How did Syria go from having “Bashar is your god, you bastard” be chanted to “Howl like a dog” and now “Bleat, you animal”?

The recent videos of humiliation emerging from Syria—specifically those targeting Druze men amid sectarian violence carried out by hardline militants affiliated with the current Syrian administration—pierce the soul. In many ways, they are more brutal than killing itself. They reveal that we are still shackled by the idea of degrading the body, violating identity, and stripping dignity, acts then celebrated by hordes of fools on social media.

Graphic images of bloodied corpses and violent killings are horrific, but even they do not match the trauma of watching armed men forcibly shave the mustaches of young Druze men. In another video, a militant mocks two young men, forcing them to answer derogatory and mocking questions.

“What did the Umayyads do to us?” One of them replies, “They plucked our mustaches.”

In a third video, a militant orders a detainee to bleat like a sheep. “Bleat! Don’t you know how to bleat?” The man, sitting on the ground, hesitates and resists, saying, “Are you really asking me to do this?” But the militant insists, staring into his eyes and forcing him to imitate the sound of a sheep.

According to French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the ethical relationship begins with the “face”—not just its physical form, but the presence of the other as a moral being. To humiliate someone, then, is to erase their face. “The face says: do not kill me. Its presence imposes an undeniable moral responsibility. Humiliation, in essence, is the negation of this presence, of that plea.”

It’s within this framework that the scenes of men lined up to have their mustaches shaved, or being forced to bleat like livestock, become clear violations of their humanity and their very essence. In Druze tradition, mustaches are deeply tied to dignity and cultural identity. Thus, the armed men deliberately meant to insult that core—and forcing them to bleat like animals only deepens the humiliation.

In war and sectarian conflict, humiliation does not stop at killing or displacement. It also includes the symbolic “killing of dignity”: forcing someone to betray or deny their identity. With smartphones now omnipresent, such acts are recorded, published, and widely circulated, ensuring the humiliation is not just inflicted, but also preserved and propagated.

Barely two months had passed since the massacres in Syria’s coastal region, where hardline militants linked to the new administration slaughtered Alawite civilians, when the same scenes began to unfold in Druze-majority areas. Among the many videos showing the sectarian killings of Alawites, some featured dozens of men and boys being ordered to howl: “Howl, you dog!” The forced howling is intended to strip them of their humanity, to render them subhuman.

Practices of sectarian humiliation, such as forcing individuals from a particular sect to mimic animal behavior or targeting cultural symbols like mustaches, have deep roots. They are often linked to attempts at symbolic and psychological domination over the “other” in the context of sectarian, ethnic, or political conflict.

Writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh recounts his personal experience in Syrian prisons under the Assad regime, highlighting how humiliation was not merely a byproduct of detention, but rather a central strategy of Baathist rule.

In one of his articles, al-Haj Saleh clarifies the difference between repression and humiliation, stating: “A state may repress or even kill its citizens, but it does not humiliate them. It does not stab their humanity and dignity. Humiliation is the violence of gangs, not the violence of a state.”

This quote underscores how the Syrian regime crossed the threshold of conventional repression, using humiliation as a deliberate tool of subjugation—transforming the state into an entity that behaves like a criminal gang. In his book Salvation, O Youths (Bilkhalas ya Shabab), al-Haj Saleh describes life in prison, noting how inmates were forced to lower their heads, whisper when speaking, and have their heads, beards, and mustaches shaved, part of a constant effort to break their spirit and strip them of dignity: “Heads had to be bowed, on the pretense that we had done nothing worthy of lifting our heads. Speech had to be whispered so our voices wouldn’t rise in the future. And our hair, beards, and mustaches were shaved to instill shame and belittlement.”

In the Syrian context, humiliation is not just a means of control, it is part of the very architecture of power, designed to destroy a person psychologically and morally, making it exceedingly difficult to reclaim one’s dignity. Many Syrians will never forget the videos of Assad’s soldiers torturing detained opposition members while shouting, “Bashar is your god, you bastard!”—a slogan that came to symbolize years of degradation, killing, and subjugation.

In this sense, Bashar al-Assad continues to rule Syria through the same system of humiliation that he instilled in the psyche of the Islamist factions now holding power. Syria has not rid itself of the Baath Party; it has merely resurrected it in the new administration through its ugliest and most brutal values.

Thus, the recent videos—“Howl, you dog” and “Bleat, you animal”—repeated by militants of the new administration as they carried out sectarian killings of Alawites and Druze, reinforce the idea that humiliation is not just a fleeting experience of pain, but a deeply rooted psychological and social structure that reproduces systems of domination.

Thinkers and philosophers who have examined the phenomenon of humiliation provide tools to understand it not as an isolated event, but as a persistent system of control and violation, one that merely shifts hands while remaining embedded in the machinery of power. In this system, punishment becomes internalized, and the victim is made complicit in the reproduction of their own subjugation.