Those who follow Facebook closely have noticed a new pattern: writers, historians, and critics have deleted past remarks (posts) glorifying "Al-Aqsa Flood" and praising the men who led the attack and the leaders of the Lebanese "support war,” as well as the posts categorically claiming that a resounding victory had been achieved.
This behavior is sad and frustrating because it speaks to how a segment of our elites is reacting to a defeat that may have been the largest and most wide-ranging the Arabs suffered in modern times. And so, the intention is to use the delete button to respond to defeats.
Those who recall how the defeat of the Russian Revolution of 1905 shook the country’s elites, the suffering of the German elite following Hitler’s rise, or what happened to the Japanese elite after Japan's defeat in World War II, should forget. In our case, the delete button does the job. Indeed, the segment of our elites in question chose to ignore its failure to understand how our societies are structured and what are our peoples’ aspirations, as well as the “West,” the “East,” Israel, and the resistance... As for the “line of history,” which these people had always assumed resides in their pockets, it fled to an unknown location. Because the delete button on our computers exempts us and our culture from greater and more important expunctions; this button was assigned the task of synergizing with our tradition of avoiding accountability to rescue individuals and allow them to save face. As a result, the “great historian” thus remains great, the “brilliant intellectual” remains brilliant, and life goes on at its leisure.
The fact is that historical turning points are usually born of technological advances, changes in popular aspirations and thought, and the lessons of lived experience. With this elite, on the other hand, these factors do nothing but put their sheer incompetence on display. They have war and resistance "in their blood," regardless of shifts in the world of technology, whatever the convictions and desires which arise and contradict those that had prevailed in the past (or were said to have prevailed), but also in isolation of an immense reservoir of experiences.
Indeed, "the people will always defeat the machine,” as had been repeated during the Vietnam War, does not always hold true, especially when “the people" are not a people in the sense implied in the slogan, that is, when they are united at heart and in their determination to fight a particular enemy. On top of that, there is reason to worry about anyone who assumes that Che Guevara, Sinwar, or Nasrallah capture the imagination of today's youths, or that the hearts of millions yearn for martyrdom in battlefields.
It seems the worst manifestation of this wretched thought is its approach to experiences. There is a large pile of wars and resistance movements in our region that have ended in disaster, but they have not precipitated a reexamination of those concepts. This is true of the notion of "Arab unity", for example, which has been collapsing since 1961, as it is for Soviet "socialism," which collapsed alongside a dozen countries a third of a century ago, or "national liberation" and its poor results... Even in the best of cases, we find only involuntary, incidental mention of the collapse of this or that iconic slogan, as though it were an action with no an actor behind it or an effect without implications.
When learning from technology, ideas, and experiences is avoided, and they are not reassessed or built upon as a result, dynamics that resist reality take hold of this miserable thought.
First, reliance on extreme wishful thinking that leads to the assumption that "obstacles and roadblocks" will not stand in the way of a promised victory, which is inevitable someday,
Second, the lost cause is associated honor, dignity, and authenticity, while those who lose faith in it and its alleged victory are associated with shame mixed with treason,
Third, the dynamic of mitigation or denial is activated, as we saw with Muhammad Hassanein Heikal dubbing the defeat of 1967 a “setback,” the former Syrian regime considering it a victory, or Hezbollah’s insistence that its "steadfastness" is a source of glory and pride.
Fourth, facts are attributed to a conspiracy or mythical hostile actions that target us, the eternal victims, alone, and we cry out "We have been forsaken,”
Finally, in Marxist circles that appoint themselves the "vanguard" and see their view of things as "scientific," allowing them to issue fatwas on “thought, history, and nature,” the problem is not the cause but those who bear it, because if they had been the ones who representing this same cause, there would have been no defeat.
Given these dynamics, there is of course no longer an official to blame for what he said and did. The official becomes the one to cast blame, as he is among the victims of the conspiracy and aggression himself.
In this soup of ideas, in which failure is buried silently- without reassessments, recognition, criticism, or declarations of responsibility- the door to the disasters’ repetition under other banners and slogans is kept open. After books and print newspapers had preserved our "blunders,” technology now allows for betting on deletion. Unfortunately, however, this is not a guaranteed bet. Deletions are nonetheless threatened by the screenshots that may have been captured by snooping enemies. Accordingly, the conflict between the delete button and the screenshot may have become the greatest challenge facing radical Arab culture in managing its "fateful wars."
