have to have an actual understanding, a basis.
In terms of getting the boots off the neck — I think there's an obfuscation about how involved the United States and Europe are in this conflict. I have a lot of problem when people say Netanyahu dragged Trump into this war, or that Israel isn't an ally to the United States — because it lets the United States off the hook for its own imperialist domination and violence. And in Europe, no one talks about the European connection — so much trade with Israel, so much munitions from Germany and Italy and the UK, so much diplomatic support — even a European-wide boycott of products from illegal West Bank settlements can't get passed. I read a report just yesterday that the German secret service, even though it's technically not allowed under their system, destroyed Hezbollah munitions in the south of Lebanon.
So my advice — and this is how I talk about internationalism in general — there's a part of direct solidarity, a part of moral support, knowing there are people who care and have us in their minds. But there's this big problem with the idea that solidarity is a binary — either you're doing it or you aren't, either you're sitting at home doomscrolling or you're out in the streets demanding a ceasefire. I can't divorce internationalism and international solidarity from y'all doing your own work, in your own communities, your own countries. George Habash — a problematic figure, but one of the founders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — said, if you really want to help Palestine, fight your own regressive policies and politicians and governments. What's been revealed in the last two or three years, because of Palestine, in the West, is that you are not free, that you don't have democratic control of your societies — something visibly obvious and illegal, contrary to everything you've been told about your societies and states. "Never again," the motto of the post-WWII era — you're not able to do it.
I say this begrudgingly, but also just to clock the moment — what October 7th revealed, and the aftermath, was a kind of desperate breaking out of this thing, that they couldn't wait anymore, and that we'd all been sleeping on it. We're late. Once the genocidal war started, we could not stop it — no one in the West could stop it, because we are so disempowered. People in the Global North are not actually democratic, free people who can say, "no, we don't want to support this" — because your bourgeoisie are still in control, your politicians more aligned to the money-making industry, the arms industry, the diplomatic and direct lobbying from Israel.
So this is my main advice, and this is why I think a lot about internationalism from below. I'm less interested in people doing direct protests about "free Lebanon" — I'm much more interested in the actual work of building leftist movements that have teeth, that can actually gain power wherever they are, because they're also inspirations for others. Specifically, for me, in this context, it's about the people where these weapons are coming from — American weapons, dropped by American planes, with Israeli pilots. And, I mean, we can also talk about the Gulf, where there's zero democracy, not even the pretense of it. Russia, all these places that are so complicit in the system that is killing my people.
That's why I have a cynicism when I say you need to get your boots off our necks — because even though I acknowledge these aren't democratic systems, that your governments are acting outside of whatever, you are still benefactors of these systems. Complacency is complicity. We can't avoid the actual work of building grassroots movements that are liberatory, that don't just have demands for those in power, but aspirations for power themselves, to be able to actually affect the changes necessary to materially affect our lives in the Global South. I talk from a Lebanese perspective, but this is also the case for Palestinians, for Sudanese, for people in the Congo, for so many people in the Global South ravaged by direct imperialist violence and neocolonial economic exploitation.
Matthew Remski: Ayman, you've given such a lot of time and such great insights. I think your comment about how Lebanese voices have been left out of leftist spaces and podcasts, and that there isn't a lot of information out there — I think you've kind of answered that question, which is that it's not easy to learn about, and it's not given over to simplistic, campist rhetoric. It's not a story where it's utterly clear that there's simply imperialism and colonialism and some sort of axis of resistance unfolding in black-and-white terms. I really appreciate this next step in the internationalist project of understanding the complexity of how we're interconnected.
Ayman Makarem: Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, Lebanon is scary for people. I mean, for sure, six, seven years ago, when I had to learn about the Lebanese civil war, as a Lebanese person whose parents both grew up during the civil war, it was daunting. We'd heard stories, but it's like Game of Thrones — there's so many names, so many acronyms, so many parties, so many tendencies, so many turncoats — it's complicated.
And you're right — I always use Edward Said's way of framing this. He said several times that Palestine and its encounter with Zionism can be fit into a kind of simple narrative — obviously not very simple, but there is a clear, literal occupier and literal occupied. And then people in the diaspora are refugees. But there's also this long struggle for Palestinians making their case at the international level, for international solidarity — it's been the case for like 50 years that Palestine has been an international struggle, and that's part of the Palestinian initiative.
