The question frequently asked by Syrians today is: Who dares to practice politics in areas controlled by the Damascus government? The answer is clear: only those who offer absolute loyalty and obedience to the authority of religious fundamentalism can survive. Thus, politics is reduced to its own negation: no debate, no organization, no assembly—only naked obedience presented as a condition for survival. In Syria, the absence of the state and the destruction of society do not open a space for freedom; rather, they produce authority in its most primitive form: the authority of the sacred, merged with naked violence.
Politics, in its deepest sense—as Hannah Arendt suggests—is not merely about managing authority or calculating power, but about the act of being present in the public space, the act of self-expression, and the capacity to start anew. Modern man is not merely the “economic animal,” as Marx interpreted him, but above all a political being—one whose humanity is realized only through participation in shaping the shared world. When man is stripped of this capacity, he ceases to be a citizen and is reduced to “bare life”—a biological existence without dignity, a body without a voice.
The country called “Syria” is not merely experiencing an ongoing civil war or a recycling of traditional tyranny; it is a “global laboratory of despair,” where politics is not only dying but being buried, yet it reemerges in its most intense forms. What we witness is not a society of citizens engaging in dialogue but bodies being managed, counted, and monitored—biological units confined within the equation of obedience. The stark paradox is that the absence of politics is not its opposite but its culmination: the denial of politics transforms into pure politics—Arendt’s “banality of evil,” as she described it.
Not Fascism, but Totalitarianism
In this context, it becomes clear why religion emerges as the sole monopoly over collective mobilization and sacrifice. As cultural critic Boris Bodin explains, religion today is not merely an alternative to politics; it is the bare expression of a post-political, post-secular society, and perhaps—in Syria’s case—even post-morality and post-simple everyday customs. The collapse of traditional ties and secular mechanisms did not empty the public sphere; rather, it filled it with a fundamentalist religious version of politics. Fundamentalism here is not a political instrumentalization of religion; fundamentalism is politics, embodied in religion itself.
Syria reveals that what appears as the end of politics and the imposition of a collective Sunni religious commitment is, in essence, the most extreme manifestation of politics as a totalizing force of negation, whereby a single social fabric is imposed that eradicates all possibilities for secular pluralism. Here, we recall Hannah Arendt’s concept of “totalitarianism”: a power that does not merely dominate state institutions but penetrates the minutiae of daily life, controlling individual destiny and private affairs at every level. However, in Syria’s case, totalitarianism not only erases class distinctions in favor of a monolithic nationalist ideology but also crushes social and cultural pluralism entirely in favor of the idea of an “invented Sunni Islamic nation.” This distinguishes it from fascism, which, despite its violence, remains confined within the boundaries of state control, whereas totalitarianism consumes both state and society alike.
The dominant feature of the Syrian scene—following the collapse of Assad’s tyranny and the rise of the jihadist version as an alternative authority—is the total absence of a secular social contract. The inclusion of Sharia as the sole reference in the interim constitution signifies a return of governance to the sacred sphere and the eradication of the social contract from its roots. Syrians—deprived of politics since the birth of the artificial nation-state—are confined within a pen of silence where political expression is forbidden, allowing only a “sensation of survival.” This is the Hegelian moment that establishes the relationship between slave and master, where fear of death does not yield freedom but total submission.
Thus, Syria becomes a stark model of totalitarianism: a regime that not only dominates but confiscates politics at its very roots. On the lips of totalitarian Islamists in Damascus echoes Louis XIV’s famous phrase: “I am the absolute state,” accompanied by the labeling of people as friend or enemy, fueled by an obsession with internal enemies—Kurds, Alawites, Druze, liberals, civil Islamists, and women in general. This inevitably leads to a sequence of genocides, massacres, indiscriminate violence, and demographic engineering.
This is no longer a transient event; it has become the very language of power. The message is clear and unambiguous: either accept voluntary slavery or be excluded from life itself. What is presented as a choice is in fact the absence of choice, as survival itself becomes a tool for subjugation and absolute control, the defining norm of life in Syria under totalitarian rule.
Politics is not practiced in a vacuum, nor can it be confined to idealistic notions. It cannot be reduced to expert authority or the isolation of people from decision-making, even if today’s notion of “post-politics” suggests this. Politics is practiced only in the open public sphere, through collective gatherings and rational decision-making.
