A cultural war, the likes of which the country has not seen since the mid-1970s, is raging in Lebanon. Youths influenced by freedom movements across the globe, or who have lived in the West, or who feel that no one has the right to tell them how to think and love, or what to watch... have begun crying out in protest. In 2019, those voices were stifled, but the tragedies that followed have revived them.
The questions that are now turning into the theme of this clash encompass everything from movies to sexual practices, and George Soros to entertainment culture... And if the sound of artillery set off by political disputes never goes silent on our televisions, then these cultural disputes are providing the artillery with additional shells.
With that, some clarification is needed: this culture war is not being fought between sectarian or partisan groups who never budge on their positions. In fact, the same fanatical rhetoric we hear from this sectarian or political authority could be heard from another sectarian or political authority, and these two authorities could be hostile to one another or diverge on many fundamental questions.
In this sense, the culture war does not correspond to the sectarian-political war. We could, perhaps, even see the former as an occasion for one of the latter’s momentary truces or interruptions, especially since the most extreme parties in every sect always are leaning on what they believe to be common to all religions and values. This is precisely what the Lebanese Minister of Culture did recently, bringing all of the prophets together in himself and speaking in all of their tongues throughout his ongoing campaign against culture.
However, the recognition does not negate Hezbollah’s particular, distinct and multi-faceted responsibility. It drew the lines of the field on which this game is being played. In addition to being a party in which the man of the sect and the man of politics are one and the same, it sets the agenda for Lebanese public affairs in general, leaving others almost exclusively reacting to its actions. Adding to its political and military worlds, it has completed drawing its cultural world.
The party is a model of a parallel society inflated by its ritual and sectarian particularities, leaving it perpetually caught in a latent culture war. Spending half an hour watching its broadcaster, Al-Manar, is enough to ascertain that it pushes out and rejects anyone with a different culture or preferences. Even the leftists and “anti-imperialists” who support Hezbollah’s resistance, got a kicking on the values front. Like every cohesive and closed doctrinal structure, it has its definitive answers, usually announced by its secretary general, for all the questions of temporal life, as well as matters of religion.
In all likelihood, the mood of Iranian officials has become more inclined to this exceptional gloominess after the murder of Mahsa Amini, women, the veil and sexual violence against women becoming central themes in Iranian politics, and the spike in repression whose blade strikes intellectuals and filmmakers. “He who teaches me a letter becomes my master,” as the Arab saying goes.
Moreover, Hezbollah is stoking the climate of cultural tensions with its rhetoric. In fact, it is stoking two climates that form the distant or immediate background for what is going on: the first, combatting normalization, is admonishing, and the assiduous toil exerted to this end knows no limits or restrictions; the second is opposing the West and its values, and firmly linking the West’s culture and Western policies that Hezbollah and its proponents oppose. Both these climates have been filled with toxicity.
There is another reason why the party bears greater responsibility than the other reactionaries: the climate of tension, fear, and polarized mobilization stirred by its arms does not create an ideal environment for novel and enlightened ideas. It pushes every other sect and community to vomit the worst and most backward things inside it, as amid the sectarian apprehensions, the verdict of the sect’s men carries more weight in determining right from wrong and the permissible from the impermissible.
However, the war on culture and freedoms could cost a country like Lebanon more than it has any other country. Without its universities, publishing houses, media, cinemas, theaters, and television stations..., Lebanon would lose its wings, not merely economically, but even in terms of its meaning.
Anti-intellectualism, under these circumstances, is nothing less than a catastrophe added to the calamities of our economy, politics, judiciary, education, and what remains of our coexistence, that we have endured and are enduring. Indeed, it would have been bizarre for culture to be spared by this wanton onslaught destroying everything else in its path.
However, because of their awareness of this truth and their sensibilities toward it, those who ruled the country before 1975 rebuffed the idea of a state ideology imposed from above. Before we became infected with the glorification of resistance, as well as the Baathist (among others) idea of “Lebanon’s Arabness,” we had no sacrosanct icons, nor did the political system allow itself to be reflected culturally. The fact is that the leading figures of what was dubbed an “isolationist culture” were subjected, during the “isolationist” era”, to criticism that was largely polemical or defamatory. This is true of Michel Chiha, Kamal Al-Hajj, Charles Malek, the Rahbani brothers, and others.
As for today, the sacrosanct continues its charge, and freedoms honorably remain steadfast.