I think Lebanon's been divorced from that, largely because we have our own state, you know? So it is, I think, scary, but it's not unknowable. Just to understand the civil war, or get a bit of understanding — there's a documentary by Al Jazeera Arabic, from around 2000, 2001, it's 15 parts, each episode 40 minutes. This is a thing I always had — "I need to watch that at some point." I've watched it three times at this point. I've screened it — I did a kind of film screening thing on Zoom, invited people to watch it with me. And that's just the civil war, but everything, all the sins, whatever.
I think there's a fear — when you want to talk about Palestine, you get a Palestinian, there's a clear "don't center Israeli voices unless they're—" I don't know, there's a couple people who "get it." But for Lebanon, I think there's a fear that they don't know who these people are, what the actual position is. Just one little example — there's this group called the SSNP, formally part of the axis of resistance, an ally of Hezbollah. I've seen people platform them like they're some of the good guys fighting the bad guys. And I have this very unfortunate thing I keep having to do, where I'm like — do you know what SSNP stands for? Do you know it's the Syrian Social Nationalist Party? Did you know the founder, Antoun Saadeh, was a literal fascist? Did you know what they did in 2008? Do you know about the thuggery?
Matthew Remski: We are swimming in information, and we are completely ignorant in very large sectors of our political knowledge.
Ayman Makarem: It's scary to have a guy who seems like he's on the — I also really don't like the phrase "the right side of history," it gives this Star Wars fantasy of whatever. But, so, yes — I don't actually think Lebanon is that scary. I think if you want to learn, you have to spend time learning, you have to read a lot — not just one book, or one speaker, and there are many different claims. It's a small country with a lot of different communities, some are notoriously reactionary, and for the most part a lot of it is complicated, because it's a country drenched in blood, a history full of tears. But that lack of unified narrative also makes it difficult for people to access, because there's so much internal disagreement.
Matthew Remski: But it also, I think, helps people focus on — well, who actually are the workers, who stand to lose most in any encounter with power. In a way, the complexity of the political story also brings the fundamental question of liberation for working people back to the fore.
Ayman Makarem: I hate to say it, but for the most part, if you're listening to a Lebanese person speak in English on a podcast, they're not part of the working class in Lebanon. Lebanon also doesn't have a working class in this traditional sense, it's very informal — I think 80% of workers in Lebanon work in a small business with five or fewer employees, aren't in a union. A lot of them are Syrian migrants, a lot are East African migrants under a functional system of, like, slavery. It's very difficult, and this is why I keep trying to bring it to class, but at the moment it's very difficult to really bring about an actual discourse on class, especially because we're still in the situation of imperialist violence.
My introduction into organizing was with migrant domestic workers, invisibilized under any political program — Hezbollah, the FPM, Kataeb, the PSP. No one is saying that these 300,000 women who are the backbone of the economy — cleaners, cooks, helpers in the back rooms of all these small businesses, the only reason these small businesses are able to function — are completely invisibilized. So I try to constantly talk about the class war in Lebanon, but most people are so focused on the regional war, and I understand why — it's hard to think about how all these political parties are complicit in an economic system that's screwing over most people. The economic collapse of the last six, seven years has been a function of class war against the entire population. That might be a bit of an obfuscating answer, only because the most important knowledge is very difficult to come by.
Matthew Remski: Well, because it's local knowledge —
Ayman Makarem: But even invisibilized at the local level. There are some people focused on it, but we're very far removed from having any socialist analysis of working people in Lebanon — who I'll also say include a lot of lumpenproletariat, people on the margins, especially because of the economic collapse. There was a period where people were literally taking metal off power lines to sell. This is a crumbling, crumbling society.
Matthew Remski: Ayman, thank you so much for helping my listeners understand a little bit about this period of history.
Ayman Makarem: I hope I did help.
Matthew Remski: Yeah, absolutely helped. I'm going to make sure all your materials are linked in the show notes. I wish you peace and safety and good mental health as you continue to study all of this.
Ayman Makarem: Thank you. In a way, studying this weirdly is helpful, because I feel like I'm taking it head-on. But yes, thank you so much for having me. I really hope I was helpful. I really hope people go watch some of these videos, where I spend more time, it's more researched, there are notes within the videos. Thank you again so much for having me.
Matthew Remski: Thank you, Ayman.
Once again, a special thanks to Ayman Makarem for all of that difficult work. Links to all resources are in the show notes. I just think it's great that he ended with — if you want to help people in West Asia, or anywhere else, elect socialists at home. I think, amidst all of these difficult conditions and difficult stories, that's an actionable message.
Take care of each other.