But faced with the tyranny of Islamist totalitarianism and the fragmentation of secular democratic forces—particularly their capacity for mobilization and action—Syrian identities have contracted, both internally and externally. Even if solace is found in the virtual world, that space quickly transforms from a promise of liberation and public debate into a toxic environment where dissenting voices are assassinated and moral destruction is waged through electronic trolls and the mouthpieces of the new Damascus authority. The result: politics is no longer possible; it has become impossible. What remains is mere management and control of bodies, not the participation of identities in shaping their own destiny.
The West and the Assassination of Politics
What is happening with the jihadist faction that claims to be transitioning into “institutional Islamism” is nothing but dark irony: it possesses none of the characteristics of modern institutionalism. The dominant jihadist militia mentality views the state as divine spoils after the “conquest of Damascus”—a conquest not born of divine inspiration but rather of regional and international settlements where interests and stakes converge. The greatest irony is that the West, which has long prided itself on its liberal values, is no longer willing to fight or die for them, thereby ceding the entire arena to a version of politics without politics, and governance without law.
Even more astonishingly, the West—especially the United States, which raised the banner of the “war on terror” to combat jihadist Islamism and all forms of political Islam that fueled this monster—ultimately found itself, along with its political envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, presenting the “Syrian jihadist base” as a reasonable option for governing a people who initially rose up seeking dignity and civil freedom. Here lies the painful truth: what was supposed to be eradicated has been presented as a “realistic” tool for governance. Once again, civil politics is being radically eliminated from its roots, while the jihadist enemy is transformed into an arm of international hegemony.
Thus, the jihadist faction has become more than just a de facto force; it has surpassed even traditional forms of political Islam in assassinating politics itself and placing Syrian pluralism on the brink of annihilation, all in the name of the “sacred.” Consequently, the illusions of a “transitional authority” have completely collapsed, and with them, the dreams of political life in Syria have evaporated.
For example, if a significant force outside the current regime were to call for a national conference encompassing the entire Syrian democratic spectrum, the almost certain result would be full-scale war and an explosion of all the hateful propaganda stockpiled over the years. Today, what is offered to the Syrian democratic camp is not only negotiation with jihadist totalitarianism in power but acquiescence to the eradication of the right to hope and political and societal pluralism. This scene fits Slavoj Žižek’s description of “shameless politics,” where Western diplomacy—from Tom Barrack to the European Commission and the United Nations—has become a performance devoid of any moral commitment in handling existential crises.
Even more troubling, the international community is promoting a new myth to Syrians: the necessity of cooperating with this “jihadi-totalitarian” regime in Damascus, hoping that its extremism will be softened by containment and control. Military, security, and diplomatic delegations flood in carrying a single message: cooperation with the existing authority is not to revive politics, engage with difference, or rebuild a social contract linking state and society. Rather, it is to buy time, strike regional and international deals, and manage chaos under the banner of “stability.” According to this logic, the doors of the United Nations are opened to the totalitarian Islamism variant, not Islam itself, as Syrian thinker Bassam Tibi emphasizes.
The Western camp—especially in its “Trumpian” form—and fragments of the liberal left mired in “Islamophobia” obsession are not seeking genuine political alternatives. Their prevailing idea is that a jihadist can become an “institutional” Islamist, formally accepting the idea of the state, thus being absorbed into the realist international game founded on the Westphalian doctrine: states recognizing each other regardless of their internal nature.
However, what we see in founding documents—such as the preamble to the interim constitution, which imposed “Islamic legitimacy”—and the massacres and violations we witness, expose this lie. This Syrian variant of “jihadi-nationalist totalitarianism” cannot be tamed or reformed: it is utterly defeatist abroad but barbaric and bloodthirsty at home.
These groups may accept all formal rituals of normalization with Israel, the Gulf, Turkey, Russia, or the West—but they will never accept the idea of modern politics: a shared life based on public space, law, and pluralism. On the contrary, they will resist anything related to the practice of politics because they understand that real politics means the end of their monopoly on sacred violence and the beginning of their accountability as a group.
Practically, this path serves the Israeli project to cement the idea of “Greater Israel’s security,” while reinforcing Turkey’s and the Gulf’s stakes in maintaining Sunni political Islam, with all its exclusionary forms, as a dominant force. The result is that politics—what Arendt describes as the act distinguishing humans from animals—becomes a crime to be eliminated before it can arise. What is presented as a step toward stability is nothing but the abolition of politics itself—the abolition of the possibility for Syrians to be free human beings in a public space.
