May 25, 2022 | Tablet

The Name of the Lebanese Play? The Aristocrats!

The country’s recent election was a masterpiece of counterfactual Kabuki theater—and there wasn’t a dry Western eye in the house
May 25, 2022 | Tablet

The Name of the Lebanese Play? The Aristocrats!

The country’s recent election was a masterpiece of counterfactual Kabuki theater—and there wasn’t a dry Western eye in the house

One of the most characteristic beliefs of Washington elites these days is that the true “meaning” of any particular event is always derived from large-scale “narratives” about headline topics like democracy, race, women’s rights, climate change, or criminal justice, which the particular case is supposed to illustrate. When the “narrative” contradicts the facts, it is the facts that are naturally expected to give way. What importance can a few stray facts possibly have next to the majesty and importance of a narrative that promises to end racism and war and save the planet?

To argue about whether yesterday’s hurricane was or was not an unusual weather event caused by burning carbon fuels in first-world countries is therefore to miss the point entirely: Facts don’t matter when confronted by the fierce urgency of a narrative beloved by the decent people who make policy in Washington. In this way, stories and parables that advance the priorities of policymaking elites become insulated from normal standards of proof. Instead, every piece of available evidence is selected to fit a predetermined pattern, which becomes reality in the minds of the narrative believers—who from the outside appear to behave suspiciously like members of a cult. What matters is that the narrative continue its progress through congressional committees that might appropriate funds that can be used to bribe local actors into shows of phony compliance that over time—who knows?—might even someday become real, too. Think of how true the narrative will be then!

In this way, even the most idiotic narrative, founded on the most absurd theories, can be gifted with a retrospective gloss of reality, as long as you don’t look hard at the facts. That is, until the entire house of cards collapses, as it did recently in Afghanistan.

Nowhere on the planet today is the gap between narrative and reality wider, and therefore under more constant pressure from elites in a wide range of countries, than in Lebanon, where the substitution of “narratives” for unpleasant realities may soon become the single largest component of the country’s GDP. Take the recent Lebanese elections, for example. The official results of the May 15 parliamentary elections had not yet been announced when English-language media reports declared the outcome to be a “major blow” to Hezbollah, the group that dominates that country.

Why? Because the fact-proof narrative in which there is a “country” called Lebanon that is separate from the control of Hezbollah naturally requires that result—and for the result to mean something. The election, the storyline went, showed that gains by reformist civil society and independent candidates reflected popular Lebanese discontent with the traditional political class. These anti-Hezbollah forces handed a stinging defeat both to Hezbollah and to the established parties, whom the people held responsible for the financial collapse in 2019. And in so doing these new representatives of the people manifestly weakened the terror group by stripping it of the majority it had held in parliament, which—in the narrative, at least—is a real institution through which power is distributed and exercised.

It’s a nice story, to be sure. It even makes internal logical sense. Unfortunately, it’s not real. In reality, which can be an unpleasant place to live—just ask any Lebanese who is not busy lobbying the Americans, the Saudis, the French, or other outside powers for cash to delay the collapse of their fictional “reality” for another month or two—Lebanon is an Iranian-run satrapy which provides a forward operating base for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran, which directs Hezbollah. That’s reality.

But it’s not just that all these words and categories like “parliament” and “elections” and “political parties” are meaningless in the Lebanese context—even on its own terms, the story is untrue. There was no such election result, either before or after the votes were counted—an action that in real-world terms was itself all but meaningless. What we’re dealing with here is messaging by Lebanese politicians and operatives in Beirut and Washington, D.C., which deliberately framed the supposed meaning of the outcome of this process for an international target audience that has invested in “the narrative” and might be persuaded to invest even more.

In quintessential Lebanese fashion, the purpose of messaging is to con the outside world, namely the United States and Saudi Arabia, into deepening their involvement and increasing their investment in Lebanon, on the basis of a narrative that allows everyone to avoid dealing with the local unpleasantness, which meanwhile only continues getting worse. The logic underlying this ploy is also characteristically Lebanese: If fate makes you bystanders of a tragedy in which you and your children and your neighbors are bound to be consumed, maybe you can alleviate your suffering for a moment or two by selling tickets to the play. The title of the play? “The Aristocrats Say That Hezbollah is Doomed!”

Lebanon’s latest round of bizarre counterfactual Kabuki theater started well before the election. After Lebanon collapsed financially in late 2019, there were popular protests that briefly expressed anger at the political class, which is composed of figures that have been around since the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s. Civil society groups also mushroomed and put forward equally numerous platforms for how best to address the deadly rot that is consuming the country.

Issues:

Issues:

Hezbollah Iran Iran Global Threat Network Iran-backed Terrorism Lebanon

Topics:

Topics:

Afghanistan Beirut Christianity Druze English France Hezbollah Iran Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Israel Jerusalem Joe Biden Lebanon Maronites Nabih Berri Riyadh Russia Saudi Arabia Shia Islam Syria Tehran Ukraine United States Washington Washington