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A network of decentralized activist groups and NGOs provided food, medicine and care for the victims of the blast. These were the same people who provided mutual aid during the pandemic and economic collapse and formed the nucleus for various legal and advocacy cooperatives that challenged the state’s austerity measures and defended protesters in court. A nascent, decentralized movement of self-governance quietly emerged from the cracks of the decaying sectarian state. Yet even this failed to mature into an ambitious political project. When it came to national politics, many activists retreated into the Shehabist default position of expecting the state to serve as guarantor of national unity, the only viable safeguard against sectarian disintegration. 

I became politically active during the early days of the Arab Spring, radicalized by fellow—predominantly leftist—anti-sectarian activists and organizers. These people, many of whom I call my colleagues today, strongly believed that the system of political sectarianism in Lebanon could be dismantled if we could only somehow reach the levers of power and enforce some form of social democracy—a vision of political life where state resources and services would be allocated equitably across the country, regardless of any confessional affiliation

the rationale of many vocal opponents of sectarianism eerily mimics the basic idea that took hold within Shehab’s administration—that fixing the country’s problems was a matter of having the right competent people manning rehabilitated state institutions.

The reality is that we—the anti-sectarian, broadly progressive political activists—have been consistently losing battles for more than a decade. In 2013 and 2014 we failed to prevent parliament from unconstitutionally extending its mandate. In 2015, when Beirut sank in trash, our protests shook the government’s resolve but ultimately stopped short of achieving any concrete long-term solutions. The Syrian revolution next door, which many of us saw as our own, escalated into a bloody civil conflict where Lebanese, Iranian and Russian forces killed thousands of Syrians to help keep Bashar al-Assad in power. The defeat of the Arab Spring nearby reverberated negatively in Beirut as spaces of protest, contention and civil liberties shrank, particularly as political elites and the Lebanese police state went after journalists and activists. In 2018, despite a somewhat more organized presence, opposition groups failed to break through in the parliamentary elections. And finally, our own uprising, which erupted in October of 2019, hastily hailed by many as the “end of the civil war,” was crushed only a few months later under the weight of state repression and sectarian militia violence. These disappointments were then followed by a global pandemic that crippled any form of organizing, the Beirut port explosion of August 2020 and an economic collapse that wiped out most people’s savings.

this was not a uniquely Lebanese story, but one that rippled out across the postcolonial world. The head of the French think tank that Shehab hired to draw up Lebanese development plans was a Dominican priest and former naval officer named Louis-Joseph Lebret, who had earned his developmentalist pedigree designing similar schemes in Senegal and Brazil. The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sent a statistician to help reorganize the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture’s statistics department in 1959, who not long after left for a similar mission in Peru. The FAO then chose Lebanon as their Near East headquarters, where agricultural experts from around the region would gather for training. For a brief period in the mid-twentieth century, Beirut had become a crucible and testing ground of global development.

Many of the state’s institutions and agencies remain barely staffed today, which has driven governmental function—already crippled by negligence and rampant corruption—to a halt.

Everyday urban life has turned into a struggle to provide for basic needs. Informal strategies have proliferated to meet those needs, and all across the country regional markets for goods and services—not just gas but also food, medicine and other essentials—have sprouted and disseminated through word of mouth, social media websites, texting services and local gatekeepers. In the vacuum left by a state no longer capable of guaranteeing security for its citizens or regulating the distribution of necessities, a space has opened up for reconfiguring social and political ties, particularly among city-dwellers, away from the established sectarian status quo

I was living in a place and a moment where everything seemed ad hoc, where a travesty lurked at every corner and the existing social contract was lit aflame. A country? More like a set of elements somehow still stitched together, decaying into oblivion.

for the year I’ve spent back home, I’ve been witnessing things cease to exist, fully aware that the worst is still to come. I find myself mourning something that isn’t quite dead yet, but that was never actually alive either.

On May 15, 2022, Lebanon held its most recent round of parliamentary elections. Just 49 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot, according to the Ministry of Interior. Buoyed by diaspora voters seeking to punish Lebanon’s rulers, low voter turnout and a political class reviled for causing the worst economic crisis since the country’s founding, thirteen anti-sectarian candidates won, unseating established sectarian politicians and household names. Though their success was a bright spot in a dark time, it remains to be seen what this heterogeneous opposition bloc can achieve in a deadlocked parliament.

Any oppositional political incursion in Lebanon will have to be resoundingly inclusive, democratic and respectful of the agency of everyone involved, not solely because this is the most morally correct approach but, more importantly, because this might be the only way for us to start imagining a political movement robust enough to challenge sectarianism.

Whereas entertainment channels that do not offer news content can attract a multisectarian and multiethnic viewing base, news channels generally draw upon a particular ethnic or sectarian segment of the population whose coverage it favors, further reinforcing the political divisions that already afflict the media environment. 