Yes to Pessimism, But…
Contrary to what some Syrians naively believe—a kind of collective self-consolation—that the international community is about to change its stance toward the jihadist regime in Damascus, this view is usually just another illusion. Cautious optimism and tracking diplomatic statements are exercises in self-deception; pessimism looks like the only valid prescription for understanding the Syrian reality.
Syrians today endure a double shock: the homeland has been reduced to a mass of ash, and at the same time they have been stripped of the most basic human right—the right to political expression, organization, and assembly. Unless you are part of the “Syrian jihadist rabble” that has installed itself as the authority, you are automatically a potential victim in the heart of the capital or any other city. Under the pressure of survival, most Syrians become scattered crowds, captive to despair, while the phenomenon of the “rabble” reappears: a hybrid mix of deprived, marginalized classes and elites emptied of meaning, carrying out political killings and the symbolic assassination of any voice that calls for public values.
In this scene, any real resistance seems conditional on international or regional backing—an almost impossible requirement, aside from rare cases such as Suwayda after the spectacular massacres, or the partial protection afforded by the international coalition in parts of northeastern Syria. But even these examples are no guarantee in the medium or long term; they are like perforated umbrellas that create an illusion of safety. Beyond them, the only fate awaiting Syrians is the cycle of terror: murder, rape, arrest, kidnapping. Thus the uniquely vulgar Syrian wheel turns, where politics is murdered before it is born and the human being is reduced to a biological organism struggling to survive.
Yet despair does not necessarily mean surrender. Despair as a catalyst for action outside the prevailing logic means recognizing that the regime or the status quo cannot be changed by conventional rules, which obliges us to think of unconventional means of resistance. In other words, resistance arises not from optimism but from despair—despair that reveals the limits of the possible and converts fear and resignation into the energy of revolt. This is precisely why we must return to “point zero,” changing our perspective on reality entirely; thus despair becomes the engine for searching beyond this hopeless situation.
Recently voices that once committed themselves to the idea of a homogeneous nation-state—rejecting the philosophy of difference as a residue of ossified ideologies and refusing legal and cultural recognition of Syrian diversity—have begun, in the face of internationally and regionally backed Islamist totalitarianism, to entertain decentralization, federalism, protected enclaves, and even independence under international protection. This is not a separatist impulse so much as a last-resort choice to defend what remains of human life.
However, these calls, however ethically sound, remain mere words unless accompanied by multi-level resistance: collective self-defense, political practice, agitation and mobilization, and the use of a “liberatory sacred” narrative to counter the “authoritarian totalitarian sacred.” In short, resistance requires practicing every form of unprincipled pragmatism necessary to keep core goals alive—the right to life, hope, and pluralism—exploiting every available means to achieve and defend them.
Some areas of Syria, such as the northeast and Suwayda, still preserve themselves and experiment with alternative models, trying to protect a space for life and freedom amid the chaos. The real challenge is not that these areas remain isolated, but that the scattered networks be linked to actual capacities on the ground instead of remaining isolated exile structures, which become empty mirrors of what could have been a living project of resistance and independent politics.
If shared Syrian life has any meaning today, it lies in inventing new forms of political existence—what Michel Foucault called “the defense of society.” This can be realized through self-administration and renewed structures that both penetrate reality and protect themselves. That cannot be achieved without abandoning cheap transactional politics and excessive opportunism, replacing them with radical secular courage and genuine attachment to ordinary people: a Leninist pragmatism and the organic-intellectual courage Gramsci described.
Perhaps most importantly, elites must free themselves from the stain of superiority and racism and commit to public values that require sacrifice and bodily risk. They must break from the liberal bent that fixates on “the pleasures of small life,” as Foucault put it. In their present form these tools disable rather than empower, and they distract from promoting civil liberty and building common life around public issues—especially under repressive conditions and social disintegration.
Only the ability to make resistance and politics a living, rooted idea can produce the “surgical breakthroughs” Syria needs. The contradiction is now plain: society in all its diversity confronts Islamist totalitarianism. It is no longer a matter of reform or settlement but of direct, surgical operations that reopen space for political action before it is finally buried. In short, what we need today is not a conventional plan or strategy, but a miracle.
