Despite having tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of people, and having forced millions more to flee, the Syrian regime in May was welcomed back by the League of Arab States . Thus, after more than a decade of hostilities with the Gulf countries, Syria has returned to the “Arab sphere.”

Dealing with this sudden change as an isolated event does not explain the context of the decision, as the current regional climate denies that any democratic progress has taken place since 2011. 

The dictators are back in full force, and with that comes a message to the millions who dared to rise up in the past 13 years: “Our resources are stronger than your will.” 

The people have nothing but will, whereas the regimes have the military, oil and militias.

The 2004 labor movements in Egypt, the 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the 2011 Arab Spring, the 2019 uprisings in Lebanon, Sudan, Iraq and Algeria: all efforts to gain back rights and institutions from the regimes that enshrined violence and neoliberalism have provided valuable lessons for generations of young men and women. 

It is often said that the revolutions “failed,” as millions of Syrians were killed and displaced, the military took back control in Egypt, militias in Iraq and Lebanon seized power, and the power of the Tunisian presidency strengthened at the expense of democracy.

However, we can still attest that the revolutions did take place, that millions of people demonstrated in an attempt to overthrow authoritarian regimes, and that democracy is a value shared by many nations and civilizations. 

We may have lost this round, but there is no defeat with so many lessons learnt and experiences gained, as the latter will no doubt accumulate to one day reach a future that is fundamentally different from the present day defeat.

From Symbols of Defeat to Signs of Hope

We acknowledge that we live in an era of defeat. But this defeat has produced powerful symbols, for which sacrifices were made, that have been recorded in books, paintings, and pictures published and publicized along roads, in newspapers, and on online platforms. These symbols serve both as a weapon for future fights and as valuable memories for the current era. 

According to recent research in the fields of sociology and political science, new social movements are founded on “emotions,” in the widest sense of the word, that motivate fighters to make sacrifices and invest time and energy in writing, organizing and confronting. 

From Alaa Abu Fakhr, Luqman Selim and Samir Kassir in Lebanon and Alaa Abdel Fattah and Sarah Hegazy in Egypt to Ali Mustafa and Ibrahim Kashoush in Syria and Tarek Bouazizi in Tunisia: they are not just names and pictures hanging on the walls of meeting rooms. They have become legends directing the struggle ahead, solidifying its meaning through statements, texts, and videos.

However, without a present adjusted to the circumstances of the moment, the past that is so rich in sacrifices and heroism will be useless. One of the current circumstances that needs adjusting is giving up on misery and victimhood. 

Building new social movements that accumulate victories, not  defeats, requires emancipating from the “emotion of defeat,” substituting it with the “emotion of hope,” which is what motivated the men and women of past experiences in the first place – despite the very challenging circumstances they found themselves in.  

The least we can say is that the regimes’ tendency to use violence, including murder, to get rid of opponents confirms that we are a real danger to them. The rulers of the region are afraid of their own people rising up. The stubborn words of the revolution have real repercussions in the Arab arena.

Defeat Produces Knowledge

The first victory of the Arab Spring in Egypt was the revolutionaries expelling Mubarak from power, after which democratic elections were held, making Mohamed Morsi as president. It was the first democratic experiment in Egypt’s history and therefore a great victory for the country’s democrats and opposition forces.

In his book Self-Criticism after the Defeat by the late Syrian thinker Sadik Jalal al-Azm, he talks about the contradictions of the national discourse and the internal crisis of the Arab world in terms of women’s rights and other issues related to social liberation. 

“This book was written under the psychological pressure caused by the awful defeat [of 1967] and the humiliating way in which it happened,” al-Azm wrote in the introduction.

Although self-criticism is rarely a pleasant deed, it is the first step that must be taken before being able to proceed. 

Samir Kassir’s writings criticizing the military Arab regimes called for prioritizing democracy, freedom, and secularization in the face of religious fundamentalism, American wars, and tyrannical regimes. 

That is the spirit of the Arab Spring! 

We need to generate knowledge that critiques the present in an effort to look to the future in the light of the latest defeat. And this study must start in the realm of social movements. 

How can we reconcile a leadership and democracy that is both  effective and participatory? How do we respond to conservative social forces with an ambiguous view on political pluralism? How do leftist and new progressive forces move beyond their confined online bubbles to become an integral part of history rather than observers on the sidelines? 

These are some of the questions that must be asked to start the process of producing the real knowledge needed for the challenges that lie ahead. 

Systems Are Always Defeated

Our defeat does not necessarily imply the adversary’s victory. And our support for a “Spring of Hope” is rooted in our conviction that we are dealing with Arab regimes in crisis. 

The current rulers have no desire to establish an institutional system. They share their rule with a confined class of soldiers and merchants who have waged war on generations of oppressed and jobless youth, a war that is ongoing.

Naturally, they create enemies given their position within an authoritarian mafia that only survives, and thrives, at the expense of the weakest in society.

Preserving such regimes is not sustainable in the long term, as it opposes the aspirations of so many “others” creating divisions and contradictions among sects, tribes and classes, that are all competing for resources. 

Therefore, we first need a good governance project, which aims at constructing just, democratic and capable institutions, to manage such divisions and contradictions. The nature of the institutions, and the theory of change we will employ to construct them, will arguably not be fully understood at first, but our adversary even lacks the will to do so. 

On this basis, our will to learn from the past and produce knowledge will be stronger than their resources. And their attempts to return today will not delay tomorrow’s spring.