Some events may seem insignificant, yet it is precisely their insignificance that gives them importance. I am referring here to the “Arab Socialist Baath Party” in Lebanon changing its name to the “Hezb Al-Raya Al-Watani” (National Banner Party).
As for the first reason for its importance, it is that this is one of those rare phenomena that are only noticed when they die. This party, which was barely perceptible, was only noticed after changing its name.
The second reason for its importance is a paradox in the name itself. It may be unusual to encounter a body without a name, but encountering a name without a body seems almost impossible. True, militant parties have often tried to circumvent this impossibility, pushing their way over time with a blend of paranoia and deliberate misrepresentation: we have long seen a handful of young men come together and call themselves the “party” of this or that toiling class, the “vanguard” of some militant movement, or a “front” that encompasses a variety of mass movements and forces. However, it is also true that the Baath Party in Lebanon is more complicated than that. It is an accessory of an extremely serious phenomenon that ruled two prominent Arab countries for decades and went very far in their path toward destroying both. Nevertheless, the Baath Party rising to power in Lebanon has never been seen as a possibility in the collective awareness. It is not a good fit for the coups that Baathist officers had made a craft out of in neighboring countries. Another party, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, had the ingenious idea to try, spectacularly botching two farcical coup attempts, one in 1949 and the other in 1961. Moreover, the slogan of transnational Arab unity never managed to build a solid base of support keen on replacing their country with this unity, though some forces used the slogan of Arab unity to further their sectarian interests. Even so, the Lebanese Baath, for a whole host of reasons, never managed to speak for or take the lead in representing sectarian grievances, though it did always manage to tie itself to parties that did represent, or knew how to exploit, those grievances, like the Palestinian resistance, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime’s security apparatuses.
The party’s name, apparently its most significant feature, was changed, but this change was not accompanied by the appointment of a new leader to replace Mr. Ali Hijazi. Mind you, the latter has not managed to join the ranks of the Baath’s “immortal historic leaders,” who, truth be told, are neither better nor more virtuous than him in any way. How, then, did the party lose its contact with the changed conditions while its leader did not?
Incidentally, we must go over the link between the name and the tasks assigned to the bearer of that name. The choice of “Hezb Al-Raya Al-Watani” brings the “Al-Raya” magazine established by Syrian Baathists loyal to Salah Jadid before Baathists loyal to Hafez al-Assad, as is typical, violently seized it. However, those who opted for this name, which tells us very little and is the kind of name sports teams are given, present themselves and their name change in terms that no sports team would ever attribute to themselves. “The change came as a mature extension of our path, not a departure from it, in a step that reflects our awareness of the magnitude of this phase and its transformations, as well as our commitment to our natural place at the heart of the struggle and fight to defend the people, the homeland, and the nation. Today, we are not merely announcing a new name; we are announcing reinvigorated determination, a clearer vision, and a new start grounded in honest reassessment, not seasonal contingency.”
The party has suggested that its name has been changed to meet the current moment and its changes. Or, as they put it: “we are entering a new and different phase whose title is openness, encounter, and dialogue, without any relinquishment of our fundamentals.” To this end, it added the cedar to the flag of the Banner “because we are of the roots of this land; we came from the core of its history and pain.”
What the bearers of the new name do not want to acknowledge, however, is that nothing has done more to undermine “openness and encounter” among the Lebanese than Baathist “fundamentals”, and that the consolation prize of adding a cedar to the party’s flag is the stuff of lazy children cheekily seeking an excuse for not doing their schoolwork.
The whole thing, in the end, has become comic material made even more ridiculous by the fact that other Baathists in Lebanon, led by former MP Assem Qanso, have vehemently rejected the decision to change the party’s historic name and publicly slandered those behind it. These are the same figures who had previously defected from Mr. Hijazi (or he defected from them), leaving observers to interpret the dispute as a race to cozy up to the “comrades” overseeing Syrian security services. However, while those clinging to the Baath name were more repugnant than those who have abandoned it, the humor in this farce remains mixed with a great deal of disgust that was engendered, just days ago, by the clip of the two “comrades,” Bashar al-Assad and Luna al-Shibl, sharing their views on the governance fundamentals, the Syrian people, and the world.
It remains that the most important thing, with regard to these unimportant phenomena, is that some have begun to change their names and others have shed their skin- and the best is probably yet to come.
As to a pretender having made false pretense- as the Baathist poet put it- and the “Baath” never cracking, those are different matters for another story.
