For all their vast differences, the most extreme or "pure" ideological movements are all defined by their intellectual rigidity and dogmatism. Nonetheless, their history reveals instances in which they move beyond pragmatism into an opportunism that carries them far from the "purity" of doctrine and its obligations. When the ideologues describe such moments as "adaptation,a tactic," or "the objective conditions not having ripened yet," they hasten to add that this is not an abandonment of their ultimate goals but a reinforcement of these goals.
Some explain this expedient contortion of ideas by the fact that the real priority is the survival of the organization itself, or of its regime, not in the purity of the doctrine. What matters most is a set of interests, resources, and bureaucratic rituals that safeguard their beneficiaries, permanence and influence.
Lenin, for instance, made immense concessions to "German imperialism" and its allies in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, and in 1921, he adopted the "New Economic Policy," which permitted private enterprise and market exchange. And in defiance of the radical enmity between Moscow and Berlin, the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact was concluded in 1939. Despite their contempt for "Asiatics," the Nazis granted the Japanese the title of "honorary Aryans" to justify their alliance.
Moreover, before the Holocaust became state policy, the Nazis struck the "goods for blood" deal with "degenerate" Jewish groups, a deal that profited their economy. The Khomeinist regime, for its part, was embroiled in the "Iran-Contra" with the "Great Satan;" despite its slogan "Neither East nor West," it tightened its military ties with communist Russia and its economic ties with communist China, and it backed "Christian" Armenia against "Shiite" Azerbaijan.
Hezbollah, as an offshoot of Khomeinist fundamentalism, has not broken with this pattern. After its founding years were tied to the establishment of an Islamic republic in Lebanon, Hezbollah took part in the 1992 elections and then broadened its participation in the political system. In 2006, it concluded the Mar Mikhael Understanding with the Aounist "collaborators." It offered a series of contradictory justifications for its war in Syria, shielded corruption and defended its authority and figures, and in 2022, it agreed to the demarcation of the maritime border with the "cancerous tumor".
The followers’ betrayals of their supposed ideas are plainly more numerous and frequent than those of the followed; it must manage its own affairs and those of its patron at the same time. Add to this a general principle: the copyist fails to reach the level of what he copies. The Arab communists did exactly this in transposing Soviet communist material, as did Antoun Saadeh in transposing German Nazi material.
On the whole, it is not hard to notice the juxtaposition in Hezbollah's language of Islam, sectarianism, and Iranian sympathies, without the door being shut on Arabism and "the Arab nation," to say nothing of a considerable dose of Lebanonism (and of Bashir's 10,452 square kilometers) that this language has annexed over the past three years.
Thus, alongside its rigidity regarding weapons, and to some extent rituals and dress, there emerges a complete licentiousness where ideas are concerned. What could serve this licentiousness better than "postmodern" notions and the insistence that everything is relative and possible, making stern critiques only of European modernity and the Enlightenment? This is what set the hearts of Islamists, not Hezbollah's alone, aflutter with rapture at the teachings of Jean-François Lyotard, which bolstered the mesmerizeds’ defense of heritage and sharia. Those who demolish absolutes and recognize no objective truths can be harnessed in the service of absolute truths and sacred texts!
Hezbollah's former MP, Nawaf al-Moussawi, is now adding "postcolonial" teachings to his party's scrapbooks. In a recent interview, he warned us against reading Thomas Hobbes and Max Weber and urged us to read instead the post-colonialists, who teach that "talk of confining weapons to the hands of the state is despotism," because the state, in their view, belongs "to a Western context," and because society comes first and the state after it.
What escapes the speaker - and the omission is not an innocent one - is that his postcolonial friends were addressing the relationship between the colonizing "Western" state, with its violence, and the colonized societies, which, in their view, would remain colonized forever. The relationship they condemn strips the state of its "rule-of-law" quality, and strips its violence of any grounding in a social contract or democratic legitimacy. Here, we are dealing with a "structural, absolute, and racist" violence exercised by states "imposed from outside" and doomed to fail in applying Weber's model.
The only narrative borrowing from "postcolonialism" can offer, here, is that the Lebanese state is colonial, or subordinate to colonialism, or an "authority of tutelage," as Hezbollah and its partisans have taken to calling it after the party had basked in the bliss of national liberation under Emile Lahoud and Hassan Diab.
Society, meanwhile, is united, pure, and rallying around Hezbollah and its weapons in the face of colonialism and Israel. We know, regardless of this impoverished mythmaking, that society without a state is nothing but sect against sect, weapon against weapon, and the war of all against all, as Hobbes, whom Moussawi warned us against reading, explained.
In all likelihood, we stand to gain a great deal by setting aside the "thought" of Moussawi and his companions and rushing off in search of the works of Hobbes and Weber.
