“Without forgetting, there can be no happiness or future.”

Bashar al-Assad fled Syria after securing his financial future. He boarded a plane without informing even his closest confidants, ignoring and neglecting deeply personal aspects such as his childhood photos, family albums, and pictures of his parents and friends. This act of “forgetting,” though seemingly spontaneous, carries psychological dimensions and reflects an intentional decision Assad made, perhaps unconsciously.

Bashar al-Assad undoubtedly belongs to an emotionally detached family. Reports suggest bitter internal conflicts: two brothers allegedly tried to kill their sister’s lover—who later became her husband, Assef Shawkat. One brother was described as excessively cruel, while the other reportedly engaged in necrophilic behaviors, famously documenting the corpses of Saydnaya Prison detainees during a strike with cold, detached movements. Their father, Hafez, was often critical and dismissive toward Bashar, while their mother was described as emotionally cold.

This emotional legacy is what Bashar al-Assad escaped. Forgetting the photo album was not a mere oversight but likely symbolized an emotional detachment from his family and a conscious attempt to sever ties with his personal history. It was a psychological act of assertion, sending a message that his family’s past and its values meant nothing to him. For Assad, the family symbolized a burden, a negative entity tied to failure and restriction rather than support, reflecting his rejection of values and emotions connected to his personal history.

From a Freudian perspective, forgetting the album could be interpreted as a complex psychological process blending the conscious and unconscious. On an unconscious level, this forgetting represents an effort to suppress childhood and youth memories that might conflict with his current image as a strong and authoritative leader. The album, with its human and emotional symbolism, posed a threat to the identity of power he sought to establish. Consciously, leaving the album behind may have been a premeditated decision long before his escape, expressing a clear desire to shed the past and sever any personal legacy that could undermine his cultivated image.

While many accuse Assad of neglecting the Alawite sect, this analysis suggests that his primary neglect extends beyond his sect to encompass everything outside himself, starting with his family. Forgetting the album was no mere accident; it was an act aimed at erasing his regressive memory, an attempt to destroy it in order to reshape himself as a figure devoid of emotional or human connections to his past, solidifying his present image as an absolute symbol of power.

Nietzsche’s notion that “without forgetting, there can be no happiness or future” could apply here. Bashar al-Assad’s forgetting represents an attempt to transcend himself, but he does so in a way that reflects a negative form of forgetting—one of weakness and denial, rather than a creative and vital forgetting that rebuilds the self with strength. He faces his old self with fragility, discarding it as a burden he cannot bear, fleeing from the past instead of confronting it courageously to rebuild on new foundations.

Forgetting commitments and promises is the most dangerous form of forgetting, as it brings society back to chaos, rendering the social contract meaningless. As Hobbes said, the absence of such commitments returns humanity to a state of disorder.

When images of the Assad family were revealed, people celebrated the symbolic stripping of a family that had long been shrouded in an aura of perfection and dominance. These images portrayed the family in mundane, even foolish, moments familiar to everyone. The idealized image of Hafez al-Assad, painted for decades as a “saintly figure,” was shattered as he appeared in pajamas, breaking the illusion of solemnity. The family’s crumbling narcissism became a source of collective ridicule, providing a form of psychological relief for people who saw in these images an outlet for their suppressed anger.

Bashar al-Assad’s personal images further dismantled the regime’s cultivated narrative of power. Photos of him in mundane situations—wearing underwear or playing games—undermined the authoritarian image the regime sought to project. These images, widely circulated with mocking commentary, became a collective satirical memory, eroding the symbolic authority of the Assad family and redefining the relationship between the people and the regime.

Other global and Arab leaders have been depicted in similar “ordinary” moments, attempting to project spontaneity and relatability between a ‘leader’ and his people. For instance, Sadat combined European simplicity with pharaonic symbolism to reflect historical prestige. In contrast, Bashar al-Assad clung to an outdated military uniform while attempting to maintain his image as a young president through cosmetic adjustments and self-curated portrayals.

However, the image of Bashar in his underwear became a powerful, vengeful tool for collective ridicule, embodying the people’s suppressed frustration and dismantling decades of carefully constructed symbolism. The “underwear” symbolized the catastrophic end of the authority Assad had sought to project for 24 years. It destroyed the social contract that upheld his regime’s dominance, unraveling the illusion of invincibility.

These photos, which became emblematic of the Assad era, were accompanied by sarcastic phrases like “the slipper army,” “the bribery army,” and “the Captagon army,” illustrating a radical shift in public narratives.

This stark contrast between constructed authority and modern ridicule created a visual shock, turning the underwear into a metaphor for the regime’s catastrophic collapse. The act of forgetting his family photos and personal history became a collective scandal in Syria, woven into the popular consciousness as a satirical narrative mocking the regime and its symbols. In this atmosphere, it became evident that everything had to change—even the Syrians themselves. While they were not yet ready to physically replace Bashar al-Assad, they symbolically dismantled his image and that of his family through satirical displays. Yet, this symbolic deconstruction was not enough to achieve true justice or quell the desire for retribution.

Heidegger describes forgetting as an oblivion of existence, where one loses touch with their true self and becomes consumed by the superficialities imposed by daily concerns.

Heideigger

The most surprising example of forgetting came from Asma al-Assad, who seemed to forget her Syrian identity card entirely. To her, Syria represented not a nation but the authority and its narratives; she didn’t have a chance to develop a true national identity. This reflected a cyclical disconnection where she existed as both the president’s wife and a fractured symbol of national identity. As “the lady of jasmine” and, at the same time, a victim, Asma’s actions symbolized a rejection of her authentic identity and an embrace of power as an abstract entity.

This form of forgetting was not just a loss of memory but an erasure of true existence. It severed the relationship with the genuine roots of identity, favoring superficial narratives dictated by the authority’s daily preoccupations. Syria ceased to be a people and a land; it became an empty symbol of domination. Even her personal identity card, small enough to fit in a pocket, seemed to hold no value to her.

Syrians endured the destruction of their homes, neighborhoods, places of worship, and even personal artifacts such as ID cards, photos, and videos documenting their lives. Yet, they reached a psychological turning point after Assad’s flight, when the release of family photos revealed the fragile reality behind decades of authority. Syrians, whose collective identity was fractured by war, began to rebuild it in unexpected ways. The man who deprived them of their memories became exposed and dismantled through his own images and memories, turning him from a figure of oppression into one subjected to collective visual ridicule.

The interpretations of what was found in the palace were endless—personal letters from Bushra to her brother Bassel, humorous photos of friends, or wedding videos shot in a cramped, mafia-like house. These details symbolically dismantled the Assad family, exposing their weakness and allowing Syrians to see the brittle nature of a regime that portrayed itself as unbreakable.

In his attempt to recreate himself and forget his past, Bashar al-Assad revealed much about his character—chief among them, a president who hated his family and a wife who washed her hands of her identity. What kind of fragmented family is this? These images taught us that the regime, which seemed unified for decades, was in reality fragile and incapable of withstanding a simple unveiling of its true nature.