 “The Ninth Studio” does not rely for its success on an enormous budget or sophisticated technical capabilities. Rather, it tends to deal frankly and directly with issues that concern the ordinary audience, and to do so with a high degree of independence. “The Ninth Studio” tends to focus on issues pertaining to the corruption and inefficiency of governmental institutions, and generally offers scathing criticism of Iraqi officials, without indulging in the discourse of sectarian prejudice.

Despite the absence of sectarian language on “The Ninth Studio,” and the difficulty of discerning any sectarian bias in its rhetoric, Iraq's Media and Communications Commission temporarily shut down its office in September on the pretext of it being a threat to public peace. Most likely, this decision came in response to governmental pressures, and as a consequence of the show's earlier criticism of the commission.

The problem is that neutral media organizations usually lack sufficient financial support, and are exposed to pressures by officials who are unhappy with their content, without being able to rely on independent institutions capable of defending them.

social media compels users to flock to the most popular point of view for fear of exclusion

an element of caution exists on the Lebanese blogosphere when it concerns political debate

to argue that Lebanese bloggers generally avoid debating Lebanese politics is to narrow the definition of what is deemed political

Social media may have constrained political debate in some corners, but overall it has expanded discourse and given new meaning to what is considered political in Lebanon. Political debate is no longer confined to the daily ritual of politicians insulting each other for a greater slice of the pie, whilst the country wallows in corruption, high unemployment, and a lack of basic services. Indeed, Lebanese citizen journalists have broken the limits of political discourse originally defined by politically engineered mass media and the country's sectarian system. Lebanese bloggers may not be responding to Hariri's rally as they have moved beyond the sectarian nature of Lebanese political life, and have grown increasingly cynical of local leaders who evoke the universal slogans of freedom, reform and democracy. Liliane's and @frencheagle's responses reflect the widespread disappointment in the failure of the 2005 “Cedar Revolution” to engender real change, and have thus lost faith in the political system altogether. A positive development out of the failed Cedar Revolution has been the emergence of online activism in tackling the issues Lebanon's sectarian elites refuse to entertain. There are blogs now on a plethora of issues ranging from migrant workers, gay rights, and women's rights, to local governance and poor basic services.

perhaps it is indeed an indication that the Lebanese blogosphere has fallen deaf to old-fashioned Lebanese political rhetoric, and is in the process of defining a new political landscape that transcends sectarianism and nepotism

The demonstrators still chant “peaceful, peaceful” but some now also carry sticks of wood and steel

“new Arab public sphere”

two distinct political positions that characterized Arab politics in the period up to the Arab Spring uprisings in 2010-11: an approach on Al Jazeera sympathetic to Islamist groups across the region and more conservative pro-Western approach in Saudi controlled media

The Arab uprisings came at the moment of a third stage in the development of modern Arab media: that of social media

bitterly contested conflicts between youth-driven protest movements and governments who were caught absolutely unawares due to a variety of factors: close cooperation with Western governments, elaborate security apparatus and the arrogance that comes with being in power unchallenged for so long

Media in the post-Spring Arab world currently has been targeted by the forces of the state in their counter-revolutionary pushback

Since the military coup that removed the elected post-uprising government, the Egyptian government has used traditional preferred instruments of television and print media for propaganda and control

Gulf governments have focused on social media in particular

Another important feature of Arab media is how it has become an arena for the Sunni-Shia sectarian schism

media has been revamped and brought back into action as one element of a multi-faceted campaign involving the law, religion, surveillance and forces of coercion to face a range of internal and external enemies seen as challenging the very survival of governing elites. New media were momentarily a weapon against these entrenched systems of rule; for now, the rulers have mastered the new array of technologies and are back in command

“Shiite channels have been operating for years and have not caused strife or crises that Salafist channels ignite. This is because Shiite channels do not incite to violence and bloodshed and do not declare others to be infidels.”

Human rights activist and lawyer at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, Ahmed Ezzat, told Deutsche Welle in 2012 that the law does not criminalize embracing or promoting the Shiite faith. Shutting down any Shiite channel or prosecuting any promoter of the Shiite ideology would be based on a broad application of the law against blasphemy of religions, he said.

“The legal criteria in shutting down any station would be based on its content and on whether or not it is viewed as blasphemy or incitement against any religion or belief."

“some Salafist channels, such as al-Hafez and al-Nas, were shut down in 2013.”

“What is happening is a part of the chaotic media and religious discourse. There are 121 religious channels broadcasting via Nilesat, including more than 60 Shiite channels, some of which explain Shiite ideas in a moderate way," he said. "Others are extremist and incite against the Sunni sect. Sunni channels respond also to such incitement with counterincitement. Thus, all extremist channels — be they Shiite or Sunni — need to be taken down.”

many Shiite channels are not at loggerheads with the state institutions, but rather with some Salafist parties.